Backstory: How some contrarians can respond to evidence of fabrication
This post breaks from my usual format. Instead of just critiquing a myth about science or addressing some arguments in philosophy, I want to make a point regarding a recent blog article. The article in question was authored by an individual named Javier in February 2018. The noted climate "skeptic" Judith Curry posted Javier's blog article on her website, as she has done for numerous other blogposts authored by Javier.
I recently discovered a clear fabrication in Javier's February 2018 blogpost. I discuss the fabrication in detail in section 2.7 of "Myth: Attributing Warming to CO2 Involves the Fallaciously Inferring Causation from a Mere Correlation"; I will explain the fabrication again later in this post. In section 2.10 of the aforementioned blogpost I also address other serious flaws in Javier's blog article.
Since I could not make a comment on Javier's blogpost (because the comments section was closed for that post), I made a couple of tweets pointing out the fabrication and asking how Curry could be informed about it:
https://twitter.com/AtomsksSanakan/status/1002737224578891776
https://twitter.com/AtomsksSanakan/status/1002831957552779264
And within the past few hours (on June 7, 2018), I informed Curry of the fabrication in the comments section of a recent blogpost she made. I related my comment to her blogpost, in order to keep my comment on topic. I also tweeted about my comment within about an hour of making the comment:
https://judithcurry.com/2018/06/05/top-15-climate-scientists-consensus-and-skeptics/#comment-873822
https://twitter.com/AtomsksSanakan/status/1004839518334308352
https://judithcurry.com/2018/06/05/top-15-climate-scientists-consensus-and-skeptics/#comment-873822
https://twitter.com/AtomsksSanakan/status/1004839518334308352
I had a pretty good idea of what was going to happen next, since I have posted on Curry's blog before and have seen how she moderates critical comments: my comment would not remain intact. Curry (or her moderators) would likely remove any snarky remarks I made, or any references to fabrication. But I held out a slim hope that the central points of my critique would be left intact. Unfortunately, that was not to be.
Within a few hours of making my critical comment, the comment disappeared from the comments section of Curry's blogpost, as I pointed out in a subsequent tweet:
When I pointed out my comment's disappearance, a frequent commenter on Curry's blog suggested that this might make a great topic for a blogpost:
So I've decided to make a blogpost about this; this is that blogpost.
Before I posted my comment on Curry's website, I saved the comment. I provide the full comment below, with all my criticisms and snide remarks intact. The only substantial change will be an added bolded and underlined title that did not appear in my original comment. So besides my title and one missing word which I will add and placed in bolded green, what you see below is what Curry (or her blog's moderators) completely removed. Feel free to make of that what you will.
Javier's fabrication regarding past temperature trends
I wouldn't call 4 of the 5 people on the "skeptic" list "skeptics", in the sense of scientific skepticism. I'd use a word like "contrarian" or "denialist". The difference is below:
"It is, however, important not to confuse denialism with genuine scepticism, which is essential for scientific progress. Sceptics are willing to change their minds when confronted with new evidence; deniers are not."
"Denialism is motivated by conviction rather than evidence. [...] By contrast, scepticism starts with an open mind, weighs evidence objectively and demands convincing evidence before accepting any claim. It contributes to the debate and forms the intellectual cornerstone of scientific enquiry."
Lennaert Bengtsson is the only possible exception, and even they wandered fairly close. If one reads the scientific literature, it's quite easy to see where Lindzen, Christy, Curry, and Shaviv distort and/or evade the evidence.
Anyway, there's a problem I saw with a previous post on here, on which comments are now closed. So I though I might as well put it here, to illustrate why I don't consider [Curry] to be a good promoter of scientific skepticism. The post in question is from Javier, and was posted on here by Curry in February:
"Nature Unbound VIII – Modern global warming"
Figure 105 of that post presents a temperature reconstruction in order to argue that recent warming resulted from a natural cycle, not man-made. The cycle is shown in red, the temperature reconstruction in black and gray:
A few points to note about this image:
1A) If the natural cycle continued into the past, then temperature should be greater around 1AD, near a peak in temperature.
2A) Recent temperature is on par with temperature from the 1000s or 1100s.
3A) The rate of recent warming in the natural cycle is on par with the rate of pre-1000s or pre-1100s warming.
Now, Javier attributes the above figure to a 2005 paper from Moberg et al. But I don't remember that figure being in Moberg's paper. So I double-checked the paper, and found this:
200 600 1000 1400 1800
Year (AD)
Figure 2b on page 3 of:
"Highly variable Northern Hemisphere temperatures reconstructed from low- and high-resolution proxy data"
A few points to note about this image:
1B) It is not the case that 1AD represents a near-peak in temperature.
2B) Recent temperature is on greater than temperature from the 1000s or 1100s.
3B) The rate of recent warming is greater than the rate of pre-1000s or pre-1100s warming.
For point 3B, Moberg et al. note in their paper that:
"The peaks in medieval times are at the same level as much of the twentieth century, although the post-1990 warmth seen in the instrumental data (green curve in Fig. 2b) appears to be unprecedented."
Obviously points 1A - 3A don't fit well with points 1B - 3B. And it's fairly clear that Javier offered an image that distorts Moberg et al.'s analysis. Javier's image is a fabrication, and the fabrication serves to remove evidence that's against the natural cycle explanation.
I'm a bit surprised that I couldn't find anyone pointing this out in the comment's section of Javier's original posit. I found lots of people fawning over the analysis, Mosher commendably pointing out problems with what Javier was doing, etc. But no one pointing out the central fabrication. I wonder why? Maybe the so-called "skeptics" online are more credulous than skeptical (in a scientific sense of skepticism)? Why was this obvious fabrication posted and lauded on Curry's blog?
There's other evidence against Javier's natural cycle explanation. But I think this suffices for now.
An update on the continued discussion
As of July 4, 2018, I managed to point out Javier's fabrication as a comment on a subsequent blogpost in his series. I have linked some of the discussion below, along with an archived copy of the comments, in case the operators of Curry's blog delete the comments again:
https://judithcurry.com/2018/06/28/nature-unbound-ix-21st-century-climate-change/#comment-876221
http://archive.is/FAnN9
I had a pretty good idea of what was going to happen next, since I have posted on Curry's blog before and have seen how she moderates critical comments: my comment would not remain intact. Curry (or her moderators) would likely remove any snarky remarks I made, or any references to fabrication. But I held out a slim hope that the central points of my critique would be left intact. Unfortunately, that was not to be.
Within a few hours of making my critical comment, the comment disappeared from the comments section of Curry's blogpost, as I pointed out in a subsequent tweet:
When I pointed out my comment's disappearance, a frequent commenter on Curry's blog suggested that this might make a great topic for a blogpost:
So I've decided to make a blogpost about this; this is that blogpost.
Before I posted my comment on Curry's website, I saved the comment. I provide the full comment below, with all my criticisms and snide remarks intact. The only substantial change will be an added bolded and underlined title that did not appear in my original comment. So besides my title and one missing word which I will add and placed in bolded green, what you see below is what Curry (or her blog's moderators) completely removed. Feel free to make of that what you will.
Javier's fabrication regarding past temperature trends
I wouldn't call 4 of the 5 people on the "skeptic" list "skeptics", in the sense of scientific skepticism. I'd use a word like "contrarian" or "denialist". The difference is below:
"It is, however, important not to confuse denialism with genuine scepticism, which is essential for scientific progress. Sceptics are willing to change their minds when confronted with new evidence; deniers are not."
"Denialism is motivated by conviction rather than evidence. [...] By contrast, scepticism starts with an open mind, weighs evidence objectively and demands convincing evidence before accepting any claim. It contributes to the debate and forms the intellectual cornerstone of scientific enquiry."
Lennaert Bengtsson is the only possible exception, and even they wandered fairly close. If one reads the scientific literature, it's quite easy to see where Lindzen, Christy, Curry, and Shaviv distort and/or evade the evidence.
Anyway, there's a problem I saw with a previous post on here, on which comments are now closed. So I though I might as well put it here, to illustrate why I don't consider [Curry] to be a good promoter of scientific skepticism. The post in question is from Javier, and was posted on here by Curry in February:
"Nature Unbound VIII – Modern global warming"
Figure 105 of that post presents a temperature reconstruction in order to argue that recent warming resulted from a natural cycle, not man-made. The cycle is shown in red, the temperature reconstruction in black and gray:
A few points to note about this image:
1A) If the natural cycle continued into the past, then temperature should be greater around 1AD, near a peak in temperature.
2A) Recent temperature is on par with temperature from the 1000s or 1100s.
3A) The rate of recent warming in the natural cycle is on par with the rate of pre-1000s or pre-1100s warming.
Now, Javier attributes the above figure to a 2005 paper from Moberg et al. But I don't remember that figure being in Moberg's paper. So I double-checked the paper, and found this:
 |
200 600 1000 1400 1800
Year (AD)
|
Figure 2b on page 3 of:
"Highly variable Northern Hemisphere temperatures reconstructed from low- and high-resolution proxy data"
A few points to note about this image:
1B) It is not the case that 1AD represents a near-peak in temperature.
2B) Recent temperature is on greater than temperature from the 1000s or 1100s.
3B) The rate of recent warming is greater than the rate of pre-1000s or pre-1100s warming.
For point 3B, Moberg et al. note in their paper that:
"The peaks in medieval times are at the same level as much of the twentieth century, although the post-1990 warmth seen in the instrumental data (green curve in Fig. 2b) appears to be unprecedented."
Obviously points 1A - 3A don't fit well with points 1B - 3B. And it's fairly clear that Javier offered an image that distorts Moberg et al.'s analysis. Javier's image is a fabrication, and the fabrication serves to remove evidence that's against the natural cycle explanation.
I'm a bit surprised that I couldn't find anyone pointing this out in the comment's section of Javier's original posit. I found lots of people fawning over the analysis, Mosher commendably pointing out problems with what Javier was doing, etc. But no one pointing out the central fabrication. I wonder why? Maybe the so-called "skeptics" online are more credulous than skeptical (in a scientific sense of skepticism)? Why was this obvious fabrication posted and lauded on Curry's blog?
There's other evidence against Javier's natural cycle explanation. But I think this suffices for now.
An update on the continued discussion
As of July 4, 2018, I managed to point out Javier's fabrication as a comment on a subsequent blogpost in his series. I have linked some of the discussion below, along with an archived copy of the comments, in case the operators of Curry's blog delete the comments again:
https://judithcurry.com/2018/06/28/nature-unbound-ix-21st-century-climate-change/#comment-876221
http://archive.is/FAnN9
https://judithcurry.com/2018/06/28/nature-unbound-ix-21st-century-climate-change/#comment-876221
http://archive.is/FAnN9
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