http://www.di2.nu/foia/1153233036.txt

From: Jonathan Overpeck
To: Tim Osborn
Subject: Re: Law Dome figure
Date: Tue, 18 Jul 2006 10:30:36 -0600
Cc: Ricardo Villalba , Keith Briffa , Valerie Masson-Delmotte , Eystein Jansen

Hi Tim, Ricardo and friends – your suggestion to
leave the figure unchanged makes sense to me. Of
course, we need to discuss the Law Dome ambiguity
clearly and BRIEFLY in the text, and also in the
response to “expert” review comments (sometimes,
it is hard to use that term “expert”…).

Ricardo, Tim and Keith – can you take care of
this please. Nice resolution, thanks.

best, Peck

What are some unanswered questions you hope to find answers toward — either by further study of the cores already obtained, or by further drilling in the Antarctic?

(Or, post a pointer, not asking you to retype anything already written elsewhere.)

I’m curious not just about the ‘big climate’ issues but whatever comes to mind, given the position you are and able to look and wonder.

I’d imagine things like — do you ever find insects or insect fragments in the ice?
What sorts of colors do you notice? How does it taste from different levels (grin).

I should have made a distinction in my post.
I was not referring to you when I responded to Ken’s point about silence or hostility in response to a reasonable question. That was a general point that had nothing to do with you.

The other point about accusations of ignorance and hostility were directed to you. My only point was that they were kind of disappointing. Certainly there are people quite ignorant of the issues involved; I’m living proof of that, but that is an opportunity to enlighten not dismiss isn’t it?
And I never saw an insinuation that you had engaged in censorship. If someone did, that was certainly uncalled for without some evidence to back it up.
In any event some of the scientists here have made eerily similar remarks regarding the frustrations involved in interacting at RC. I’m not sure what that says other than some people and issues are contentious in just about every walk of life and discipline. Perhaps ignoring the ones you find contentious and engaging the ones you don’t would lessen your frustration. There seem to be quite a few scientists here who engage in productive discussions. I hope you’re not confusing disagreement with hostility.

It is not a hostile attack it is a statement of fact,your comments suggest a lack of knowledge of the additional parameters(variables)Do not take it personal it is business(science).If you do not understand the coeffcients of nuclear (solar and galactic)radiation as an energy inputand its qualitative energy budget or the biochemistry of say refrigerant bacteria such as phylum Pseudomonas the activators and inhibitors of chemical thermodynamics and thermodiffusion state it in your discourse,ie provide a risk matrix of the levels of understanding of unquantified variables and the correlation of accuracy (proof) of the gcm.It does not disprove the experiment.

As Swift wrote on the scientists of the grand academy of Lapunda who became so diversed in their specialist subjects they failed to relate reality to virtuality ie they lost objectivity.

It is now the post industrial information age. Each day we experience data transformed in both electronic visual and print mediums to our senses and perceptions. The data transcends both virtuality and reality. The convergence of reality and virtuality in News and entertainment, with science and controversy, with chaos and catastrophe, and the transformation of the delivery of data along the various modes of information have resulted in uncertainty and confusion.

Indeed how can it be expected to identify reality, when there are difficulties of distinction between reality and the unreal when the unreal is being realized, and the real being shown as unreal. Each day we experience a growing crisis of unrealized proportions .As Umberto Eco observed “crisis sells well” The question such crisis pose is whether attitudes have been undermined by the experience of modernity, or whether reality itself, something objective and firm, is an illusion .Is the paradigm now one of “there is no reality?” When the media, governments, and advertisers tell us that dreams are becoming realities, does this mean conversely, reality is becoming a dream?

The philosophical ideology of what is, or not real are continuing debates.The primary questions being ontological and epistemological. The former is about being: what is real? Is there reality and form behind appearance? The epistemological question is about knowing: what is truth?. Is knowledge by reason or experience? Or do our everyday systems distinguish between reality and appearance, and truth from falsity. We expect the system of road rules to regulate the traffic, and do not question if the other drivers are rationalists, or empiricists .Although the parentage and marital status of the regulators is often questioned .Previously the normality of the result of an experiment, performed by a scientist, did not rest on whether the scientist performing the experiment is an idealist or materialist, or the source of funding, but the outcome and replicability of the experiment that showed reality.

The transformation of the interpretation of science and the contemporary views on the ways science operates in both form and validation, and the variances of the determinants of science have caused obfuscication of the basic tenets and norms of the characteristics of the scientific model. This has formed an ideological involvement in scientific validation that has created uncertainty and confusion. and. a convergence between reality and virtuality that have obscured the outcomes and development. The loss has been one of order and objectivity, and its replacement by chaos and controversy. The underlying philosophical conditioning, the interpretation of the results, rather then the scientific model and reality. The Divergence from Realism and its objective reality and existence to one of the Feyerabend model of anything goes and his promotion of anarchy as an antidote against epistemology and the scientific method.

The social component of science also is an important determinant in the truth of the outcome. This is not only within the scientific community, but in the areas of funding and oversight. This form can see the suppression of some theory and the enhancement of others. The theories suppressed are not always incorrect, but in some instances far ahead of their time and interpretation. The example of the Austrian Ludwig Boltzmann and the connections he discovered with heat and thermodynamics and the notion of entropy that went against the social climate rather then logic whilst questioning Newtonian mechanics. Another is the Russian Boris Belousov whose work showed entropy could move both forward and backwards along the arrow of time. His experiments proved the mathematical theories of Turing were possible.Belousov theories and publications were dismissed as against the laws of thermodynamics ,but obstinacy and the persistence of one of his post graduate students and the publication of the BZ reaction saw it enter the real world of science and that a theory is changeable.

The philosophical intents of Feyerabend and also the misrepresentations of the ideals of Thomas Kuhn and his structure of scientific changes by Paradigms by the alternative and anti science movements meant the order or formalization of the scientific method has undertaken structural change that blurs the line between reality and virtuality,of possibility and probability.

The constraints of the formal method has seen pseudo science take equality with recognized science theory ,and often the merging of the real and virtual worlds.

We have seen the transformation from the Merton norms of Originality, detachment, universality, Skepticism.and public accessibility, and its cognitive structure, to theories that have the form and reason of Pseudoscience. These rely on a casual approach to evidence, spurious similarities, explanation by scenario, research by literary interpretation and a refusal to revise.

1. fFred is one of the nicer guys on the site. I know. I’m one of the less nice. You show lack of discrimination or insight by talking about him as the bad guy.

2. I don’t know if you participate in the censoring. I do know that I have been very routinely censored there. You can’t ask a very simple yes/no question, like “was the off-centering in MBH PCA intentional” or “why was it not disclosed in the methods”. You CAN’T even ASK it. They preview the comments and if you push them too much on a vulnerability, then they stop your posts.

3. Hang around here. No one will censor you.

First, I thought an accusation of my involvement in censorship was a pretty good example of hostility, but I’ll let it slide.

Second, my reference to ignorance wasn’t meant to imply that “not knowing” is somehow a crime. It’s the combination of ignorance and hostility I have trouble with. I read maksimovich’s comment on GCMs as hostile because it implied I didn’t know what I was doing, and ignorant because it is full of bizarre terms like “solar free energy” and appeals to worry about “biogeochemistry” when addressing recent Antarctic climate change. This is so far off the mark of what is relevant that I’m actually, honestly, not sure where I’d begin in trying to respond! This all comes back to Steve Bloom’s point that most scientists trying to engage on this site, no matter how open minded they are, will quickly become very frustrated. I certainly have. Accusations that my “silence” are somehow speaking to some ulterior motive or fear of engaging on my part are similarly not very encouraging. It’s particularly bizarre to be accused of this given that I wrote inthe first place (me, a RealClimate guy!) to AGREE with Steve McIntyre on something).

You are correct Ken. I am trying to resist the conclusion that comes from either silence or hostility to reasonable questions. Simply telling people several times that they are ignorant and hostile hardly engenders confidence does it?