Monday, October 19, 2009

Food Fight

UPDATE: Roger jumps the shark. The shark wins.

Well, Ethon said so. Such joy, first the Supercalifragiliciousfeakonomics Climate Pie breaks out all over (well here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and maybe here, but later) and then Ethon's favorite food group goes toe to toe with Brad DeLong at the new place, Brad being smart enough to keep the less expensive cuts out of his blog, does manage to call Roger, well careless on purpose. Roger does not take well to this and blows it into a second post.

Some highlights from brad (yes it is Delong and not the brad at Sadly No)

Well, how about: http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/08/another_pielke_train_wreck.php ?

"The thing about a Roger Pielke Jr train wreck is that you just can't look away. Check this one out. Pielke claims that there were 1,264 times as many news stories about a Michael Mann study that suggests that hurricanes are at a 1,000 year high as about a Chris Landsea study that found no increase in hurricanes over the past century. (Mark Morano , of course, links to Pielke's post.) The fun is in the comments as folks try to explain to Pielke that there is a film director called Michael Mann and that maybe Pielke shouldn't count those stories. Pielke comes back with the claim that restricting the search to "Michael Mann" + nature + hurricanes + Aug 13-15 gives 1,412 stories. Some folks might wonder how restricting the search gives you more results, but not Pielke. In fact, if you read what Google says at the link Pielke gave it says that there are "about 20", and if you look at all the results there are just 11..."
and
Re: "Yes, I did butcher a Google search. But when pointed out I corrected the mistake and apologized. But it is not really relevant to this post is it? Five years of blogging and a few hundred publications, and that all you've got? Really?!'

Well, how many do you want?

I do remember that what knocked my view of your work over the edge was one of your attacks on Hansen.

Ah. "[Pielke] claims that [Hanson's] scenario B was off by a factor of 2 on CO2. This sounds like a lot until you discover that means that emissions grew by 0.5% per year instead of 1% a year. And that works out to scenario B having the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere within 1% of what has actually happened. Pielke is being much more than a little unfair by calling a prediction that got within 1% of the correct answer as not being 'particularly accurate or realistic'."
With material like this who needs to blog.

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

http://www.issues.org/19.3/forum.htm

http://www.prisonplanet.com/evidence-that-global-temperature-trends-have-been-overstated.html

skanky said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
bi -- International Journal of Inactivism said...

Shorter Anonymous 10:33pm:

Pielke's wrong, but here's some linkspam, so he's right!

Dano said...

Help me understand why anyone engages with RP Jr.

Is it similar to the old saw "Why do you keep hitting yourself in the head with that hammer?" "It feels so good when I stop!"

Best,

D

Thad said...

Need some help from Ethon and fellow bunnies.

Unfortunately, I will be attending a guest lecture by RP Jr. on uncertainty in my university pretty soon. As much as I would love to skip this, I wouldn't want to pass up an opportunity to listen to Mr. Disingenuous himself.

Would it be wise to antagonize him by reminding him of all the train wrecks he caused? Should I show up wearing an Ethon T-shirt? Suggestions from all would be most welcome.

Dano said...

When's the lecture & what's the building? Maybe we can tag team...

Best,

D

(word verification agrees: regeo)

EliRabett said...

Eli thinks the trick with Roger is to force him to be the good Roger. Something like you have said on many occasions that adaptation without mitigation is futile, so what mitigations can we undertake now that would be effective enough to help.

Another tack is to point out that he confuses mitigations and adaptations. For example, CO2 sequestration is not an adaptation as it removes CO2 from the atmosphere. You can refer to the summary for policy makers for WGIII table SPM3 to start.

OTOH, Ethon recommends flinging a relish pie at him and pecking away.

Anonymous said...

Thad,
Ask him when Klotzbach et al will be published in JGR, and if the authors are planning to correct the major error pointed out by Gavin Schmidt.

(Klotzbach et al used a global amplification factor of 1.2 in the analysis of tropospheric and surface temperature trends. In fact, climate models and basic physics imply no whatsoever over land and enhanced amplification over oceans, completely negating the original analysis.)

Anonymous said...

Make that "no amplification whatsoever over land" ... sorry

Anonymous said...

My favorite RP post was the one where he started "I asked an undergrad in to teach me some statistics" to show just how wrong some other use of statistics was, and then proceeded to get everything wrong, just digging himself in further and further... I'll have to see if I can find the post again.

-Marcus

Anonymous said...

This was the one! http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/archives/prediction_and_forecasting/001431the_helpful_undergra.html

Thad said...

Thanks all!

Dano:

RPJr will be leaving CO for the lecture. It would have been nice to tag-team though.

Eli:

It would be nice to speak to Dr. Jekyll but I fear mentioning "teh mitigationz" to RPJr will transform him to Mr. Hyde, as Joe Romm has observed. In that case, Ethon's advice would be heeded.

DeepClimate:

Good point about Klotzbach but isn't it more relevant to address it to Sr instead of Jr? I'd rather ask questions about his framing of uncertainty.

Anon:

Ouch. Yes, Megan the friendly and probably fictitious undergrad, and her unpaired t-test for temperatures of different planets...

Thanks for all the suggestions. I may also ask RPJr why he is so nice to climate contrarians relative to the smears he throws at Joe Romm, Tim Lambert, James Annan, Gavin Schmidt, Al Gore, James Hansen...

Hank Roberts said...

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/23/contrarianism-without-consequences/

http://crookedtimber.org/2009/10/22/rules-for-contrarians-1-dont-whine-that-is-all/