Uncharted - Josh 366

Climate super sleuth Brandon Shollenberger discusses a strange climate expertise chart over on his blog which made us wonder about what kind of other data might be lurking down the dimmest corridors of climate science. Brandon and Anthony helped with locating the data points.

Cartoon by Josh

Comments

[Radical Rodent]

Perhaps we should also look at the safety record of the subsidy wind farms. What other industry can claim to be this concerned about wildlife: “1.4 million bird fatalities per annum are estimated if the US reaches it’s 20% target for wind generation. ” [sic]?

[Alan Kendall]

Isn't the chart a tad biased? The best you can be is dim or puzzled. Stern is categorized as puzzled, not far from dim. I doubt he is either, how about "intentionally misinformed"? Still leaves no room for anyone believing in the 97% consensus with good intentions, or is that an oxymoron?

Also slightly perturbed by use of the word "spectrum" with its associated connotations, but then something has to explain 97% of their behaviour.

[Phil Clarke]

Hmmmm. Brandon's objections seem to boil down to

- Discussion of Powell's work was present in an unpublished draft but dropped from the published paper
- The paper highlighted a methodological flaw in Tol's assumptions and cited Powell (2015) in support.

'Powell' is James L. Powell, Executive Director of the US National Physical Science Consortium He has written extensively on the consensus, but on his website, rather than the peer-reviewed literature. I speculate that is why his work was not cited in the final paper. Imagine the outcry from Schollenberg and others if Cook et al 2016 had relied on a non-peer-reviewed source for their major conclusions.

Powell (2015) is a non-peer-reviewed article in Skeptical Enquirer, which neatly describes the problem with Tol's assumptions.

Here is the context Equating no-position papers with rejection or an uncertain position on AGW is inconsistent with the expectation of decreasing reference to a consensual position as that consensus strengthens (Oreskes 2007, Shwed and Bearman 2010). Powell (2015) shows that applying Tol's method to the established paradigm of plate tectonics would lead Tol to reject the scientific consensus in that field because nearly all current papers would be classified as taking 'no position'.

From this Brandon somehow decides that

We examine the available studies and conclude that the finding of 97% consensus in published climate research is robust and consistent with other surveys of climate scientists and peer-reviewed studies.

… is a 'lie' and an 'obscene' one at that.

Brandon's funny, isn't he?

Here's the paper http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/11/4/048002

[michael hart]

At WUWT they added this comment

Note: Bob Ward of the Grantham Institute was also on this list for plotting, but because at one time or another he has put himself in every bin, we had to discard him and his data as being “unbinnable”.

:)

[Phil Clarke]

Wow! Radical Rodent wants all tall buildings demolished and domestic cats culled!

Shonkylogic (TM)

[Alan the Brit]

Having been a devotee of Yes Minister for many years during its original run, & having worked in the public sector for some 14 years, I can confirm that high-level appointees are so appointed because their "politcal" stance, rather than on their sheer ability at what they are supposedly qualified at! So when anybody says this person or that person is Head of This or That organisation, I accept it with a pinch of sodium chloride. When applying for a job with a local authority Highways Department, on of the questions they posed to me was what I would do if something the authority had undertakne resulted in public complaint, the last thing ever to do was to admit that the authority might in some way be at fault! It's endemic in the public sector of ALL countries, except Russia of course, they're never wrong! ;-)

[JerryM]

More proven mendicants, rogues, charlatans and outright fraudsters associated with that paper than you can shake a stick at and yet - pedictably - here comes Phil Boy galloping to their support. And immediately floods the thread with his utter dullness. Oy!

[golf charlie]

Apart from Astrology etc, has any scientific body ever required a single 'consensus survey', let alone a series of consensus surveys to confirm the original consensus surveys?

In the absence of any other science behind climate science, they believe that 97 out of 100 climate scientists say their bank accounts prefer it, and it does whitewash all other science with a new improved Green whiteness.

Climate Science, never does exactly what it says on the tin.

Doing nothing works better than climate science.

Climate Science kills 97% of all known industry. Dead.

The British steel industry. The appliance of climate science.

[golf charlie]

8 out of 10 polar bears prefer climate scientists. They have never looked better fed.

[dennisa]

Dana Nucitelli is giving it big in the Guardian:

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2016/apr/13/its-settled-90100-of-climate-experts-agree-on-human-caused-global-warming

and John Cook is doing the same for the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists:

http://thebulletin.org/yes-there-really-scientific-consensus-climate-change9332

[Arthur Dent]

And before we forget in this grandiose supply of verbiage: exactly what is the 'concensus' that is being talked about, surely not the trivial one that "since the end of the LIA the globe has warmed and that human activity has contributed to this" even most dyed in the wool sceptics don't resile from this relatively uncontroversial formulation.

Now if this is being spun to imply that the majority of the warming since the LIA has been caused by anthropogenic emissions of CO2 then the authors are being disingenuous or deceitful

[david smith]

I noticed Ken Rice was involved in this latest pile of rubbish Cookie calls a paper.
C'mon Ken, tell us: since when is an appeal to concensus scientifically valid? Surely such appeals are anti-science?
Tell us as well Ken: why does your gang need to keep flogging the concensus meme? No other area of science feels they have to do it, so why clim sci? Is it because you lot secretly have so little faith in the CAGW hypothesis that you need people like Cookie et al to keep the scam appear to be valid?

[kim]

99.9% pure and still it stinks.
===================

[david smith]

Phil - your 'shonky logic' graph
Hmmm, we can't really control cats killing birds as it's what the little b#ggers do. Additionally, we have yet to find a viable alternative to windows in our buildings and vehicles, so until we do birds will continue to fly into them.
Windmills however, are a completely different matter as we have a viable alternative: fossil-fuelled power stations kill far fewer birds.

[kim]

Maibach is second signer and an instigator of the RICO 20 petition. Shukla, the Shekeler, was first. Sometimes, people are known by the company they keep. I didn't make that up.
================

[Phil Clarke]

Some first generation windfarms were sited poorly - actually on migration routes in Spain and the USA. That does not happen now, and proper siting, and measures such as shutting down when flocks are detected and setting up feeding stations away from the turbines reduce bird deaths markedly, so the alarmist figures, which do not account for such changes, are likely a big overestimate.

This article summarizes the threats that wind farms pose to birds before surveying the recent literature on avian mortality and summarizing common methodological problems with such studies. Based on operating performance in the United States and Europe, the paper then offers a preliminary calculation of the number of birds killed per kilowatt-hour kWh generated for wind electricity, fossil fuel, and nuclear power systems. The study estimates that wind farms and nuclear power stations are responsible each for between 0.3 and 0.4 fatalities per gigawatt-hour (GWh) of electricity while fossil fueled power stations are responsible for about 5.2 fatalities per GWh. Within the uncertainties of the data used, the estimate means that wind farms killed approximately 20,000 birds in the United States in 2009 but nuclear plants killed about 330,000 and fossil fueled power plants more than 14 million. The paper concludes that further study is needed, but also that fossil fueled power stations appear to pose a much greater threat to birds and avian wildlife than wind farms and nuclear power plants.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960148112000857

[Jit]

Phil:

Fossil-fueled power plants killed >14,000,000 birds in the US in 2009 HOW EXACTLY?

[Phil Clarke]

Apart from Astrology etc, has any scientific body ever required a single 'consensus survey', let alone a series of consensus surveys to confirm the original consensus surveys?

No other discipline has been subject to quite such a campaign of lies, disinformation and propaganda.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2013EF000226/full

[Alan Kendall]

Phil Clarke. I advance you the medical discipline, from its earliest days following Galen and closed shop practices, to today's links with the pharmaceutical industry. Lies, disinformation and propaganda are rampant, yet consensus???

[golf charlie]

Phil Clarke "No other discipline has been subject to quite such a campaign of lies, disinformation and propaganda."

No Phil. No other discipline has ever been created and sustained by such a campaign of lies, disinformation and propaganda, as Climate Science.

As a subsriber to Non Violent Direct Action, why are you squealing, now that the lies disinformation and propaganda are exposed?

[david smith]

measures such as shutting down when flocks are detect

So, every time a flock of geese turns up, we turn off the power. It's almost beyond parody.

[Brandon Shollenberger]

Phil Clarke offers a rather strange criticism of my writings:

- Discussion of Powell's work was present in an unpublished draft but dropped from the published paper
- The paper highlighted a methodological flaw in Tol's assumptions and cited Powell (2015) in support.

'Powell' is James L. Powell, Executive Director of the US National Physical Science Consortium He has written extensively on the consensus, but on his website, rather than the peer-reviewed literature. I speculate that is why his work was not cited in the final paper. Imagine the outcry from Schollenberg and others if Cook et al 2016 had relied on a non-peer-reviewed source for their major conclusions.

Powell (2015) is a non-peer-reviewed article in Skeptical Enquirer, which neatly describes the problem with Tol's assumptions.

Cook et al cite Powell (2015) as showing one of their critics (Richard Tol) is wrong. Powell Clarke apparently think this is okay, but it would have been wrong for Cook et al to use Powell (2015) "for their major conclusions." So... the source is good enough to cite for one thing, but not for another thing. Because that's how science works.

I think most people can see through this charade for the real standard. The way these authors look at it, when it's something you want to talk about, it's cool to cite a lower quality (according to Clarke) source. When it's something you don't want to talk about, that same lower quality source isn't acceptable at all.

I mean, seriously, if their reason was anything like what Clarke suggests, they would have at least acknowledged the criticisms in Powell (2015) existed and mentioned how his results match up to the others. They could do that even if they didn't include his results in their (insane) chart.

[Phil Clarke]

So, every time a flock of geese turns up, we turn off the power. It's almost beyond parody.

It is beyond something. The measure reduces output by 0.07%.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006320711004927

[Phil Clarke]

So... the source is good enough to cite for one thing, but not for another thing. Because that's how science works.

Um, yes it is actually.The paper uses Powell(2015) as it summarises well the flaw in Tol's logic, as well as describing it in the paper. None of the study's conclusion rely on that cite.

A major discussion or inclusion of Powell's work would have been inappropriate as it has not been peer-reviewed. It really is that simple.

Where is the 'obscene lie' exactly?

[Phil Clarke]

... and Powell's argument is that the Cook et al method actually underestimates the consensus, so by excluding his work they arguably weaken their own case.

The "97% consensus" on anthropogenic global warming: wrong assumptions, wrong method, wrong result. The true consensus of acceptance of AGW among publishing scientists is above 99.9%: virtual unanimity. The peer-reviewed literature contains no convincing evidence against AGW.

James Powell.

[esmiff]

Sitting atop a wind turbine with a telescope shouting 'geese ahoy' is a job I think I could do well. I have three years experience as a plane spotter, a similar discipline.

[Phil Clarke]

Alan - maybe -but what would be medicine's equivalent to the Oregon petition with its bogus journal paper? The Heartland conferences? where are the billboards comparing surgeons to the Unabomber? , the 'NIPCC' reports, Exxon's funding of groups distributing misinformation, Mark Steyn and friends? Where is the book subtitled 'The Corruption of Medicine', where is the movie 'Medical Hustle', where can I find a dump of the internal communications of top consultants?

[Brandon Shollenberger]

Phil Clarke:

Um, yes it is actually.The paper uses Powell(2015) as it summarises well the flaw in Tol's logic, as well as describing it in the paper. None of the study's conclusion rely on that cite.

No. Cook (2016) does not say Powell (2015)'s logic proves Richard Tol is wrong. It says Powell (2015) shows Tol is wrong. This is based on analysis Powell performed and described in Powell (2015).

A major discussion or inclusion of Powell's work would have been inappropriate as it has not been peer-reviewed. It really is that simple.

Of course not. Discussing results contrary to their work in something the lead author himself labels a "paper" and cites analysis from would clearly be inappropriate. Because using one analysis from the paper is fine, but discussing another is inexcusable.

Or, you know, we could all be fair-minded and reasonable people who say you don't get to cite a "paper" which says you're wrong without addressing the fact it says you're wrong.

[esmiff]

Phil Clarke

Heartland are a bunch of right wing crazies who have been funded to attach themselves to the anti global warming cause precisely b/c everyone can be tarred with their nastiness.

They aren't the only oil industry funded cuckoos in the global warming nest.

Naomi Klein

The whole affair, according to Klein, underlines a painful truth behind the “catastrophic failure” of some environmental organisations to combat the fossil-fuel industries responsible for soaring greenhouse gas emissions. “Large parts of the movement aren’t actually fighting those interests – they have merged with them,” she writes, pointing to green groups that have accepted fossil-fuel industry donations or partnerships and invited industry executives on to their boards.

It is no coincidence, suggests Klein, that several environmental organisations have also championed climate policies that are the least burdensome to the energy industry, including generously designed carbon markets and the use of natural gas as a bridge to a cleaner energy system.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e373bd70-3d8e-11e4-b782-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3IlD0mBsv

[hunter]

Poor Phil, trying to keep lipstick on his pig of a movement by claiming the other side are the bad guys.
So Phil is reduced to a pathetic sort of a checklist:
- conspiratorial ideation
- circular reasoning
- faith based arguments
- historical illiteracy
- dismissal of critical thinking
Play on, Phil.

Brandon- you are on a great roll. Keep it up.

[Alan Kendall]

Phil Clarke (5.50pm) You posed a question with the expectation that there would be no positive answer. I give you one and you respond "maybe". Maybe because you now want a point by point similarity; something not specified in the original question. Changing goalposts is no way to properly win an argument. I'm sure that, if I could be bothered, I could find even more points of similarity between the way medicine and climate science are similar (in the way its practitioners behave and are treated by others) but why bother? You just want to win any argument, fair means or foul. The gracious thing to do would have been to concede the small point, then move on to point out differences.

You also seem oblivious of the lies, disinformation and propaganda promoted by the pro CAGW side.

[Roger Tolson]

Phil Clarke, your'e 'aving a larf.
"Siting of windmills is now avian friendly" that is why ,despite enormous local opposition and high court action, planning has finally been granted for a windmill near me that will be sited on a ridge which is patrolled by Buzzards and Red Kites. In case you don't know or don't care, these birds, because they are top of their food chain and have no natural predators normally raise only one or two chicks per nest, are because of their downward vision while hunting makes them particularly susceptible to collisions with windmill blades. In the meantime ,despite the predations of the local cats, my garden has about ten varieties of song birds the population of which seems to be in rude health, contrary to what the RSPB keep telling me!
Meanwhile there are numerous recorded instances of Peregrine Falcons nesting on power station cooling towers.

[Phil Clarke]

Brandon - The core of Cook et al 2016 is a review of reviews of the consensus, from the peer reviewed literature or respected polling organisations. Powell's work, while valuable, does not fit either of these categories.

The logical flaw is in the way studies that do not explicitly take a position are categorised. Cook et al describe it in the abstract.

. At one point, Tol also reduces the apparent consensus by assuming that abstracts that do not explicitly state the cause of global warming (‘no position’)represent nonendorsement, an approach that if applied elsewhere would reject consensus on well-established theories such as plate tectonics.

And later in the body text

Tol (2016) effectively treats no-position abstracts as rejecting AGW, thereby deriving consensus values less than 35%. Equating no-position papers with rejection or an uncertain position on AGW is inconsistent with the expectation of decreasing reference to a consensual position as that consensus strengthens (Oreskes 2007, Shwed and Bearman 2010). Powell (2015) shows that applying Tol’s method to the established paradigm of plate tectonics would lead Tol to reject the scientific consensus in that field because nearly all current papers would be classified as taking ‘no position’.

So Powell is used as no more than an example of the flaw which is described twice in the paper itself. The cite could be removed without changing the conclusions of the study. I still fail to see any lie. As I pointed out, Powell's opinion is that Cook et al is too conservative.

Cook (2016) does not say Powell (2015)'s logic proves Richard Tol is wrong. It says Powell (2015) shows Tol is wrong.I'm struggling with this, you are drawing a distinction between 'shows' and 'proves'? Really?

Discussing results contrary to their work in something the lead author himself labels a "paper" and cites analysis from would clearly be inappropriate.

Where did Cook describe Powell (2015) as a "Paper"? It is not represented thus in the article.

[hunter]

Roger Tolson,
Phil's mind is a like a modern ceramic armor tank, immune to nearly all facts or information. What is fascinating is how the enlightened secularists have become the modern day fundamentalists over climate, and are as immune to critical thinking or skeptical thought processes as any religious kook every has been.
The only group I am aware of that hates skeptics as much as the climate obsessed are the UFO true believers.

[Barry Woods]

What was the definition of madness again, repeating the same action and expecting a different result..?

The Doran paper, was supposed to be the definitive paper, showing a consensus of previous papers , and asking a better survey.

“The major objective of this study is to collect and assess information about the opinions and
attitudes of professionals within the field of geosciences (earth sciences) regarding global climate
change, and the climate "consensus" debate, as well as to understand the rationale the participants
use when forming their opinions by directly surveying a large number of earth scientists.

In particular, this study endeavors improve on past survey attempts and provide a more rigorous dataset
from which to draw conclusions on the global climate change debate. “ - Zimmermann – The Consensus on the Consensus

So Cook is just repeating the past - Cook tried to do the best 97% consensus paper - Cook 13
(repeating the Oreskes paper),

Then we have this new consensus of consensus paper (repeating Doran)

I count 5-6 co-authors of previous consensus papers (Doran, Oreskes, Carlton, Cook, Anderegg, Bart, etc), as co-authors of this consensus paper - truly recursive..!

quoting from the press release:

https://www.uq.edu.au/news/article/2016/04/consensus-consensus-97-of-experts-agree-people-are-changing-climate

"Mr Cook said he hoped this latest finding, which he has termed “consensus on consensus”, will enable scientists to focus on the real work – addressing climate change."

Funny, Cook seems incapable of original thought, as The Consensus on the Consensus", was the title of the MSC thesis, for the Doran/Zimmerman consensus paper. (and Doran is a co-author of this nonsense)
http://www.lulu.com/shop/m-r-k-zimmerman/the-consensus-on-the-consensus/ebook/product-17391505.html

It is pure PR/marketing, dare I say propaganda, because they see the 97% of scientists sound bite as a gateway believe to persuade the public.

Lewandowsky's blog post on this paper:
http://www.shapingtomorrowsworld.org/lewandowskyConC.html

"Given that recognition of the expert consensus is a gateway belief that determines the public’s attitudes toward climate policies, and given that informing people of the consensus demonstrably shifts their opinions, it is unsurprising that attempts continue to be made to deny the existence of this pervasive expert consensus." – Lewandowsky

It doesn’t matter to them, if academia laughs at this, or it gets loads of criticism, they have “peer reviewed” science to wave, to general newspaper headlines and persuade politicians.

look at the headlines (and the silly graphic)

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/04/160412211610.htm

http://phys.org/news/2016-04-consensus-expertise-agreement-human-caused-climate.html

http://thebulletin.org/yes-there-really-scientific-consensus-climate-change9332

https://news.slashdot.org/story/16/04/13/2328213/consensus-on-consensus-climate-experts-agree-on-human-caused-global-warming

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2016/04/13/3769104/climate-scientific-consensus-real/

http://www.climatechangenews.com/2016/04/13/scientific-consensus-on-climate-change-still-overwhelmingly-high/

https://www.rawstory.com/2016/04/its-settled-97-percent-of-experts-agree-on-human-caused-global-warming/

LOOK - NASA were quick to update their 97% consensus reference with Cook’s new paper

http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/

J. Cook, et al, "Consensus on consensus: a synthesis of consensus estimates on human-caused global warming," Environmental Research Letters Vol. 11 No. 4, (13 April 2016); DOI:10.1088/1748-9326/11/4/048002

Quotation from page 6: "The number of papers rejecting AGW [Anthropogenic, or human-cause, Global Warming] is a miniscule proportion of the published research, with the percentage slightly decreasing over time. Among papers expressing a position on AGW, an overwhelming percentage (97.2% based on self-ratings, 97.1% based on abstract ratings) endorses the scientific consensus on AGW.”

LOL – Dana calls it an – All Star Team – (but politically, with Oreskes as an author - this is true)
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2016/apr/13/its-settled-90100-of-climate-experts-agree-on-human-caused-global-warming

[Brandon Shollenberger]

Phil Clarke:

So Powell is used as no more than an example of the flaw which is described twice in the paper itself. The cite could be removed without changing the conclusions of the study. I still fail to see any lie. As I pointed out, Powell's opinion is that Cook et al is too conservative.

Okay, I'm done. You just claimed Powell (2015) was only used as an example of a flaw Cook (2016) found in Richard Tol's argument even though Cook (2016) explicitly cited Powell (2015) as having demonstrated a flaw in Tol's argument, which is quite different from exhibiting a flaw.

Additionally, the flaw Cook et al claim Powell (2015) shows is the exact opposite of the flaw they claim Tol's argument shows, making your claim even more absurd. Then you go on to say:

"Cook (2016) does not say Powell (2015)'s logic proves Richard Tol is wrong. It says Powell (2015) shows Tol is wrong."I'm struggling with this, you are drawing a distinction between 'shows' and 'proves'? Really?

While cutting off a sentence of the paragraph you quote which directly shows you are wrong. This level of... I don't know what is not something I can reasonably hope to cure or highlight anymore clearly than has already been done, so I'm done. You make it too obvious what you say is nonsense for it to be worth the trouble.

Where did Cook describe Powell (2015) as a "Paper"? It is not represented thus in the article.

Have fun finding out on your own.

[It doesn't add up...]

James Powell - the man who thinks that a paper titled "X-ray emission from high-redshift miniquasars: self-regulating the population of massive black holes through global warming" supports anthropogenic global warming. Well, I suppose X-ray emissions from high redshift miniquasars are quite energetic, but they're hardly anthropogenic.

There are many other similar examples in his database of papers he claims to have considered.
A small selection:

ZK-5: A CO2-Selective Zeolite with High Working Capacity at Ambient Temperature and Pressure
Warming up a stream reach: design of a hydraulic and heating system
What about causal mechanisms promoting early hominin dispersal in Eurasia? A research agenda for answering a hotly debated question
Whole-genome sequencing of giant pandas provides insights into demographic history and local adaptation
Why ban the sale of cigarettes? The case for abolition
Two-phase assessment for the environmental impacts from offset lithographic printing on color-box packaging
Upper Ordovician brachiopods from the Montagne Noire (France): endemic Gondwanan predecessors of Prehirnantian low-latitude immigrants
Size variation of conodonts during the Smithian-Spathian (Early Triassic) global warming event

The proportion of irrelevant papers he cited is alarmingly high. The fact that he did so suggests he failed to review or comprehend even the paper abstracts or titles.

[hunter]

IDAU,
What the propagandists are trying to do is to equate the study of anything to do with radiative physics as confirmation of their climate obsession.

[Phil Clarke]

You just claimed Powell (2015) was only used as an example of a flaw Cook (2016) found in Richard Tol's argument even though Cook (2016) explicitly cited Powell (2015) as having demonstrated a flaw in Tol's argument, which is quite different from exhibiting a flaw.

I think maybe you would benefit from working on the clarity of your written English. Thesaurus.com has 'exhibit' as a synonym of 'demonstrate'.

Additionally, the flaw Cook et al claim Powell (2015) shows is the exact opposite of the flaw they claim Tol's argument shows

Cook: At one point, Tol also reduces the apparent consensus by assuming that abstracts that do not explicitly state the cause of global warming (‘no position’)represent nonendorsement, an approach that if applied elsewhere would reject consensus on well-established theories such as plate tectonics.

Powell: Is it true that scientists routinely endorse the ruling paradigm of their discipline? To find out, I used the Web of Science to review articles in three fields: plate tectonics, the origin of lunar craters, and evolution.

Of 500 recent articles on “plate tectonics,” none in my opinion endorsed the theory directly or explicitly. Nor did a single article reject plate tectonics.

Exact opposite argument? No. A neat example of pretty much the same one.

Q Where did Cook describe Powell (2015) as a "Paper"? It is not represented thus in the article.
A Have fun finding out on your own.

Does putting the word 'paper' in double quotes not imply a direct quotation? Did you lose the source? OMG Brandon, I can't think of any word to describe this other than "lying.

It is obscene.

[Radical Rodent]

Hmm… bit of a straw-man, there, Phil Clarke. I am not wishing to attack or defend the ownership of cats or tall buildings; it is that one of the main “selling points” of wind turbines is that they are … ahem … environmentally-friendly (and ask the Chinese about that!). Now, had you responded with statistics that showed the more conventional means of electricity-generation to be as damaging, or even more so, to wildlife, you might have a stronger argument.

There is also the accidents and incidents involving humans to consider (which, I note, you neatly side-stepped*); how does the wind industry compare per kWh with more conventional systems? I suspect the figure will be alarmingly high; it would be interesting to find out, though.

*Oh. Let me guess; while you expect others to follow the links you provide, it is too far beneath you to follow the links supplied for you.

[Brandon Shollenberger]

I find it genuinely disturbing how Phil Clarke keeps changing the subject and pretending comments referred to something entirely different than what they actually referred to. Nobody needs to hear me discuss that though, much less explain why his feigned grasp of the English language is so poor. I do want to make one remark though. He says:

Does putting the word 'paper' in double quotes not imply a direct quotation? Did you lose the source? OMG Brandon, I can't think of any word to describe this other than "lying.

I could provide a link at a moments notice. I have it right on hand. I just don't see any value in encouraging deranged commentary from people I'm not convinced can read English. Maybe using Google Translate or some other software could explain Clarke's difficulties.

[Micky H Corbett]

Cook: At one point, Tol also reduces the apparent consensus by assuming that abstracts that do not explicitly state the cause of global warming (‘no position’)represent nonendorsement, an approach that if applied elsewhere would reject consensus on well-established theories such as plate tectonics.

Powell: Is it true that scientists routinely endorse the ruling paradigm of their discipline? To find out, I used the Web of Science to review articles in three fields: plate tectonics, the origin of lunar craters, and evolution.

Of 500 recent articles on “plate tectonics,” none in my opinion endorsed the theory directly or explicitly. Nor did a single article reject plate tectonics.

So Powell took recent papers on plate tectonics and then said none of them appeared to endorse plate tectonics. But they are written about plate tectonics and plate tectonics is now the prevailing theory that has been backed up by measurement.
So what Powell is actually saying is that his method is not sufficient to determine if papers endorse the subject he looks at.
But then goes and says that if papers don't say it then it doesn't mean they don't endorse it. Nice reversal of the scientific method there.

Richard Tol on the other hand says that is you are using a method to determine if papers endorse a subject and those papers don't appear to say either way then you can't use them as evidence of endorsement. Or in other words by the rules of the analysis method and you have defined, and maybe that thing called COMMON SENSE, they can't be included. Which suggest that the analysis method may not be sufficient to determine what you are looking for and common sense is actually a good thing to use.

Richard: follows the method to its conclusion and it is what it is
Powell: follows method, finds something similar then just changes his mind and says well it doesn't prove I'm not right but Richard is wrong.

All of which just goes to show that you can pluck any old tripe from noise.

[Micky H Corbett]

Brandon

I just read your post. The unintentional comedy (or maybe it is intentional) is brilliant. It's like reading a review of a Gender Studies paper.

[stewgreen]

@Brandon you can see from Phil Clarke's posting record that he is a figure straight out of GreenPeace and FoE central casting who is here ........ to bully, intimidate and disrupt
....rather than have good honest debate towards the truth.

------------
Point of order : Yes Labour MP Stephenl Kinnock has quoted a figure of 40,000 made up of Tata jobs and 15K plus its supply chain of 25K, but that total is NOT the total number of UK steelworkers cos it;s missing the steelworkers employed in other steel companies. Tata produces steel, but other companies have rolling mills and casting operations.

Jamspid's point is that we skeptics care about ALL jobs : Tata, the supply chain, and other steel businesses that are impacted by the UK's high energy prices due to GreenDream policies.

[JerryM]

@stewgreen: "Jamspid's point is that we skeptics care about ALL jobs"

Yep, I found one of Clarke's comments revealing:

"There are not 40,000 steel workers in the whole country - that's one of those inflated figures you get by including supply chain and so forth."

The supply chain and so forth? It's still PEOPLE, Phil Boy. On the dole. Idiot.

[golf charlie]

Jobs.

When it comes to meaningless pen pushing, form filling etc, we need to remember the true scale of the Green economy, and the number of real jobs it has destroyed.

[It doesn't add up...]

hunter:

The mini quasar paper relates to the universe when it was less than a billion years old - long before our sun was even formed. It is perhaps proof that mentioning global warming and climate change helps get you funding and being noticed, whatever your field of study. It is also proof that Powell's work should not be considered seriously.

X-ray emission from high-redshift miniquasars: self-regulating the population of massive black holes through global warming

Observations of high-redshift quasars at z>6 imply that supermassive black holes (SMBHs) with masses over a billion solar masses were in place less than 1 Gyr after the Big Bang. If these SMBHs assembled from "seed" BHs left behind by the first stars, then they must have accreted gas at close to the Eddington limit during a large fraction (>50%) of the time. A generic problem with this scenario, however, is that the mass density in million-solar-mass SMBHs at z=6 already exceeds the locally observed SMBH mass density by several orders of magnitude; in order to avoid this overproduction, BH seed formation and growth must become significantly less efficient in less massive protogalaxies, while proceeding uninterrupted in the most massive galaxies that formed first. Using Monte-Carlo realizations of the merger and growth history of BHs, we show that X-rays from the earliest accreting BHs can provide such a feedback mechanism. Our calculations paint a self-consistent picture of black-hole-made climate change, in which the first miniquasars---among them the ancestors of the z>6 quasar SMBHs---globally warm the IGM and suppress the formation and growth of subsequent generations of BHs. We present two specific models with global miniquasar feedback that provide excellent agreement with recent estimates of the z=6 SMBH mass function. For each of these models, we estimate the rate of BH mergers at z>6 that could be detected by the proposed gravitational-wave observatory eLISA/NGO.

The abstract and paper.

Now tell me he read it. I think he lied.

[Mailman]

Phil Clark is in fact himself a wind turbine. Lots of spinning (ok, I am being generous here) in every direction and lots of noise but nothing useful is ever generated.

Mailman

[Gavin]

I am 97% convinced that Phil Clarke is a direct descendant of Monty Python's Black Knight.

[Radical Rodent]

Gavin: there was some humour in the Black Knight.

Personally, I am 97% sure that Phil Clarke is the mouthpiece of a team of researchers, all scurrying around looking at pieces of paper relating, however obscurely, to whatever argument might be put forward, with very few actually looking out of the window.