Nate Silver Interview Completes Epic Fail Week for Climate Confuser Pielke
March 28, 2014
I’ve posted on the misleading methods of Dr. Roger Pielke, the GOP congress’ replacement for crank “Lord” Monckton.
Normally I stay away from the “inside baseball” sniping that goes on between scientists and climate denial types, but this is above and beyond.
After a catastrophic debut essay that may have ruined Nate Silver’s new “538” Blog’s credibility right at the start, Pielke has not only been called out by leading climate scientists, he has now been very publicly thrown under a bus by his employer, Mr. Silver, in a Huffington Post interview.
Mr. Silver felt compelled to apologize for the thinly veiled threats (another Monckton touch) that Pielke issued to climate scientists mentioned in a critical blog posting at ClimateProgress.
This comes one day after Silver, in a “Daily Show” interview with Jon Stewart, where Silver was asked about the piece that leading scientists called misleading and inaccurate. Incredibly, Silver admitted that Pielke’s piece provoked so much justified outrage, that the blog would print a rebuttal of their own columnist.
““That’s a piece where we did have a lot of concern from our readers,” Silver admitted. “We don’t pay much attention to what media critics say, but that was a piece where we had, you know, 80 percent of our commentators weigh in negatively, so we’re commissioning a rebuttal for that piece.”
NEW YORK — Two prominent climate scientists say Roger Pielke Jr., a controversial writer at Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight site, sent emails threatening possible legal action in response to their criticism of his findings for the data-driven news site.
Pielke says it’s “ridiculous” to characterize the emails as threats against Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University, and Dr. Kevin Trenberth, a distinguished senior climate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. FiveThirtyEight, however, apologized to both men.
“Roger is a freelance contributor and his private communications do not represent FiveThirtyEight,” Silver said in a statement to HuffPost. “We had candid conversations with Michael Mann and Kevin Trenberth. We made clear that Roger’s conversations with them did not reflect FiveThirtyEight’s editorial values.”
Revelations of the private correspondence are particularly poorly timed for FiveThirtyEight, which has been dogged online throughout most of its 11-day existence by the climate change dispute. The controversy was given increased exposure Thursday night on “The Daily Show.”It began with Pielke’s March 19 article, “Disasters Cost More Than Ever — But Not Because of Climate Change.” Pielke’s claim that the cost from natural disasters has risen because of increased wealth, and not because climate change is making weather events more extreme, was quickly challenged by several scientists and experts, including Professor John P. Abraham on The Huffington Post.
John Abraham in Huffington Post:
In his FiveThirtyEight post, Pielke references the IPCC reports to support his central claims. When I shared a draft of this piece with him, he again referenced the IPCC, highlighting its statement that there is “medium evidence and high agreement that long-term trends in normalized losses have not been attributed to natural or anthropogenic climate change.” But the panel, which is referring to an “absence of an attributable climate change signal,” has set a high scientific bar for itself. Detecting climate signals in normalized economic losses remains deeply contested, but trends in extreme weather itself can be studied directly, a field around which there is much consensus. Pielke has taken the IPCC’s caution at drawing an attributable conclusion and inserted his own counter-claim into the vacuum. But a closer reading of those IPCC reports tells a different story than Pielke’s. For temperature extremes, heat waves, and warm spells, the report says:
It is very likely that both maximum and minimum temperature extremes have warmed over most land areas since the mid-20th century. These changes are well simulated by current climate models and it is very likely that anthropogenic (human) forcing has affected the frequency of these extremes and virtually certain that further changes will occur.
The report also states that:It is likely that the number of heavy precipitation events over land has increased in more regions than it has decreased since the mid-20th century and there is medium confidence that anthropogenic (human) forcing has contributed to this increase.
Third, the report states that “over the satellite era, increases in the frequency and intensity of the strongest storms in the North Atlantic are robust.” Pielke does concede that there have been more heat waves and intense precipitation events, “but these phenomena are not significant drivers of disaster costs,” he claims. Heat waves and heavy rains are not drivers of disaster costs? Just don’t tell that to sufferers of floods from Irene, in Colorado, Duluth, Europe, or in the U.K., to name a few. Also, don’t tell residents of France in 2003, Russia in 2010, Oklahoma and Texas in 2011, California this year, Australia, or just about any U.S. citizen in 2012.What about droughts? The subject is not simple because increasing temperatures cause two competing phenomena. First, some areas get drier because evaporation is strengthened. At the same time, precipitation can increase because there is often more water in warmer air. In many parts of the globe, the “drying” wins out whereas in others areas, things get wetter. But averaging these competing factors on a global scale hides what is happening locally. Take the United States as an example; the first part of 2013 had extraordinary precipitation in the north-central part of the country but exceptionally dry conditions in the West. On “average,” you might conclude that this was just a normal spring but in reality, it was two offsetting disasters.
Climate Denial Crock of the Week 
March 28, 2014 at 3:22 pm
Climate scientist John Abraham (ahr ahr) uses anecdotal evidence without rebuttal of Pielke’s points. The relevant ipcc report is days away.
538 will publish a rebuttal because readers didn’t like a story (HuffPo’s words) -not because the story was wrong.
In the meanwhile no news in the peer reviewed literature.
Wherever there’s climate change there’s endless entertainment.
March 28, 2014 at 4:05 pm
Wherever there is omnologos there is error, purposeful blindness and incompetence.
March 29, 2014 at 8:01 am
Apparently you’re too lazy to follow through on the link YOU posted below, which is to someone else writing about what John Abraham wrote.
If you go to Abraham’s actual rebuttal, you will find, among many resources, the following:
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/10/18/1101766108.abstract
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v4/n1/full/nclimate2067.html
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2012GL052459/abstract
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/3/034018/article
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2011GL050422/abstract
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2006JD008303/abstract
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/10/10/1209542109.abstract
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/MWR-D-13-00228.1
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/09/18/1307758110.abstract
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/07/05/1301293110.abstract
Either you’re blindingly incompetent, or you’re a liar. Which is it?
March 30, 2014 at 4:26 am
it’s just that you can’t be possibly having a functioning brain, alteredstory, so any idiot can post 10 or 100 links and you’ll believe anything they say.
March 30, 2014 at 10:52 am
What possible kind of brain function has an individual whose modus operandi is to make unsupported assertions in lieu of an argument, makes just such an assertion implying some one who backs up his argument with solid references is not credible?
‘Tis a wonder.
March 30, 2014 at 11:56 am
Jp – stick to the point – you cannot be possibly believing Abraham is right only because he added links to his post?
Am sure you don’t, but others appear to. And I was replying to them
As for risks all I need is reasonable interlocutors who don’t believe CAGW is such a high risk as to justify them renouncing all civil discussion.
March 30, 2014 at 12:48 pm
‘Tis a wonder, indeed, although I question whether it is even proper to mention “brain function” and Omnologos in the same discussion.
BTW, I have just returned from that strange world of Omno’s website. Omno is a Flat Earther, in case anyone doubted that. He has engaged in a little exercise on his website in which he took a transparency of a Mercator projection, flipped it and put it on top of another Mercator projection in an attempt to show where you’d come out if you drilled a hole through the Earth. Lots of interesting math too. I became dizzy while trying to follow him and fell out of my chair again, so I couldn’t complete my analysis of his “work”—–but I DO wonder why he didn’t just use a globe?
Back to brain function. Omno’s website of course has the self-absorbed narcissist’s typical header—-a “selfie”—-in this case a pic of him peering out from under his troll bridge. I hadn’t visited the Omno twilight zone recently, and I was struck at how chubby his little cheeks are getting.
My hypothesis is that we are feeding him too much troll food, his head is getting fatter, and the earpieces of those cute little glasses he wears are digging into his head and cutting off the blood supply to his brain. Get contact lenses, Omno—-soon! (Or is it too late and is Omno already brain dead?)
March 30, 2014 at 12:50 pm
dumber- this comment of yours certifies you as a spammer. Unless you believe my opinion is on par with Pielke Jr’s, Mann’s, Abraham’s.
Seriously.
March 30, 2014 at 1:16 pm
Seriously? I think you need to look up the definition of “spammer” before you make such accusations. You must have looked it up in your Omnothesaurus or Omnodictionary, and we have all been telling you that you will find only confusion there.
March 30, 2014 at 1:06 pm
LOL The poster of more pointless comments than anyone since Kingdube is telling someone else to “stick to the point”?
And I love the high sounding whining evident in “…I need reasonable interlocutors who don’t believe CAGW is such a high risk as to justify them renouncing all civil discussion”.
Yes O-Log, I for one also come to Crock to look for “reasonable interlocutors” who wish to discuss AGW. Unfortunately, your insulting and willfully ignorant renunciation of all sane discussion reduces the civility level considerably (as far as your participation goes, anyway).
This could be solved if you just stopped posting here. Many of us “play” with you on occasion, but it’s really not very satisfying to pick on the village idiot, and we would not miss you. If I put on my telepsychiatry hat, I could list a host of reasons why you keep returning in the face of such scorn from so many people who are more intelligent and better informed than you, but “faulty toilet training” will suffice for now. Again, why don’t you just go away?
March 31, 2014 at 9:44 am
You stated, explicitly, that he provided no peer-reviewed sources.
That was a lie.
There is no other word for it.
Your statement was blatantly false.
If you have a problem with the content of those sources, that’s a different matter, but you said that he used anecdotal evidence, and “no news in the peer reviewed literature”.
You either lied or, as I said, you’re so indifferent to the truth that you didn’t bother to check whether your statement was accurate. Either way, it seems that you’re not in a good position to comment on the brain functions of others.
March 31, 2014 at 10:26 am
Alteredstate – you would be far less altered if you read and understood before altering yourself. I have said there is no news in the peer reviewed literature, and none of the links provided by Abraham provided any ‘new’ news from the peer reviewed literature.
Connolley, Silver and many others happen to agree with me. Even Rahmstorf could not bring himself to write anything more than re-recycled info about the difficulty of the task at hand – something upon which Bob Ward, Pielke Jr and Robert Muir-Woods agreed publicly some four years ago – in terms pretty much identical to the ones explained at RC.
I have never stated that Abraham had not linked to peer reviewed sources.
March 31, 2014 at 11:21 am
“none of the links provided by Abraham provided any ‘new’ news from the peer reviewed literature.”
First of all, just because research was done a couple years ago does not mean that it’s invalid.
Second, let’s look at the dates of the peer-reviewed articles he linked to, shall we?
Publication years are as follows:
2011
2014
2012
2013
2012
2007
2012
2014
2013
2013
So, two published within the last three months, five within the last year, and
eight out of the ten within the last two years. I suppose next you’ll be saying that because it wasn’t within the last week it’s not “new” enough?
Abraham was not making claims to “new” information, he was rebutting assertions by Pielke, who was claiming – as deniers are wont to do, that we don’t have enough data to make any conclusions.
And just like you, he was wrong about the evidence and information available.
Abraham provided recent peer-reviewed research that supported his assertions, and you deliberately ignored that by claiming that he used anecdotes and no “news”. 2014 is as new as it gets. It seems pretty clear that you’re just going to keep moving the goal posts so you can claim to be right, without ever actually providing any evidence to support YOUR opinion.
March 31, 2014 at 11:58 am
Let me know when Your Grace comes down to the level of us humans to say sorry for making an unfounded accusation against me and worse piling it up with fantastic romancing about lies and the likes.
In the meanwhile we can only wait for this unassailable review of the literature by Prof Superxp Magnif John Abraham to be peer reviewed. Or alternatively read what WGII has to say.
April 1, 2014 at 12:24 am
So, you said that he didn’t include peer-reviewed research, and it turned out he did. Then you said that your REAL problem was that it wasn’t recent enough, but it turned out that it was as recent as is humanly possible, so now you’re resorting to saying that I’m making unfounded accusations, without ever acknowledging the errors/falsehoods you propagated?
Classy.
April 1, 2014 at 2:53 am
Your honesty shows – I have not said Abraham did not use peer-reviewed research, I have even repeated the concept, but you have not moved an inch. You could not even quote me on what you alleged I wrote, even if it is in this very same thread.
You make dumberguy look like an example of informed and intelligent discussion.
Ps I have said Abraham has used anecdotal evidence. He has. I have not said Abraham has used ONLY anecdotal evidence.
Pps Kerry Emanuel has replied to Pielke. Not sure that’s something anybody here will truly like.
April 1, 2014 at 7:58 am
Omno once again displays his intellectual shortcomings in his latest reply to Alteredstory. Classy indeed. And dumb as ever. As Dirty Harry said, a man should know his limitations, and Omno’s dogged persistence in spouting horsepucky in the face of truth is proof that he is clueless.
He is even clueless enough to provoke me with the totally irrelevant “You make dumberguy look like an example of informed and intelligent discussion”. Losing focus, Omno? Feeling the considerable heat of Alteredstory’s arguments and blindly lashing out and trying to distract us?
I try to leave you alone and not comment on any but your most egregiously idiotic posts. I do that because it is not nice to pick on the handicapped. I also try to refrain because you are a troll and should not be fed. Perhaps your “dumberguy” is an invitation for me to join Alteredstory in beating your inferior brains out every time you open your mouth here? He doesn’t need my help and spring is finally arriving here in VA, so I will have better things to do with my time—like clean up the dog poop and dead animals in my yard that have accumulated over the winter—I will think of you as I do so.
So stop playing Omnosemantics with us and adding all those fractured logic “explanatory” PS’s to your messages. Better yet, go away. You are becoming less and less the useful idiot on Crock, and more and more the annoying and willfully ignorant pain-in-the-ass.
April 1, 2014 at 8:06 am
PS to Omno. Have you noticed that one of your comments on this thread has now gotten 26 (TWENTY-SIX) “thumbs down”. Do you have any idea what that means, both in terms of what everyone thinks of your “contributions” and what your persistence in the face of such scorn says about the state of your psyche?
April 1, 2014 at 8:24 am
Thumb-downs are for the weaker spirits who find solace only in group bullying.
Ps congratulations for writing the longest ‘I don’t want to respond to you’ response ever!!
April 1, 2014 at 9:00 am
I would thank you for your “congratulations” if there were any rational thinking behind them. As usual, there isn’t—-just more mindless thrashings of a deluded rooster, strutting in the barnyard, crowing about nothing.
COCK-a-DOODLE-doo, Omno!
(PS I know you would like to distract us, but do you intend to respond to Alteredstory?)
March 28, 2014 at 3:50 pm
“Climate scientist John Abraham (ahr ahr) uses anecdotal evidence without rebuttal of Pielke’s points”
He references and links to ten studies. Is that what your close reading of his article interprets as “anecdotal evidence” omnologos (ahr ahr)?
Jesus A. Fracking Christ what a troll you are.
March 28, 2014 at 4:18 pm
Good choice Wile E Coyote’s character fits Pielke or Monkton or Curry or any of the TRUE frauds
March 28, 2014 at 4:32 pm
What about Omno?
March 30, 2014 at 10:57 am
Who?
March 28, 2014 at 4:31 pm
I’ll re-itererate – I’d sure like to see a good peer-reviewed journal paper which takes into account the aspects Pielke conveniently ignores. Something quantitative. The qualitative criticisms of Pielke are a good start, but won’t end this controversy. Clearly there’s two competing effects: increasing storm severity is definitely in the data, but so is creeping urbanization and population rise. Costs as such are easy to normalize away with inflation figures, as has been done in all the studies I’ve seen, but factoring in better building codes and procedures is not so easy. I suppose the insurance companies would be most likely to have such data. They’re on the hook. You could also look at the costs of climate-related insurance (CPI-corrected of course). I’ll bet you’ll find they’re going up significantly faster than inflation. With lots of competing insurance companies out there, that should give pause for the Pielke’s of the world.
March 28, 2014 at 5:05 pm
Good. There is at least one thinking commenter at this blog (actually, two 🙂 )
Ps Munich Re has been trying that for years. But surely WGII will speak on the topic?
March 29, 2014 at 11:09 pm
It’s a tough nut to crack:
One way might be to create a computer model that would superimpose, say 1980 to 2010’s real property construction, agricultural yields & occupied areas, etc., onto 1940 to 1970’s weather and run the model and see how much damage occurs, observing the differences between damage costs in real terms.
Using this technique you don’t have to try to normalize the real estate bubble of 1998 to 2008 against what real estate was doing from 1968 to 1978, or other economic peculiarities; you don’t have to normalize real property as a % of global wealth; you don’t have to normalize changes in building codes and new technologies and materials; you don’t have to normalize healthcare costs, etc.
But what you have to do is come up with a good model that when you run an Irene scenario in the proper time and location, spits out a cost of damages similar to what happened in reality with regard to that hurricane.
This would seem just as complicated as climate projection modeling to me, so good luck ever getting such a thing accomplished, especially if you’re being accused of ‘just being in it for the grant money’ by some politician who’s hand is partly on the grant money spigot.
March 28, 2014 at 5:30 pm
[…] Richard Tol vs. i climatologi: le sue disavventure continuano. Il politologo Roger Pielke Jr: idem, per di più i suoi abusi della statistica hanno spinto il frequentista Tamino a dichiararsi […]
March 28, 2014 at 6:38 pm
I wouldn’t want Nate Silver caving to reader pressure just because they are unhappy,but I also give him credit for taking on board that there may actually be substance to their criticisms. After all,what we really should be after are the facts about what is actually happening with our climate,and not just information that conforms to our current understanding.
I am still puzzled by his choice of Pielke Jr. for that position since his previous writings tend to be outliers in the field and his expertise is in political science and public policy.
At the very least,he should have also chosen a mainstream climate scientist to provide perspective,Hell,he should have had at least half a dozen from diverse areas since the field is so broad.Add to that an economics expert with climate science background,and you might begin to scratch the surface of comprehensive analysis of this complex puzzle.
March 28, 2014 at 7:13 pm
who is an expert in Pielke Jr’s field of study apart from him? (question)
I know about a Robert Muir-Wood whose works were used by the IPCC, but at a debate in 2010 he had little disagreement with Pielke Jr himself. Then there is the Munich Re team. Who else?
March 28, 2014 at 7:49 pm
I would speculate that the kind of questions that Pielke was attempting to address would require a multi-disciplined approach in order to really get a hand on what is unquestionably a knotty and complex question. His CV is a bit short of that task as far as I can see.
Maybe much like Richard Muller’s experience when he teamed up with a group high quality and diverse scientists,Pielke might see his analysis in a different light if given the chance. I don’t know if 538 is really up to that task though.
March 28, 2014 at 8:28 pm
By the way, apropos discussions on climate blogs and other similar venues:
http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2939
No matter which side you are on,this should resonate 🙂
March 29, 2014 at 12:51 am
Which is why we need to ignore trolls like Pielke. People like him are just noisy crybabies. Rather than taking them at face value we should just ignore them and get on with what we know to be true about the fundamental physics which really cant be disputed.
Pielke is asking us to travel to Alpha Centauri and get some tablets like some Moses all the while its plain obvious that the herd is fornicating just by observation.
We no longer need to provide the evidence to the likes of Pielke as they will never be satisfied because all the other evidence is somehow not worth anything until you bring the next vital clue. This is basically what has stalled any action these past 30 years, and will perfectly stall any action for the next 30 years too if we allow these people a microphone for their lies and noise. We no longer lend our ears to flat earthers so why do we listen to crackpots like him?
March 29, 2014 at 3:01 am
Given Pielke Jr’s activist stance in favor of doing something about climate change, I am not sure it is wise to call for him to be ignored.
March 29, 2014 at 12:07 pm
The problem with Pielke Jr. is the same problem with omnologos and all of the ‘lukewarmers’. That of minimization. When complete denial of the reality of climate change is no longer tenable, the redoubt position is to cling to the ever more remote possibility that the risks involved are no big deal. That, and shedding crocodile tears over all the poor folk who will never know the wonderful beneficence of coal powered electric plants and the joys of navigating increasing traffic congestion in hugely over-powered ICE vehicles.
It is interesting that maurizio seems so intent on laying the groundwork for the next level of redoubt, victim blaming. Namely, that when the destructive consequences of climate change become ever more undeniable, as they continually do month by month, year by year, the blame will fall on the scientists who are warning us about these destructive consequences for their, in the unsupported opinion of those like maurizio, lack of credibility.
March 30, 2014 at 4:31 am
jp – as we have seen in the Arnie-Cameron thread, the issue is alarmism, not minimization. I am perfectly fine with people who say AGW poses a risk as long as they agree that it one risk of many, instead my problem is with those who say that THE risk of CAGW overtakes everything else.
In fact we know that the AGW risk is considered by the likes of Hollywood star as important as anything more or less, but not more important as to be more important than the risk of taking public transportation and being hounded by paparazzis and deranged fans. So they take private flights.
March 29, 2014 at 10:30 pm
I am a big fan of SMBC. Most of my “Morning Snorts” are from them.
March 30, 2014 at 4:49 am
that came out wrong 😉
never write in a hurry on a sunday morning
jp – as we have seen in the Arnie-Cameron thread, the issue is alarmism, not minimization. I am perfectly fine with people who say AGW poses a risk as long as they agree that it is one risk of many, instead my problem is with those who say that THE risk of CAGW overtakes everything else.
In fact we know that the AGW risk is considered by the likes of Hollywood stars as important as anything more or less, but not as to be more important than the risk of taking public transportation and being hounded by paparazzis and deranged fans. So they take private flights.
March 30, 2014 at 11:03 am
So, maurizio,
You’d be happy if everyone who expressed concern about AGW, do so with an addendum cataloging every possible risk from infected hang nails to nuclear war?
That sounds reasonable.
March 30, 2014 at 5:52 am
Pielke Jnr is a political scientist and they are 2 a penny.
March 29, 2014 at 1:46 am
Pielke’s spiel has all the look and feel of Baliunas and Soon.
March 30, 2014 at 11:22 pm
I haven’t been following the Pielke stuff other than looking at his damages vs. GDP graph so take my comments with a grain of salt:
If i was a Pielke critic, the first question i would ask would be, ‘At what point, using your methodology, does a climate signal show up?’ I would be very interested in the sensitivity of his test.
This is because:
1) I can divide any curve by a faster, steadily growing curve and marginalize whatever the primary phenomenon was. We’ve seen upticks in polio and pertussis secondary to crazy, anti-vax soccer moms lately, but if i divide the economic damage these diseases have done in the US by the US’s GDP it looks like the polio and pertussis comeback is no problem; no problem at all;
and 2) using GDP to adjudicate anything seems flawed, especially since 85 billionaires hold more wealth than 3.5 billion people on the planet, and the richest 1% hold 65 times more wealth than those same 3.5 billion people. The poorest 1 billion people on this planet could starve to death secondary to drought and this wouldn’t affect the 85 billionaires or the 1% – GDP would just keep chugging up the hill and Pielke would still be singing, ‘Not a problem yet’. And guess who climate change will affect first? The poorest 1 billion people on the planet.
and 3) since every time a large storm takes out real property and we spend money to rebuild such, that contributes to GDP. By Pielke’s measure, the signal robustly arrives only after we’ve lost the economic ability to rebuild stuff after weather knocks it down (in other worlds a catastrophic scenario). If a storm surge were to take down Miami, that would cause a contagion and a global economic depression, similar to a Euro country default. Maybe that would get Pielke’s method to sound an alarm?
and 4) with the financialization of the US economy and the extreme amount of debt out there (95% of our fiat is debt) GDP might be less vulnerable to short term disasters as real property may be getting marginalized in comparison to 1’s and 0’s on Wall St.’s computers.
and 5) land area use may not be growing as fast as GDP and area where wealth is accreting the most may be growing slowly compared to GDP (Los Angeles coast, NYC, Vancouver, etc. where cities can’t expand, but only either grow upward or increase in value as demand grows as a function of population, debt, etc.) Tornadoes and Hurricanes are area games, so if real property wealth accretion is only happening at pin points on the board then a false negative could present in a GDP driven methodology.
March 31, 2014 at 12:11 am
That’s an interesting set of questions. My guess for the answer would be “sometimes in the 2030s”. However please note it ain’t just “Pielke’s measure”…the chart is part of a shared body of scientific literature and AFAIK there has been no published peer review work showing it wrong.
March 29, 2014 at 2:35 am
[…] I've posted on the misleading methods of Dr. Roger Pielke, the GOP congress' replacement for crank "Lord" Monckton. Normally I stay away from the "inside baseball" sniping that goes on between scie… […]
March 29, 2014 at 3:05 am
A small detail that has escaped our host. This story is becoming the demise of John Abraham as a serious interlocutor in climate circles. The self-styled “climate scientist” has overstretched himself one last time, hopefully. From the HuffPo:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/28/fivethirtyeight-climate-change-dispute_n_5049279.html
John P. Abraham, a professor at the University of St. Thomas who blogs with Nuccitelli at The Guardian, wrote Wednesday on HuffPost that he contacted Silver last week and was invited to write a response to Pielke for FiveThirtyEight. Abraham said he submitted the piece and it went through the editing process before, “late in the game, they decided not to run my post”.
[…] On Friday, Silver addressed the climate change controversy in a lengthy “Note To Our Readers” on FiveThirtyEight and acknowledged receiving Abraham’s piece. But that rebuttal, he said, “wasn’t quite what we were aiming for.”
[…] Silver said FiveThirtyEight is looking for a rebuttal from someone who has not weighed in yet on the dispute and “has very strong credentials.
This BTW will also disqualify Dear Kev and Mann from penning the 538 rebuttal. Let’s hope a long life of blogging for Abraham.
March 29, 2014 at 4:14 am
FiveThirtyEight invite John Abraham to write a response. He does, entirely dismantling Pielke’s cherry-picking, and then, pathetically, they don’t run it.
Saying it “wasn’t quite what we were aiming for” shows that sticking by Nate’s guy comes above evidence. So much for 538.
March 29, 2014 at 11:15 am
not quite, Paul.
Abraham “contacted Silver last week and was invited to write a response to Pielke” means Silver can refuse Abraham’s response if he doesn’t consider it appropriate, because Abraham made the first move.
After all, we don’t want amateurs to be put on the same level as scientists and experts, do we? Abraham knows in matters of climate-change-related costs as much as you and me. He’s just lucky to have found an audience foolish enough to believe all you need to gain authority is to mindlessly mention this or that peer-reviewed study.
Silver ain’t a fool. As Connolley tried to explain, you can’t seriously reply to Pielke Jr on a subject where Pielke Jr is a peer-review-published expert, unless you are a peer-review-published expert on the same subject as well.
March 29, 2014 at 12:30 pm
March 29, 2014 at 2:31 pm
Same for Mann then. Maybe this blog will close B-)
March 30, 2014 at 11:09 am
One needs evidence, not just unsupported opinion, to arrive at a rational conclusion.
Sorry, maurizio, but non sequiturs just don’t make the grade.
March 31, 2014 at 10:04 am
Jp – it is especially absurd to advocate in defense of the experts only when the experts say what you like them to say.
April 3, 2014 at 9:45 am
So reason, logic and evidence have nothing to do with your defense of Pielke?
Thanks for clarifying.
April 3, 2014 at 9:53 am
You’ve missed a beat or two. This blog is about defending the scientists against the attacks of vile amateurs -only like in this case it isn’t and takes the side of the amateurs.
Would be nice to know if all past proclaims about leaving science to the scientists will be disappeared 8)
March 29, 2014 at 12:52 pm
OMG CLIMATE GEOENGINEERING instructions are right in front of your faces….the giant stone sites across earth are geoengineering instruction….Giza great pyramid was originally coated in solar reflectivity mirrorlike casing stones….removed 600 years ago…. restore the mirroring + it becomes a pictionary super volcanic mirror…which is this SO2 + OH + 3H2O -> H2SO4 (l) + HO2,,,,,a mist reflectivity that BIGGER / SUPER volcanic eruptions cause in stratosphere every time…stays up reflects away incoming sun thus earth cools…SEE pinatubo 1991-1993….if super volcanic mirror is a natural phenomena that results in earth cooling + you SEE a pictionary of that phenomena when you restore the pyramid + they SPOKE pictionary its the answer …its geoengineering instruction it reads as easy as a duck crossing sign…there are more of them …see my fb page ..judith woolworth donahue….great granddaughter of FW Woolworth
LOOK at my avatar i simply restored the mirror casing to pyramid ….you + everyone else SEE volcanic looking mirrored structure….ONLY ONE phenomena in nature + it saves 7 billion people…..Easter Isl volcanic statues are a pictionary of the ring of fire it sits within…..peace
March 30, 2014 at 8:12 am
WHOA!
March 30, 2014 at 8:27 am
Pictionary….fun game! 🙂
March 30, 2014 at 11:01 am
Drugs are getting cheaper…..
March 30, 2014 at 11:07 am
The problem with word salad is that there’s no dressing you can put on it to make it palatable.
March 30, 2014 at 11:14 am
Wow, Judith!
Wouldn’t it be easier just to say, “Coat roofs with white paint.”