JohnMashey’s Recent Comments

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  1) I think appealing to general morality indeed gets few new supporters.  Many people are concerned about people in proportion to their relationships, and places according to their geographical distance.

  2) People are often more motivated by what they lose, than some optional thing they might not gain. I'm not sure reduction of ski trips and beach holidays is as strong a motivation as one might like.

  3) The effects of AGW are very geography-dependent, and enumerating a general list just dilutes it.  I'd suggest that for instance , saying +2C sounds pretty attractive to someone in Canada.  On the other hand, more specific items like:

  British Columbia: all your mature pines will be killed by pine beetles

  Ontario: by 2020, kudzu will survive

  (various places in Canada): West Nile virus will thrive as well

  Oklahoma: how do you feel about the likelihood that your grandkids will nto be able to live in OK, and will become Okies? Ever see "Grapes of Wrath?"

  Vermont: too bad about ski resorts and maple sugar business, go to Canada

  Upper midwest: you get warmer, but expect worse flood

  Realistically, there are bunch of places where people live, where  their grandhcildren will either not be able to, or it will be very expensive or very unpleasant.  In the West, we have ghost towns around,and they are pretty sad.

  4) So: a suggestion: maybe Grist should do a series, in some standard format, area by area, describing:

  a) What's already been seen in that state or area.

  b) Effects to expect, either by year or by degree or both

  c) Cover temperature, precipitation changes, snowpack issues, water, sea level rise, insurance, agriculture, ecosystem  changes, ins some standard format.

  d) Ideally, do a series that covers USA & Canada, at least.

  e) When possible, recruit climate scientists local to the area to write.

  5) If I had a wish, it would be to get Andrew Dessler or one of the other Texas climate scientists to start.  See recent conference Climate Change Impacts on Texas Water, for example.  Texas scientists know they have serious issues ahead, with even less water in some places, and a lot more in other places.

  
  But, without being doom-mongering, you have to be specific, and tell people things they relate to directly, and those are *very* geography dependent.

  On Think of the children, or think of your ski trip: Two ways to tell the climate story posted 5 months, 1 week ago 5 Responses

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  Arguments are for the uncommitted

  Some people:
  a)Will not even look at any real science.  Some will not even read one introductory book by a real  scientist.  They insit they know enough, although most won't say what their sources are.  [I suspect I would recognize the blogs. :-)]
  Many of these:

  b)Think oil & gas are forever, no matter what TheOilDrum and other serious petroleum people say.

  But, other people are legitimately confused, and want to learn some real science,  and if one can help them, as others have helped us, it seems a good idea.

  This is a lot like elections in politics, where the real battle is often over the Independent vote.
  

  -John Mashey

  On A look at the non-experts speaking at Heartland Institute's denialist sideshow posted 8 months ago 23 Responses

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  Google Scholar, etc

  1) Yes, this is good advice, although of course Google Scholar works better for some names than others.  Also, it helps to know something about the journals.  See journal impact factor for example.

  It's worth knowing that:
  a) Getting something published in Science or Nature isn't easy.  Likewise PNAS and AGU professional journals.

  b) Watch out for "Energy & Environment" - publishing there is not a plus.  Also,watch out for non-peer-reviewed society "newsletters", which sometimes publish odd things, like happened last summer with the American Physical Society's FPS/Monckton kerfuffle.

  c) An important article has a high citation count, and not just from the authors(s) and  their associates.  Important articles get cited over years.  Be careful, though, sometimes Google Scholar ends up with multiple references to the same article, splitting the citation counts.

  Still, if you see something with hundreds of citations, it's pretty serious.  It can also be worth Googling such an article to see where it's referenced outside the more restricted set done by Google Scholar.

  d) Sometimes an article will get published, expressing  a set of conclusions from some data, and relatively quickly, there will be a flurry of refutations, either finding real errors, ore  reflecting new data.  Then citations die off.

  e) Some articles just aren't interesting, and nobody cares.

  2) HOWEVER, some of these people actually have published peer-reviewed articles in serious journals, in some cases, many.

  a) In some cases, they have published many peer-reviewed articles in some other disciplines, and then have gone off into anti-science around climate, at which point they write OpEds, web articles, etc, etc.   This often happens near/at retirement time.

  For example, Coby didn't mention the Heartland attendance of Syun-Ichi Akasofu, a fine aurora researcher with hundreds of legitimate publications ... who upon retirement started putting out truly embarrassing material on climate.  If a senior person, with hundreds of peer-reviewed articles, has real science, they know how to get it published in credible places.

  It is a serious red flag if Instead, he puts out material on a website, writes OpEds, etc.
  See my analysis of one of his website papers.  This is very sad, a bit akin to Linus Pauling's forays into Vitamin C or William Shockley's into eugenics.

  b) In some cases (like Lindzen), people have published many peer-reviewed articles on legitimate climate science.  Here, you have to do more work, like looking at citations and seeing if the work stood up.  If someone else cites a 20-year-old paper, you want to check out what happened since.

  You want to check out what someone writes in their peer-reviewed research and what they write in OpEds, say in interviews,  etc.  Modulo the inherent differences in audience, its is a red flag if those are too different.  No scientist with some truly world-shaking science (like disproving AGW) does it in a WSJ OpEd, they send it to Science or Nature.

  Lindzen is a rarity in this area, and for some useful insights, see Logical Science comments, including especially quotes from old students. Perhaps compare with different reasons for anti-science.

  3. It takes a while [years], but it is very instructive to watch people.  If they make mistakes, are they usually in the same direction? Do their opinions change as new data arrives, or not?  Do they cite long debunked claims (at least in OpEds)?  (One of the useful features of Coby's list is to see how often the same junk gets recycled again and again.]

  4. Of course, people with experience in this turf learn who's who after a while, but it takes work.
     
  I'll admit there are some people in this, who, if they said the Sun would rise in the East, would cause  me some worry, and I'd have to go check :-)

  -John Mashey

  On A look at the non-experts speaking at Heartland Institute's denialist sideshow posted 8 months ago 23 Responses

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  KenG -please read my comments at ThingsBreak

  Lomborg isn't an economist, he's a political scientist, and his tactics work very well for the unwary.

  You might ask a simple question: how much money has the Copenhagen Consensus actually raise dfor all the worthy causes?

  -John Mashey

  On Gore declines to debate Lomborg posted 8 months ago 11 Responses

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  Another view on Lomborg

  Take Lomborg seriously ... not for what he says, but for the cleverness of his political advocacy strategy.

  See Lomborg and Playing the Long Game.

  Keywords: right-wing thinktanks, reincaration of Julian Simon, misdirection arguments, sophisticated version of false dilemma.

  -John Mashey

  On Gore declines to debate Lomborg posted 8 months, 1 week ago 11 Responses