Welcome to the Authors Forum. This is a private forum available only to Skeptical Science users who've been upgraded to Author status. There are several ways to use the forum.

1. Publish a blog post

2. Review other rebuttals

3. Write a Rebuttal

4. Uploading images to the website

5. Upload a graphic to the Climate Graphics resource

1. Publish a blog post

If you'd like to publish a blog post, follow these steps:

1. Go to Authors Admin and click on Add New Blog to go to the submission form.
2. You must enter a Headline, Filename and Article in order to successfully add the blog post to our system. The Filename should only contain alphanumerical characters, underscores or dashes. Eg - if you enter the Filename global-warming then your blog post will have the URL www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming.htm
3. Hit the 'Save Blog Post' button to add your blog post.
4. Then go to Blog Posts Forum, scroll down to the bottom of the page and add a new thread for your blog post. You should then get feedback from other SkS authors - feel free to go back and edit your blog post via Authors Admin based on the feedback.
5. Once you're happy for the blog post to be published, post on the thread asking for the blog post to be added to the schedule. There is usually a recent thread outlining the schedule for upcoming blog posts and John or Dana will add your post to the schedule.

You can edit how much of your blog post displays on the homepage (it's recommended to show several paragraphs and your first graphic on the homepage for maximum impact). Here are the steps:

• In the WYSIWYG editor, click on the HTML button
• Find where you want the break to go (sorry, you'll have to get used to navigating HTML)
• Add the code <!--more-->
• Save your blog post changes
• If you don't use this, the system automatically defaults to only showing the first paragraph. Eg - it stops when it first encounters a </p> tag

It's also strongly recommended everyone reads REQUIRED READING FOR ALL SkSers: How to make your blog posts 'sticky'.

You can see posts by other authors at http://www.skepticalscience.com/posts.php

2. Review other rebuttals

The most valuable contribution you can make is to review other rebuttals. When you visit the Authors Forum, make a point of checking out threads with some thumbs-up. If you deem the rebuttal good to go, approve it with a thumbs-up. If not, post a suggestion on how it can be improved . This way, we can get rebuttals through peer-review with a bit more focus and direction.

If you've approved all the green thumbed rebuttals, next have a look at the rebuttals languishing towards the bottom that have no thumbs-up - either approve or post a comment. This will bump it to the top so other authors can also give it some love and attention.

3. Write a Rebuttal

If you'd like to write a rebuttal to one of the existing skeptic arguments, follow this procedure:

1. Go to the Rebuttal List and see if your argument is unclaimed. If not, click Claim. If it is, sorry, first in first served (but if it looks like there is no action on that argument, feel free to contact that author and ask them to unclaim).
2. Write your rebuttal and post it as a new thread. To start a new thread, don't post it here. Instead, go back to the Author Forum main page and fill out the 'Start a new thread' form.
3. For the summary, include the level and argument number. Eg:
   BASIC rebuttal 01: It's the sun
4. Next, all the other authors post comments/suggestions.
5. As the suggestions come in, if you agree with their feedback, updates your original rebuttal by clicking the Edit link in the bottom right corner of the post. Then post a reply to that thread, letting everyone know you've updated the rebuttal and bumping the thread to the top of the forum
6. As all the other authors are happy with the final wording, they give it the thumbs up. This is done by posting a reply and checking the thumbs up box beneath the Message box
7. Once a post receives *five* thumbs up, it's "passed peer-review"
8. As a final step, I (John Cook) will officially go live with the rebuttal and also post it as a blog post to let the world know about it. I'll also mark the thread with a green background to indicate that it's live and published.

Once your rebuttal has gone live:

1. You can still edit the rebuttal via the Rebuttal List. Go to your rebuttal and click Edit. This will edit the live version.
2. You can also edit the blog post so long as it's posted under your name. Just look for the Edit link below the blog post - clicking this will take you to the Author Admin where you can update the blog post. Note - the Rebuttal and the Blog Post come from two separate sources so unfortunately you have to edit both sources.

4. Uploading images to the website

There are several ways you can insert a figure into your posts:

1. If the figure is already on another webpage, just highlight it, copy (Ctrl + C), insert the cursor in the form box here, paste (Ctrl + V) and bob's your uncle!
2. If the image is uploaded to the web somewhere and you know the URL, click on the picture icon (found in the WYSIWYG icons in the forum form box - it's a tiny tree) then enter the URL
3. If the image is on your computer, you need to upload the image to the web. As a Skeptical Science author, you can upload images to my pics folder. Just go to the Upload Image feature in Author Admin. This will upload a pic into the www.skepticalscience.com/pics folder then give you the URL of the image. So copy that URL then paste it using the steps in option #2 above.

Apologies that these are fairly clunky options - I will work on a better option soon.

5. Upload a graphic to the Climate Graphics resource

To upload a graphic to the Climate Graphics resource:

• Create a high resolution version JPG. The recommended size is 1024 x 768 pixels which is the ideal size for adding to Powerpoint presentations. The image *must* be a JPG.
• In Author Admin, go to Graphics and click on Add Graphic.
• Compulsory fields are Title and Image Large. Make sure your Image Large is 1024 x 768 pixels and in JPG format.
• The system will automatically create a 500 and 180 pixel version for displaying on the webpage.
• Enter text in the Description if you wish to add a caption to the Climate Graphics section. This is good for offering more explanation of the graphic such as links to data sources, peer-reviewed references, etc.
• Set Display to Yes when you're ready for it to go live on the Climate Graphics.

Hi Folks,

before too many rewritten rebuttals show up, I'd like to suggest to always add the corresponding argument number from the "fixed num list". Instead of "BASIC rebuttal: Water vapor...." it would be "BASIC rebuttal 24: Water vapor...." or "Rebuttal 24 - BASIC: Water vapor...." (the latter would perhaps even make it possible to create a sorted list by argument number).  "BASIC rebuttal: 1998 is the hottest year on record" would be "BASIC rebuttal 07: 1998 is the hottest..." (this is an example where the number would help to avoid ambiguity as the argument's "real" title currently is "It hasn't warmed since 1998"). We will eventually have a very long list of arguments with different explanation-levels so the fixed numbers will make it easier to see which have already been tackled.

The numbers will also help with eventually keeping track of the translations.

Cheers

Baerbel

Two points.

1) I wonder if I'm alone in finding the text in this message box that I'm writing in, too small (and with no way of making it larger that I can see)? I'm not a spring chicken and I'm finding it painful: even the zoom facility in Firefox leaves it still a bit too small.

2) It would be useful if the three boxes in the rebuttal list linked to the appropriate threads, John. I'm imagining it could get very difficult to find one's way around the forum once the list starts being more extensively populated.

Best wishes,

JR

Forget my point 1 -- I cracked the problem.

There are several ways you can insert a figure into your posts:

1. If the figure is already on another webpage, just highlight it, copy (Ctrl + C), insert the cursor in the form box here, paste (Ctrl + V) and bob's your uncle!
2. If the image is uploaded to the web somewhere and you know the URL, click on the picture icon (found in the WYSIWYG icons in the forum form box - it's a tiny tree) then enter the URL
3. If the image is on your computer, you need to upload the image to the web. As a Skeptical Science author, you can upload images to my pics folder. Just go to the Upload Image feature in Author Admin. This will upload a pic into the www.skepticalscience.com/pics folder then give you the URL of the image. So copy that URL then paste it using the steps in option #2 above.
   

Ari, there is a link to the forum from Skeptical Science but only in the left margin underneath the "You are logged in as..." - it only appears if you're logged in and have sufficient clearance to access the forum. As this is still a private forum, I'm not going to post public links to it. I may add a general public forum later on but only when its developed to the point of having a robust moderation system.

Also, just updated the first post at the top of this thread, laying out instructions on how to post rebuttals for new people (or old people who weren't paying attention first time around).

Does anyone have any suggestions for how I can do an advanced search to show only search results for, say, something that appeared before a certain date? I use the alternative -- last week, last 24 hours, last year -- all the time, but I'd really like to be able to find out whether a certain popular phrase was used before a certain date. The only way I can see at the moment is to trawl through every one of 100,000+ hits to note the date of each -- and that's not on.

Any ideas?

Best wishes,

JR 

JC,

 I hate to complain, but the connection to this site is terribly slow. Is there anything that can be done?

Neal, do you mean just the Authors Forum that's slow for you or all the pages on my site?

If just the homepage of the Authors Forum (which I've noticed has gotten slower as it's bloated with size), I might be able to trim it back by rejigging the database structure and reducing the number of database queries.

Right now, a thread you have never looked at is bright blue; then it turns dark blue once you have looked at it.

Would it be possible to renew its "virgin" status when someone posts a new reply in that thread? That way, it would be easy to tell if there is something that I haven't read before.

Neal

re virgin threads, that's easy enough to do - just append a variable to the URL like &r=7 where the number is the number of replies. But what I have been planning is a "email me when someone replies to this hread" subscription option. Particularly useful for an author waiting for feedback on their rebuttal. Would this suffice? Or both?

- The "color refresh" would be useful if one drops onto the page and wants to work one's way down the site, making sure no topic is being neglected.

- The email subscription is great for notification; it should be optional on a per-thread basis, to avoid being driven mad on a hot topic.

Only took a few seconds so done and dusted.

Email subscription bit more work, will take a little longer to get to :-)

I think it helps a lot.

Now, if you could re-order the listings in the Basic/Intermediate/Advanced threads so that comments against already-approved (Green) articles take their place by order of posting, instead of being segregated way out of sight, I think that would also save time.

Neal

John,

If they're not active in some sense (either under development, or being discussed for some other reason), they will be buried and migrate downward naturally.

Whereas, if they're being discussed, why should they be way down there anyway?

Other views?

...of things like typos could be more easily brought to the attention of the original author if the published rebuttals were to stick to the top instead of being relegated to the bottom of the thread-list. That said, it's still helpful for them to be color-coded green and to show the green pin-icon on the left.

Cheers
Baerbel

about the green coding for already-published articles: It's useful to know.

OK, I'll shut up again.

Hello, I am new to this and have just claimed the rebuttal "Breathing contributes to CO2 buildup". I am not sure whether or not the article I have in mind will be intermediate or basic, so I chose intermediate - when I post it here, if people think it should be under basic, is that easy to change?

Also, am I allowed to cross-post it at my blog?

Thanks!

Kate 

Hi Kate. Yes, easy enough to change. Neal wrote a basic rebuttal to "positive feedback means runaway warming" but it was so complex, I changed it to advanced.

Definitely yes to cross-posting on your blog.

Have heard the breathing argument, look forward to reading the response!

My general suggestion is that, if you plan to write at more than one level, you write first the most complex version. Then you can make sure that you have all the logic and evidence worked out.

Then figure out what you can afford to cut back for the simpler versions.

That doesn't mean that the simpler versions are just abbreviations; but you will know where the pitfalls could be if someone reading the Basic version knows enough to look for weak points.

Just my POV.

Neal

Good point, Neal, probably most practical to write the advanced version first. Definitely the most efficient way to go.

On a slightly related note, I'm writing a new rebuttal to the "it's only a few degrees warming" argument. Was planning on writing a basic rebuttal first.

I'm not very efficient :-(

It also depends on which ones you're planning to write yourself: If you're planning to farm out the Advanced version, there's not much point in waiting on that, might as well get your own thoughts in order.

 Also, when I did the feedback articles, I let good ideas and 2nd thoughts regarding the Basic article revise the Advanced article, as appropriate. That's really why they were all released at the same time: They weren't individually finished until they were all finished.

It would be very convenient if I could monitor everything from one page, such as the Authors' page.

The Authors' page already shows the most recent poster in the Basic/Intermediate/Advanced rebuttal pages, the Chat heading on the lefthand bar, and of course displays the articles in the Authors' list. These last show the color-refresh property.

If you could set the 3 rebuttal-page headings and the chat heading to also have color refresh, I could open a window on just the Authors' page and be aware of the status of the entire site, with respect to my having read items. As it is now, I have to circle to the rebuttal and chat sites to check it out.

Is this possible?

Would it be possible to give us the option to "mark all posts in a (sub)forum" read? This is something which can be helpful if there are many recently unread posts/threads where the user doesn't have the time or interest to actually call them all up once to mark them as actually "read". This is obviously something in the category of "nice to have" and not "need to have"!

Cheers
Baerbel

If you mean changing the link colour of all the threads so they all go purple like they were visited, I'm sorry - I wouldn't have a clue how to do that - I don't even know if its possible. Any boffins have an idea on how to achieve this, please let me know :-)

John,

The folder at  www.skepticalscience.com/pics is a forbidden zone.  It may be a good idea to allow us to have "read only" access to this area.  We would be able to see the pictures that we have uploaded and we would be able to use those of the other authors if they meet our needs.

It may also be good idea for each of us to have our own private section where we can store our pictures and change them as we please.

Thanks,

Bob 

Do you intend to add a "Font Size" button?

                                               Uncertainty in Global Warming Science

Since the time of Kepler and Galileo there has been steady progress in the precision with which humans can predict the outcome of kinematic events.  As is well known major advances were made by Newton and Einstein and today we can predict with extraordinary accuracy the trajectory of an object traveling with a known velocity under the influence of gravitational forces.  This does not mean that the trajectory of a rocket traveling to Mars, for example, is known with absolute precision but is to some extent uncertain.  In part this uncertainty is introduced both by our inability to determine the velocity with perfect precision and by the perturbations of gravitational effects arising from  more distant objects.   Therefore it is correct to say,  even in this very well understood case, that the results of the scientific calculation are “uncertain”.  Such uncertainty is a reality in all scientific calculations and those who depend upon the results of such calculations must be aware of this fact.  However in cases of the character of rocket trajectory calculations the uncertainties themselves are understood such that we can be very certain that a rocket meant to go to Mars will arrive there barring some unforeseen catastrophe such as an engine failure or a giant solar flare.

In the same fashion there are many areas in our lives (communication, GPS, air traffic control, cat scans, MRI, internal combustion, electric generation and transmission, radar, computer automation, etc.)  that depend upon the results of science and have associated with them uncertainties  that are both known and known to be negligible in terms of  the particular application to which the relevant science (electromagnetism, quantum mechanics, classical mechanics , etc.) is applied.  This is simply to state an obvious fact of our lives in the 21^st century. What I have briefly described above is a type of science that I will, for convenience call Type A. I will take science to be of Type A if, in principal, the uncertainty in the result and the uncertainty in that uncertainty can be numerically calculated and the relative uncertainties in each can be determined to be less than some set percentage.

For me, then, Type B science depends on equations that are less precisely constrained than in Type A science.  In the case of Type B science there is difficulty in defining quantities and boundary conditions.  The equations in Type B science  cannot be solved with the same precision as for Type A and, equally important, the uncertainty in the uncertainty is frequently unknown..  An example of a result of Type B science is the prediction of weather.  We may be told, for example, that  there is a 75% chance of rain in our area. This “prediction” is based upon the understanding that meteorologists have of the basic equations governing the movement of air masses , the changes of temperature and pressure with such movement and the condensation of water  vapor, however the conditions limiting the equations in this case, the boundary conditions, are not so precisely defined and  the objects to which the equations apply not so well defined as in the previous cases. The conclusions of Type B science have a much greater range of relative uncertainty than for Type A. The 25% uncertainty suggested by the 75% probability would of course be totally unacceptable in a Type A calculation of, say, the osmotic pressure of an injected serum or the probability of a mid-air collision. Furthermore, the uncertainty in that 25% uncertainty in the weather itself is, from everyday experience, quite a bit larger than would be acceptable for placing a lander on Mars or determining the locations of neighboring planes in the vicinity of an airport.  This, by the way, is not to demean meteorology – given the complexity of the problem the meteorologists do a marvelous job!

Then there is Type C science.    A major tool of what I call Type C science is curve fitting.  One seeks to fit a curve  to data using parameters with no apriori physical meaning,  but that provide the smallest residual “error” .  In many cases it is the best that can be done, but the results are inevitably open to doubt.  An example is the growth of a population with time where an observer fits the data to a population vs. time curve and uses this to interpolate or extrapolate populations to times for which measurements are not available.  Such curves are always open to question even though in the hands of a skilled observer they may be used to reach significant conclusions (think Malthus).

Now, finally, I will turn my attention to global warming.  My concern is that there is science of all three types applied to global warming and that frequently, when the validity of conclusions is under discussion, no distinction is made between the three types of science.  Taking the earth’s temperature as a function of time as an example, many deniers have focused on the uncertainties associated with the interpretation of tree ring or ice core data.  In my view this is o.k. to a certain extent, i.e. I believe that those who have made the measurements and compiled the data can and do adequately defend their conclusions.  But it is my personal view that global warming is based first and foremost upon the conclusion of Type A science (the interaction of the earth’s  Planck radiation with the rot-vib modes of atmospheric carbon dioxide and the experimental and theoretical determination of the extent of this interaction ). It is also my view that only upon the basis of Type A science is one able evaluate  the Type C science inherent in fitting the earth’s temperature to time. 

A major problem, as I see it, is that when deniers question the Type C science without coming to grips with the underlying Type A science they can deceive themselves and others into believing that they are attacking the basic structure of global warming science whereas in reality they are just dealing with a detail in the superstructure. They may in fact deal with a detail in the detail, e.g. selecting for discussion a particular subset of data (“cherry picking”). On the other hand to deny the Type A science showing global warming without finding a flaw in the argument (see hfranzen.org for a basic discussion of the effect without feedbacks or interferences) is like saying , ”I accept almost all of mathematics but deny the validity of Euler’s Theorem”. Just as it would make sense to disprove Euler’s Theorem if one could it would make sense to disprove  the Type A science demonstrating GW if one could, but it makes no sense to simply  deny it without refuting the science while accepting the myriad results of Type A science that come into play in our daily lives. And further it makes no sense to attack the average earth temperature vs. time (hockey-stick) curve without first coming to grips with the Type A science of GW.  To my way of thinking the hockey stick is not the basis of GW science, it is derivative and confirmatory, and its basic correctness depends upon the fundamental Type A science underlying the temperature changes.

The gist of what I am saying is this – when deniers confront an issue dealing with Type C science they should be asked to first consider the question, “Do you accept the basic  conclusion of quantum mechanics and spectroscopy that global warming is occurring  right now?” If their answer is “no” than it seems to me that  it is Type A science that should be considered before tackling the Type C science.  If their answer is yes, then, importantly, it is not possible for them to take the fact of a disagreement  as a demonstration that the major thrust of the science of global warming is basically flawed. Furthermore any discussion of some aspect of the Type C science can be meaningfully limited to the relevant issue without  trying to discuss the larger question of the validity of the GW proposition. In short, if a denier disputes the claims of the hockey stick and is unwilling to accept the basic science of absorption of infra-red radiation by carbon dioxide then it is fruitless to discuss the hockey stick with that denier.  On the other hand if they accept the basic science but deny the hockey stick then it can be worthwhile exploring  their concerns  and pointing out that the hockey stick result follows straightforwardly if not rigorously from the known increasing energy input into the earth.  In the discussion that follows they might  be able to find some basis for criticism of the hockey stick curve beyond the fact that they simply don’t want to believe in global warming, and if the criticism is valid this would be a win-win situation.

Dr. Franzen, do you mean to have this form the basis for a blog ppst?

I am submitting this as a guest editorial.  I have tried to direct my remarks ro both deniers and those who are presenting rational GW analysis.