Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Will The Real Climate Change Denier Please Adjust His Toupée ?

There's much gnashing of teeth over at Climate Audit re James Hansen's recent e-mails on the adjustment to GISSSTEMP's U.S. temperature estimates. McIntyre's readers are especially upset at Hansen's remark to the effect that the episode was a "tempest inside somebody's teapot dome, and that perhaps a light was not on upstairs". There is much speculation as to the meaning of the phrase "teapot dome". For example:

I find Hansen’s choice of words interesting. “tempest in a teapot dome”.

As most students of American History are aware, the “teapot dome” is a reference to a major political scandal early in the last century.It involved bribes and kickbacks and went pretty high up into the executive branch. I believe “teapot dome” itself was a geological formation that held oil.

And:

Teapot Dome was an oil scandal in a Republican administration (Harding) in 1921.

Well, perhaps because my ears are more attuned to purely political discourse, this strikes me as being pretty obviously a bald joke. A teapot's surface is rounded and smooth. Hansen is describing someone within the Denier community as being balding and stupid. The question is, who?

And the problem is, it could probably be anyone! There are more crazy bald-heads in the skeptics camp than there are at a convention of Kojak impersonators. For example, Timothy Francis "Cue" Ball. But for my money I'm betting it refers to Mr. McIntyre himself. Witness the sketch left, the only pictorial representation of Steve I've ever found on the Net.
Now, I'm not entirely sure where this came from before it appeared L. Motl's blog (which I won't link to because it keeps crashing my browser), but it looks like a pic from the Wall Street Journal from around the time of the original McIntyre/Mann clash--lets say from the late 1990s.
I imagine it isn't just the glaciers that have receded since that time.
And to forestall the obvious response: yes, it true, but at least Hansen has enough to attempt a comb-over.
And as a rhetorical flourish, Hansen's choice of words is inspired. A bald man can never become President; they naturally inspire distrust and suspicion: "hide your women... the bald-headed men of Rome have come" and all that.

50 comments:

Anonymous said...

My breasts are tender and I'm crampy and bloated today, so please google up something stupid about "warmists" and imagine I cut and pasted it into this comment.

Thank you. Now where's my Midol...

Ti-Guy said...

I think the beady eyes are more characteristic of the morally and ethically challenged, quite frankly.

Why can't we get the "citizen scientists" (aka unlettered knobs) to focus on that?

Anonymous said...

You don't even ATTEMPT to debate the issue, all you can do is attack the guy's appearance. And you think your argument is superior? Unbelievable.

Anonymous said...

Faith Based Science has now been trumped by Fashion Based Science.

Oldschool said...

why don't you just goggle "Hansen liar" and read all about this sack.
The doctored computer programs mean absolutely nothing . . . anyone talk to their computer today to find out what the stock market is going to do tomorrow?
Of course not it doesn't know . . . just like is doesn't know what the weather is going to be like 10 years from now . . . or even 10 weeks from today . . . you "believers" make me laugh . . . weather is always changing . . . when the Vikings move back to Greenland or there's glaciation in southern Manitoba . . . give me a call.

Anonymous said...

And right one cue, Mini Me (oops, I mean ti-guy) is back parroting his master's words.

Oldschool said...

TI-gy . . when you going to post that "Scientific data re: CO2"
Show me how the miniscule amount generated by man . . . 4% of .05% of total CO2 . . . is changing the planet.
I mean Provable, Repeatable Real Science . . . not computer junk.

Ti-Guy said...

What?

Anonymous said...

'Ti-Guy', you heard. Answer the man!

Anonymous said...

Historical record of temperature and CO2 levels going back thousands of years - very spotty.

Physical correlation between CO2 levels and temperature - poorly established, weak at best.

Understanding of global weather systems - low and developing.

Modelling capability of future global temperatures based on CO2 levels - weak.

Predicted costs associated with 'global warming' (giggle) - trillions.

So in essense, you want us to commit trillions of dollars to fight the possible effects which may or may not materialise in the future based on weak data, poor cause and effect correlation, and low understanding of a complex system?

Send me $50/month, and I'll save the world for you.

Ti-Guy said...

'Ti-Guy', you heard. Answer the man!

I did. He just doesn't remember.

Unschooled, we talked about...the meth...

Ti-Guy said...

Send me $50/month, and I'll save the world for you.

Why 50$ a month? I'm sure one cyanide capsule for you would save the world for me. And I'm sure they're not that expensive...

Anonymous said...

Just admit it, BCL. You're gay for Steve.

bigcitylib said...

Me and you both, TCO. And you still like him after what he did to you. Isn't that like Battered Wife syndrome?

Anonymous said...

Hey oldschool! I gave you all sorts of info about volcanoes at an earlier post and you never responded!

Weren't you glad to learn that humans produce 150 times more CO2 than volcanoes each year, and that the statement you made about Pinatubo was nonsense?

Anonymous said...

It was this thread, the coooool one.

https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=23292180&postID=1128185810928384163

Anonymous said...

That's how they show their love, BCL. You know, like the trappers loving on the baby seals. ;-)

Ti-Guy said...

NO ONE MENTION THE WAR!...er...the baby seals.

Anonymous said...

I know you Canadians love nothing more than some baby seal clubbing.

Ti-Guy said...

Beats burning down the White House...

Anonymous said...

54-40 or fight.

Anonymous said...

I'm unbanned guys. Gotta go have sex with my hubby.

Ti-Guy said...

54-40 or fight.

54-40 and...You lose.

Anonymous said...

I'm banned again and AntHoney has erased every one of my recent comments.

Anonymous said...

Wow, TCO, 57 minutes. Is that a record? You could avoid so much heartbreak if only you would learn to be a compliant bottom like Sadlov or jae.

Hey, wait... 57... Manchurian Candidate... Heinz... Hansen... I could learn to love this kind of elliptical thinking.

Seriously, I expect that the Teapot Dome reference relates to McIntyre's fossil fuel industry background.

bigcitylib said...

Tco,

Come over to our side. I can set you up with Al Gore.

Anonymous said...

I'm being deleted again. Great openness, guys. You allow the rightest version of Lynn Vincenthaven, but delete this rather than discussing/debating it:

------------------
(from Tucson detectives thread)

My reasonable questions have still not been addressed. Not to do so show's this place as promotional rather than interested in hashing things out. (Except for Mosh-pit.)

A. Presumably the (not stated as a definite hypothesis) point of showing the picture of the airport is to scoff at all the paving. But the location of the weather station is not shown in the picture. Nor do we see the entire airport.

B. Comparing slopes from different length time series is just SUCH a fundamentally wrong thing to do, that I'm aghast. And that Steve has not corrected it? He KNOWS it is a very, very basically wrong thing to do. I (hope, hope, hope) that this is just stubborness/tendentiousness/not willing to admit fault, not a failure of understanding. Every now and then I worry that Steve does not understand the basic concept of issue analysis, of disaggregation of factors, of confounding variable. I mean, if I compare the performance of tech stocks versus industrials and one is over the last 10 years and the other is over the last 30, what do I learn? How do I know if the difference reflects something about the two populations or the two periods? Is this so hard? Please, Moshie, come talk to me. My head is hurting from banging on the wall with true believers and lightweights.

C. Dave D.: Good point. I don't have the data to allow least squares analysis. However I did print out and draw lines of best fit and saw that there was a difference. And that doing the curves over the actual common period REDUCED the difference in the populations. But the big thing to me is that Steve would even MAKE such a mistake. And then PASSIVELY AGGRESSIVELY refuse to correct it? I mean he is meester time series and resisting this type of correction? That's not the behavior of a truth seeker. It reminds me of the (thankfully very few) teachers I had in school who refused to admit mistakes out of pride.

D. 58 and 59 are still reasonable questions that have not been answered. I'm not so cocky to assume that every time I find a discrepancy, it is a flaw (sometimes it is my mistake). But in this case, no one has even answered! Aren't you all interested in learning? In thinking?

F. Trev: thanks, man. Dave Smith: sorry you feel that way. you are a gentleman of the board. Wish you would say issues to my face (in unthreaded) vice commenting while I'm banned, but I can understand if you are concerned I will cause a bruhaha.

Anonymous said...

I'm very concerned about Steve's responses to me under Burger's review (note that it's not just me, Burger also addressed this concern in April!) I'm worried he may be avoiding admitting a calculational flaw. (I have not calculated it, it's just the behavior.)

----------------------
(post preservation via cross post from CA "Burger Review" thread.)

Steve: Is that your last word? Can't you offer me some partial satisfaction. After all you are at fault for publishing and not allowing a replication.

Also it is a bit damning that you blow off answering the question for so long and then only under pressure come forth and say that the data is lost. Shouldn't you say that right away? If I go to the trouble of replicating this and THEN ALSO find a mistake, it's really going to look bad, evasive and dishonest.

--------------------

P.s. although I'm generally on Steve's "side", not liberal climatologists, I'm MOST on the side of truth. So this is an area, where I WOULD WELCOME a trained team member looking and replicating Steve's calculation.

bigcitylib said...

TCO,

I remember the Burger post, and your comments. In fact that was my first clue that you might be some kind of legit math guy. But I figured the whole post must have gotten eaten during the whole switch over to the new servers. If you wanna give me the for dummies version of your complaint I will turn it into a post. "Did Bald Denier Cover Up Climate Criticism?" something like that.

Throw in a topless shot of Britney, and we can send that guy back to the nickel mines.

(I AM serious, however)

Anonymous said...

BCL: Thanks for asking first. Let me figure what I want to do.

Feel free to launch the Britney shot though...

Anonymous said...

and I am not a serious math guy. Just someone who problem solves by asking questions

Anonymous said...

Posted in Take Ritalin Dave thread (Aug06)

So did Ritson ever get his data from Wegman? Were your emails returned? What's up with Wegman and why have we heard nothing more from him on climate statistics (in general) or on hockey stick wars (in particular)?

Anonymous said...

Is CA down again?

bigcitylib said...

TCO,

Yup. Wasn't me. Where's Al Gore tonight?

Anonymous said...

Tipping Tipper.

bigcitylib said...

TCP,

So we can rule Gore out. Think Hansen himself snuck out and cut the hardline? Wouldn't surprise me. Him suppressing the truth and all that.

Anonymous said...

He's got a big of an edge to him. Good call. I know it's not you since you're busy harvesting around surface stations.

Anonymous said...

In seriousness, though. This is just one more example of why using a blog to replace publication is very bad for the science community. If someone right now wants to look at something in the blog, how good is the wayback machine going to be? Sheesh!

Anonymous said...

You or Moshpit play bridge? I'm online now.

bigcitylib said...

No. And I'm just off to pick up the wife.

Anonymous said...

Wives are the opium of the people.

Anonymous said...

I haven't made any more drunk posts, but am being stopped from posting again. Not sure what gives as I can slip a post in every now and then. and then they start being stopped.

(from Brazil thread)

a. I don't see an assertion of trend, population effects or anything else in this posting from Steve. Just 6 graphs. How are we to have meaningful discussion based on thatn? Note, that this is a commmon pattern of discussion. Posting something that Steve thinks is ugly but not clearly making a falsifiable hypothesis.

b. Something is being held back with the "guess which one is rural" comment. I'm still waiting for the "gotcha" post as to which one.

c. Reading the ~200 comments here, there is almost 0% useful insight or additive science/analysis commentary. As might be expected from A above. I'm in shock that my "trolls" get deleted, when so many hoi polloi, no value, cheerleader, 0% content comments are allowed instead.

d. (content) Rereading Steve's post, I think the one interesting comment is the NUMBER of sites for Brazil versus the number for the US. To discuss this better, however, one should use graphs that emphasize this point. Rather than showing the 6 graphs of Brazil, show some metric with coverage in the US versus Brazil (maybe a map). Or average distance between stations. Also important to discuss the more homogenous weather in Brazil as compared to the US. Also important to draw in some general inferences as to how many climate stations are needed per grid point to give what variability as important for what analysis.

Anonymous said...

TCO post preservation (More on Elsner, following comment #60):

-------------

Matt:

Are you going to publish a paper (or has one already been done) on the solar flare to hurricane correlation analysis? Is this a new discovery or a previously articulated scientific observation?

Have you some statistical tests to show the strength of the correlation?

Why not show a longer data set than just the lat few years?

What possible physical connections are there for solar flares causing hurricanes?

Anonymous said...

Post preservation from Hansen and the Great White North. After comment 95


The added graphic gives more insight than before Steve. However, I think you can do even more. Why not include the unadjusted stations in the same graphic? Or better yet, show the color of the adjustement per gridcell. that would really be interesting.

Anonymous said...

Posted in Brazil GHCN Station Population:

What does it mean that the small towns are cities? Is this some legal distinction in tersm of incorporation? Or is there some size (what?) for a city?

bigcitylib said...

TCO,

You know you could always grab another hotmail account, change your moniker, and start posting to CA again that way. I've done the same thing with a bunch of right wing forums that I really like to troll. Start out slow, and you could get at least a few weeks of pleasure out of it.

Anonymous said...

I'm too fff...ucking proud.

Anonymous said...

I'm resigning from the boards again. That Dutch paper was right. Skeptics are too interested in "shooting from the side of the road" like guerillas. Was fun getting to meet Mosh-pit.

bigcitylib said...

Come back for tomorrow's first post. ;)

Anonymous said...

The flesh is so weak...

Moshpit: I'm still posting. Check out coyote blog and atmoz. I'm not yet banned at those.