Talk:Patrick Michaels

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[edit] "Linear"

Michaels' view is described as "linear", when it is actually a preposterous assertion that two non-linear effects will conveniently balance. One is a claimed CO2 effect - "each increment results in less and less warming", and the other is increasing CO2 emissions. I've never heard of this non-linear CO2 effect, and it strikes me as nonsense. Can anyone clarify? Rd232 18:42, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

Non-linear in CO2 is fair enough: its band-saturation stufff, which makes in linear in log(CO2). Conveniently, CO2 inc is about exponential, so the forcing inc is about linear. http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/figspm-5.htm shows the predictions from the TAR. William M. Connolley 20:28:32, 2005-09-04 (UTC).
Maybe it's the lateness of the hour, but why are we taking the log? And if the IPCC thinks the same, why is it cited to show why Michaels disagrees with IPCC range? Rd232 23:07, 5 September 2005 (UTC)
Radiative forcing increases roughly with log(CO2). There are three regions: linear for low conc, sqrt for medium, and log for high. We're in the log region. This is std. Not sure what you mean for the second Q re IPCC. William M. Connolley 08:45:08, 2005-09-06 (UTC).

i have elided both quotes from the article. both are inappropriate; they are little more than ad hominem. i'm sure there will be push back. that's fine - explain to me the accuracy of the quote "he has published little if anything of distinction". well which is it? has he published some things of distinction, or nothing of distinction? plain and simple, it's weasel words by the person quoted, and on that basis, inappropriate.Anastrophe 07:32, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] fast work!

u editors ought to be on Wikinews. Doldrums 09:36, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

  Looking at the East Anglia monthly temperature data, http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/,
the global temperature anomaly for Jan 1998 was +.489 (and  +.546  for the year 1998),
while for 2006 so far the monthly temperatures are:

0.320  0.449  0.379  0.365  0.338  0.436  0.442  0.497  0.420  0.483

The difference in Januaries probably is statistically significant; the difference between .489 and .483 surely is not, but in any case the earth has not warmed since January 1998.156.56.74.83 16:11, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] This article is not neutral

This article on Michaels reads like more of a hit piece than a balanced biography. Why is there a section of quotes from critics, but none from supporters? Why is it stated that he has "published little if anything of distinction" when I also see references to articles he has published in Science, Geophysical Letters, and other major journals? And there is a link to "Evidence regarding Michaels' participation in crafted and executed strategy to discredit Al Gore through use of name of Roger Revelle," when in fact the link points to accusations against someone else. (Michaels is cited there only as someone who may have reviewed or or cited the disputed article.)Onorato 04:20, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree with this. I've attempted to clean up some of the bias, but it is still very unbalanced. The "published little if anything of distinction" is a personal opinion of one of his critics that is clearly unsupported. It's all right to include some critics' opinions, but there needs to be more fairness and balance. Geoffrey Allan Plauche 23:17, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Michaels isn't a GW skeptic.

Michaels does not deny that the globe is warming and he does not deny that humans are the cause of this warming. I thought the exclusion of one of these two things were necessary to be label, pejoratively, as a skeptic. Michaels denies the catastrophism of the IPCC and others, but does mean you should attack him as a skeptic of science. ~ UBeR 21:20, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

I find it a little hard to tell whether Michaels is a skeptic or not. In his more temperate moments, his statements regarding the science are in marked contrast to his shrill and sarcastic op-eds and such. He's widely characterized as a skeptic in the mainstream press, so the argument could go either way. Raymond Arritt 21:48, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
At any rate, we should adhere to biographies of a living person guidelines. Pejorative statements must be quantified with enormous scrutiny. ~ UBeR 22:10, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
Oh, so you think referring to someone as a GW skeptic is pejorative? ;-) Kidding aside, I don't see how the label adds anything to the article so delete it if you want. Note again that he's widely characterized as a skeptic in the media and (to my knowledge) hasn't objected. Raymond Arritt 22:18, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
I do not necessarily, but I think your comrade William does.[1] Cheers. ~ UBeR 22:41, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
Global warming skeptic implies to me that he is skeptical that anthropogenic global warming is happening at all. This isn't the case, of course. He IS skeptical of global warming alarmism. I would rather rewrite the first part of the sentence to say "He is a well-known skeptic of global warming alarmism..." Geoffrey Allan Plauche 23:11, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
OK, I tried to edit this to cover all the nuances. I have noted that he has stated he accepts that temperatures have warmed and accepts the basic science, and have also noted that he is widely regarded as a skeptic (and gave a few supporting references). I think part of the problem is that he tends to tailor his message depending on the audience: when responding to straight-media interviews he comes across as much calmer and more mainstream, but when writing for business think-tanks or conservative publications he is far more shrill and extreme. It's not our place to say which (if either) is the "real" Pat Michaels but simply to give both views and let the reader decide. Raymond Arritt 00:26, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
I rather object to the description of Michaels's op-ed and commentary pieces as "shrill and extreme." Perhaps more skeptical of the possible negative effects of global warming than you would prefer, but shrill and extreme? Compared to the skeptics who produced and advocate the Global Warming Swindle documentary he is a downright mainstream skeptic. (That's actually what he calls himself, by the way, a mainstream skeptic.) Also, I don't believe that the Cato Institute is a conservative think tank. It's libertarian. And libertarianism is not neatly pigeonholed as either left or right. National Review, on the other hand,...very conservative, but Michaels is a Cato Senior Fellow. Geoffrey Allan Plauche 03:53, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
My comments regarding "shrill" referred more to the snide, sarcastic tone that he often uses rather than his views, which as you say are not too far out there (especially his more recent views, which are tamer than what he was saying 5 or 6 years ago). Stuff like deriding mainstream climate researchers as "Al Gore’s scientists"[2] and such. Raymond Arritt 04:11, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
Understood. At the risk of being nitpicky though, snide or sarcastic would be more appropriate than shrill. Geoffrey Allan Plauche 04:55, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Vanity Fair? Really? ~ UBeR 00:38, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Sure. It's changed a lot over the past few years and is not your mother's Vanity Fair, so to speak. As well as the pretty pictures it's now also known for "gutsy but carefully vetted investigative stories."[3]. Delete it if you think the graphical content disqualifies it as a WP:RS. That still leaves the Boston Globe, Seattle Times, etc. Raymond Arritt 00:46, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
Do you mind if I remove some that don't really make a good case or aren't really directly calling him a skeptic? For example, Vanity Fair's, "The stars, as in any constellation, are an eclectic bunch. They include fringe scientists such . . . Patrick Michaels" or "CO2 emissions are good for the planet; coal is the best energy source we have. Affiliated Individuals: Patrick Michaels." ~ UBeR 18:13, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

"In 1998, Michaels was invited to testify before the US Congress. He maintained that climate scientists had wildly exaggerated the likely impacts of global warming. He illustrated this with reference to a paper by the climatologist James Hansen in 1988. Hansen had presented three possible scenarios for temperature rises by 2000: high, medium and low. Both the high and low scenarios, he explained, were unlikely to materialise. The middle one was "the most plausible". As it happens, his middle scenario was almost exactly right. But Michaels took the graph from Hansen's paper, erased the medium and low scenarios and presented the high curve as Hansen's prediction for climate change. This, he claimed, proved that climate scientists were exaggerators" -- Paul Krugman, 29th May 2006. Swift Boating the Planet. New York Times. You're right, that's not skepticism at all. ~ LamontCranston 8:50, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Gelbspan on Tom Wigley

Dear user Kim D. Petersen: Sorry if I seemed to be doubting your word on the sources for the material on Tom Wigly. I did not doubt that Gelbspan referred to Wigley as "one of the world's leading climate scientists", I merely disagree that, as written, the sentence made it clear that this honorific description was clearly Gelbspan's conclusion, since only the statement by Wigley that you included in quotes was clearly from The Heat is On, with the introductory material, as I said, being in the "voice of Wikipedia." I was reluctant to repair the paragraph because I thought that perhaps the phrase "one of the world's leading climate scientists" might be a direct quote and should be presented as such, but I had no easy access to the source to check this. I gather from your remarks on my user talk page (i.e. it is almost verbatim) that it does not belong in quotes, so I have left it as is and merely reorganized the paragraph to make the source of all the conclusions presented unambiguous. —Blanchette 04:05, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

The description of Wigley as a "leading climate scientist" is a common one (including such quality sources as Nature and the American Geophysical Union), so it's not a controversial point. Raymond Arritt 04:16, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
Ok - lets take this slowly: 1) Its not Gelbspan who is saying this (i have no idea where you get that from). 2) Its verbatim from the source [4] - read the 2nd last paragraph. 3) Its a direct quote - but not from a person - but from the Pacific Institute.
Would you please read the references before judging whether or not something is attributable - or to whom (or what) it is attributable. --Kim D. Petersen 08:35, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
You should make it more clear you are plagiarizing from the Pacific Institute. ~ UBeR 17:45, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
UBeR: I'm not plagiarizing anything. I'm not the contributer of this - i just have this article on my watchlist, and what i'm protesting is that the text is changed away from what the reference says. --Kim D. Petersen 18:06, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
Or rather that the deletions of text from this is summarized as "unsourced", "Clarifying source" - when nothing of the kind is accurate or supported.
Btw. i'm not against this being rewritten or deleted entirely - i have no feelings for the content. If you want to clarify it - go ahead. --Kim D. Petersen 18:09, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Okay, Kim D. Petersen, now I know what you're talking about. I'm sorry I didn't understand what you meant sooner. I managed to find the source of the entire paragraph in question in the Michaels article. Because of the way you (I mean someone) formatted the paragraph in the article it was not obvious which reference (Gelbspan or Pacific Institute) went with which piece of information. I have reformatted it as a block quote since the entire paragraph (minus their inline citation) was taken from the Pacific Institute article. My only change was to replace the Institute's inline citation of Gelbspan with an ellipsis and a Wikipedia-style reference. In the future, maybe you (anyone) would consider using block quotes for this kind of material written by others, and help people like me avoid confusion. The block quote icon is the second from the right on the edit toolbar. Thanks! —Blanchette 21:53, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't understand why Kim D. Petersen thinks describing the Pacific Institute as an environmental advocacy group is POV since they self-describe as so: "The Pacific Institute is dedicated to protecting our natural world, encouraging sustainable development, and improving global security." [5]. The point is to describe them briefly; nevertheless I'm dropping the description — perhaps Kim can do better. It would not be consistent with Wikipedia policy to revert the entire paragraph again, however, since it would be plagiarism to present quoted material in 'the voice of Wikipedia' when it is in the voice of the Pacific Institute. —Blanchette 22:37, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Please read WP:MoS. I think that you are trying to change this because you do not like the content or the source- thats not your perogative. Tom Wigley is one of the worlds leading climate scientists. And the text is attributable. We could easily change the wording so that it isn't a direct plagiarized paragraph, and still have the same text - as it follows the guidelines in WP:ATT. --Kim D. Petersen 23:05, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
Here is another source for "leading" [6] - and these people (American Geophysical Union) should know, and you'd have a hard time calling them advocates :-) --Kim D. Petersen 23:19, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
Its now reworded - and i've added extra attribution. Now its not the Pacific Institute who is saying anything - except to back up the specific wording in the book. Satisfied? --Kim D. Petersen 23:32, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Controversy whether it's a controversy

The recent edits of this article mainly consist of adding, deleting, adding, ... the following sentence "The scientific controversy [...] was resolved by 1995, when the Nobel Prize for Chemistry was awarded to [...]". What do you think of the following version: "The scientific controversy [...] run out in 1995, when the Nobel Prize for Chemistry was awarded to [...]" or, "ceased", "terminated", "diminished", "ended", "was put to an end" or something like that. It think its better that we discuss this on the article's talk page instead via the edit summaries. --Cyfal (talk) 18:13, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

There was never much "scientific controversy" to begin with. There was just this phenomenon that we didn't know the specific mechanism of and which a few smart people eventually figured out. The idea of a raging "controversy" sells newspapers, but the word is used for too many instances where it doesn't apply. Raymond Arritt (talk) 03:23, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
I reworded to get rid of the bogus "controversy." Better now? Raymond Arritt (talk) 03:40, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
Unfortunately, the current revision (while being somewhat less POV) doesn't make that much sense. Is it that hard to simply state something like "Although most scientists considered (insert controversy) settled in the mid-1990s (include the awarding of a Nobel Prize), Michaels persisted in advocating (blah) until at least 2001." Jdb1972 (talk) 13:47, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
Okay, how about changing the current sentence in the article to "Although scientists generally considered the basis for the relationship between CFCs and the ozone layer to be settled by 1995, when the Nobel Prize for Chemistry was awarded to Paul Crutzen , Mario Molina, and Sherwood Rowland for their work that demonstrated physical mechanisms for the effects of CFCs on ozone depletion, Michaels persisted in advocating against the CFC phaseout as late as 2001." I think "most scientists" isn't as accurate as "scientists generally," but otherwise Jdb's proposal isn't too bad. Brian A Schmidt (talk) 16:39, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
I don't think Wikipedia is well served by its typical "most scientists consider the Earth to be round though others say it is flat" version of NPOV.[7] Per WP:WEIGHT we don't need to take tiny-minority fringe positions into account. Just say that the scientific basis was established by 1995. Raymond Arritt (talk) 16:46, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
In general I agree with you (and thank you for the link to the funny comic) — but this article is about a person belonging to the tiny-minority fringe position, therefore a mention is adequate. I think Brian A Schmidt's version is fine. You may think of "Although scientists generally considered the earth to be round from the third century B.C. onward, Charles K. Johnson persisted in advocating for a flat eart as late as in the twentieth century A.C." which would be adequate in Johnson's article. --Cyfal (talk) 21:48, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
Yes, that would be appropriate. It was the erroneous implication that there was a big scientific controversy that I objected to. Raymond Arritt (talk) 23:11, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
I now updated the article like this and removed the disputed-tag, I guess it's ok now. --Cyfal (talk) 08:00, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Ridiculous Article Reminds me of Gulliver's Travels.

Hit piece. Now I see why one of the founders of Wikipedia resigned. The suppression of counter ideas to the herd laser like focus on ridiculous science is not condoned by the Stalinist thought controllers of the world. Norm Worrell —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.100.99.38 (talk) 04:46, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

This is one of the least NPOV articles on Wikipedia; I do not know where to begin on editing out the religious fervor. After the top 9/10ths of the page consisting of criticism, the bottom 1/10th is a section on yet more criticism (this time with a helpful label!). The sole purpose of this page seems to be to discredit an AGW heretic (not an AGW infidel even!) using political-style attacks. 137.186.41.143 (talk)

You're being a bit boring, but there isn't much else going on so I may as well tweak you a bit: do you include the quotes from Michaels, and the list of his pubs, in the 10/10's biased bit? William M. Connolley (talk) 22:58, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Quote from Cato website

I have removed the passage cited from the Cato website. Using such a long quote is problematic in many ways. First of all, it doesn't seem clear to me whether it is really a public domain source. And if yes, it still remains a biased partisan source and thus problematic even if it is labelled as such one. If the content is correct, it should be possible to back it by other sources and incorporate the reformulated content without copying long passages from websites of conservative think tanks.--Fan of Freedom (talk) 23:43, 27 April 2008 (UTC)