A big news day. It appears Steve McIntyre (volunteer unpaid auditor of Big-Government-Science) has killed the Hockey Stick a second time…
The details are on the last three days of Steve McIntyre’s site Climate Audit, and summed up beautifully on Watts Up.
The sheer effrontery and gall appears to be breathtaking.
The Briffa temperature graphs have been widely cited as evidence by the IPCC, yet it appears they were based on a very carefully selected set of data, so select, that the shape of the graph would have been totally transformed if the rest of the data had been included.
Kieth Briffa used 12 samples to arrive at his version of the hockey stick and refused to provide his data for years. When McIntyre finally got hold of it, and looked at the 34 samples that Briffa left out of his graphs, a stark message was displayed. McIntyre describes it today as one of the most disquieting images he’s ever presented.
Background
Since 1995 Kieth Briffa has been publishing graphs about temperature of the last thousand years. Like Michael Manns’ famous (and discredited) Hockey Stick graph, Briffa’s graphs were based on tree rings and appeared to show dramatic evidence that the current climate was extraordinarily warm compared to previous years. They were used in the infamous spagetti plots, and the IPCC 3rd Assessment Report, and recycled in other publications giving the impression they had been replicated. His work has even made it into school resources (Cimate Discovery, p4). His publications since 2000 are listed here.
Unaudited science
Suspiciously Briffa refused repeated requests to provide the Yamal data that his analysis was based on (something about the data belonging to the Russians). As Steve McIntyre points out, this kind of data should be archived and freely available after any peer reviewed paper is published.
Last year Briffa published a paper in a journal (Philosophical Transactions of Biology, the Royal Society) that did maintain basic standards (after being prodded) and a few days ago McIntyre noticed the data was finally up. This data had been used in papers going back as far as 2000. (And no one thought to politely inform McIntyre that the information he’d requested for years was now available?)
Hiding data in science is equivalent to a company issuing it’s annual report and telling the auditors that the receipts are commercial in confidence and they would just have to trust them. No court of law would accept that, yet at the “top” levels of science, papers have been allowed to sit as show-pieces for years without any chance that anyone could seriously verify their findings. In science, getting the stamp of Peer Review has become like a free pass to “credibility”.
…
Science is broken
So much for the repeat claims that peer review is a “rigorous process”. Those who keep telling us we have to “listen to the experts” and who put so much stock in a peer reviewed paper have been left hanging out to dry. Even if Briffa has a reason to exclude 2/3rds of the samples and somehow it’s just a coincidence that the ignored data were from slower growing trees, nothing changes the fact that he didn’t mention that in the paper, and nor, damningly, did he provide the data. It only takes a sentence to say (for example) “ABC tree chronologies excluded due to artificial herbicide damage” and it only takes a few minutes to email a data file.
…
Now we know why he might not have been so forthcoming with the data…
If all the tree rings are combined, the graph looks like this below. (I’ve added the black thick line to the original to make the merged data stand out). Obviously today is not as warm as things were 1000 years ago (at least not in far north Russia), and it’s also clear things have been warming since 1800 in Yamal.
Here’s a map to help put places to the names. These are the four sites mentioned as sources of the tree ring data. Yamal and Taymir are roughly 400 km apart.
In the mid 1990’s the Polar Urals were the place to be for interesting tree rings, but then as the data got updated and yielded a medieval warm period that Team AGW preferred to ignore, they moved their focus to the Yamal Peninsula. There was plenty of data to pick from, but that’s the point. They chose 10 data sets from 1990, and only 5 post 1995. Which seems curious as presumably there is no shortage of 20 year old trees on the Yamal Peninsula. As Ross McKitrick notes, a small sample may have been passable, but it appears that these trees were not selected randomly.
McKitrick expands:
Thus the key ingredient in a lot of the studies that have been invoked to support the Hockey Stick, namely the Briffa Yamal series (red line above) depends on the influence of a thin subsample of post-1990 chronologies and the exclusion of the (much larger) collection of readily-available Schweingruber data for the same area.
Honest scientists who believe in there is a crisis in carbon must surely be starting to ask questions about what’s going on with their colleagues. If the evidence is so strong, so undeniable; if the warming recently has been so unprecedented, why won’t people offer their data up freely so that science can progress as fast as possible? When is deluding the public, other scientists and our elected representatives ever a useful thing to do? People have invested money and careers, governments have paid millions for reports, and billions for research; and companies have planned years ahead, all partly based on the Hockey Stick Graph.
If the data had been archived immediately for the public, the world could have had access to better information for nearly a decade.
Thanks to readers Francis, Charles, and Kreuger. 🙂 Entertaining evening.
UPDATE: Graph with all tree rings included has been updated 30-9-09. ThanksDavblo!
http://tinyurl.com/jonova-briffa
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Coming just after the “lost” data from the Hadley Centre by Phil Jones, this is beginning to look more than just carelessness. When the public learn about this they will be stunned. These scientists have shot themselves in the foot, and done a great deal of damage to the good name of science.
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data is the plural of datum
Anyway, all this so-called evidence of “global warming” doesn’t stand up to a thing and there will be a big exposé about this fraud on ABC tonight I’m sure.
If not tonight then tomorrow night. Or maybe the day after
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As a Brit, I’m deeply embarassed by the activities of Jones and Briffa, who are Director and Deputy Director of the CRU at the UEA. The damage they have done to the reputation of science is incalculable.
How can anyone trust government-funded scientists in the future? And we rely on such scientists’ advice in many aspects of our lives – food standards and medical research, to mention just two.
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ooops … Looks like all the alarmists have left is lies.
And how exactly did they expect to get away with this hoax?
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To paraphrase Shakespeare: “… first, we get rid of all the politically-connected grant-taking pseudo-scientists…”. Can’t somebody run him out of town for not just the lies, but the bad Manners? (pun intended).
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Madoff went to jail for defrauding people out of billions of dollars. Maybe it is time we hold scientists and politicians to the same standards. I do not enjoy paying taxes under the best of circumstances. To watch my hard earned dollars go towards this kind of fraud and to have the people spending my money call me names is about enough to inspire me to grab that pitchfork and torch and get busy!
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Oh Mann manny Mann,
What a SCAM SCAM SCAM,
You’re a prat and a sham,
You cherry-picked an upward tick
And formed a hockey stick
‘Til we found your hidden data
Now found to be ‘errata’.
Now don’t be sad, we don’t all hate ya,
But you really ought to ponder,
The things you did all wrong, sir.
Faking data is a CRIME,
And criminals belong
With others who’ve done wrong,
But instead your data’s sitting oh-so-pretty
Subject to adoration, never pity,
That the media gives to cats stuck in a tree,
I don’t know what happened in the newsroom,
But I hope that branch will snap soon,
And when your data splashes on the ground,
I hope I’m there to see…
Because Mann manny Mann,
You’re a prat and a sham,
Incredible how low you had to stoop!
You cherry-picked an upward tick
And formed a hockey stick,
Which I deeply hope you trip on,
Right in front of all the scientists you duped,
That would be some “justice” served,
Much less than you deserved,
But maybe something good would come of it…
©2009 Dave Stephens
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Hiding data and cherry picking to get the wanted results is endemic. I tried for a while to find the raw data used for the Hadley, RSS and UAH data sets, but all I can seem to find is post processed anomaly data. Anomaly data can be very misleading when multiple data sets and aquisition methods are involved. Any mismatch between data sets appears as an anomalous trend. There’s also a significant amount of processing involved, including data adjustment/renormalization and ignoring data that doesn’t fit expectations. The only raw data I’ve ever been able to find is the ISCCP data set from GISS, which is an aggregation of data from multiple satellites (5 geostationary and at least 1 polar orbiter) and even this is more processed than I would have liked to see. This data shows the clear 4C variability in the global average temperature across a year that anomaly reports cancel out by using separate averages for each month, thus obscuring how the climate is actually responding. I have to give some credit to Hansen for allowing this, even though he always represents his data in anomaly form. At least you can find the data anomalies that lead to his temperature anomalies.
In the recent past, surface temperature data changed from a small number of samples per day to continuous measurements, providing a more accurate indication of average temperature. Older unautomated temperature acquisition programs didn’t collect as much night time data (the operator was usually sleeping) and there was more uncertainty about when temperatures were sampled. Data like the Hadley data set are decidedly biased towards cities, where heat island effects have definitely been increasing. Since most of the surface is water, this leads to more errors. Surface temperature collection is also rather sparse at the poles. Based on the data available, it’s impossible to tell whether the reported anomalies are an anomalous warming trend, or anomalies in the data collection process.
George
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There will be those that claim this also does not matter! Along with the minor issue that Models can not replicate past climate and past temperature data being corrupted do not matter. The fact that temperatures are declining does not matter. All that matters is that they think the globe is warming and that warming is cause for concern! Even if history shows that warming is good and cooling is bad that does not matter because this time it is different because “Chicken Little” told them so and Chicken Little and his followers make up a consensus of fantasy promoters.
Now we wait for those who think this is a campaign to discredit reputable climate scientists by making up false claims when this group of so called “Reputable” promoters admitted to only using the data that supported their position.
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You probably should find a bit of space to write “credible peer review” on the slab of marble somewhere. The scientific publishing industry is in a shambles.
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Phillip Bratby:
I am British too and am very aware that global warming is principally a British lead scam. From Margaret Thatcher to Lord Stern.
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/sealed/gw/politics.htm
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So now the mythical miasma of Mann-made global warming is in clear focus, the dog ate Jonesy’s homework, Hansen’s “smoking gun” of ocean heat accumulation has been firing blanks, the signature tropical troposphere “hot-spot” is a-blowin’ in the wind, the ice-core bubbles are nowt but froth, and the urban-heat-island-ashphalt car-park-next-to-the-airconditioner-vent land gauges are hiding their faces in shame.
On that marbled epitaph t’is writ “…but the Model says…”
You’ll be able to read it on a dark night by the light of a 1.6W/m2 mysterious background glow.
This has to be the ultimate failure of Voltaire’s Bastards (sensu J.R-S), recklessly squandering the gains of the Enlightnement for personal aggrandisement. Will institutional Science ever recover in the eyes of Joe Sixpack? The coming COP15 willy-willy will be funny to watch if it wasn’t so dangerous.
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Is McIntyre planning to submit this finding to the academic community, or just the public?
I’m wary of such damning analysis of academic work that doesn’t go through the academic channels. The scientific process is self correcting because these sorts of reviews are published in scientific forums.
____
Meanwhile, in the scientific world, scientists from the UK Met Office at a Oxford university conference presented findings that predict a catastrophic 4°C or warming at 2070 under recent greenhouse gas emission growth: Four degrees of warming ‘likely’.
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The only surprising aspect about this is that some of you seem surprised by data distortion among the AGW KoolAid Club. Each day brings forth new instances of fraud and deceit among “scientists”. This is what happens when science gets mixed with social agendas. The grant whores become the gate keepers of information in order to preserve their positions and further their agenda.
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I think some people and organizations need to be arrested and prosecuted for Science Fraud! Perpetrating such a horrific atrocity of this magnitude on mankind is disgraceful, especially since that fraud has such huge implications on all mankind.
10
Now we see why there is so much surprise when something happens faster/slower than expected. The surprise is that the data were not cherry picked enough to match expectations. They thought they had a lock on it so there would be no surprise. Only data matching their expectations were to be published.
Actually, this might be granting them too much honesty and honor. They live in a world of total fantasy in which their thoughts create reality. They had already written the AGW/CC story and had issued commands as to what was to be. Reality had the audacity to ignore them and do its own thing. Isn’t reality a stubborn bitch?
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I find the POV that the scientists must all be lying or on drugs an unlikely explanation.
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When an awareness campaign has to be run to make people AWARE that it’s getting hotter, then it isn’t true. If the con artists hadn’t come up with this hoax, nobody would even think anything strange about the climate. It’s just the weather. 34 U.S. states show no warming trend since 1850…global warming, not quite global. The AVERAGE temp. means NOTHING. There are a lot of ways to arrive at the same average temp using a lot of different highs and lows. It’s shocking that people of intelligence buy into this, but it’s the train that will take them to a socialist paradise and rid the world of evil corporations. They are INSANE.
10
A lot of people would not notice 0.02°C per year. But it’s effect on biological systems is marked (see: A globally coherent fingerprint of climate change impacts across natural systems, Camille Parmesan & Gary Yohe, NATURE (2003)) and serious (see: Extinction risk from climate change Nature (2004)).
Global Warming means warming in the global mean temperature, not a warming at every point on the globe.
10
I’m afraid there’s still plenty of spin left in the machine. Politicians and science mercenaries (working for the highest bidder) will figure out a way to keep the target on CO2 for another couple of years. The exact mechanisms by which solar cycles alter our climate are still being explored – because all the grants went into C02 science.
It’s a damn shame too. We might have understood the processes enough to make accurate 5-10 year predictions by now. From the little I understand, I have no idea if a 25 yr solar minimum is a boon or a curse. Some people are convinced that the current solar minimum is going to wreak havoc on global food supplies (cold air = dry air = bad for crops). But the last time the earth had a minimum of this magnitude it was following a cold cycle, not a hot cycle. Global cold air over (relatively) warm waters – maybe more rain (please, please)? In any case the conditions are unprecedented for the modern weather predicting era, so meteorologists are going to have to rewrite the books. With almost 7 billion mouths to feed, things could get ugly…
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Tel,
Peer Review cannot be trusted in this field. Check out this article. Go to Climate Audit. Mr McIntyre has shown time and time again the inaccuracies the Alarmist’s work in submitting all of the records for analiysis.
http://www.globalwarminghoax.com/e107_plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?464
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Robin, you seem to be a cool and careful thinker about things that others may have hot flashes of indignation over (often with a great degree of justification). I ask you to think carefully about your assertion that, “Global Warming means warming in the global mean temperature, not a warming at every point on the globe”. How can one arrive at a global “mean” temperature unless one is able to add up the temperatures of all the “points” (what ever they may be) of the globe. A temperature measuring system that is largely based on the US and parts of western Europe, missing great expanses of South America, Asia and most of Africa as well as vast areas of ocean, cannot be relied upon to provide even a trifflying approximation of a true random selection of all the possible “points” that are needed to make this “global mean” in any way meaningful. This doesn’t even begin to deal with the shifting data points and the constant adjustments of the official records. It’s difficult to imagine you accepting this as seriously useful information about the world’s climate now, or in the future.
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The globe is broken into grids, and the mean temperature for as many gridded areas as data exists. (Polar grids are often not measured).
The shifting data points are accounted for largely by comparing the grid to previous years by only considering consistent data collection sites.
The adjustments are accounted for largely by looking for steps in a sites reporting temperature that are inconsistent with other sites in the grid and removing the spurious trend.
The exact procedures are vastly more intricate, but are published.
It is certainly true that the global mean temperature is not generally calculated, just the global mean change in temperature from some base line for that time of year.
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Ocean temperature are measured by a vast array of stationary and floating buoys.
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Can anyone imagine any reason that Briffa could have selected trees that had larger recent growth rings (other than the obvious). Could there be any possible reason for ruling out trees that coincidentally have grown more slowly lately? Briffa apparently is unwell at the moment, so he can’t comment, and we hope he returns soon. I do want to hear what he has to say.
Let’s get creative, is there any situation where you could rule out 2/3rds of the data for a legitimate reason and therefore get a graph that was wildly different from what you would have otherwise got. Soil conditions? Rainfall. Altitude. Artificial fertilizing programs. Other trees were downwind of herbicide spray?
(But of course, if there was a legitimate reason… presumably you would note that in the paper eh?)
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Robin Grant thinks it proper that McIntyre submit his findings to the academic community for peer-review and opines that the ”… scientific process is self correcting because these sorts of reviews are published in scientific forums [sic].”
This was an entirely predictable response from Robin as we have come to know him, and at first it seems a perfectly reasonable suggestion. Problem: The scientific process IS indeed self correcting – but in AGW’s case it is not in the way Robin suggests.
How do you seriously rate McIntyre’s chances of getting published in any of the scientific journals – at least the ones “accepted” by Robin – given their editorial bias towards “AGW positive” science? I mean, seriously? The gatekeepers would be out in force!
Scientists, science editors and journalists, government bureaucrats etc. who have been subscribing for years to the AGW alarmist “we-must-act-now” narrative are not likely to just roll over and let their lucrative and prestigious careers which depend on it crumble by allowing McIntyre (or anyone else with counter-evidence) to publish in their scientific journals.
People lie all the time, Robin. And no one is suggesting they ALL lie, but some do – just like the rest of us. Contrary to what our zealous friend Damien thinks, scientists are not gods; they are human beings, mums and dads with mortgages, food bills and school fees to pay, not to mention jobs (and face) to lose. Is it really so hard to believe that some scientists would lie to protect their careers? I am at a loss to understand Robin’s unshakeable faith in scientists.
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In college one of my favorite professors warned against what he called “oracular reasoning”.
People go to the oracle and ask for a miraculous sign that answers a deep question. But they already have an answer in their heart. Whatever happens at the oracle, they’re subconscious will search the environment for a sign that answers the question the way they want it answered. Fortune tellers use this – they know how to read the “tells” and give people the answers they are looking for.
We are all biased because we’re human, not robots. For every question we already have a desired answer in our heart. That’s why an honest scientist provides their work to peers seeking different answers. If you want to know whether or not you’ve found the truth you must invite others to tear you down – not an easy thing for anyone to do.
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Logical Fallacy: Special Pleading
It’s hard to believe that lying generally protects a scientific career.
Reality is quite the opposite. Fraud and irreproducible results … especially high profile irreproducible results are powerful dead ends to a scientific career.
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I note that Robin Grant is very short on discussing hiding the raw data so that replication is not possible. Replication in the long run is far more important than peer review.
Having hidden his data for over 10 years and now being forced to release it, no wonder Briffa has gone off sick. Wouldn’t you be fealing sick if you had to reveal your pseudo-scientific cherry-picking methods for all to see?
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Robin: “It’s hard to believe that lying generally protects a scientific career.”
Strawman. My question was whether someone would lie to protect his career, not whether or not his career would actually BE protected.
Nice try.
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“The Straw Man fallacy is committed when a person simply ignores a person’s actual position and substitutes a distorted, exaggerated or misrepresented version of that position.” Fallacy: Straw Man
Your question was not a statement of your position so not a strawman.
Also I did not imply that your question was whether a scientist’s career would be protected by lying, so also not a strawman.
But nevertheless, I feel the point answers your question. If a scientist’s career would not be protected by lying, it is difficult to believe that they would lie to protect their career.
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These people are passed off by the media and government as top climate scientists. Going to http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/ it is evident that they are not climate scientists in the way I think of the science of how the climate functions. Jones trained as an environmental scientist and then a civil engineer specialising in water catchment. Briffa is no more than a dendroclimatologist. As a physicist with about 40 years involvement in heta and mass transfer, I could consider myself to be someone who has a good understanding of the physical processes governing how how the climate works.
I don’t like these charlatans (I looked up the dictionary definition to see if it was a good word to describe them) wasting my hard-earned tax and being drivers behind the waste of billions of pounds on promoting and solving a problem (man-made global warming) which at best is immeasurably small.
That money could be better spent on solving far more important problems. Disease eradication and food production spring to mind. I would redirect billions wasted on climate-related nonsense to fusion research. The number of people in the UK being publicly funded to look at climate impacts is mind-boggling. And billions are being wasted on ruining the countryside with useless wind turbines and their infrastructure. Nero fiddling springs to mind.
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I don’t see where any lie occurred in the now infamous “hockey stick graph”. The data they chose to analyze was analyzed honestly, and they named the datasets they chose (although not providing them publicly). I believe that they believe their results.
The most they could be accused of is being obtuse. Perhaps “unnecessarily obnoxious in the face of criticism”.
Politics and science don’t mix, because politicians have far too easy access to spread their beliefs via mass media (scientists get squat without a patron). Al Gore held up a hockey stick graph and got a Nobel Prize! If it wasn’t for Al Gore, the hockey stick graph would have been torn to shreds by bickering scientists before it had the chance to imprint itself upon the masses.
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Addition to the post just done.
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Science is broken
So much for the repeat claims that peer review is a “rigorous process”. Those who keep telling us we have to “listen to the experts” and who put so much stock in a peer reviewed paper have been left hanging out to dry. Even if Briffa has a reason to exclude 2/3rds of the samples and somehow it’s just a coincidence that the ignored data were from slower growing trees, nothing changes the fact that he didn’t mention that in the paper, and nor, damningly, did he provide the data. It only takes a sentence to say “ABC tree chronologies excluded due to artificial herbicide damage” and it only takes a few minutes to email a data file.
—————————–
There is no excuse. If a scientist “believed” his data why wouldn’t he provide it? When people repeat your work you get credibility. You have nothing to lose by providing data unless your work is flawed.
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Robyn,
It’s hard to believe that lying generally protects a scientific career.
Reality is quite the opposite. Fraud and irreproducible results … especially high profile irreproducible results are powerful dead ends to a scientific career.
Please, do yourself a favor, download and read the Wegman report in relation with the Hockey Stick controversy and think again before embarrasing yourself in public.
http://www.climateaudit.org/pdf/others/07142006_Wegman_Report.pdf
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Does lying help a career? If he lied, he’s gotten away with it for years.
Robin, who would have picked up this gaping flaw if McIntyre hadn’t? Who is paid to go over this kind of data and find the flaws? Not the peer reviewers, not fellow Team-AGWer’s who want the Hockey Stick to live on.
The AGW team have had a long time to get it right.
This doesn’t just reflect badly on Briffa, it casts a shadow on all who have endorsed him without checking the data. Their standards are in question.
Joanne
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The National Academies report was less criticised for lack of internal peer review.
You will be aware that that report gave Mann et al. a near complete vindication.
(See: Academy affirms hockey-stick graph or Backing for ‘hockey stick’ graph.)
The report itself is here.
Of course, I am aware of the Wegman Report too though, and it does not suggest the Mann lied to protect his career either.
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Robin Grant – This is a thread about the selection of proxies for historical temperature reconstructions. It is also about the provision of data, or lack thereof, in scientific journals. Your unicorns are transparent, if amusing. Address the issue or have a little lie down.
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Joanne wrote:
Confounding factors is the main problem with dendrochronological data.
Not necessarily. A published paper is very abbreviated.
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I guess that the 30% drop in biodiversity over the past 35 years is populations going immeasurably extinct?
Not that all of those are attributable to climate change, but many are.
And you can measure 0.8°C with a rectal thermometer. It’s not immeasurable either.
The effect on the biosphere is certainly measurable. Nearly every ecological system under study is under severe stress from climate change.
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Not necessarily. A published paper is very abbreviated.
Perhaps you are referring to the abstract. Briffa et al Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 12 July 2008 vol. 363 no. 1501 2269-2282 when copied to Word is 21 A4 pages and over 7,000 words. Just as well they abbreviated it. Nevertheless I’m sure he could have squeezed in a reason for only selecting 12 out of 46 cores and why these show a marked 20th century temperature increase and the other 32 show (gasp) the opposite.
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Robin Grant: The Wegman panel report is what counts; the Chairman of the NAS report said they agreed with the findings of Wegman.
There is no doubt that humans affect biodiversity. And climate change affects ecological systems; it has for hundreds of millions of years. But we are talking about man-made global warming here, and there is no evidence that there is any measurable amount of it. Or perhaps you have the evidence to show what is natural and what is man-made.
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Jo Wrote:
A little melodramatic, Jo.
I assume that my computer, GPS unit, spectacles, and vaccinations still work?
Then Science isn’t broken. (And my communication, navigation, eyesight, and life expectancy are vastly improved from the pre-scientific era.)
So much for them. I don’t see such claims, it has to be said.
It is more often called “the least worst process we have”.
That doesn’t mean the science is not self correcting.
I think that telling us to stop listening to experts is advice with a shorter longevity. And peer reviewed papers are still better than the alternative … not peer reviewed papers. But certainly the main reason is that peer reviewed papers are generally subject to attempts to reproduce them, and not initial accuracy. This is why the scientific process is one of consensus.
There could be reasons why the slower growing trees had a tendency to be the discarded ones. If the predominant confounding factor was one the retarded growth rather than accelerated it, for instance.
And neither are such details always included in the few pages that a study has to be reduced to for publication in a journal.
And, the record shows, he has provided the data.
Sure, but the sentence might be one of the ones you would cut as less critical to describing the overall methodology coherently, and a data file that includes a vast range of sources must be put together before emailing.
Because he needs time to put it together?
And the data has been provided.
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Joanne Nova wrote:
Quite so.
Jo, I’m not convinced there is a gaping flaw. If there’s not, surely only McIntyre would have found it. If there is then scientists would have found it, or at least found other temperature reconstructions that are vastly different from Briffa’s.
Scientists who reproduce the work, or produce temperature reconstructions for the same time interval.
No, the peer review process is less fine detail than that.
I don’t buy that line, and I’m yet to see any evidence of this near universal conspiracy of climatologists.
Temperature reconstructions are fairly consistent. They’re probably right.
McIntyre’s claims don’t reflect badly on Briffa at all.
But even if there is a genuine problem with the selection of data (Which I for one doubt, because, as I say, temperature reconstructions are fairly consistent with eachother), lots of science is accepted without checking the data. Fraud is rare enough that it is not expected. (Still not a good career plan though).
Not really. Science is self correcting. It’s only if they back Briffa once they know that the data was biased that their standards are in question.
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Robin:
I write to thank you for the belly laughs you have given me. Truly wonderful! Thankyou.
You say:
“Meanwhile, in the scientific world, scientists from the UK Met Office at a Oxford university conference presented findings that predict a catastrophic 4°C or warming at 2070 under recent greenhouse gas emission growth: Four degrees of warming ‘likely’.”
That, of course, is the same “scientific world” that forecast the “BBQ Summer” the UK did not have this year. And their prediction of “a catastrophic 4°C or warming” (sic) only exists in their virtual reality, but the real world has shown no warming for a decade.
Of course, you jest when you call the astrological prediction of “a catastrophic 4°C or warming” the “scientific world”. And a very good joke it is.
Then you asserted:
“I find the POV that the scientists must all be lying or on drugs an unlikely explanation.”
But nobody suggested – and nobody asserts – that is a likely explanation of anything. The facts are that several prominent climate scientists have fabricated research results by fabricating data (e.g. Wang) and by extreme ‘cherry picking’ of data while hiding data that provides contrary evidence (i.e. Briffa in the case being discussed here).
Of course, your assertion is surreal, and I liked it because I enjoy surrealism as an amusing art form.
And I really enjoyed your contribution that said;
“A lot of people would not notice 0.02°C per year. But it’s effect on biological systems is marked (see: A globally coherent fingerprint of climate change impacts across natural systems, Camille Parmesan & Gary Yohe, NATURE (2003)) and serious (see: Extinction risk from climate change Nature (2004)).”
A change of “0.02°C per year” for a century would be 2°C total rise. But ecosystems cope with that much temperature change every day. Adaptation by slight movement of ecosystem boundaries would negate “it’s effect on biological systems”. Anyway, here in the real world inhabited by real “biological systems” any “biological systems” that are harmed by 2°C temperature rise would have been killed by normal weather long, long ago.
So, the paper by Parmesan & Yohe is pure science fantasy. I enjoyed it when I read it, but I never take science fantasy as being anything more than a bit of fun. Your pretence that their paper should be taken seriously gave me the best laugh of all.
Then you demonstrate some gullibility when you write:
“Global Warming means warming in the global mean temperature, not a warming at every point on the globe.”
OK, so define “the global temperature” because nobody has done it so far: the different agencies (e.g. CRU, GISS) compute it in different ways.
And global temperature is not a meaningful indicator of climate change. For example, “global temperature” would not change if the Southern Hemisphere (SH) cooled by 10°C while the Northern Hemisphere (NH) warmed by 10°C but there would be very significant climate change everywhere.
Do not try to assert that SH and NH trends cannot have opposite sign because they did in the 1990s. The SH started to cool about 20 years ago while the NH continued to warm until the cooling spread to include the NH about 10 years ago: see
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/.
So, I thank you for the laugh you gave me with your claim of what “the global temperature” is.
Then you provide a simplistic explanation of how the global temperature is calculated and omit to explain that the different methods for calculating grid box temperatures provide 10% of the boxes of CRU and GISS to show temperature changes of opposite sign!
And you follow that explanation with a statement saying;
“It is certainly true that the global mean temperature is not generally calculated, just the global mean change in temperature from some base line for that time of year.”
Well, yes. That is because global temperature indicated by all the methods rises by nearly 4°C from January to July and fall by the same amount from July to January. see
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/anomalies/index.php
Use of anomalies hides this inconvenient truth.
Please note that the highest global temperature is when the Earth is furthest from the Sun during each year and, therefore, it is an empirical fact that mechanisms within the climate system have much more effect on global temperature than change to incoming vs outgoing radiation.
And I wonder why some people think a rise of global temperature of 2 degC would pass a catastrophic “tipping point” when global temperature rises by nearly double that during each year and recovers within the same year, and it does this every year.
And your knowledge of the history of science is very imperfect. I fell off my chair laughing when I read your assertion saying:
“Reality is quite the opposite. Fraud and irreproducible results … especially high profile irreproducible results are powerful dead ends to a scientific career.”
Have you never heard of the Piltdown Man, or Elias Elsbati, or …
Anyway, perhaps you should start by reading
http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0005738
It includes this finding;
“A pooled weighted average of 1.97% (N = 7, 95%CI: 0.86–4.45) of scientists admitted to have fabricated, falsified or modified data or results at least once –a serious form of misconduct by any standard– and up to 33.7% admitted other questionable research practices. In surveys asking about the behaviour of colleagues, admission rates were 14.12% (N = 12, 95% CI: 9.91–19.72) for falsification, and up to 72% for other questionable research practices.
…
Considering that these surveys ask sensitive questions and have other limitations, it appears likely that this is a conservative estimate of the true prevalence of scientific misconduct.”
And you attempt to justify your patently false assertion by saying:
“But nevertheless, I feel the point answers your question. If a scientist’s career would not be protected by lying, it is difficult to believe that they would lie to protect their career.”
Has it not occurred to you that all scientists are human beings and few of us are saints? What do you expect a person to do when observed to “have fabricated, falsified or modified data or results”? Say, “I did that, sorry” or proclaim the kind of rubbish proclaimed by RealClimate.org?
Again, thank you for the laughs. Please keep providing your posts because laughter is the best of medicine.
Richard
10
I think we have to get away from the concept that scientists are pre anoraked, sterile, test tube creations. They are human and fallible.
Peer-review
While passing the peer-review process is often considered in the scientific community to be a certification of validity, it is not without its problems. Drummond Rennie, deputy editor of Journal of the American Medical Association is an organizer of the International Congress on Peer Review and Biomedical Publication, which has been held every four years since 1986.[7]He remarks, “There seems to be no study too fragmented, no hypothesis too trivial, no literature too biased or too egotistical, no design too warped, no methodology too bungled, no presentation of results too inaccurate, too obscure, and too contradictory, no analysis too self-serving, no argument too circular, no conclusions too trifling or too unjustified, and no grammar and syntax too offensive for a paper to end up in print.”[8]
Richard Horton, editor of the British medical journal The Lancet, has said that “The mistake, of course, is to have thought that peer review was any more than a crude means of discovering the acceptability — not the validity — of a new finding. Editors and scientists alike insist on the pivotal importance of peer review. We portray peer review to the public as a quasi-sacred process that helps to make science our most objective truth teller. But we know that the system of peer review is biased, unjust, unaccountable, incomplete, easily fixed, often insulting, usually ignorant, occasionally foolish, and frequently wrong.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer_review#Criticisms_of_peer_review
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Phillip Bratby wrote:
[Citation needed.]
There’s lots of evidence that it is mostly man made. And there’s lots of evidence that the lion’s share of the man made part is anthropogenic CO2 greenhouse effect.
There’s evidence from first principles physics, that puts the forcing due to the enhanced greenhouse effect at 1.7W/m², ten times that of any natural forcing.
There’s about a dozen lines of evidence that put the climate sensitivity to CO2 at about 3°C per doubling, and the 0.5 doublings of CO2 have been directly measured, and can be tied to human activity by carbon budget and by isotope ratios. Showing that about 1.5°C of warming is due to the anthropogenic increase in CO2. And 1.5°C is most of the observed 0.8°C of warming.
There’s evidence from models that show that the response of the climate to different forcing in approximately additive, so the response to the CO2 forcing (and any other forcing) can be differentiated in the model. This shows that the current warming is anthropogenic.
There’s evidence from the spatial distribution and temporal distribution of the warming that ties it to a greenhouse warming. (Warming of the troposphere, exaggerated at the poles combined with a cooling of the stratosphere, and increased warming at night and winter compared to day and summer).
Overall, it’s not really rocket science. If you increase the concentration of greenhouse gasses, you increase the greenhouse effect; so theory predicts that a warming will be observed. This warming is confirmed by observation.
Would you like me to cite you some papers?
10
For me, the interface between scientists and politicians is the most problematic area in this field, particularly the use of consensus driven processes.
The Delphi Method
Based on IPCC documents and the “consensus” terminology, this comes from use of the Delphi Method, developed by the RAND Corporation for the U.S. Department of Defense, about half a century ago to make predictions about the future or other events for which there is insufficient data to make a statistical forecast.
In the Delphi Method, a moderator or facilitator exchanges questions anonymously amongst the participants (in this context, typically a panel of “experts”), summarizes the answers, and sends the summary back to the participants. The process repeats as participants may change their perspectives on each iteration, perhaps because they learned something from the other responses. Over time, the method may lead to the anonymous members of the group finding “consensus” on some questions while not achieving consensus on other topics. The facilitator makes a judgment as to when the review process should be halted as no further progress is being made.
http://hamradio-online.com/commonsense/2007/10/where-does-ipcc-terminology-very-highly.html
Founding director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change: ‘Time to ditch consensus’
Moreover, says Hulme, no one is even quite sure what sort of knowledge it is that the IPCC, as a “boundary organisation” – part science, part politics – actually produces. Nor how the world at large interprets that hybrid knowledge. Even more fundamentally, he says, it is far from clear that the IPCC has actually allowed us to do “better science”:
“Or has it actually narrowed the way we frame and ask questions in climate change research?” Hulme wonders
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/05/06/mike_hulme_interview/print.html
Memorandum by Professor Paul Reiter, Institut Pasteur; Paris
20. The issue of consensus is key to understanding the limitations of IPCC pronouncements. Consensus is the stuff of politics, not of science. Science proceeds by observation, hypothesis and experiment. Professional scientists rarely draw firm conclusions from a single article, but consider its contribution in the context of other publications and their own experience, knowledge, and speculations. The complexity of this process, and the uncertainties involved, are a major obstacle to meaningful understanding of scientific issues by non-scientists.
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200506/ldselect/ldeconaf/12/12we21.htm
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Charles Bourbaki:
Fair call.
Papers in Science and Nature need to be knocked down a lot more than that.
But quite right. 21 pages is not very abbreviated. I hadn’t looked up the paper yet. What does it say about data selection?
10
Thank you Charles. 7000 words eh?.
The link to the Briffa 2008 paper
http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/363/1501/2269.full
And Robin: “Confounding factors is the main problem with dendrochronological data.”
So you can’t think of any reason either?
Your tenacity in the face of overwhelming evidence is remarkable.
Science – the current process of understanding the world – is clearly not working when a paper that can be debunked in a few days by one unpaid man is left to sit on one of the most esteemed scientific sites – unquestioned for over a year. Not to mention all the other studies by Briffa going back to 2000. Nine years of being repeated everywhere, even in school texts, and no one could check the data? This is the most dangerous form of propaganda – one that masquerades as upstanding and rigorous but is haphazard, sloppy and easily corrupted.
Science is better than astrology yes, but that’s hardly an endorsement for unquestioningly leaving this flawed slow process as it is. We can do better.
10
Robin – Reality is quite the opposite. Fraud and irreproducible results … especially high profile irreproducible results are powerful dead ends to a scientific career.
Fleischmann and Pons come to mind.
10
Robin Grant:
Why do you continue trying to defend the indefensible?
Richard Courtney:
As I would expect, beautifully put.
10
Richard s Courtney wrote:
No worries.
I see you’re returning the comedy.
(For the reader this is funny because the 00’s so far are about 1.9°C warmer than the 90s. The last decade has seen more warming than any other decade on record).
How amusing we are.
That’s not the only funny bit. I did also provide a link!
Tee hee hee.
This must be some comedy meaning of “facts” right.
You’re so funny. I am chortling heavily.
Good.
Here you’ve missed the joke, my good friend. Species ranges are surprisingly narrow in terms of mean temperature and precipitation compared to the diurnal and annual range of temperatures. The amusing consequence is that it is probably not the increasing temperature itself that is causing this side-splittingly hilarious mass extinction. Perhpas competition from slightly more optimised species, or sensitivity to disease and parasite influx that is sensitively controlled by only minimum or maximum temperatures? Who knows? I don’t. I did maths not Biology.
I do know that 25% of Australia’s 819 eucalyptus have a range that spans less than 1°C mean temperature range, and 41% of them have a range that spans less than 2°C. (source.) However the diurnal temperature range is much higher than that.
Hilarious eh?
Great! Hilariously ignorant of what actually causes species range! Tee hee hee!
Do another one!
Surely you mean pure comedy!
No, me neither. Have you been following the new Dr Who series?
Thank you. I also do children’s parties.
Okay. Not sure what’s funny about that particular one. There’s not mention of mass extinction for instance. But pleased to give you a laugh, mate.
It’s funnier if you put it “Global temperature is not a meaningful indicator of global temperature change”. But I still like your joke.
No worries, mate. Pleased to oblige.
Sorry. That joke is a bit convoluted for me. Could you make it a bit more plain?
Hilarious! Temperature being different in January to July being inconvenient!
I guess the land mass on the earth is inconveniently balanced!
It certainly seems top-heavy! Perhaps it will fall over soon?
Tee hee hee.
Ha ha ha ha! Yes! Tee hee!
Probably all that mass extinction we were laughing about earlier.
2°C would probably take the northern summer sea ice, the Boreal forest, and maybe the Amazon forest. I might be enough to disturb the Indian monsoon and threaten about a billion people with water insecurity. Some of them will already be refugees from sea level rise though. Bangladesh is particularly poorly off for erosion under rising seas. Unfortunately a cholera outbreak is only about as funny as it sounds.
Oh dear! I hope you didn’t hurt yourself!
I’ve heard of Piltdown Man. I’ve not heard of Elias Elsbati. I like how you made one enduring fake seem like three though with the addition of ‘…’ That’s pretty funny.
And don’t forget this famous scientific hoax that lasted milennia: Ellipsis
Tee hee hee. And I like the subtle self-reference. Very high brow humour. (Geddit? Piltdown man? High Brow? … oh forgeddit).
Is that really the funniest bit? It seems a bit dry.
Gerald Durrell is frankly a better read. I recommend “My Family and Other Animals”.
No worries, and I certainly will.
You too.
10
Joanne wrote:
I can think of a reason. Confounding factors. And I can think of why it might be correlated to low growth. It was some effect that limits growth. Most confounding factors are that way around. It is if nothing else limits the growth that the tree measures the temperature.
But I repeat myself.
10
Robin:
Thankyou for continuing to provide amusement.
You assert:
“There’s evidence from first principles physics, that puts the forcing due to the enhanced greenhouse effect at 1.7W/m², ten times that of any natural forcing.”
Sorry, but no.
For example, clouds reflect solar heat and a mere 2% increase to cloud cover would more than compensate for the maximum possible predicted warming due to a doubling of carbon dioxide in the air. Good records of cloud cover are very short because cloud cover is measured by satellites that were not launched until the mid 1980s. But it appears that cloudiness decreased markedly between the mid 1980s and late 1990s. Over that period, the Earth’s reflectivity decreased to the extent that if there were a constant solar irradiance then the reduced cloudiness provided an extra surface warming of 5 to 10 Watts/sq metre. This is a lot of warming. It is between two and four times the entire warming estimated to have been caused by the build-up of human-caused greenhouse gases in the atmosphere since the industrial revolution. (The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that since the industrial revolution, the build-up of human-caused greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has had a warming effect of only 2.4 W/sq metre).
And the Earth is constrained within close limits of global temperature in each of two stable states; viz. glacial and interglacial. And its temperature has been the same within narrow bounds in each of those stable states throughout the ~2.5 billion years since the Earth gained an oxygen-rich atmosphere. Importantly, the Earth’s surface has had liquid water throughout that time, but heating from the Sun has increased by about 30% over that time. If that additional radiative forcing from the Sun had a direct effect on temperature then the oceans would have boiled to steam long ago.
Clearly, the climate system contains very strong constraints that keep global temperature within close boundaries in each of the two stable states.
So, I wonder why an increase to radiative forcing of at most 0.4 per cent from a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration is supposed to threaten a “tipping point” when ~30 per cent increase to radiative forcing from the Sun has had no discernible effect on global temperature.
Then you assert:
“There’s about a dozen lines of evidence that put the climate sensitivity to CO2 at about 3°C per doubling, and the 0.5 doublings of CO2 have been directly measured, and can be tied to human activity by carbon budget and by isotope ratios. Showing that about 1.5°C of warming is due to the anthropogenic increase in CO2. And 1.5°C is most of the observed 0.8°C of warming.”
Really? Evidence and not assumptions?
I prefer examination of what the real world’s behaviour indicates so, for example, I cite Idso’s 8 natural experiments: see
http://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/FOS%20Essay/Idso_CO2_induced_Global_Warming.htm
He concludes:
“Best estimate 0.10 C/W/m2. The corresponds to a temperature increase of 0.37 Celsius for a doubling of CO2.”
Then, you provide this belly-laugh:
“There’s evidence from models that show that the response of the climate to different forcing in approximately additive, so the response to the CO2 forcing (and any other forcing) can be differentiated in the model. This shows that the current warming is anthropogenic.”
Nonsense!
Evidence is the result of empirical observation of reality.
Hypotheses are ideas based on the evidence.
Theories are hypotheses that have repeatedly been tested by comparison with evidence and have withstood all the tests.
Models are representations of the hypotheses and theories. Outputs of the models can be used as evidence only when the output data is demonstrated to accurately represent reality. If a model output disagrees with the available evidence then this indicates fault in the model, and this indication remains true until the evidence is shown to be wrong.
So, the outputs of the climate models are merely expressions of the opinions and assumptions of those who built the models.
Let me spell this out for you with a simple analogy.
A scientist discovers a new species.
1.
He/she names it (e.g. he/she calls it a gazelle) and describes it (e.g. a gazelle has a leg in each corner).
2.
He/she observes that gazelles leap. (n.b. the muscles, ligaments etc. that enable gazelles to leap are not known, do not need to be discovered, and do not need to be modelled to observe that gazelles leap. The observation is evidence.)
3.
Gazelles are observed to always leap when a predator is near. (This observation is also evidence.)
4.
From (3) it can be deduced that gazelles leap in response to the presence of a predator.
5.
n.b. Thegazelle’s internal body structure and central nervous system do not need to be studied, known or modelled for the conclusion in (4) that “gazelles leap when a predator is near” to be valid. Indeed, study of a gazelle’s internal body structure and central nervous system may never reveal that, and such a model may take decades to construct following achievement of the conclusion from the evidence.
6.
An imperfect model of a gazelle cannot and does not provide any evidence of gazelle behaviour.
Point 6 is true of all models of all complex systems (a gazelle’s internal body structure and central nervous system is merely one example of a complex system). The Earth’s climate is an example of another complex system.
You really do need to try to undertand the difference between assumptions and evidence.
And you conclude with an assertion that is the opposite of the truth when you write;
“There’s evidence from the spatial distribution and temporal distribution of the warming that ties it to a greenhouse warming.”
No, in the real world the ‘hot spot’ is missing.
Richard
10
Phillip Bratby wrote:
Science is self correcting, and is never indefensible, because it changes it’s views to fit what is observed.
McIntyre has a long history of science denial, so my guess is that he is once again wrong.
But it needs to be said that if he is right and this paper has genuine bias, then it makes exactly no difference to the climate science because there are a dozen independent temperature reconstructions of NH temperature in the scientific literature, so the discarding of this paper doesn’t even change our view of the climate 500 years ago, much less our (much firmer) view of the climate now.
Nevertheless, at the moment all I see McIntyre not understanding why certain data were better than others, and so behaving as he does in such circumstances.
10
Robin Grant – What does it say about data selection?
I can see nothing in this particular Briffa paper that says anything about data selection but at least he had the good sense not to credit it to “confounding factors”.
Are you really serious?
10
I must admit to being a tad amused by the claim of Robin Grant that the National Academies of Science panel gave “Mann et al. a near complete vindication”. I say amused, I nearly came off my seat with laughter.
What the NAS panel reported was that beyond 400 years, the proxies used weren’t suitable to provide a temperature proxy. They also said that the methodologies used by Mann, Bradley & Hughes were flawed (as reported in your links Robin) – in essence agreeing with the criticisms of McIntyre and McKitrick.
If you listen to the press conference announcing the results, Karl Cuffey explicitly states that how Mann et al got the methodology wrong yet it may be ‘plausible’ that their conclusions were right.
How you think that is a ‘near complete vindication’ is beyond me…
10
Richard s Courtney wrote:
Aw, shucks, Dickie!
I’m all shy now.
But ta.
Tee hee. This is your own very funny meaning of “no” right? Pfffft!
Tee hee! Clouds would be a feedback, not a forcing wouldn’t they?
Well spotted, me!
What fun this is. It’s like a crossword, only easy.
Oh oh oh oh!
I know this one! (Pick me! Pick Me!)
There’s cloud records from shipping observations that go back further than that!
And where they overlap with satellite observations they are shown to be good. (So well done those shipmen).
Here’s the paper:Observational and Model Evidence for Positive Low-Level Cloud Feedback. Clement et al, SCIENCE 2009
Notice the “FEEDBACK”. Which is (hilariously) different from FORCING, don’t you know? Kind of the opposite actual. Actual factual. Tee hee. I’m a poet and I don’t know it.
So, (get ready for the punchline), the air holds more water when it’s hot, so cloud cover reduces. Since the greenhouse forcing is (amusingly) more than ten times solar forcing the reduction in cloud cover is more than nine parts due to increasing CO2 to one part due to increasing solar irradiance.
(Tee hee hee. I hope you held on to your chair before reading that!)
Pffft! Where did you get that from! (Tee hee hee). “within narrow bounds in each of those stable states throughout the ~2.5 billion years”. Hahahahahaha.
Oh, I know that Latin name of that logical fallacy: “Completely making stuff up”. Ha ha ha ha ha. We’re so funny, it hurts.
Tee hee hee. Only two states for billions of years! Tee hee! Even when all the fossil fuels were in the biosphere still some 200 million years ago! ha ha ha ha. Two temperatures. Pffft!
“no discernible effect on global temperature” – Ha ha ha ha ha. You’re hilarious. 30% more radiative forcing … same temperature. Brilliant. Do another one.
Yep. Evidence. It’s even in papers and stuff. With scientists writing about it, and talking about it at conferences, and students coming through at testing it. Science is good like that. Assumptions get spotted.
Ha ha ha ha ha. An essay. That must overthrow the hundred odd peer reviewed papers that estimate climate sensitivity.
Tee hee. That’s so great.
I know! I know! We’ll get a kindergarten kid to guess what the climate sensitivity is, and claim that that has more real world evidence than climate science. That’d be even funnier!
Ha ha ha.
Hahaha! Yeah! Science! Nonsense!
Truth can only be found in essays published on webpages of public relation companies.
tee hee!
And even then, only when it disagrees with at least 100 peer reviewed papers.
Ha ha ha!
Crikey we’re good. Let’s get a TV spot.
What about model cars? My mates kid has lots of model cars. What hypotheses and theories are they representations of?
I’m not sure you’ve thought this through very carefully, funny guy.
“I don’t think that word means what you think it means.”
Let me spell this out for you with a simple analogy.
Ha ha ha. You’ve confused the climate with a gazelle.
The climate is not a gazelle. Silly man.
Oh oh oh! I know this one! Pick me!
Your logical fallacy is false analogy.
Did I get it right?
Even one cell in a Gazelle is too complex to model, and the chemistry is not understood. But the atmosphere is just wind rain clouds and radiation, the physics of which are understood, so it can be modelled. Like a car can be modelled.
You tried to say that because a gazelle can’t be modelled the climate can’t, but you missed the fact that a climate is not a gazelle!
For instance point 1 does not apply. Climate doesn’t have a leg on each corner.
Yeah, I think I undertand that now. Pffft!
Hahahahaha! You’re hilarious. I like it. No really. I like it too much. It’s starting to hurt.
Can you do the bit about the hot spot being due to greenhouse effect again. And then spend half a post dissing models and explain how we know the how spot should be there. Pffffft!
No really. I like how people claim that a hot spot 10km up is a signature of the greenhouse effect, which warms most at the ground. Can you do that?
And I love it how they stoutly ignore that every other kind of warming causes the same hotspot! You have to be kind of stoic about it or it’s not funny though. Perhaps do it with a bag on your head. That might work.
But you got the best bit. Say models are rubbish! models are rubbish! they don’t prove a thing! except that there is a greenhouse hotspot that is the signature of greenhouse warming and it should be at 10 km, and some, if not all, attempts to measure it, except recent ones find that it’s not there! At all!
And then go: “Because this model is wrong 10km up, global warming must be a whole lot better than we thought, because if it were a whole lot worse … umm … ahh … the lack of hotspot would be starkly different.”
Then wave your hands around a bit and sit down.
Tee hee hee. If you film it we could put it on you tube. It should get as many hits as “kitten waking up”. It’s hilarious.
10
Seems a sensible place to look. Why wouldn’t I be serious.
10
John Lish (58)
It is because Robin Grant is repeating a big lie, on the principle of say it enough and it will stick. We know the provenance of that strategy. Not only that, Robin knows it to be untrue since he has read the Wegman report. So with 100% certainty he can be called out as a liar. Pure and simple.
10
Not my words. “My reading of the summary of the report and parts of the text is that the NAS has rendered a near-complete vindication for the work of Mann et al.” – Author: Pielke Jr., R.
So alas, I can’t accept credit for your amusement in this case.
No, you completely made that up.
If you read the report it says that “the committee finds it plausible that the Northern Hemisphere was warmer during the last few decades of the 20th century than during any comparable period over the preceding millennium.” This is completely in line with Mann’s results. The upper error bar gets close to the current temperature at the time, and is (as the committee also agreed) larger prior to 1600 CE, but from the Mann reconstruction, it is also plausible that the Northern Hemisphere was warmer during the last few decades of the 20th century than during any comparable period over the preceding millennium.
Which is agreement. Hence Pielke Jr’s analysis of “near complete vindication.”
And the prestigious journal Nature’s headline that “Academy affirms hockey-stick graph”.
Do you get all your opinions from counterscientific blogs, or do you also venture into reality sometimes?
10
Lazlo wrote:
If you claim that the hockey stick was not vindicated, you certainly do.
I have read most of the National Academies’ Report. I have only perused the Wegman report. I thought the graphs of connections between scientists was particularly meaningless, given
1) No evidence was supplied that this made any difference in any circumstances or field.
and
2) Recent northern hemisphere climate reconstruction is a small field.
dedicating so many pages to this is smacked of politics.
10
Robin, you’re a great propagandist, I’ll give you that but your rhetoric is flimsy.
There was no vindication of Mann Bradley Hughes in the NAS panel report. If you bother to read the report then you find that all the criticisms stated by M&M were supported in its text. Pielke Jr. is commenting on the political nature of the summary but please take that out of context.
The NAS report says that Bristlecones are not a temperature proxy. Take out those from the analysis and no hockey-stick shape can be derived.
Are you also suggesting Robin that Kurt Cuffey lied at the press conference when he said that the methodology was flawed?
Hell even the Wahl & Ammann paper agreed with M&M on the r2 statistical insignificance of MBH98&99.
Finally, what does ‘plausible’ mean in an NAS statistical context? Well Robin, it means without evidence – mediaeval temperatures could be lower than present or equal to present temperatures or higher than present temperatures. All three scenarios are plausible because the evidence through the usage of proxies isn’t substantial enough to draw any conclusions.
So the proxies were limited, the methodology flawed and the NAS panel wasn’t able to support the idea that temperatures today were warmer than 400 years ago (in the middle of the Little Ice Age). Wow, some vindication…
10
Despite decades or research there is still no empirical evidence to support AGW.
All we get nowadays is goalpost shifting a system of pseudo logic and undefined terms that prevents any argument based on fact, reason or consistency.
The response, or lack thereof, to Senator Fielding’s questions supports the above.
When I see comments from Robin, Damien et al supporting the like of Mann, Briffa and AGW in particular I think Arthur Koestler – Dual Mind.
The ability of the religious to protect their faith by keeping their beliefs separate in their thoughts from facts and practical knowledge that contradict all of them.
Robin, Damien prove AGW is not faith based provide empirical evidence for AGW -not warming but AGW.
10
Allen: Isn’t it called cognitive dissonance?
10
Robin:
I admit that your jokes are becoming a little tedious, but I am still following them.
You wrongly assert;
“Tee hee! Clouds would be a feedback, not a forcing wouldn’t they?
Well spotted, me!”
No, not “spotted” but misrepresented. Alterd cloud cover is a modulation to albedo and not feedback from anything. It seems that my attempt to inform you of some basic scientific principles fell on stony ground.
And, sorry, but we differ because I NEVER, not ever, make things up. The facts are what they are. Solar heating of the Earth has increased about 30% over the last ~2.5 billion years and liquid water has existed throughout that time. This is known as the Early Frozen Earth Paradox, and it is one of the very many inconvenient truths warmers like to ignore.
You say to me:
“30% more radiative forcing … same temperature. Brilliant. Do another one”
Well, I could: I have dozens more such inconvenient truths but I see no need to provide another one because this one has stumped you. The best you could do was to try to fool others into thinking I made it up!
Your responses to my explanations of basic scientific definitions and principles are truly ridiculous. If you manage to understand the definitions and explanations I provided then you may aspire to raise your scientific understandings to undergraduate level.
For now, I merely try to show you the puerile nature of your understandings by answering a question you have asked me. I wrote:
“Models are representations of the hypotheses and theories.”
Clearly, I should have added that hypotheses and theories are ideas because you have responded by asking:
“What about model cars? My mates kid has lots of model cars. What hypotheses and theories are they representations of?”
They each represent an idea of the appearance of a car. It is a theory that a particular toy car looks like a real car, and some of those models are more accurate than others. Get it? A model is a representation of an idea: all models are.
This nature of models is so fundamental to all scientific practice that it is no wonder you fail to understand anything about the science of climate change.
And I did not use a false analogy. I used a precise analogy that is applicable to all complex systems. As I said:
“Point 6 is true of all models of all complex systems (a gazelle’s internal body structure and central nervous system is merely one example of a complex system). The Earth’s climate is an example of another complex system.”
What part of the word ALL is beyond your comprehension? Or are you merely trying to look stupid as a method to continue the humorous nature of your contributions here?
Your response to my point about the hot spot is merely another demonstration that you have absolutely zero understanding of what models are. The models are representations in computer code of the understandings and assumptions of those who have constructed the models. So, if their models predict a pattern of warming that does not exist then their understandings and/or their assumptions are wrong.
Please note that I mentioned the hot spot to refute your erroneous claim saying;
“There’s evidence from the spatial distribution and temporal distribution of the warming that ties it to a greenhouse warming.”
That claim is completely disproved by the absence of the hot spot and no amount of waffle can alter that fact.
I had thought your postings here were provided purely for humorous effect. However, your recent postings suggest otherwise, and they imply you are merely a troll. So, I will not bother to reply to more of your postings.
Richard
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That’s not my analysis, and it’s not the analysis of the prestigious scientific press, nor of the popular press, nor of the scientific blogosphere.
It is yours, and it is McIntyre’s. So that’s two of you. I claim McIntyre is biased though.
Really?
Perhaps I’d not read the report as well as I’d thought. Can you point out where they say this?
Are you saying that the NAS says that too?
Because:
1) No they didn’t
and
2) You might be mistaken on that point. There are plenty of reconstructions that don’t use bristlecones, and they all have the same basic shape.
I’m not sure. Who is Kurt Cuffey, and what exactly did he say to the press?
The NAS did say that “As part of their statistical methods, Mann et al. used a type of principal component analysis that tends to bias the shape of the reconstructions. A description of this effect is given in Chapter 9. In practice, this method, though not recommended, does not appear to unduly influence reconstructions of hemispheric mean temperature; reconstructions performed without using principal component analysis are qualitatively similar to the original curves presented by Mann et al. (Crowley and Lowery 2000, Huybers 2005, D’Arrigo et al. 2006, Hegerl et al. 2006, Wahl and Ammann in press).”
So they used a not recommended method, but their results were good enough.
Nope, it doesn’t mean without evidence. It means plausible. Similar to the findings of the Mann paper. And many others since.
I can’t find what you claim about bristlecones, the methodology was not recommended, but the results were not affected, and they did support that it was plausible that temperatures were plausibly warmer today than 400 years ago.
And, the response from the scientific press was that is was a affirmation. And the response from the scientific blogosphere was that is was a near complete vindication. And the response from the popular press was that is was backing for the hockey stick graph. It was only the response from the counterscientific blog ClimateAudit, that takes your view.
Is it possible that the reporting at Nature at least was not as far removed from scientific?
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allen mcmahon wrote:
Well there is for most people’s definition of “empirical evidence” …
Don’t you think that observations of climate’s response to changes in forcing such as volcanic eruptions is empirical evidence?
Don’t you think that measurements of the earth’s radiation budget is empirical evidence?
Don’t you think that measurements of the CO2 increase are empirical evidence?
Don’t you think that the relationship between CO2 and temperature that can be derived from ice cores is empirical evidence?
What DO you think empirical evidence is?
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Robin: “Clouds would be a feedback, not a forcing wouldn’t they?”
Would they? Love to see that paper. Its cooler under low clouds… does the cold patch attract the cloud?
Spencer has pointed out many times that clouds could be a cause, and temperature an effect.
Clouds might be forcings AND feedbacks and simultaneously too.
Awkward eh?
10
Like I said at the beginning, still plenty of spin left in the machine.
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Richard s Courtney wrote:
Aw c’mon. I wasn’t doing all the jokes. You were saying incredibly stupid stuff like “species ranges don’t change with climate change, because it gets colder than that at night”, and we were all laughing uproarously because you were so dead pan. Just like flight of the conchords singing about the issues. You were great!
Tee hee. I’m still sniggering about it now. Pfffft!
You’re such a funny guy too!
Tee hee hee! You are pretending that you didn’t read the paper I posted did you?
The one about cloud feedback being positive? You have to read the sub text to work out that it is also a feedback. Being a positive feedback. Pffft! Classic!
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Lets grant that you’re correct, Robin, and that McIntyre is just confused. What is still absolutely appalling about the Briffa Yamal data set is:
a) That it took 10 years to get the data made public – after herculean efforts by McIntyre and the strong arm of a brave Journal editor
b) If there was a selection filter applied, this was not discussed in the paper at the time of publication, or subsequently. So if Briffa suddenly comes out with some “confounding factors” after he has been busted, too little and too late. The time for full disclosure is past.
c) NONE of the rest of the so-called “climate scientists” bothered to raise the issue – in fact, they continued to use the data to support their own reconstructions, and suppressing any “confounding factors” or hidden selection biases.
Do you have any idea what this looks like to real scientists in and outside the field of climate reconstruction? I have published many papers in my field, and while I am not a climate scientist, I do understand the peer-review process and how results are checked and verified independently by others in my field. It does not appear that you understand how little credibility someone has if they refuse to make data available, and when it finally emerges under duress, it is shown to have unjustified selection biases. In my research field, that’s grounds for getting fired for lack of scientific integrity. Guess “climate scientists” have their own standards….
If the remaining trees were rejected, even for a legitimate reason, that absolutely has to be discussed in the original publication. In any other field of science, such a result would be completely ignored and the author(s) irreversibly discredited. But hey, this is peer-reviewed climate science, right? Who cares about data and integrity, as long as one can get a press release!
At the very least, the peer-reviewed climate reconstruction community appears to incapable self-examination to maintain the scientific integrity of their results, and are therefore self-deluded. At worst, this looks like an deliberate orchestrated attempt to subvert the truth by the Hockey Team. Given the history of the Hockey Team, the latter view is what I believe is true. To quote a certain Congressman in the US – “You lie!”.
Cheers.
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‘I have read most of the National Academies Report’. ‘I have only perused the Wegman report.’ Most of??? only perused?? what sort of pompous distortion is that?
Wegman:
‘Overall our committe believes that Mann’s assessments that the decade of the 1990s was the hottest decade of the millenium and that 1998 was the hottest year of the millenium cannot be supported by his analysis.’
I say again: you are a liar. Prove me wrong.
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Someone above already made the Bernie Madoff comparison, but I don’t mind bringing it up again (-:
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I’m no scientist, but my wife is! Eileen just finished her involvement in a 5 year grant study at Stanford. http://med.stanford.edu/clinicaltrials/psychiatry/detail.do?studyId=771
A 5 year study with thousands of subjects. For almost all of 2008 she was checking every line of data, looking for anomalies. Did she automatically get to delete something because the sleep tech forgot to push a button? Nope. Decisions like that had to be made at committee, with proof of the error presented. All this because the study results will be used to determine the extent of coverage of CPAP machines under health insurance.
By comparison, a study who’s results would determine economic policies for most of the planet had all of its data decisions made by… what was it? Four or five guys?
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So, the data belonged to the Russians. Does it tell you anything that Russia is pushing the nuclear energy program? They know gullible countries (like most of Europe and the US) will fall for this sob story and they’ll be in the position of being the energy leader in the world. They won’t need to invade their neighbors anymore. They will just exploit them through energy rationing and the people will just return to the Mother Country.
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There’s a dreadful stink in here – following some remarks about Richard Courtney –
– Joanne will you open a window?
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Definition of “plausible” from Merriam-Webster:
1 : superficially fair, reasonable, or valuable but often specious (= having a false look of truth or genuineness)
2 : superficially pleasing or persuasive
3 : appearing worthy of belief
Hardly the resounding scientific vindication Robin claims.
Robin: “… the response from the scientific blogosphere was that is was a near complete vindication. And the response from the popular press was that is was backing for the hockey stick graph.”
Irrelevant according to the terms set out by Robin himself: Neither blogosphere nor popular press are peer-reviewed and therefore don’t count.
Robin: “teehee, pffft! …”
I do believe Robin is becoming unhinged!
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Good one, Anne-Kit! Robin claims he won’t look at non-peer reviewed literature, so I wonder how he knows that the press and warmist blogs support the Hockey Team reconstructions. And gee, if he was looking at blogs like RealClimate, I wonder why they might support Mann et al…. oh wait, never mind.
Of course, he also won’t actually try to check if peer-reviewed literature is sound science as well, so that makes one wonder if all he does is to parrot the lies. Your Emperor ain’t wearing any clothes, Robin.
Cheers.
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Excellent point Steve #76. I like the specificity and the details bring it to life as a comparative example. It helps people understand just how bizarre the excuses are that defend Briffa.
Billions of dollars are riding on the carbon trading schemes, yet central publications like Briffa’s are checked only by an unpaid blogger?
Thank you Steve McIntyre…
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Anne-Kit Littler: “I do believe Robin is becoming unhinged!”
Unfortunately, that presumes Robin was hinged in the first place. That is becoming more questionable with his every post. They are rather like a broken shutter banging in the wind. Lots of repetitious noise but very short on content.
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In 1999, there was an EU series of conferences on “Representing Uncertainty in Climate Science” The co-ordinating body was the University of East Anglia and the CRU at the same location. One of the co-ordinators was Professor Mike Hume, later to become founding Director of the Tyndall Centre.
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/eclat/
If I may quote some extracts, (cherry picking, I hear Robin say, but there are lots of cherries).
Uncertainties in Social and Economic Projections
Arnulf Grübler, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Austria.
“Projecting the future state(s) of the world with respect to demographic, economic, social, and technological developments at a time scale consistent with climate change projections is a daunting task, some even consider as straightforward impossible.
Over a century time scale, current states and trends simply cannot be extrapolated. The only certainty is that the future will not be just more of the same of today, but will entail numerous surprises, novelties and discontinuities.
Practices of linear or exponential trend forecasting (e.g. a 0.5 or 1 percent growth in radiative forcing) relying on “linear” futures are more unlikely as scenarios of discontinuous developments and trend changes.
Even if probability distributions can be constructed, they are inherently subjective and also time dependent. To quote Henry Linden: “The probability of occurrence of long-term trends is inversely proportional to the ‘expert’ consensus.”
….excessive self-cite and “benchmarking” of modeling studies to existing scenarios creates the danger of artificially constructing “expert consensus”.”
This is from Dr Mark New, Climatic Research Unit:
“Observed climate data are typically of short duration – less than 100 years – which makes it difficult to place an observational record in the context of longer-term natural variability. This issue is complicated further because some of variance in the observational record may be anthropogenic.
Detrended observed data for England over the last 350 years provide evidence of natural variability on a similar scale to that simulated in HadCM2 control integration. Similarly, natural spatio-temporal variability in 20-year mean climate ………… suggesting that the sub-GCM scale change signals in this regional model may be indistinguishable from natural variability.”
Mark New is currently helping to push the 4 degree claims at the Oxford Conference
Remember that in 1999, we were already in year 11 AH, (after Hansen). The science was already certain, as pronounced by no less a person than Professor Bob Watson, the current UK Director of Strategy at Tyndall and Chief Scientific Adviser to DEFRA:
When asked in 1997 at Kyoto, as the new IPCC Chairman, about the growing number of climate scientists who challenged the conclusions of the UN that man-induced global warming was real and promised cataclysmic consequences, Watson responded by denigrating all dissenting scientists as pawns of the fossil fuel industry. “The science is settled” he said, and “we’re not going to reopen it here.”
http://sovereignty.net/p/clim/kyotorpt.htm.
Yet in a publication dated January 2005, just before the Exeter Conference on Dangerous Climate Change, Hadley was far from certain of its models.
“Stabilising climate to avoid dangerous climate change — a summary of relevant research at the Hadley Centre:
· What constitutes ‘dangerous’ climate change, in the context of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, remains open to debate.
· Once we decide what degree of (for example) temperature rise the world can tolerate, we then have to estimate what greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere should be limited to, and how quickly they should be allowed to change.
· These are very uncertain because we do not know exactly how the climate system responds to greenhouse gases.
· The next stage is to calculate what emissions of greenhouse gases would be allowable, in order to keep below the limit of greenhouse gas concentrations. This is even more uncertain, thanks to our imperfect understanding of the carbon cycle (and chemical cycles) and how this feeds back into the climate system.”
In 2007, Professor Lenny Smith, a statistician at the London School of Economics, warned about the “naïve realism” of current climate modelling. “Our models are being over-interpreted and misinterpreted,” he said. Over-interpretation of models is already leading to poor financial decision-making, Smith says. “We need to drop the pretence that they are nearly perfect.”
He singled out for criticism the British government’s UK Climate Impacts Programme and Met Office. He accused both of making detailed climate projections for regions of the UK when global climate models disagree strongly about how climate change will affect the British Isles. New Scientist magazine, 16 August 2007.
The problem is they don’t really know, but they have to pretend that they do, hence “the science is settled” approach and they don’t want us to know that they don’t know. That way lies loss of face, loss of grants and ignominy. Who’s going to stick their hand up for that?
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[…] cardinal sin is uncovered. That of cherry-picking data. In the cross-hairs is Keith Briffa. Steve McIntyre explains the problem: The Briffa temperature graphs have been widely cited as evidence by the IPCC, yet it appears they […]
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I didn’t read the whole thread, but it seems to me that Robin is some kind of idealist. Indeed, in an ideal world, results would be tested and reproduced, comments would be fully adddressed and rebuttals published. In the real world, especially in Climate Science, this does not happen. Firstly, many of your reviewers are also your collegues and co-authors. Secondly, if you do not archive your data and explain your methods, it’s impossible for anyone to attempt to reproduce them. Thirdly, if you want to publish a rebuttal, those same people (“the team”) will be the editors and reviewers of your comment!
To prove that this must be true, consider Steig et al and the work by Briffa cited above. Does it strike you as in any way odd that this work has been published with the so called quality stamp of Peer Review, when a few days with the data and an open mind can uncover such glaring weaknesses? Why weren’t such things discovered when the papers were sent out for review? The fact that they were published is proof positive that the peer review process is fundamentally broken in Climate Science. It’s about time you recognised this fact.
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Why do you guys feed that troll Robin Grant? He is obviously just a psych or philosophy major doing some study on argument theory. I guess feeding him serves that purpose, but man, is it ever sickening reading his posts/responses.
“Confounding factors”…god that’s funny. I just don’t know to keep laughing or to feel pity.
10
JP: There’s always at least one troll appears. A troll keeps the conversation going, causes some good responses which are well worth reading, and as you say, gives most readers a good laugh. Trolls don’t realise they are counter-productive.
10
My fear is that some one innocently glancing at this blog may mistakenly get the impression that what Robin posts is actually grounded in reality just because he is prolific, and that the “science is settled”. That would be doing true science a great disservice. But by this time, he has thoroughly lost credibility by defending Briffa….most people with common sense mentally filter him, I suppose.
Food for thought though.
Cheers.
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JoNova.
You may like to update the graphs you present here.
McIntyre updated his on Sep 28. Presumably he got it wrong first time.
Look here, Yamal: A ‘Divergence’ Problem and go down to Figure 2. See the black line at the right. It doesn’t drop so far down any more.
Five lines below the figure he says “[Amended Sep 28 6 pm. Replaces url]” and the “url” takes you to the old graph which you used.
Cheers; davblo2
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Robin Grant:
I said I would not correct any more of your silly misrepresentations, but your assertion that I said other than I did is too disgracefully offensive to let it stand.
Your comments here overstep the boundaries of levity and propriety when they are no more than blatant lies.
You say of me:
“You were saying incredibly stupid stuff like “species ranges don’t change with climate change, because it gets colder than that at night”, and we were all laughing uproarously because you were so dead pan.”
I said nothing of the kind!
A CENTURY IS NOT A DAY AND “A NIGHT”.
Anybody can read what I actually wrote, but to save them finding it (above) I quote it here.
I wrote:
“And I really enjoyed your contribution that said;
“A lot of people would not notice 0.02°C per year. But it’s effect on biological systems is marked (see: A globally coherent fingerprint of climate change impacts across natural systems, Camille Parmesan & Gary Yohe, NATURE (2003)) and serious (see: Extinction risk from climate change Nature (2004)).”
A change of “0.02°C per year” for a century would be 2°C total rise. But ecosystems cope with that much temperature change every day. Adaptation by slight movement of ecosystem boundaries would negate “it’s effect on biological systems”. Anyway, here in the real world inhabited by real “biological systems” any “biological systems” that are harmed by 2°C temperature rise would have been killed by normal weather long, long ago.
So, the paper by Parmesan & Yohe is pure science fantasy. I enjoyed it when I read it, but I never take science fantasy as being anything more than a bit of fun. Your pretence that their paper should be taken seriously gave me the best laugh of all.”
So, spout your AGW propoganda if you like. And make your jokes for the amusement of others if you choose. But do NOT pretend that I or others say other than we do. That is not funny.
Richard
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I can’t read very much Robin Grant. I just skim it a little and move on to something else.
Anyway, Robin makes me miss people like Boris for exapmple – if people with that bent are goingt to visit here.
Robin gives me the same feeling I get while watching someone have a screaming fit in public – screaming obscenities and waving their arms around. One simply wants to move away from it.
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Robin:
What empirical evidence would persuade you that Keith Briffa had indeed inappropriately screened the Yamal data series, i.e., cherry picked?
10
Here is the link to the Wegman report.
http://www.climateaudit.org/pdf/others/07142006_Wegman_Report.pdf
Please could Robin show where Mann, the statistical methods and data management are vindicated?
.
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The link Robin Grant provided for the National Academy report was so people could buy it. Hardly a viable check. However, and particularly relevant to the discussion is the following paragraph in their summary.
“Large-scale surface temperature reconstructions have the potential to further improve our knowledge of temperature variations over the last 2,000 years, particularly if additional proxy evidence can be identified and obtained from areas where the coverage is relatively sparse and for time periods before A.D. 1600 and especially before A.D. 900. Furthermore, it would be helpful to update proxy records that were collected decades ago, in order to develop more reliable calibrations with the instrumental record. Improving access to data used in publications would also increase confidence in the results of large-scale surface temperature reconstructions both inside and outside the scientific community. New analytical methods, or more careful use of existing ones, may also help circumvent some of the existing limitations associated with surface emperature reconstructions based on multiple proxies. Finally, because some of the most important potential consequences of climate change are linked to changes in regional circulation patterns, hurricane activity, and the frequency and intensity of droughts and floods, regional and large-scale reconstructions of changes in other climatic variables, such as precipitation, over the last 2,000 years would provide a valuable complement to those made for temperature.”
Note the bit about improving access to data and limitations involving proxies. That is where the improvements need to be made. With so much hinging on the findings, one thinks more effort would have been made to get it right.
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Chris – Please could Robin show where Mann, the statistical methods and data management are vindicated?
Yup, there were some minor problems with the statistics. But even when the offending data sets are removed, the same essential results are obtained as confirmed by many other studies.
In fact, here is a plot of the original analysis overlayed on top of the corrected
analysis.
http://www.realclimate.org/images/WA_RC_Figure1.jpg
There is no practical difference. The two curves are essentially identical.
How sad for you.
And of course the NAS concluded that the orginal hockey stick results and analysis were the best available at the time with the knowledge available at that time.
The NAS also concluded that the uptrend in the current temperature (hocky stick) is substantiated by not only the original analysis, but by many subsequent studies that produce their own similarly shaped plots.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:1000_Year_Temperature_Comparison.png
Awww, boo hoo!
10
Damien
Are you sure you are reading the same report?
“• It can be said with a high level of confidence that global mean surface temperature was higher during the last few decades of the 20th century than during any comparable period during the preceding four centuries. This statement is justified by the consistency of the evidence from a wide variety of geographically diverse proxies.
• Less confidence can be placed in large-scale surface temperature reconstructions for the period from A.D. 900 to 1600. Presently available proxy evidence indicates that temperatures at many, but not all, individual locations were higher during the past 25 years than during any period of comparable length since A.D. 900. The uncertainties associated with reconstructing hemispheric mean or global mean temperatures from these data increase substantially backward in time through this period and are not yet fully quantified.
• Very little confidence can be assigned to statements concerning the hemispheric mean or global mean surface temperature prior to about A.D. 900 because of sparse data coverage and because the uncertainties associated with proxy data and the methods used to analyze and combine them are larger than during more recent time periods.”
Doesn’t sound like a ringing endorsement. And please don’t quote Wikipedia or real climate to support your assertions. The least you could do is go to the original documents.
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Robin (Boy Wonder) – Is McIntyre planning to submit this finding to the academic community, or just the public?
You mean why would anyone go to a blog maintained by a nonscientist, who worked for a mining company, when they can go to scientific sites maintained by actual scientists?
I can only think of one reason – To confound and confuse the public. Another days delay in action against CO2 polluters is money in the pocket of carbon industry execs.
I’m sorry Denialists, the measure of science is peer review, publication in scientific journals, and the acceptance in the field. Mann and co have all of these; McIntyre has none.
10
I just love hearing these obvious non-scientists talk about the holy validity of peer review and publication in scientific journals.
They don’t even understand temporal causality – that would be “time” for you non-scientists. Time works like this: You discover something, THEN you post about it in the easiest format first (i.e. on the web if you want), and THEN you can think about writing a paper for publication. I know it isn’t obvious, but you can’t publish something in a journal before you discover it. I’ve tried to do it and had to learn the hard way – I just can’t publish an article about something that I’m going to unexpectedly do two weeks from now. I know you expect McIntyre to do this, but, he’s just a poor mortal like me.
And as for peer-review – this finding by McIntyre proves that peer review has major flaws, and that other scientists generally do NOT meticulously review other scientists data or findings.
Have any of you non-scientists ever been a reviewer? Have you ever had any papers reviewed yourselves? Well I have had both, and I can tell you for a fact that papers will and are regularly published which are full of inconsistencies and errors, and where basic due diligence on the part of the paper-writer is non-existent. Peer review generally means little, especially if all the reviewers might be expected to have certain biases (…my Lord as if I have to spell this out). That’s why we talk about “thinking for yourselves”. But I see this is misinterpreted as “regurgitate irrelevant talking points for yourselves”.
Ooooohhh I bet you can’t wait to repeat that last sentence straight back to me! So giddy you’ll be with excitement to think for yourselves. Aw cute.
20
I’m not so sure it is poor science but it’s misuse for politics – the UL Labour party is nothing other than the Fabian Socialists (FS) and this group’s tentacles are long and penetrate almost every UK governmental organisation.
Rather I think the data was released as the FS think they have achieved their goal with the election of Obama and hence can afford the political flak that will occur for short period after McIntyre’s latest auditing. The UK is more or less a socialist state and the US is the same, and given the current politicking at the G20 and the UN, I would therefore not be blind-sided by(as Bluebottle might say)doubly deaded hockey sticks.
What the issue is the unwitting slide into a quasi totalitarian state as predicted by Hyek last century. Gordon Brown’s recent statement that the days of laissez-faire capitalism are over has to be looked at more closely, and not the disappearance of the hockey stick.
AGW was first and foremost the sheeps clothing to hide the Fabian wolf – and they have succeeded.
And so did Charles Lyell and the Whigs two centuries ago when they ousted the Tories from government in the UK.
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[…] […]
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Damien wrote:
To echo JP’s comments (good job, JP!), spoken as a true non-scientist who has no clue about what scientific process is all about. As a scientist, I believe I am qualified to comment on this.
True science, before peer-reviewed journals started, had three hallmarks that are inviolate:
So-called peer-reviewed climate science fails all three criteria miserably. The Climate Science “peer-review” process is a joke, and an insult to every honest, hardworking scientist in the world.
Note that “Consensus” isn’t one of criteria. If it were, the world believe the earth is flat, that the Sun orbits the Earth, and that Jupiter has no moons.
Blind faith, that just because something is peer-reviewed it must be true, is a sign of someone who is unable or unwilling to think critically.
Fortunately, I can attest to the fact that the peer-review process (having been a participant in it several times) is solid in other disciplines, but completely broken in Climate Science.
In Briffa’s case, its not what the McIntyre’s analysis shows that is the central issue – its the complete lack of transparency, reproducibility and rigor that makes any result from the Hockey Team disingenuous.
Why would I go to a former mining consultants blog? Because the so-called “climate scientists” are a disgrace to science, and unable to produce anything that is scientific. McIntyre shows all his data, provides his code, and is careful with his conclusions. He also completely exposes himself to criticism and cross-checks from the entire world. I trust his work infinitely more that Briffa, Jones or Mann.
If this is the best defense of Briffa that you can come up with, the appeal to authority routine, thats pathetic.
Cheers.
[Thanks Kartic, we appreciate your insights. I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve added formatting to help draw attention to your remarks. I may do this randomly to any comments that catch my eye. -JN]
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[…] […]
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[…] 1800 This graph shows that most of the last two thousand years have been warmer then today. Breaking news: Cherry Picking of Historic Proportions « JoNova The telling point is that you like the graph, not whether the graph is accurate or correct, but […]
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Damien wrote:
Peer review: Nearly meaningless in Climate ‘Science’ because in a tiny group of scientists, their “buds”, their “pals” hold sway and rubber stamp the work of their “boon companions” (yeah, I’m being snarky, aren’t I? Oh well).
Publication in scientific journals: Yes, the above foolishness pretty much guarantees publication, hm? A lot of back-patting going on behind the scenes.
Acceptance in the field: Are you outstanding in your field? LOL
It’s a field of nattering YES men, slaves to the income that only flows in the direction of AGW while they fudge the numbers left and right, tilting at “treemometers” with gusto…
I became a skeptic the moment I noticed their “treemometers” missed the Medieval Warm Period. That’s some seriously bad “science” they are doing. Ugh.
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Joanne Nova wrote:
What’s wrong with the one I keep linking to showing the positive feedback that is low cloud cover?
Partly, yet.
There is no doubt that clouds reflect incoming sunlight, and also outgoing earthheat.
How would they be a forcing?
10
“Confounding Factors” – I’m going to try that one out on my wife next time I’m home late from the pub!
10
Looks like Robin joined the tree ring circus.
Have fun. Shady sampling techniques do not make for experiments that can be replicated.
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Richard s Courtney wrote:
Really? So you actually fell off your chair whist reading post 28?
Pffft! Well, maybe the psych students were right. Dexterity is a form of intelligence after all. (Tee hee! See what I did there? I made a joke about you being stoopid, because you can’t balance on your chair! Hahaha!)
Sure. And whether you think the earth went snowball or slushball in the Paleoproterozoic, Your claim that the “And the Earth is constrained within close limits of global temperature in each of two stable states; viz. glacial and interglacial. And its temperature has been the same within narrow bounds in each of those stable states throughout the ~2.5 billion years since the Earth gained an oxygen-rich atmosphere.” is a hilarious description of this vastly colder climate only 2.25 billion years ago. Great comedy!
Can you do one claiming the lush warmth of the carboniferous was equally cold? That would be funny too.
Pffft! The components of climate are as difficult to model as the components of a gazelle! Tee hee! Keep it up! You’re gorgeous!
Brilliant! And because only recent temperature measurements have detected the hot spot, the understandings must be wrong! And because some understanding is wrong, the bit that must be wrong is all the basic tenets of thermodynamics and optics! Clearly showing, beyond all reasonable doubt that there is no greenhouse effect, and we can all go back to trying to burn as much fossil fuels as we can! Flawless logic! Tee hee hee.
Ha ha ha! But you’ve done that joke already. You’ve said that a hotspot that occurs under any warming is evidence against greenhouse warming.
Not to disparage, still funny though. You should change your material occasionally though.
Pffft! Completely disproved! By an equivocal absence of a hot spot, that has no relationship to greenhouse warming! Tee hee! This must be the meaning of proof that they use for vodka!
Brilliant! Love the irony! Hahahahahaha!
10
You GO Robin – make that “Pffft!” sound and the room clears instantly… When you ride that “treemometer”, do you get slivers in your rump?
10
player wrote:
I’m not yet ready to accept that the reason is not obvious to someone in the field.
But certainly cherry picking is unacceptable scientific methodology.
10
Lazlo wrote:
What do you claim that I have said that is a lie?
Please quote me exactly and give the post number.
Why do you claim that it is a lie?
10
Robin in post #53:
Huh? I must have missed the latest IPCC report – care to tell us all how the 2000’s are 1.9 degree Centigrade warmer that the ’90’s? The 00’s are not even 1.9 degree warmer that the 1890’s leave alone the 1990s! Maybe you meant the 1790s?
Didn’t know you were in the temperature reconstruction business too…. any peer-reviewed results yet? Using the Briffa Yamal series, perhaps?
GISS Temps below:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2008/
There is an approximately 0.1 deg C/decade rise over the last century. “2008 was the coolest year since 2000” according to GISS.
You must really be losing it – the “treering circus” lifestyle is a tough road….. the stress of defending Briffa is showing. Especially with the “Pfffts”….
Cheers.
10
Robin:
I like the “yet” – this is the first time I have seen any inkling of open-mindedness from you, and I applaud that.
Cheers.
10
Anne-Kit Littler wrote:
Well the people in the field have said that it is.
Perhaps what you are not understanding is that “the committee finds it plausible that the Northern Hemisphere was warmer during the last few decades of the 20th century than during any comparable period over the preceding millennium” is perfectly in line with MBH 99.
You seem to be thinking that they are saying that MBH99 is plausible. They are not. They are saying that “that the Northern Hemisphere was warmer during the last few decades of the 20th century than during any comparable period over the preceding millennium” is plausible. This is what MBH99 said.
Hence vindication.
10
Richard Courtney,
Nice analogy on the gazelle behaviour. Some people have trouble with the concept of emergent properties.
When Robin is posting here there’s a bridge somewhere missing its troll.
10
Robin, you’re nothing if not a master of obfuscation.
Read my post again: It deals with the definition of the word “plausible”, not with anything else, so stop making assumptions about my thinking.
The definition speaks for itself, I have nothing more to add.
10
Just to spell it out for you: To say that something is “plausible” is not to vindicate it – cf above definition from Merriam-Webster.
Geddit?
10
DennisA wrote:
The science is settled on that the warming is anthropogenic, and that different biological systems are being affected by it. At some point the costs become such that the most cost effective policy is emission reduction.
The rate of expected climate change, what biological systems are valuable, and how they interact is still under study.
Do you have a few examples of people who have lost grants in this way?
It’s just that it seems unlikely to me.
10
I for one am happy to be living in such interesting times. The CO2 centric models will go head-to-head with solar centric models over the next five years – there’s no way around it during this solar minimum. Latent heat trapped in all the seawater that was heated during the recent hot cycle will throw the curve a bit, but it’s already waning. Either arctic sea ice will continue to recover, or it won’t. Keep an eye out, y’all, and make sure noone changes the method of measurement midstream…
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
What to watch out for in the next couple of years – volcanic eruptions blamed for a blip in the global warming cycle. Note that solar cycles have also been correlated with increased seismic/volcanic activity, so some solar cycle theories hypothesize that the associated vulcanism is one of many factors that drive temperatures down during a solar minimum (hypothesis only because… no funding!). But politicians can ignore the correlation (for a little while, anyway) and say, “If it wasn’t for all these volcanoes going off, global warming wouldn’t have stopped!”
I’ll drop by next thread – this one’s getting too junior high for my tastes. Love the site.
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Robinson wrote:
It is certainly true that peer review has its flaws.
But I don’t buy that the field of climate science is so small that the limitations imposed by reviewers having to be selected from a small field is causing a greater bias than in any other field.
And I emphatically don’t buy that better science can be found outside the peer review system than in it. It is flawed but it is the least bad system that we have come up with. And science is self correcting and holds researchers that cause paradigm shifts as most respected, so questionable results have to hold back a strong force as they stand for a long time.
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I have little time for people like Robin Grant so i dont even bother to entertain him in conversation. He like many of his ilk have a “need to believe” mentality so when he is presented with a study that is so damning he simply chooses to ignore it. Any attempt by free thinking people to show him the error of his ways is a complete waste of time.
Mc Intyre and the many other scientists that work tirelessly to expose the scientific fraud surrounding AGW will be remembered for the efforts, unfortunately we will never be able to repay them enough.
Cheers
Crakar
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JP wrote:
I’m not trolling.
Certainly I am posting back to appeals to ridicule in kind; but I haven’t found that that ever limits the intellectual discourse much, because anyone who thinks an appeal to ridicule is a sound response to science based understanding isn’t going to be the deepest frog pond in the garden.
But I stand by my points.
The biochemistry in even one neuron of a gazelle is beyond our capacity to model, because we don’t understand the chemistry. Radiation and convection are not beyond our physics and optics, and so the climate can be modelled. (Largely … I understand that there are about half a dozen parameters that are poorly constrained by our understanding of physics, but these can be constrained by tuning the model – and that is not as invalid as some people will claim. Half a dozen unknowns are strongly overdetermined by even a single step of a climate model, which has tens of thousands of output values, and hindcasts are run over decades or more.
And emergent properties do occur in climate models built on understood physics. One sees hadley cells, monsoons, the ENSO the NAO, and ocean currents appearing similar to as they do in the real world.
The greenhouse cause of the current warming is visible in the warmings spatial distribution. The hot spot is neither unambiguously not there, nor a signature of greenhouse warming, given that it occurs under any warming.
I will point out other logical fallacies by name, but appeal to ridicule is best responded to in kind, because posting rapidly ceases to be any fun otherwise. But this is not trolling – I don’t do it to elicit a response. I merely protect my own enjoyment at the time of posting. It is surprisingly important. These idiots really get on your wick otherwise.
10
player wrote:
Hadley Centre data is downloadable here.
Using the annual series, the average temperature for the 90s is +0.2286K. The average for the 00s so far is +0.4227K. That’s 0.194°C warming so far; with 2010 still to go.
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Richard s Courtney wrote:
Tee hee! That’s great! I especially like how you quote the bit you’re denying you said! Encore! Encore!
[ Robin. What you quoted Richard as saying was not what he said. It was not a paraphrase. What Richard said was not ‘incredibly stupid’, it was a valid point. There are counter arguments but throwing insults and misquotes is not one of them. — JN]
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While we debate what is disputable science the real issue is going on behind our backs. We have Governments legislating to solve the problem of Climate Change. As in anything where Governments are involved this requires the extraction of money from the taxpayer either directly or indirectly.
Now if the scheme does not work and we do not fix the climate, say for instance if the crisis is not man made and there is some other force at work, we may be closing off our options to respond.
Just suppose climate change makes the Canterbury Plains on the South Island of New Zealand wetter. And also suppose that the climate does not take any notice of our ETS. New Zealand will have a bunch of wheat farmers who are unable to continue to grow their crops. And probably because of the ETS and higher costs they will be unable to adapt or move their businesses elsewhere.
The knee-jerk reaction in response to the assumption that climate change is man made and that it is reversible could very easily impose costs that will make appropriate responses unaffordable.
(I suppose then the socialists will step in and nationalise the industries.)
Given the mounting evidence that climate change is natural, and other events e.g. a volcanic eruption, could have more dramatic effect in a couple of hours than man could in centuries, wouldn’t it make sense to try to try to plan how to adapt.
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Anne-Kit Littler wrote:
Then I agree with your definition of plausible.
Anne-Kit Littler also wrote:
Then I point out again that it is not the Mann paper that is plausible. It is that “the Northern Hemisphere was warmer during the last few decades of the 20th century than during any comparable period over the preceding millennium”. This is the near full vindication of the Mann paper that has been noted. The Mann paper also finds it appearing worthy of belief.
10
Steve wrote:
What solar centric models?
10
In response to Jo’s post 25,
Thinking of a reason………..Nah i got nothing Jo.
Except one thing, we have all seen the ramifications of a scientist who publishes a study which questions the theory of AGW and we have all seen the scientist who publishes a study which reinforces the AGW theory get showered in rose petals as he/she walks up the aisle to collect his/her trophy.
With that in mind let me ask you a few questions. 1, If he published his results with all the data included what would the result be? 2, If he published his results with only a small portion of the data what would the result be (well we know the answer to that). 3, If you where in his position what would you do?
The orchestrators of this scam are a lot smarter than we give credit, not only have they manipulated the compliant media into brain washing people like Robin but they have also made it nigh on impossible for a scientist to produce unbiased work.
10
Robin Grant (or should that be robbin’ grant?) responded to a challenge to demonstrate how the noughties were 1.9 degrees warmer than the nineties
“Using the annual series, the average temperature for the 90s is +0.2286K. The average for the 00s so far is +0.4227K. That’s 0.194°C warming so far; with 2010 still to go.”
Indeed, and since when has 0.194 = 1.9? (I will let pass the obvious blunder of confusing temperature with temperature anomaly; unless perhaps you were referring to the average temperature of the Universe?)
I thought you said you did math at university.
10
JoNova; with all the flack flying, no one seems to have noticed YOU HAVE GOT THE GRAPH WRONG. McIntyre updated his on Sep 28.
See my comment #89.
Cheers; davblo2
[ I did, and I just replied offline to you to say thanks, I’m checking it out. Apologies for needing to sleep and do other living things at odd hours. I am in a different timezone to you. I do appreciate you pointing it out. — JN]
10
BS! By their own admission it isn’t raw data, but “value added” data.
For those who don’t know what that means, that’s data that they’ve tortured for a while to produce a certain “picture.” The raw data sets and complete methodology are NOT available and Phil Jones steadfastly refuses to release them even in the face of Freedom of Information requests.
Hey folks, Robin is very good at getting everyone to chase red-herrings that don’t address the issue of the original post. Heck he opened with an argument from authority. Yet I haven’t seen any of his code, methodology or anything resembling a valid argument refuting Steve McIntyre’s findings. Instead he’s leading everyone on a merry chase around trees we’ve been around many times before.
Even Gavin Schmidt has been dead silent on the issue and Gavin usually loves to pounce back on Steve. He came to Eric Steig’s defense within hours back in February when Steve nailed Steig for both bogus data AND methodology. (Steig, et al: “Warming of the Antarctic ice-sheet surface since the 1957 International Geophysical Year”, Nature, Jan 22, 2009.)
The silence eminating from Gavin at “Virtual Climate” and Tamino over at “Closed Mind” on this issue (the cherry picking subject of the post) is deafening…and telling. In fact, over at “Virtual Climate” the censors have been frantically deleting all posts attempting to discuss the Briffa fraud. It’s indefensible and they know it.
[ Thanks for the news update. Significant. — JN]
10
I’ve updated the graph. Thanks Davblo2 who noticed McIntyre has recalculated the all tree rings combined graph.
I added in a line to show current temps according to trees in Yamal compared with the past. At least compared to the last 2000 years in far north Russia, today’s temperatures are at the high end, but are not unusual, there being at least 5 occasions where it’s been as warm or warmer.
Briffas work has been hailed as supporting Mann for nearly ten years, yet clearly in this graph there is no hockey stick, nothing like a hockey stick, unless you very carefully select trees in the last 50 years.
Robin, if you want to impress us with your analysis, why don’t you download the data from the Royal Society site and crunch the numbers yourself.
There is little correlation with CO2 apparent. Since most of our CO2 has been released since 1950, and CO2 was essentially level for the 1950 years prior.
10
Surely you jest!
It only warmed one degree in the entire last century.
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JoNova; “[ I did, and I just replied offline…]”
Sorry. Didn’t mean to shout. Just wanted to make sure it wasn’t missed since #90 to #129 appeared to ignore me.
Yes, I found your email. My fault for not checking earlier.
Cheers; davblo2
10
Alex Heyworth wrote:
Fair call.
I misplaced the decimal point.
The 90s to the 00s have seen 0.19°C of warming, the fastest on record, not 1.9°C, as I said.
10
I see you update your second graph with the merged data; but your first graph is still wrong. McIntyre updated the unmerged one as well. See Yamal: A ‘Divergence’ Problem Figure 2.
All the best; davblo2
10
JLKrueger wrote:
It’s a temperature dataset.
Yes, it is temperature anomalies, but that means that the decade to decade (or year to year) comparisons are valid.
Methodologies have been published in the peer reviewed literature.
The data is from many countries including some who retain the intellectual property of the data submitted. This is why the raw data in its entirety cannot be released.
10
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A2.txt
Linear regression from 1998 to 2008 gives 0.01064 warming per year, or 0.1064 degrees per decade, or 1.064 degrees per century. Warming? YES. Disaster? NO.
Hmmm, now from the previous statement of 1.9°C we go down to 0.194°C, bit of a difference. Get those powers of 10 right.
However, linear regression is the correct way to calculate a trend, and the method of averaging over the 90s and the 00s is actually working over TWO decades, not one decade.
For interest sake, doing linear regression over a sliding decade of the GISS satellite data gives (results in degrees C per decade)
1957 -> 1967 : 0.0159 (cooling)
1958 -> 1968 : 0.0139 (cooling)
1959 -> 1969 : 0.0536 (cooling)
1960 -> 1970 : 0.0018 (cooling)
1961 -> 1971 : 0.0446 (cooling)
1962 -> 1972 : 0.0155
1963 -> 1973 : 0.1245
1964 -> 1974 : 0.1464
1965 -> 1975 : 0.0382
1966 -> 1976 : 0.0800 (cooling)
1967 -> 1977 : 0.0182 (cooling)
1968 -> 1978 : 0.0045 (cooling)
1969 -> 1979 : 0.0173
1970 -> 1980 : 0.1336
1971 -> 1981 : 0.2500
1972 -> 1982 : 0.1791
1973 -> 1983 : 0.2445
1974 -> 1984 : 0.2855
1975 -> 1985 : 0.1927
1976 -> 1986 : 0.1409
1977 -> 1987 : 0.0764
1978 -> 1988 : 0.1491
1979 -> 1989 : 0.0955
1980 -> 1990 : 0.1455
1981 -> 1991 : 0.2045
1982 -> 1992 : 0.1873
1983 -> 1993 : 0.0773
1984 -> 1994 : 0.1191
1985 -> 1995 : 0.1336
1986 -> 1996 : 0.0636
1987 -> 1997 : 0.0600
1988 -> 1998 : 0.1855
1989 -> 1999 : 0.1964
1990 -> 2000 : 0.1455
1991 -> 2001 : 0.2491
1992 -> 2002 : 0.3636
1993 -> 2003 : 0.3291
1994 -> 2004 : 0.2345
1995 -> 2005 : 0.2273
1996 -> 2006 : 0.2300
1997 -> 2007 : 0.1827
1998 -> 2008 : 0.1064
Clearly the most recent big warming burst was the decade 1992 to 2002 and we are coming down off that. The big warming burst before that was 1974 to 1984 so hmmm, does a 22 year solar cycle mean anything to anyone here?
If a 20 year timescale is more to your liking, it averages out most of the solar cycle to give smoother results:
1978 -> 1998 : 0.1569
1979 -> 1999 : 0.1404
1980 -> 2000 : 0.1299
1981 -> 2001 : 0.1486
1982 -> 2002 : 0.1852
1983 -> 2003 : 0.1866
1984 -> 2004 : 0.2025
1985 -> 2005 : 0.2094
1986 -> 2006 : 0.1945
1987 -> 2007 : 0.1873
1988 -> 2008 : 0.1774
I’d say even the 0.19 degree per decade estimate is out of date by now, we are clearly moving away from that. This is of course only one estimate and the series itself is glued together from a great number of data sources so lots of calculations are hidden behind the scenes. At least the satellite data can be said to be global, and not measuring the output of an air conditioner.
10
You claim that this is not a disaster, but you give no evidence, or even definitions. How much warming does it take to have a “disaster”? (Or at least why is a warming about 5 times faster than any natural warming not a disaster?)
Plus you cherry pick 1998 was very warm because of the strongest El-Nino ever. A linear regression from 1991 to 2008, (which covers the same years as the 90s to 00s decade to decade change calculation) for instance gives 0.216°C per decade on that data set.
And the mean of the 00s minus the mean of the 90s decade to decade average is 0.215°C per decade … very close to the slope of the regression line, and stronger than that for the Hadley Centre data.
10
Joanna Nova, Comment 132
Jo here’s a link to Steve McIntyre’s post 29th Sep 09, “The Impact of Yamal on the Spaghetti Graph” This is the Spaghetti Graph that was presented in IPPC AR4. It’s a must read for all those interested in this issue.
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=7229
I’m suprised anyones still defending this. Beliefs die hard I guess.
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Robin Grant is a non-scientific troll and not a particularly bright one. Up to post 140 there were about 25,200 words in this thread of which he has “contributed” 9,340 or 37%. And barely a word of it on the Briffa Yamal sampling.
It’s your show Jo, but I would show him the electronic door, if only to alleviate my RSI as I am continually compelled to scroll at pace IOT ignore his drivel
10
I wouldn’t grant Robin Grant a status as high as a “non-scientific troll”. His posts are little better than screeds generated using random phrase list software. The only possible point of interest is the counting of unique logical fallacies committed. Even that grows boring after the n’teenth repetition of the same few fallacies: Argument from Authority, Begging the Question, and the endless use of the Kolker Reset (returning the argument to its initial state and pretending that nothing else was ever said by anyone, anywhere, anytime).
Many of the attempts to respond to his empty words have been quite good. They presented a well developed and coherent arguments against Robin’s pseudo argumentation in favor of AGW/CC. Unfortunately, that too gets tiresome after it has been done again and again and again and again without any effect upon Robin. Robin unfailingly returns with the same flawed phrases expressed in a different random order. All quite correct in form but without actual meaningful content.
It is hopeless that anything we say will have even the slightest impact upon Robin’s (for lack of a better word) thinking. We should abandon any hope for change. There is no fact, no argument, no explanation that will dissuade Robin from his chosen path into the abyss of peer reviewed unreality. Clearly, banning him would greatly improve the signal to noise ratio on this blog.
10
On what basis do you call him a troll?
His answers have generally addressed the points made.
Or do you you want this to be an echo chamber like Real Climate?
10
That means it’s useless for validating their work, which is the entire point.
Produce published work that completely defines the methodologies. Good Luck. Phil Jones refuses to share that info.
Another 2-point BS on the “intellectual property” argument.
Phil Jones couldn’t produce the confidentiality agreements either when pressed under FOI. His argument then was essentially, “the dog ate my homework.”
When several Skeptics deluged him with FOI’s a while back, many also queried some of the countries whose data was involved. They were told that no such confidentiality agreements existed or were necessary. A couple countries even provided their data. But without the detailed methodology (the one that describes which data is included and what adjustments are made to it), one can’t use that data to replicate the anomaly construction.
Try another lie.
10
Hence my comment earlier about how good he is at using red herrings. Robin is a skilled practitioner of argument from authority (the peer-review line) and the red herring (liberal examples throughout this discussion). He only occasionally throws out ad hominem, but condescension is usually in full cry.
10
Tis not for Robin that we argue, but for the poor soul who happens upon this scene.
The point, as you so aptly hit, is to demonstrate the logical fallacy he’s committing and force him back on subject.
We tend to let him get away with diverting the argument from the context of the original post, far too long and that has the effect of giving him more credibility than he deserves in the eyes of an “innocent observer.”
10
Oh, you mean sorta like how you produce no evidence?
Get back to Yamal, Robin. Knock of the diversions.
Kindly demonstrate how Steve McIntyre is wrong. Put up, or shut up.
As Gavin Schmidt and Tamino seem to be tongue-tied, I guess you’ll find it difficult.
10
I thought someone here might have been just a little concerned about the lack of quality control surrounding the results which form the topic of this blog post.
McIntyre has already withdrawn the first versions he published on his site, and replaced them with new ones; presumably because the first ones were incorrect.
The incorrect ones were visible long enough for JoNova to copy them.
She has since updated the second of her graphs, (with thick black line over merged data), but the first one present right at the top (where she added “Biffra used…” and “He didn’t use…”) is still based on the incorrect offering from McIntyre.
See my comments #89 and #136 for details.
Without some form of quality control, isn’t it jumping the gun to draw definite conclusions? Unless you’ve already made you decisions that is.
All the best; davblo2′
10
tom @ i43: Or do you you want this to be an echo chamber like Real Climate?
Is clearly identifying the evidence and its logical consequences an echo? While endlessly repeating the same old errors and misrepresentations is not?
Like it or not, truth exists and it can be known to be true. Conversely, false positions exist and they can be known to be false. To insist that which is demonstratively true is true and that which is false is false is not echo. It is nothing but a simple acknowledgment that reality is what it is and is not what it is not.
JLKrueger @ 146: Tis not for Robin that we argue, but for the poor soul who happens upon this scene.
Its a sharp edge we are walking between demonstrating Robin’s errors and the ability of “the poor soul” to perceive the content of the argument. At times, to argue with a position, is to give it credit way beyond what it deserves no matter what the quality of the argument against.
Yes, we must present our case in contrast to their case. Often more than once. However, it should be our best case against their best case. Jo is doing just that. Robin is far from their best case and appears to be in competition for their worst case.
Enough is enough. When enough is achieved, its time for clear action. If we do nothing but argue endlessly with the likes of Robin, they win and we lose by default. If Robin has any purpose for existence, it is simply to be the last surviving voice even at the cost of truth, science, and the continued existence of technological civilization.
10
Robin Grant: ‘What do you claim that I have said that is a lie?
Please quote me exactly and give the post number.
Why do you claim that it is a lie?’
37: ‘You will be aware that that report gave Mann et al. a near complete vindication.’
– You know it didn’t
40: ‘Nearly every ecological system under study is under severe stress from climate change.’
– You know that this statement cannot be supported by the published literature
44: ‘I don’t buy that line, and I’m yet to see any evidence of this near universal conspiracy of climatologists.’
– Any? Wegman, which you claim to have ‘perused’ and are ‘unconvinced’
56: ‘McIntyre has a long history of science denial’
– No evidence for that statement – pure made-up stuff
56: ‘there are a dozen independent temperature reconstructions of NH temperature in the scientific literature’
– You know very well that these are not ‘independent’ by any reasonable interpretation of that word. They are by the same group of people and they are based on the same datasets.
68: ‘And the response from the popular press was that is was backing for the hockey stick graph.’
– All the popular press? Maybe not a lie, but desparately risible
108: ‘Clearly showing, beyond all reasonable doubt that there is no greenhouse effect, and we can all go back to trying to burn as much fossil fuels as we can!’
– Not what was being said, and you know it..
118: ‘The science is settled on that the warming is anthropogenic, and that different biological systems are being affected by it.’
– You know it is not settled. But maybe this is not a lie if you have not read the published science, just ignorance then.
137: ‘The data is from many countries including some who retain the intellectual property of the data submitted. This is why the raw data in its entirety cannot be released.’
– Gobsmacking. Show us the evidence for this, else it’s more made-up stuff
139: ‘(Or at least why is a warming about 5 times faster than any natural warming not a disaster?)’
– You know you have nothing to support this ‘5 times faster’ assertion, other than hockey sticks of course..
Thank you
10
The changes Steve made on the graphical output had no impact on the crux of the story. It isn’t like Steve said, oops, I got it wrong, never mind.
The story is still there with the methodology, code and data available to anyone willing to try to rebutt Steve’s work, so unlike the high priests of the AGW religion.
So far only one taker and his “audit” of Steve’s “audit” has already been effectively refuted.
10
I know that most of the discussion going on over at “Climate Audit” is difficult for many readers to follow, but there is one factor that stands out.
Briffa resisted sharing for almost a decade until forced into it. Steve’s analysis is the result.
Steve put his code, methodology and the data out there for anyone willing to rebut him.
He had a taker, TomP, who made a valiant effort and who shared his code and methodology.
JeffId then demolished TomP’s analysis, again sharing code and methodology.
That’s real science of the likes you don’t see in “Nature” or “Science” when it comes to the climate change nonsense.
That’s also the marvel of the new medium, the Internet, for carrying on such discussion. We can get to the truth much quicker, as long as all parties are sharing their data, code and methodology than was possible only a decade ago.
Who needs the peer review of “Nature” or “Science” when the peer review is happening right before your eyes in real time?
10
I’d like to respond to Joanne’s call for potential reasons for Briffa to have excluded a significant portion of core samples.
Anthony Watts at Watts-Up-With-That (http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/09/28/a-look-at-treemometers-and-tree-ring-growth/#more-11262) has posted information showing that trees are relatively poor thermometers. Tree growth and hence growth rings respond to “The Law of Minimum”. So let’s say that Briffa had metadata that indicated that some trees were sited such that other factors may have constrained their response to temperature (sited on rocky ground, acidic soil, etc.), then this might have been reason for exclusion.
If used, this sample selection criteria should have been stated in the methodology (for simple transparency on the presumption that someone’s going to try to replicate findings) and further, would create significant effect in terms of the uncertainty in the temperature “signal” contained in the data.
As a side comment, on the topic of the scientific process being broken – as other contributors to this blog have posted, in fields such as dendrochronology where data sets are limited the process of review and replication requires transparency to work. As cited by Steve McIntyre and his struggles with Briffa, P. Jones and others, the transparency does not exist. This fault to me lies squarely with the “scientists” and the management of the various Journals.
One thing that somewhat mystifies me, is that given the level of real infrastructure and legislative investment going into the whole issue of AGW/Climate Change, how oversight of the “science” has been so weak (I note the IPCC Wikipedia slip, IPCC lack of conformance to its own transparency rules, Journal transparency, EPA transparency, Hadley transparency, etc.).
Paul
10
I see how JeffId did it; in Audit of an Audit of an Auditor he said…
Of course if you remove the spike at the end, then you get a graph without a spike at the end. Sounds a little dubious dubious to me; I guess McIntye did the same when he merged the data to produce his green line.
JeffId also says…
Maybe he should ask Steve why he needed to change his results after he published them.
All the best; davblo2
10
Brian Valentine, I hope you don’t mean ABC Australia. Tony Jones is as left wing as they come.
http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2008/s2554129.htm
(I’m know you didn’t mean Australian broadcasting corporation 😉
10
Has anyone had feedback from Mann?
10
Well, like Steve M., I’m not a scientist, nor a peer reviewer. I’m just an old weatherman, so I’m sure I will have little standing with the most scientists. Surely I would have noticed my frigid surroundings had the “average temperature” during the decade of the 90’s been +0.2286K.
Maybe I’m just living in the missing “hotspot.”
10
Paul T @ 153: One thing that somewhat mystifies me, … how oversight of the “science” has been so weak….
I think it is obvious that science is not the goal. They are simply working to substantiate a pre-conceived conclusion. Their level of scientific ethics is such that the end justifies the means.
Why they are willing to sacrifice their reputation and sully the good name of science is the critical issue. It puts them into a pitched battle against reality. That battle cannot be won. Any gain will be short term only. The only long run outcome is they will lose and anyone who follows them will lose. I suggest that failure and destruction of everything that is good and life giving is in fact their goal.
You say that this does not make sense? Making sense presumes the use of reason. They use only the form but not the substance of reason. Peer review does not consist of an actual review. The consensus is not an actual consensus. The evidence is not actual evidence but only the output of a model that presumes what they are saying they are trying to prove. Reason and science have absolutely nothing to do with what they are doing.
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The Wegman Report, in the nicest possible way stated that the Bristlecone Pines should not be used in paleo temperature constructions
“Bondi et al. (1999) suggest [Bristlecones] “are not a reliable temperature proxy for the last 150 years as it shows an increasing trend in about 1850 that has been attributed to atmospheric CO2 fertilization.” It is not surprising therefore that this important proxy in MBH98/99 yields a temperature curve that is highly correlated with atmospheric CO2.”
In other words their ability to act as temperature proxies is confounded by their response to carbon dioxide.
To those who say that NAS/Wegman endorsed the “Hockey Stick” : The NAS panel has said that it entirely agrees with the conclusions of the more in depth Wegman review and the first sentence of the Wegman Report Findings says “we found MBH98 and MBH99 (Papers by Mann et.al.) to be somewhat obscure and incomplete and the criticisms of MM03/05a/05b (Papers by McIntyre & McItrick) to be valid and compelling.”
A very polite way of saying that they endorsed McIntyre’s criticism’s of Manns work, hardly an endorsement.
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How does one quote? with the ‘greater than’, ‘less than’ keys?
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Lionell: great post @158. That is an excellent philosophical overview of what it happening here.
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Explain how this is dubious and describe the flaw in Steve’s and Jeff’s methodology and code. Perhaps you too can run the data and attempt to rebut with facts instead of hunches, as TomP attempted.
Steve provided his reasoning for the changes and was open about it. You must not understand the statistics to make such a comment. Steve isn’t hiding anything. Keith was.
Since you choose to cherry-pick from my comment, I said the changes Steve made had no material impact on the results. Demonstrate otherwise.
Before you criticize Steve, why not consider that Briffa’s work has been out there being quoted for a decade without being corrected by either Briffa or any of the so called “peers.” But of course it’s a little difficult to do a proper review without the data, which is the whole point.
The specific study from which Steve was finally able to obtain data (in spite of Briffa’s stonewalling) has been out there for a year. Perhaps you should query Keith as to why he felt compelled to hide his data and improperly document his methodology.
Perhaps you should ask Michael Mann why he STILL refuses to produce his complete methodology.
Perhaps you should ask why Steig didn’t correct his work for SIX MONTHS after his errors had been thoroughly exposed.
Perhaps you should ask why the vaunted “peer reviewed” journals “Nature” and “Science” seem incapable of catching errors or why they have no requirement to archive data so that studies they are reporting on can be exposed to real peer review.
You, like Robin, are throwing out a red herring.
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Write, …
[blockquote]Text you want to quote[/blockquote]
…with “less than” instead of [
…and “greater than” instead of ]
/davblo2
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Updated graph one now with the latest version from Steve McIntyre. (thanks Davblo again.)
The message is damning. The hockey stick shape would not exist if all the samples from Yamal had been included.
For those who claim this doesn’t matter and “other independent studies agree with Briffa anyway”. The point that matters is that these studies are not independent. Not only is there a forest of cross-authorship, but many studies use the same set of proxies AND those that don’t use the flawed Bristlecone Pines.
Steve McIntyre notes the impact this will have on many versions of the “Hockey Stick”.
“If the non-robustness observed here prove out, this will have an important impact on many multiproxy studies that have relied on this study. Studies illustrated in the IPCC AR4 spaghetti graph, Wikipedia spaghetti graph or NAS Panel spaghetti graph (consult them for bibliographic refs) that use the Yamal proxy include: Briffa 2000; Mann and Jones 2003; Jones and Mann 2004; Moberg et al 2005; D’Arrigo et al 2006; Osborn and Briffa 2006; Hegerl et al 2007, plus more recently Briffa et al 2008, Kaufman et al 2009. (Note that spaghetti graph studies not included in the above list all employ strip bark bristlecone pines – some use both.)”
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I haven’t seen that. Do you have a link?
/davblo2
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Further to #165…(how to…)
This info is buried in the source of this web page, but is commented out.
Don’t forget to add a close-tag where necessary.
/davblo2
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You’re joking right?
Are you implying you haven’t really read the the post and comments?
You’re criticizing without knowing of what you speak?
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=7168
See in comments:
Steve hides nothing.
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This story demonstrates that the process is broken.
IF Briffa had a good reason for excluding samples, then that should be clearly stated in the study. It was not.
Even if he had stated sound reasons for rejection, the rejected samples should still be included in the archived data.
Finally, the complete archived data should have been available upon demand without needing to resort to FOI or other maneuvering.
Until and unless Keith Briffa can comment, we are left wondering about motivation and ethics, though his stonewalling pretty much answers the question.
Far more damned is the entire peer review and publishing process as practiced by certain “high profile” science journals. The lie has been exposed and it cannot be defended. Three days and nothing from the “usual suspects.”
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I’ve read the post, but reading everyone’s comments would be too much of a chore.
Thanks for pointing out McIntyre’s comment.
He could have added a footnote to the post when he made the correction; then I wouldn’t have missed his explanation. Although he was none to clear about what the problem had been.
It’s the way blogs work; there will be those who follow the comments closely, and those who “pop in” to read the main post and browse a little. But you know that.
I speak of the hasty publishing of reports without due quality control. This was an example of what can go wrong; where the hasty publishing proved to be just that, “too hasty”. When an error is involved you can’t be sure what the true outcome will be. McIntyre was “lucky” in a way, the results still demonstrate what he reported.
And just because others do worse doesn’t make it right.
All the best; davblo2
PS. you never explained why you thought it was ok to remove what JeffId (my #154) called the “the ridiculous spike at the end the curve”. All he did was truncate the plot. Why can’t the spike be put back? Is the data invalid? (Sorry if it’s explained in a comment somewhere).
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This comment from Barry R on the CA page seemed worth repeating. A nice summary of the findings:
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Lionell Griffith:
September 30th, 2009 at 11:52 pm
” At times, to argue with a position, is to give it credit way beyond what it deserves no matter what the quality of the argument against. ”
That’s a poor approach, exactly the one Tamino, the wimp, chose to use:
My post at WUWT
Unlike the eerie silence at RC
Tamino has weighed in, in the wimpiest way possible:
“As for Steve McIntyre’s latest: I’m really not that interested. He just doesn’t have the credibility to merit attention. I have way better things to do.”
He got out of his “2 box” dilemma vs. Lucia by gloriously announcing her banishment.
What a sad sack.
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Anne @ 172: That’s a poor approach….
I think you are presuming a level of honesty and honor that does not exist in the case of Robin et.al. It is not a poor approach after you have repeatedly and rationally demolished your opponent’s argument and he keeps coming back with the same old same old. His purpose is clearly NOT to discover the truth nor even to convince you of the truth. His purpose is to keep you otherwise occupied from educating the willing and taking effective action to promote proper policies.
In war, such an action is called “Fire and Motion”. You keep firing while you are moving to force your opponent to remain inactive and under cover. In football, its called “Running out the Clock” so your opponent has no chance to score points. In debate is called “Keeping your opponent off topic” so you appear to be controlling the debate. Its simply an action to stall any effective action on your opponents part so you can win by default.
There is a time that it is both proper and necessary to disengage and reconnect into a situation where you can be more effective in reaching your long term goals. There is no point in doing the pointless.
My goal is not to win arguments nor to convince the unconvinced. Its to regain, enhance, and protect my individual rights and to defend capitalism so that I can exercise them.
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Robin Grant;
“The science is settled on that the warming is anthropogenic, and that different biological systems are being affected by it.”
Only among those with an agenda who will not accept obvious facts. What warming we had is NOT anthropogenic and NOT caused by GG’s. Are you going to start screaming about how the GG’s are causing the next ice age when it happens???
As far as biological systems, are you an evolution denier?? Biological systems are IMPROVED by adversity based on Evolutionary principles!! Oh yes, y’all whine that the AGW is SOOOO fast it takes down a speeding bullet and Biological systems haven’t a chance. You really know how to prove you have no clue about the known climate history of this planet!!!! There are no current climate parameters that have not been shown to have been exceeded in the last couple of ice age cycles!!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
You also mentioned extinctions due to climate change. Care to give us that loooooong list of extinctions due to climate change and NOT due to human encroachment?
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Sam, we have much worse than that in the USA. We have people on the networks who make Tony Jones look like a denier.
Why are you people arguing with Robin about why he throws out nonsense and giggles at you?
He does that because he wants to.
He just likes to do it, that’s all.
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From “Robin Grant”:
“McIntyre has a long history of science denial”
Outrageous ad hominem attack. Anyone who knows Steve McIntyre’s work knows how false this is. For example, McIntyre advocates that policy makers continue to follow the IPCC’s recommendations despite his criticism of the hockey stick work. He doesn’t even claim that there was a “Medieval Warm Period”, but rather simply says that the tree core work done to date is poor evidence of anything about past temperatures. McIntyre is very narrowly focused on auditing a particular body of work. He and McKitrick have several refereed and published papers based on this work. Robin Grant’s statement is either profoundly ignorant or a calculated slander or both.
I suggest that Robin Grant either produce some evidence backing his ridiculous slander, recant, or be banned from here as a troll.
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I wonder if Robin Grant is this fellow:
http://www.linkedin.com/in/robingrant
For those of you without access, the referenced Robin is Managing Director at a UK “digital marketing” form, whose self professed specialties are
“strategy, branding, marketing, advertising, conversational marketing, word of mouth, influencer marketing, advocacy programs, social media relations, online PR, buzz, blogs & blogging and most importantly getting things done”
…ie. an astroturfing firm. Again, I don’t know if it’s the same Robin Grant — although the photographs are very similar — and I certainly don’t know if his presence here is part of a paid campaign or just a busman’s holiday.
Since I thibnk none of us wish to engage in a faux dialog with an astroturfer, I look forward to a denial by this board’s Robin Cook.
My apologies if you’re not an astroturfer, Robin Cook.
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http://wearesocial.net/clients/
Kasmir:
October 1st, 2009 at 6:06 am
From “Robin Grant”:
“McIntyre has a long history of science denial”
Outrageous ad hominem attack. Anyone who knows Steve McIntyre’s work knows how false this is.
Robin is a full time blogger. The blogging trades are like the Squeegee guy for healthcare or for Cap and trade.
Blogger types that borrow best practices from the Squeegee guys thrive on obsessive compulsive agression.
The bloggers use the same tired expression on everyone they attack. Robin has zero clue what Steve mcIntyre found.
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Lionel #173
I agree with Anne. It’s very instructive to see how little Robin et al (et al? you mean on other sites?) have to say. Every once in a while I follow a link they provide to see if I have missed something of substance. This morning I have followed one of Robin’s links to find the CA comment “Crowley and Lowery [2000] is a key part of the Hockey Team. The data versions used by Crowley were never archived and have now been mis-placed.” So now I can ask Robin to show where the data is archived. When he replies that this is more non-peer-reviewed garbage, Teehee, but doesn’t actually give a link, I think it says a lot more than if someone simply criticises Climate Science for their refusal to release data.
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Friends:
I write to bring some focus back to this discussion. There are three issues of importance that are raised by the recent findings of Steve McIntyre.
The first is the issue of scientific practice.
Briffa is seriously ill with kidney failure and it is to be hoped that he will soon be able to make a full recovery. Assuming he does recover then he will need to defend against a prima facie case of his serious scientific malpractice. That case is as follows.
Data which were in the possession of Briffa have been obtained for scrutiny by the scientific community. This revealed that there was a large data set and Briffa selected from that data set for conduct of his analysis. He published that analysis and its results.
But, importantly,
Briffa failed to state that he had selected from a larger data set
and
Briffa failed to state any criteria he used for his selection.
These failures invalidate Briffa’s analysis. Indeed, they are a severe scientific malpractice that is tantamount to fraud in that they misrepresent the analysis which Briffa conducted.
The second issue is the validity of dendrochronology studies of past climates.
This issue arose when Mann, Bradley & Hughes published their 1998 paper (known as MBH98) that provided the first Hockey Stick. It purported to be an analysis of tree rings (i.e. a dendrochronology study) which showed global temperature was near constant for a thousand years until global temperature rose rapidly through the twentieth century. The resulting graph of global temperature v. time was known as a hockey stick graph because the shape of the graph is similar to the shape of an ice-hockey stick: the near-constant temperature period resembling the handle and the rapid rise resembling the blade of the stick.
The analysis in MBH98 is probably the most discredited analysis in the recent history of science having been shown to be flawed by McIntyre & McKitrick (known as M&M) in two papers they published in E&E (in 2003 and 2006) and another in GRL (in 2005), and the flaws in MBH98 found by M&M were confirmed to be correct by expert committees appointed for the task by the US Senate and the US National Academy of Science.
Perhaps the most serious of the flaws in MBH98 was that the statistical method used by Mann, Bradley & Hughes tends to generate a graph of hockey stick form when provided with any data. Indeed, use of the method to analyse random data in the form of red noise generates a hockey stick nine out of ten times. Hence, obtaining a hockey stick graph by use of that method only indicates the nature of the method, and it indicates nothing about the data that was processed by use of the method.
The IPCC had published the MBH 98 hockey stick in its Third Assessment Report (TAR: 2001). Indeed, the TAR published it in eighteen different places including in its Summary for Policymakers. But the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4: 2007) of the IPCC did not publish the MBH 98 hockey stick and did not mention it because it had been completely discredited by then.
The Wegman Committee had investigated the improper statistics used to generate the MBH98 hockey stick. That Committee reported that there is a clique of researchers who share the same data, jointly publish, and peer review the publications of each other. Mann, Bradley, Hughes and Briffa are leading members of that clique.
The clique continued to publish papers using the same data and the same and similar methods. Indeed, they continued as though MBH98 had not been discredited and supporters of climate alarmism (e.g. RealClimate.org) promoted a surreal pretence that MBH98 had not been discredited.
But there is a problem with the use of tree rings to determine past temperatures that is more fundamental than the analysis method; viz. trees are not thermometers.
Tree growth is affected by several things including frost damage, variations in water supply, and periods of disease. There is no method to travel back in time to determine if and when growth of a tree was affected by such variables. Hence, the past temperature indications of dendrochronology can vary as a result of the samples of trees which are analysed.
Furthermore, there is a so-called divergence problem. Trees that seem to show a correlation between temperature and growth rate prior to 1970 fail to show the correlation after 1970. This is assumed to be a result of increased atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration fertilising tree growth after 1970.
Whatever the reason for the divergence problem, the problem is severe. If an effect destroys the correlation after 1970 then it cannot be known if that or some other effect destroyed the correlation in times past. Carbon dioxide is not the only nutrient available to trees that varies with time; for example, water does, too.
Even if it is assumed that the observed divergence problem is a function of recent elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration and, therefore, it is unique to modern times, it cannot be known that similar divergence has not happened for a variety of possible reasons in the past.
The Briffa analysis provides a variety of results depending on which samples of the available trees are analysed. It does not matter if the variation is large or small because the sampled trees are a convenience sample (i.e. the only data that is available) and is not a random sample so statistical assessments of variance are not valid.
Importantly, the discovery that Briffa used a selection of data from the available data means his analysis is invalid. He did not use all the available data, he did not reject data for any stated a priori reason, and he did not select data for use according to any a priori reason.
Joanne Nova asks for suggestions for valid reasons why Briffa may have made his data selection . However, any post hoc explanation for his data selection cannot correct his analysis because post hoc justifications cannot – and do not – overcome a flawed a priori choice of selection (failure to state selection criteria is a very severe flaw).
The Wegman Report is extremely important to this. The clique peer reviewed Briffa’s analysis and agreed publication of Briffa’s analysis. But it is a known fact that they shared the data with Briffa and, therefore, they must have known his data selection was invalid.
Hence, the dendrochronology studies of past climates are now known to be completely invalid. The investigations of MBH98 showed that the dendrochronology studies use statistical analysis methods that provide wrong indications, the analysed data are imperfect, and the divergence problem is unresolved. In addition to all that, the recent disclosure shows that data selection is flawed, and peer review of publications by the clique is worthless.
The third issue is validity of published science papers
The Wegman Report expressed concern at the existence of the clique. And the recent disclosure proves the correctness of that concern. The clique fails to conduct proper peer review but accepts obviously flawed papers for publication. (There is also some evidence that the clique also acts to reject sound papers for publication when those papers oppose the views promoted by the clique, but this is not the place to discuss that).
It is proper scientific practice to ensure that all publications are accompanied by provision of all pertinent data related to that publication. This ensures that readers of the publication can replicate the work with a view to confirming or rejecting it. (Incidentally, this requirement to provide all pertinent data is one reason why most commercial research is not published in public literature).
But several journals have not ensured that publications are accompanied by provision of all pertinent data: M&M have been seeking dendrochronology data from Nature, Science and GRL for a decade.
The Editor of Philosophical Transactions B of the Royal Society of London has upheld the proper practice of ensuring that all the dendrochronolgy data pertaining to Briffa’s paper are available. This has resulted in the revelations I discuss above.
Hence, the peer review and data provision practices of several leading scientific journals are now known to be severely corrupted.
Richard
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Robin Grant (September 29th, 2009 at 6:16 pm):
You will be aware that that report gave Mann et al. a near complete vindication.
JK:
Why do you call this “a near complete vindication”:
The OVERALL FINDINGS AND CONCLUSIONS says:
* Large-scale surface temperature reconstructions yield a generally consistent picture of temperature trends during the preceding millennium, including relatively warm conditions centered around A.D. 1000 (identified by some as the “Medieval Warm Period”) and a relatively cold period (or “Little Ice Age”) centered around 1700. The existence and extent of a Little Ice Age from roughly 1500 to 1850 is supported by a wide variety of evidence including ice cores, tree rings, borehole temperatures, glacier length records, and historical documents.
JK: This re-affirms the existence of a “little ice age” WHICH IS NOT SHOWN ON MANN’S FRAUDLENT HOCKEY STICK
Evidence for regional warmth during medieval times can be found in a diverse but more limited set of records including ice cores, tree rings, marine sediments, and historical sources from Europe and Asia, but the exact timing and duration of warm periods may have varied from region to region, and the magnitude and geographic extent of the warmth are uncertain.
JK:This re-affirms the existence of a “medieval warm period” Remember the famous “hockey stick” chart? It DOES NOT show either the “little ice age” or “medieval warm period”. This omission disproves the “hockey stick” chart and the data/methods used to create it. And much of the rest of the field because they rely on the same flawed methods
Robin Grant (September 29th, 2009 at 6:16 pm):
Of course, I am aware of the Wegman Report too though, and it does not suggest the Mann lied to protect his career either.
JK:
No, it just suggest that Mann made a long series of amateur level mistakes:
In general, we found MBH98 and MBH99 to be somewhat obscure and incomplete … Normally, one would try to select a calibration dataset that is representative of the entire dataset. The 1902-1995 data is not fully appropriate for calibration and leads to a misuse in principal component analysis. page 4
Lets add the up:
1. Inappropriate calibration.
2. Did not consult statistics experts, although his university had a very good statistics department.
3. Used bristle cone pines, known to be in-appropriate for temperature.
4. Mis applied the statistical method that he used (he also got the name wrong).
4. Didn’t happen to notice that his non-standard methods just accidentally gave hockey sticks from random inputs.
5. Didn’t happen to notice that most of his input data did not show hockey sticks and his output did.
Naw, any well respected PhD would make this series of mistakes then try to hide his data and algorithms. Do you get all your opinions from realclimate, or do you also venture into reality sometimes?
Robin Grant (September 29th, 2009 at 11:45 pm)
The NAS report says that Bristlecones are not a temperature proxy.
Really?
Perhaps I’d not read the report as well as I’d thought. Can you point out where they say this?
JK:
You have to use your brain, but here it is:
The possibility that increasing tree ring widths in modern times might be driven by increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations, rather than increasing temperatures, was first proposed by LaMarche et al. (1984) for bristlecone pines (Pinus longaeva) in the White Mountains of California. (SURFACE TEMPERATURE RECONSTRUCTIONS FOR THE LAST 2,000 YEARS, top of page 50)
OF course he may have been referring to Wegman”:
Although we have not addressed the Bristlecone Pines issue extensively in this report except as one element of the proxy data, there is one point worth mentioning. Graybill and Idso (1993) specifically sought to show that Bristlecone Pines were CO2 fertilized. Bondi et al. (1999) suggest [Bristlecones] “are not a reliable temperature proxy for the last 150 years as it shows an increasing trend in about 1850 that has been attributed to atmospheric CO2 fertilization.” It is not surprising therefore that this important proxy in MBH98/99 yields a temperature curve that is highly correlated with atmospheric CO2. We also note that IPCC 1996 stated that “the possible confounding effects of carbon dioxide fertilization need to be taken into account when calibrating tree ring data against climate variations.” (Wegman, page 49)
Robin Grant (September 29th, 2009 at 11:45 pm)
Take out those from the analysis and no hockey-stick shape can be derived.
Are you saying that the NAS says that too?
Because:
1) No they didn’t
JK:
Wegman did (or are you picking nits, not science?):
Also, “effective omission” is more descriptive of the MBH98 de-centering method, which uses 14 bristlecone sites to account for over 99% of explained variance
McIntyre also said it & Wegman confirmed it:
Wegman Report, page 49:
2. In general, we find the criticisms by MM03, MM05a and MM05b to be valid and their arguments to be compelling. We were able to reproduce their results and offer both theoretical explanations (Appendix A) and simulations to verify that their observations were correct. . .
Robin Grant (September 29th, 2009 at 11:45 pm)
2) You might be mistaken on that point. There are plenty of reconstructions that don’t use bristlecones, and they all have the same basic shape.
JK:
Why don’t you show us a few of those plenty. Of course you won’t use any cherry picked data like Briffa’s Yamal set, – only papers that full archive ALL of their data & calculatiomns, otherwise we will think it is just more misrepresentations like Mann & Briffa.
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There was no mystery at all about what Mann did to produce a hockey stick shape curve.
He simply assumed that the time rate of change of temperature at any particular time was proportional to the temperature.
By definition, that is an exponential function of time.
We would see a hockey stick shape no matter what the previous history of temperature was.
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Yes, I almost fell out of my chair laughing when I read that. It was one of the first things I saw after I woke up this morning. Came back after a shower and clearing the sleep from my eyes and yep, he said it. Pathetic.
Can’t wait for Joe Romm mouth-frothing. Might be very entertaining.
So far Gavin has the good sense to remain silent, but his silence says more than anything he could put to words.
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@Brian Valentine #182
Is that really what he did? I didn’t know that detail.
I’ve been trying to explain to my colleagues lately that we’re simply dealing with very poor scientists in the AGW camp…they’re just dim students and this is the best they can do.
I’ll believe what you said if you confirm – it’s just one of those things that boggles the mind, and defies belief.
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Gavin doesn’t know what to say until Hansen tells him what to say.
Good God, I wish I could get Hansen on a stage with me before an audience. Debate style, with podia.
I would sytematecally make wall paper paste out of each and every of his Power Point presentation slides.
There wouldn’t be dust left too look at after I got done decimating them and he would either stand there in agony whilst I pulverised them or he would just walk off the stage.
I dream about that
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Yes, that is what he did.
The methodology is obscured in what he did with his analysis, but that is the 10,000 foot view of what it amounts to
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This is why the hockey stick shape is reproduced for any initial data
He knew that, and then just adjusted the data set so that the exponential growth appears in the 20th century
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He still pulls down about a million and a half in grant money per year from, let’s say, groups that have interest in what he does.
This is why his institutuon is some what less than, eager, to propose an internal investigation of misconduct.
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JLKruger, Post 131, I think you are incorrect on the statement made about “Open Mind” being quiet.
Check His site here: http://tamino.wordpress.com/2009/09/30/message-to-readers/
He does respond and gives his reason!
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[…] Breaking news: Cherry Picking of Historic Proportions « JoNova /thread /global warming bs […]
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Robin
“The science is settled on that the warming is anthropogenic, and that different biological systems are being affected by it. At some point the costs become such that the most cost effective policy is emission reduction.”
This is a profoundly anti-science statement! How was it settled? Surely to ‘settle’ the science it needs to be tested against the physical record in a sceptical manner. You imply there is not need.
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If anyone wishes to claim the “science” settled, that’s fine with me.
I settled it.
It isn’t science – whatever it is, isn’t fit to wash hogs with.
Period.
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I agree that the science is settled. It’s just that the understanding of those who adhere to the AGW religion is lagging far behind the reality dictated by the settled scientific principles.
George
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Richard S. Courtney, if you don’t mind me asking, is this you?
Richard S. Courtney is an independent consultant on matters concerning energy and the environment. He is a technical advisor to several UK MPs and mostly-UK MEPs. He has been called as an expert witness by the UK Parliament’s House of Commons Select Committee on Energy and also House of Lords Select Committee on the Environment. He is an expert peer reviewer for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and in November 1997 chaired the Plenary Session of the Climate Conference in Bonn. In June 2000 he was one of 15 scientists invited from around the world to give a briefing on climate change at the US Congress in Washington DC, and he then chaired one of the three briefing sessions. His achievements have been recognized by The UK’s Royal Society for Arts and Commerce, PZZK (the management association of Poland’s mining industry), and The British Association for the Advancement of Science. Having been the contributing technical editor of CoalTrans International, he is now on the editorial board of Energy & Environment. He is a founding member of the European Science and Environment Forum (ESEF).
Thanks!
Denny
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co2isnotevil, I think this is one of the main reasons Alarmists want this bill to pass!
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/15283
….and this is what I’ve got to say about it!
http://www.globalwarminghoax.com/e107_plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?1035.last
For those who care, I believe Robin Grant is the attraction here….It brings out a side of you most do not see. I’ve seen Joanne’s responses to Robin in the past…He’s like a Duck in water..The water just rolls off of the Duck’s back! It “never” really gets under His “feathers”. Haven’t you all noticed that Joanne is hardly recognizing Robin on this issue! Plus Joanne has another Life other than here.
Brian and I know what “Tee Hee” means if this was in the U.S..Right Brian? I agree though, His style does get boring after a while…Remember, it’s “you” that has control of the mouse! Pass Robin’s post by or leave or turn off the computer…That’s why my TV has been commandeered by my Sixteen year old playing “Call of Duty 4” on the Internet. But if he’s there, I’m am on my computer or doing Housework!
Regards,
Denny
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Robin, your arguments about MBH vindication were decimated elsewhere on this blog in August. Please stop repeating the Big Lie here. I gave you chapter and verse. You’ve never retracted any of your claims, nor have you admitted that Robin Logic is simply incorrect.
Now, in addition to continuing the meme that Steve McIntyre has been proven wrong and MBH vindicated, you add another: the idea that there’s been a 30% drop in biodiversity in the last 35 years.
I am giving far too much credence to the claim by saying it is an extraordinarily speculative estimate. Note that the 2004 paper you cite begins by admitting of only ONE species extinction due to climate change. The rest is all estimates of species extinction based on methods such as species-area.
My wife happens to have a strong background in population biology. These estimating methods have little connection to reality.
For example, the first data I found in your references was a link to information about Latvia. They provide a table of extinct species in Latvia: a few dozen. This compared to their estimate of 30,000 total species there. Any loss is painful to be sure, but here we’re talking about 0.1 percent loss.
Making it even more extreme: at least one of the species listed there is only “extinct” in Latvia. I saw a Peregrine Falcon last week. Perhaps they don’t like the Latvian climate any more (quite polluted last time I was there) but they love the western USA. So this list of extinctions is padded.
Certainly there’s a serious decline in populations. That’s alarming.
Certainly there’s some extinctions going on. That’s alarming.
But 30% in the last 30 years? That’s pretty far-fetched. Show me a list of the 10,000 extinct species in Latvia. Show me the hundreds of North American bird species that have gone extinct in the last 30 years. Show me the thousand-plus bird species that have gone extinct worldwide. Impossible. It’s just not credible.
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Yo Denny,
Tamino made his “message to readers” post afterI made my comment. Tammy isn’t the only one who makes posts on “Closed Mind”, so his first paragraph is pretty lame. The rest of his non-response is just evasion.
AND I commented on his non-response in #183. My comment #183 was about 40 minutes earlier than your #189. Stay up to speed there Denny.
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It seems that the number of variables affecting tree growth and their interactions would be extremelly difficult to interpret even with a carefully controlled study with a number of PhDs on the ground. What comes to mind are 1) Water (too much or too little are no good) 2) Drainage (the soil needs to have the right balance of water, air, minerals) 3) Sunlight (cloud cover is not generally good. Those photons seem to drive our wood factory.) 4) Temperature (Warm is generally better over most ranges, but it can get too warm) 5) CO2 concentration (what our wood factory is doing is pulling carbon out of the air) 6) Nutrients (The trees roots will occasionally find some yummy stuff and will eventually use it up, then later on find some more) 7)Disease ( pathogens like warm weather too) 8)Pestilence (One year the leaves might get decimated by caterpillars that are not there next year.) 9) Plant density (shade keeps out those photons).
I’m sure the list is much longer. The interactions need to be considered also. Rain at night and sunshine during the day are better than rainy, cloud covered days. A high water table (due to recent rainfall, or a natural dam down the river) with strong sunshine can stress the plant (transvaporation without the roots being able to suck up water in saturated soils).
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Denny,
GE is also big in the environmental monitoring segment. Just think about all those companies who will need big brother monitoring their CO2 emissions to stay within new laws governing emissions. GE is also the parent company of NBC, whose news organizations have done nothing but pile on praise of Obama and his socialist views since well before the election. It’s hard to dismiss the possibility of some quid pro quo here, most likely illegal and certainly unethical. Madoff’s conspiracy of one only stole a few billion, mostly from wealthy investors. This conspiratorial relationship will steal trillions from all.
As for Robin, I’ve kept out of this one as well. I’ve already heard all of his arguments and don’t feel like debunking them all over again. I figure I’ll give others a chance. His AGW logic is so predictably illogical, that I usually have my next response ready before he’s even replied to the last one. I’ll give him credit for being consistent.
When playing wack-a-mole with an AGW proponent, science is the best hammer. Using their science is even better. Like Brian, I would love to engage in a public debate with Hansen. If such a debate were televised on a network, or even the science channel, the AGW debate would be all but over.
George
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Wikipedia refers to the Medieval Warm Period as a period of warm weather in the “Northern Atlantic” region. Not a global phenomenon. A few trees in a small part of Russia, on the other hand.
10
The descriptions under the figures note the date of the change. One need then only go to that point in time in the comments. However, I’ll agree that it could have been made clearer.
Steve caught his own error and flagged it himself for the whole world to see. Even though his complete code and methodology were there for everyone else to see and use, no one caught it for over 24 hours. You are comparing apples and oranges in your complaint and it still amounts to a red herring.
There’s no crime in being wrong. There is something wrong when a scientist has so little faith in his work that he feels a need to stonewall to prevent proper review, or if his ethics are so challenged that he’s more concerned about grants than the truth (Briffa, Mann, Steig, et al).
What you are seeing on Climate Audit is how science should operate — totally open and transparent. It’s not something that you should be complaining about.
10
Heck the city of Chicago has a healthy peregrine population. Seems the tall buildings are rather like the cliffs they like to nest in and there’s plenty of pigeons to eat.
I was stationed at Fort Sheridan, north of Chicago back in the late 80’s when they used the clock tower prepping young falcons for reintroduction to the wild. To everyone’s surprise, once the birds were old enough, they relocated themselves to downtown Chicago rather than flying north to the more rural Wisconsin. It left a lot of naturalists scratching their heads.
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I must assume that you at least perused the post since you brought it up.
JeffId says:
Seems to me that Jeff’s the lead paragraph above explains the reasoning for the truncation and it is statistically sound reasoning.
What you are witnessing in the exchange is statistical testing of the impacts of including/excluding data. You have to read the entire discussion and not look at any one graph in isolation.
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Charles Bourbaki wrote:
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JLKrueger wrote:
I don’t understand that. How are temperature anomalies less easily validated than any other way of presenting the data?
Anomalies are good because they self correct for different temperature collection times and methodologies by the different contributing countries.
The links to such are on their website.
Really. I hadn’t heard that. Do you have a source?
Really. I hadn’t heard that either. Do you have a source?
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tom wrote:
Thank you.
I think that I have been particularly generous with responding to points raised. Many of my questions go unanswered.
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J.L.Kruger, yes, I saw that “after” I had already posted. Thanks, sorry about that…just want to keep you straight and narrow!! 🙂
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co2isnotevil, yes, I’ve read the same thing and you see it in their advertisments. Yes, the only thing I wonder is Robin on a “agenda” or is he so High in the Clouds that he cannot see anyone on the ground…
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Robin Grant, your slander of Steve McIntyre (“a long history of science denial”) remains unsupported by you and is frankly absurd and abhorrent. If you cannot support such an ad hominem you are indeed a troll.
I also notice that you haven’t denied that you are this Robin Grant:
http://www.linkedin.com/in/robingrant
…i.e. an astroturfer. Please deny this is you and I will apologize. If are indeed this person, your not only a troll, you’re a professional troll.
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Lazlo wrote:
I have shown that as far as the scientific press and opinion was concerned that it did. I have linked to Nature (no less), and news articles as well as the blogs of neutral scientists such as Pielke jr., who used almost those words exactly.
You are simply wrong on this point. The National Academies gave Mann et al a near complete vindication.
I don’t think that it is true that it cannot be supported by the published literature. Certainly studies show a globally coherrent influence on range changes, and although ecology is a long way from my field my impression from the CSIRO,is that of the four horsemen of ecology: climate change, habitat destruction, pollution and over exploitation, climate change is considered the most extensive.
The paper I linked to above estimating the extinction risk from coming climate change does also tell of very wide extinction risk.
But I am also aware of work done in Australia desert and freshwater ecosystems, and climate change has effected a very broad overturning of ecosystems; although it is indirectly global warming; the consequent changes to rainfall pattern has effected that destruction.
Subantarctic marine communities are also being destroyed from the temperate end, and this is directly attributable to water temperatures rising to points that allow temperature predators.
And of course many large coral reefs are seeing bleaching (which is the death of the symbiote), and this is also directly attributable to increase in ocean temperature. And that in turn stresses extensive oceanic food webs, because so many oceanic species spend at least some part of their life cycle on coral reefs.
That aside, you make a straw man. I did not say that I was familiar with the scientific literature, I said that the ecological systems were stressed. That’s not the same thing.
Wegman didn’t even look at universal climatologists, much less suggest that there was a conspiracy. It did map working relationships between people who had worked on Northen Hemisphere Temperature reconstructions over time intervals of the order of magnitude of a millennium.
Climate science has tens or hundreds or thousands of publishing scientists. I don’t believe that there is a global conspiracy. And I think that groups of people have a tendency to propose conspiracy theories when they believe something that is not true.
See: Moon landings, Area 51, 9/11, vaccinations, big pharma, and such.
He runs a site with an editorial position that is counter to accepted science.
Fair point. Not all of them are independent.
Most of them are independent. There are ice core ones, There are ocean sediment ones. There are bore hole ones. There are even tree ring ones.
Many are mutli-proxy.
The basic point is that there are sufficiently many that even if this data set is found to be biased, it won’t change what we know of past climate in the 1ky time frame.
Well, I am only aware of such articles. Feel free (even welcome) to supply some counter examples.
That was essentially what he was saying.
He was making the fallacious argument from ignorance that because we don’t know what the temperature is in the upper atmosphere, the whole science of global warming was faulty. And he further assumes that since it is faulty it must be faulty strongly in the direction of overestimating warming.
The paraphrase is pretty fair.
It is indeed settled on that point. As has been shown in the Oreskes literature review that of the 928 peer reviewed papers 1993-2003 with the ISI keywords “global climate change” not one took the position that the warming is not anthropogenic.
And ecological studies show its growing effect on biological systems.
You will also find that the position of every scientific organisation of international standing also does not refute that the current warming is anthropogenic, and by far the majority specifically support it.
So for any reasonable meaning of settled, the science is settled. The peer reviewed literature shows it to be true, with only very minor (read much less that 1%) of papers refuting, and scientific organisations in consensus.
It is what Jones said. “Jones says he can’t fulfil the requests because of confidentiality agreements signed in the 1990s with some nations, including Spain, Germany, Bahrain and Norway, that restrict the data to academic use.” (nature)
You seem to be claiming that Jones is lying, not me. I think you’re probably wrong there too.
Temperature reconstructions from ice cores show the speed of climate change. The rapid part of ice core data is the end of glaciations, during which time temperatures rise about 12°C over about 6 millennia. That’s about 0.2°C per century. The current warming is ten times that. (For and ice core temperature record see:High-resolution carbon dioxide concentration record 650,000-800,000 years before present)
Okay, you got me. I exaggerated when I said past temperature reconstructions were independent. They include independent studies.
You are completely mistaken on all your other points.
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Guy, Post 198, I would like to add to your list is stress on the Tree from high winds,lost limbs, lightning strike really slows a tree down, another tree falls into another causing stress. Guy, you have a great list. I know this because I owned and produced Maple Syrup for over 23 years. You have to have interest in your trees because we are farming them for their sap.
Interesting to note that when you tap (or drill a 7/16 dia. hole) into the tree to recover it’s sap, you put the tree into stress. This first year will be the best year if the tree is a good producer. The larger the tree, the more taps you can have. Hence a little more stress. If you continue to tap this tree every year, the amount of sap decreases overall but stabalizes. Thru research, we found out that if you skip a year on a group of trees, which we call a “Bush”, the amount of sap increases the next year. Towards the end we would rotate our Woods or if the woods was big enough, we would rotate within the woods. Trees, like any plant, responds to injuries. Just like Humans do.
The main point is anything that causes interference in its growth will affect the tree. Oh, I just thought of one more thing, genetics is definitely a big thing within the confinds of each tree. I’ve seen 16″ diameter trees fill a five gallon bucket with one tap in less than 24hrs, where the tree next to it with four taps only does half! A four tap tree is anything in diameter of 21″+. I could go on but I hope I’ve made my point!
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A little further investigation:
http://www.linkedin.com/in/robingrant
is Managing Director of “we are social”, a web marketing firm that engages in…
“online reputation management, conversation response, corporate blogs, advocacy programmes, influencer campaigns, community building, social applications and conversational campaigns.”
…on behalf of its clients. One of its eight listed clients is WWF/UK, i.e. “the world’s leading independent environmental organisation”.
And this is the guy besmirching Steve McIntyre’s reputation?? He’s a *paid astroturfer* here conducting a “conversational campaign” on behalf of WWF.
We’ve all heard the endless accusations that “deniers” like Joanne, Steve McIntyre, and Richard Lindzen are in the pay of the “oil companies”. This is one of the guys who’s *paid* to insert those allegations into blogs like this.
You’re wasting your time talking to him. He’s far worse than a troll.
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JLKrueger wrote:
You make a straw man. My position is not that I can demonstrate that McIntyre is wrong, it is that I find it quite credible that dendrochronological data that is discarded for confounding factors such as drought, nutrition, clouding … whatever reasons would be that data that shows lower growth.
Therefore I am not compelled to believe that this is any evidence of bias. It could also be correct treatment of data.
But McIntyre is not one to sit on his hands when he has some unverified point, especially when the timing is such that the victim of his attack won’t be able to respond until this is part of the climate science denial folklore whether it is true or not.
But I don’t say that it is not true. I only say I don’t see that it is yet.
00
Lionell Griffith wrote:
There’s enough irony there to start a blacksmiths.
00
It is neat how results can be discussed even before publication with scientific blogging.
ClimateAudit is not really an example of such.
00
Robin,
Either deny you’re the astroturfing Robin Grant or stop spamming this board on behalf of your client. And no sock puppets defending you, please.
00
Rod Smith wrote:
Relative to the baseline, which is, for the Hadley data, the 1961-1990 average for that time of year.
00
Robin,
No denial so I’ll take that for agreement. Your own ethics page says:
“When we outreach to a blogger or participate in a community we will always be clear about who we are and who we represent. We will never ask anyone to say anything they do not believe.”
http://wearesocial.net/ethics/
How about it? Why not ‘fess up and have an honest dialog here? I can actually see your participation here as acceptable if you at least admit you’re a proxy for a paid viewpoint.
00
More red herring BS! You’ve got no business lecturing others on the science if you don’t understand it. Quit the BS and get back on the topic of Yamal.
Maybe you should read what’s posted before you spout this outlandish nonsense. It isn’t complete or reproducible as written, but then perhaps you don’t really understand it either. You are still throwing out a red herring. Yamal, that’s the topic.
I’m not chasing your red herrings Robin and I’m not going to play service to your “cognitive dissonance” or deliberate ignorance of the controversy surrounding Phil Jones and HadCRU.
So when are you going to actually rebut Steve McIntyre? Show us what is wrong with his analysis.
Yamal is the topic. Get back to the topic and put up or shut up!
Folks this is classic Robin Grant. He’s throwing out tidbits on everything except the topic in question. The closest he’s come to being on topic was his opening ad hominem attack on Steve McIntyre. He’s yet to produce a single valid criticism of McIntyre’s methodology, code or statistics.
Careful folks, don’t slip on all the red herrings Robin Grant is throwing out.
00
More ad hominem. You are incapable of refuting the analysis, so you resort to ad hominem. Why not just admit it Robin? The math is clearly way beyond your skill set. Prove me wrong with a detailed refutation where you provide your methodology and code.
Put up or shut up.
00
Robin Grant said:
“But McIntyre is not one to sit on his hands when he has some unverified point, especially when the timing is such that the victim of his attack won’t be able to respond until this is part of the climate science denial folklore whether it is true or not.”
Projecting a bit there, aren’t you? Steve McIntyre’s not anyone’s hired attack dog. Implying as you seem to be that Steve timed his announcement around Briffa’s illness is a pretty far stretch, and I suspect gives us some insight into the way you plan your own campaigns…
00
OK, that’s your judgement on the matter, and of course you are entitled. Would you at least conclude that any researcher should:
[A] should make available for review ALL of the data that was available to them, including the data rejected by “confounding factors”.
[B] clearly document the criteria by which any data was rejected.
This is the only way that any independent and detailed peer review is even possible. Allowing review means that each reader is also entitled to make their own judgement on what they think is reasonable and plausible rather than being told, “just trust me”. After all, if you feel that you should be allowed to decide what you trust and why, then on what basis do you deprive another human of their ability to do the same?
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Denny:
Yes, that is me.
Richard
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“Using the annual series, the average temperature for the 90s is +0.2286K. The average for the 00s so far is +0.4227K. That’s 0.194°C warming so far; with 2010 still to go.”
I wonder how much of that 0.194 is error, how much is heat island effects, how much is solar variability and how much is due to the strong PDO at the end of the 20th century. Only after those have all been accounted for (not that they can entirely be accounted for given limited understanding), would I be looking for some additional “forcing”. Even so, I would further need to account for the obviously fraudlent activities of certain activist scientists when generating their data (unfortunately).
00
Kasmir,
Ad hominems are just as unattractive, no matter what side of the fence they are thrown from.
00
Well at least we got you back on topic.
Ah poor Robin, alas it is you who doth produce the strawman in the context of McIntyre’s analysis, for no one denies that these other factors can affect tree rings. They are factors that make use of dendo science so dodgy when applied to climate studies.
But sadly, your heroes failed to explain how they differentiated in their original papers. Given the stonewalling on releasing information on which tree ring sets were used, let alone failure to define what their selection criteria were, your defense is a strawman.
Ah, the nyah-nyah defense. Sad. It becomes self-evident that you don’t understand McIntyre’s analysis at this point.
Nope, that’s the whole point that has been demonstrated with the analysis. If you can’t follow the analysis, as clearly you can’t, then mayhaps you should let go and wait for the great and powerful Gavin to try his hand. If he does.
Kindly demonstrate how McIntyre’s analysis is wrong/unverified. His code and methodology are out there for you use. Instead of running your mouth about it, prove it. Now that you’ve gone down that path with the above statement, you do have an obligation to back it up.
The second half of your assertion is more ad hominem. McIntyre tried for years to get the data. Nor was he aware of Briffa’s ailment until people started wondering about Keith’s silence. Once Steve found out about it, he started snipping comments about Briffa’s silence and notified his readers as to why Briffa is not responding. You can’t rightfully impugn his integrity on that point.
That is to say you don’t understand the analysis. You don’t know. Fine, then sit back and learn. Lay off the herrings and ad hominems. I like herring, mind you, just not the red ones.
00
Good grief, is this Robin Grant character some sort of professional apologist? As a scientist I’ve never read so much squirming tripe ever – from his incomplete understanding of statistics, to even suggesting the brevity of papers excludes mention of elephant-in-the-room variables.
What is his next occupation – professional mourner at funerals? The AGW and a few of its proponents may be his first job.
00
Steve, in all fairness I don’t think you can classify Kasmir’s question as “ad hominem”. After all, he is just asking Robin to either confirm or deny that he is a particular person. If he is not that Robin Grant, why doesn’t he just say so and be done with it?
00
Yeah, that’s generally why people go into ecology, optics, geology, meteorology, atmospheric physics, statistics and engineering. It’s a wonder there’s any life on earth left after a couple of centuries of this evil “science” stuff.
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Arthur Dent wrote:
I couldn’t find where they said that. Do you have a link or citation?
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Joanne Nova wrote:
And many don’t.
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Isn’t he ill?
00
It baffles me to see some people rejecting Steve Mcintyre’s observations. A die hard will certainly have trouble swallowing their pride but in the end they will be forced to concede both the truth in Steve’s analysis and the frailty of climate science.
In not doing so, they perpetuate what has been speculated all along; that their positions are entirely emotional and their reasoning childish and over protective. Textbook psychology of a fraud.
It’s amusing to look back when the world was whipped up in a frenzy and all the hysteria began. Didn’t you guys find the immediacy of world leaders’ actions alarming? This should have been the first sign that the AGW campaign was insincere but I think it was sheer opportunism.
00
People, even if Robin is an astroturfer paid for by WWF I would allow him to post here as long as he is polite.
Bear in mind that there are quite a few “Robin Grants” out there, it’s not an uncommon name, and that ultimately whether he is paid or not is not relevant to his arguments.
I understand your frustration with the way the conversation loops around the important points without being pinned down, and how it’s illogical that anyone can defend that a graph that: censored data they said they included; produced the same shape even with random data; and used data that was hidden until an FOI legal case dragged it out (scientific misconduct); used proxies that were inappropriate, and spliced two datasets together artificially… Mann’s actions were indefensible scientifically.
But attack the message, pin Robin down logically.
> McIntyre has a long history of science denial, so my guess is that he is once again wrong.
So Robin: Give us an example of any evidence McIntyre “denies”?
> He runs a site with an editorial position that is counter to accepted science.
Do you realize that your statement above means that anyone who finds a problem with “accepted science” (whatever that is) is therefore automatically wrong by your reasoning, thus ensuring that Robins-world-of-science will never have any more revolutions? Do you realize how this breaks laws of logic and kills scientific endeavor dead? Will you admit that that was a slip?
Sceptics: We need both sides here in the comments. By definition there are no rational AGW believers for us to play this debate out with, so we have to make do. Robin is what he is, and for the most part he is polite, which I’m grateful for. He is outnumbered here. He also admits it when he gets a number wrong (mostly) and deserves some kudos for that.
Right now, Robin might be the only person (apart from Tom on CA) defending Briffa.
His dedication faced with 20 of us against him is admirable, even if his logic is not.
In fact Robin helped me write Climate Money. True. My replies to a few of his questions were edited and included and helped to make the paper that much stronger and that much more damning for the apologists for Giant Banks and Big Bureaucracy. … Thanks Robin. You think of questions I could not possibly come up with.
00
Yeah, The media are pretty evangelistic over there.
But this makes for interesting viewing. All the hallmarks of the pious. Mob rule, diversionary tactics and dismissal, parading as fact. Not that Durkin’s film was without its flaws.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeQfD2DNnUQ
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kuhnkat wrote:
That’s not true. Amongst people who understand current climate science, and amongst ecologists, respectively.
Probably over 99% of papers published in the last 16 years on the subject agree that the current warming is anthropogenic. The claim that it is not accepted can only be made in ignorance of the scientific literature.
Yes it is anthropogenic, and it is caused mostly by greenhouse gases and most of that by CO2.
It can be shown from first principles that if you increase the concentration of greenhouse gasses, you increase the greenhouse effect. It has also been shown that of the things affecting the climate since the industrial revolution, greenhouse gasses apply the strongest forcing – and CO2 the greatest of those.
It can be shown from isotope ratios that the increase in CO2 is from the combustion of fossil fuels. It is therefore anthropogenic.
None of this is in any serious question in the scientific literature. This is why there is such a consensus in the published articles.
Unless there are some serious engineering solutions instigated to reverse global warming we are not expecting another glaciation for about half a million years.
No, I’m not. But any biologist with tell you that the current extinction rate cannot be sustained.
No they’re not. Adversity that creates a new selection pressure drops population and genetic diversity, which are the requirements for finding an evolutionary solution to the next problem.
So you may find that a biological system will adapt to a particular cause of adversity, but this is not improvement in any normal meaning of the word. It is a hit on the creature’s genetic diversity and it takes a long time to recover from.
Well we have seen a 29% drop in biodiversity over the 35 years to 2005.
Yes there is. Speed of warming.
But most importantly, the effect of humanity on ecosystems does not occur, and cannot be calculated in isolation.
The reason that we have lost 29% of populations over a 35 year interval is climate change combined with pollution combined with over exploitation combined with habitat loss. It’s fine that species of birds are no longer migrating because it is warm enough in the north over winter, but birds can fly, and so can easily change their range to fit a rapidly changing climate.
No so for an echidna in Ku-ring-gai national park that has to migrate south to Royal national park … There’s 50km of sydney to cross, full of road and rail and fences and walls and kids and dogs and loud noises.
A eucalypt faces a similar problem to the echinda.
Snigger, Chortle, Snarf.
They obviously interact, but climate is the major cause of the loss of amphibians. There was a possum that was the first mammal whose loss was the first mammal that could be attributed to climate change. (It’s range was reduced as it had to migrate further up mountains, until there was no mountain left and it went extinct).
But the list of amphibians alone is some hundreds of species.
There are a lot of Australian desert species that haven’t been seen in several years, but it is difficult to know if they can be called extinct yet. Certainly if they are extinct the cause was primarily climate change.
And the loss of fresh water species is well known, which again is primarily to the loss of rivers, which is due to climate change.
I’m not sure if anyone has composed a list. I’ll have a google and see if you like. It would probably be a bit long for posting here though. And of course for each one that is known there will be many unnamed species that will have also gone.
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Joanne
I agree that things should be diplomatic. The warmist’s are frail and need our love and acceptance. Let’s show them that we can be benevolent. 😉
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Kasmir wrote:
His editorial position is counterscietnific.
This logical fallacy is called “Appeal to Common Practice“.
I also suspect that it is an over-generalisation.
He probably accepts that the solar system is heliocentric too. I didn’t say that he denied all science.
However, he still has a long history of science denial.
I call shenanigans. ArXve and Energy and the Environment are emphatically not peer reviewed.
Please cite some of these several papers.
I maintain that it is true.
00
I would like to join in the question posed in Post #222. Assuming for the sake of argument that Briffa chose to use some Yamal cores and not use others because of “confounding factors,”
(1) Do you agree he should have disclosed that he was doing this?
(2) Do you agree that he should have explained why he was doing this?
(3) Do you agree that he should have made all the data available (both what he used and what he did not use)?
00
I doubt it. He’s got a different face from me for starters.
Also, most people will know me as a Sydneysider, and this chap seems to like in London. Which is not quite the opposite side of the world, but it’s pretty close. Also he seems to have studied Aeronautical Engineering, whereas I did Discrete Mathematics.
So, overall, I would guess ‘no’.
I suppose I should update that I have moved to Perth to take up a short contract. The Perth Skeptics in the Pub seem to be a small but energetic group that meets with the Perth atheists on the last Sunday of the month.
Good for the London Robin Grant. He seems to be doing quite well for himself.
I would say that the photographs are dissimilar. But then I’m familiar with what my face looks like in full face.
I recommend steering clear of climate denialist blogs then. Perhaps a source more like this:Nature Reports Climate Change would be safer.
Who’s Robin Cook?
Okay.
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Henry chance wrote:
Hmm. Creative fiction.
Why would denialists have to resort to creative fiction?
I guess reality doesn’t hold their world view too well.
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davidc wrote:
I am a little more loathe to post links here in long posts than I am on boards with less aggressive filtering.
But if you ask me for a link I will attempt to provide it. Some links seem to send the post in to Joanne’s spam though, so it is not always possible. The Oreskes essay at science is an example. There are some other key global warming papers at sciencedirect that appear to do the same thing.
That sound’s like I put the wrong link in. In which post did I do that?
Which data is that?
00
Robin:
I am ignoring all your igorant and false assertions concerning what is science and what is and what is not in the literature.
But I demand that you withdraw the lie and apologise for the lie you provided when you said:
“ArXve and Energy and the Environment are emphatically not peer reviewed.”
Energy & Environment papers ARE peer reviewed. I am on the Editorial Board of Energy & Environment (E&E) and its peer review processes and procedures are much more stringent than e.g. Nature.
Indeed, the scandal being discussed here could not have happened if Mann, Bradly, Hughes and Briffa had published in E&E (instead of Nature) because E&E peer review would have insisted on full disclosure (as happened when Briffa published in Phil. Transact B. of the RS).
Admit the lie and apologise for it immediately.
I expect to see the apology has been posted here when I return next week.
Richard
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Richard s Courtney (The Funny Guy) wrote:
Not in terms of results. A very serious flaw would be making an inappropriate choice of selection criteria.
A minor flaw would be failure to state a selection criteria, if it were sound and well justified.
But that is pretty obvious … to most people.
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Richard s Courtney (The Funny Guy) wrote:
It looked like MBH 99 to me. The error bars are quite distinctive.
Are you sure you know what you’re talking about?
They did however publish MBH 99 twice. Figures 6.20 and TS.10.
Your conclusion that this was because it had been completely discredited by then is pretty funny when you consider that. How many other graphs appeared twice in the Fourth Assessment Report, when they were reported on already in the Third assessment report? I challenge you to find one that appeared three times.
Quite apart from my careful explanation above that it was soundly supported.
But I see your world view is not susceptible to evidence, except on counterscientific blogs.
That headline from Nature news again:
Academy affirms hockey-stick graph
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Errata: The figures in which Mann et al’s hockey stick appears are are TS.20 and 6.10, not TS.10 and 6.20.
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Robin, there’s something unsettling about you posting prolifically on a skeptic blog. Can you be a little less hyperbolic and a little more concise? And out of respect, I’d appreciate it if you stopped calling skeptics denialists. The former is an endearing trait, the latter a religious term for heresy.
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Personally, I feel that I am more than just a skeptic. To me, a skeptic is someone who believes the warmists have not proven their case. I would go further than that. I am reasonably satisfied that the CAGW Hypothesis is flat out wrong.
By the way Robin, I am still waiting for answers to my questions:
Assuming for the sake of argument that Briffa chose to use some Yamal cores and not use others because of “confounding factors,”
(1) Do you agree he should have disclosed that he was doing this?
(2) Do you agree that he should have explained why he was doing this?
(3) Do you agree that he should have made all the data available (both what he used and what he did not use)?
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There’s a difference between skepticism and an invalid hypothesis. Steve McIntyre conducts himself professionally and methodically and tends to let the science do the talking. Rarely do we see conjecture from his posts and if there is, he makes sure it’s clear.
Steve’s work is admirable but it doesn’t ‘disprove’ the existence of climate change, it discredits the ‘evidence’ presented by the IPCC and its representatives. It puts the theory in an passive state where it always should have been.
Sure, I believe AGW is fictitious but that’s just my gut feeling and I’m not a scientist. Skepticism is healthy but it is not a means to an end. I’m sure even good scientists begin with a ‘gut feeling’. It’s what they do with it that counts.
I kinda feel that you’re just amusing yourself debating with Robin.
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” Steve McIntyre conducts himself professionally and methodically and tends to let the science do the talking. Rarely do we see conjecture from his posts and if there is, he makes sure it’s clear.”
I agree. If McIntyre is a denier like me, he hasn’t said so. At least as far as I know.
“I kinda feel that you’re just amusing yourself debating with Robin.”
Well obviously I don’t expect to convince him of anything. I do debate people mainly for the amusement but also because I learn stuff once in a while.
Anyway, if McIntyre is anti-science, it really says bad things about the state of science.
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If I am a denier, it is from healthy skepticism. Robin seems to think blogging it to death is a substitute for science.
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2009/09/30/message-to-readers/
Tamino is now playing the victum card.
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SamG: Steve’s work is admirable but it doesn’t ‘disprove’ the existence of climate change ….
That the climate changes is not at issue and never has been at issue. The climate has changed since the big bang and will continue to change until the end of time. What is at issue is the contention that the Earth’s climate is changing more rapidly and more extremely now than in the past 1000 years (particularly in the direction of increasing global temperature) AND that said change is caused by man’s emission of CO2 as he lives, breaths, and uses energy to enhance his life on earth. It is the assertion that the various Hockey Stick presentations proves or even supports the above contention that is totally demolished (aka disproved) by Steve’s work on procedural, scientific, mathematical, and ethical grounds.
Part of being an effective scientific skeptic is to be very careful, very explicit, and very open about the things you are discussing. I suggest you check your premises and insure you are saying what you really mean to say.
Yes, gut feel is used by real scientists. It tells you that you need to look and approximately where to look. It does not tell you what you will find when you do look nor how to interpret what you see when you see it. That takes a rigorous application of reason with as much objectivity as you can muster.
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I do believe we’ve established that and it may excuse him from replying to the current analysis. However, it doesn’t excuse almost TEN YEARS of stonewalling!
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Ye gads folks! Why do you keep falling for Robin’s red herrings? He’s got everyone going around the tree on everything except the issues in the original post!
As Joanne put it above, “…attack the message, pin Robin down logically.”
When you do, you find he simply doesn’t answer. Instead he likes to go for easy pickins’ with those who chase his red fish.
With good reason! This is one sticky tar baby for the AGW crowd! 😉
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“Part of being an effective scientific skeptic is to be very careful, very explicit, and very open about the things you are discussing”
I agree 100%. There is a lot of ambiguity in the discussion over what exactly is being debated. Is the climate changing? Have global surface temperatures increased since 1950? Will mankind’s activities affect the climate? Will they affect global surface temperatures? Will mankind’s CO2 emissions cause an increase in global surface temperatures? Will mankind’s CO2 emissions cause an increase in global surface temperatures which increase will be greatly magnified by water vapor feedback?
The last question is the critical question. The warmist hypothesis is actually a compound claim, i.e. that mankind’s CO2 emissions will cause (and have caused) an increase in surface temperatures AND that increase will be (and has been) greatly magnified through water vapor feedback.
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From “Robin Grant”:
“McIntyre has a long history of science denial”
Outrageous ad hominem attack.
His editorial position is counterscietnific.
You rant. What is counter scietnific?
Blog your hear out buddy. You regurgitate stuff you google and lack any factual information.
You are not educated enought to know that extrololation of conclusions from tree rings means very little. Too many variables that influnece the rings and None of the variaBLES WERE OBSERVED.
On the other hand you insult S McIntyre. It is he that had trouble for 3 years getting all the data behind the claims. When people commit fraud, they sure don’t cooperate with providing evidence that will show the fraud.
http://wearesocial.net/what/
I am willing to avoid your urban viewpoints. It is just blogging.
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Robin Grant,
Steve Mc has a paper in the highly regarded Geophysical Review Letters.
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Briffa has put a comment on his web page.
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa/yamal2000/
What is interesting is his conciliatory tone.
“I note that McIntyre qualifies the presentation of his version(s) of the chronology by reference to a number of valid points that require further investigation.”
“Whether the McIntyre version is any more robust a representation of regional tree growth in Yamal than my original, remains to be established. “
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It is interesting to contemplate that global “climate” problems are always blamed on human activities somehow.
“Ice age” fears were promoted as being the result of aerosols, as from sulphate from coal combustion.
“Ozone holes” come from CFC.
“Evidence” for these for these “anomalies” can always be gathered – by ignoring conflicting evidence.
(Yes, folks, that “ozone layer gone from CFC” is junk science too.)
I think the whole thing is just a way to avoid addressing truly global problems – such intermittent famine in underdeveloped regions resulting from bad politics and warfare.
The UN has been quite impotent in dealing with such problems, so that organisation chose instead to invent a problem that could be addressed by developed nations handing over huge sums of money to the developing.
I think a reasonably good case could be built to establish the hypothesis, “The UN has been an abysmal failure.”
I think the case for that would be a lot stronger than the case for AGW
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Well, Keith Briffa has had a startling recovery and managed to post a rather bland, general response on his CRU web site.
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa/yamal2000/
While he questions McIntyre’s data selection, he offers no justification for his own. In fact, in the Briffa set, one tree (YAD06) overpowers the results of all the other trees in the set. We’re wondering why his study had nothing to say about that.
Briffa says, “We have not yet had a chance to explore the details of McIntyre’s analysis or its implication for temperature reconstruction at Yamal…”
Then this isn’t really a rebuttal of Steve McIntyre’s analysis, but a general response to the fact that his work is under attack.
He has nothing to say about ten years of stonewaling, which is the real issue and leads to questioning his ethics.
He still has to answer for the fact that he has not yet provided the metadata to go with the data. Nor has he adequately answer why, when finally force to archive the data, he provided the data in an obsolete punch-card data format.
And Tom P, one of Gavin’s thralls at Real Climate who’s been up to his knickers over at Climate Audit, has provided RC with a post…finally.
At CA Tom P sticks to arguing facts. His post at RC, however, goes quickly for what the RC crowd loves…ad hominem.
Tom P’s main defense is actually a red herring. Gee why do we keep seeing this from the AGW thralls?
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Ooo, don’t even get me going on that one Brian! It’s so blindingly obvious as to already have the status of “settled political history!”
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I can assure you I am not a sock puppet.
I would definitely qualify as a skeptic.
Ironically, one thing that made me such a skeptic was the attitude of the climate scientists over at RC, censoring the posts of contrary opinions.
This blog is thankfully NOT censoring Robin Grant’s posts. But I am dismayed by the the amount of non-factual factual responses to his posts.
Really, what difference does it make who he really is?
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“The UN has been an abysmal failure.”
You are judging them by your standards of being technically competent, wealth productive, life giving, and freedom loving. Clearly, they fail on all of those grounds.
To discover the real goals, look at actions and consequences but not at pretty words and pictures. The UN exists, continues to receive a huge stream of unearned (aka stolen) wealth, and is filled with petty dictators, tyrants, murders, criminals, and other parasitical types held to be equal in moral stature to the US, UK, et.al.
Their goal is to consume wealth, destroy freedom, run the free world into the ground, and to implement a world government with them in charge. They are well on their way to achieving their goal with the current US and UK governments cooperating in their own demise. THIS is NOT failure. It is a very successful disaster in process.
As always, success or failure is very dependent upon the goal and not at all dependent upon the words used to describe it.
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Henry chance:
October 2nd, 2009 at 12:28 am
“Tamino is now playing the victim card.”
Briffa managed a response
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/10/01/response-from-briffa-on-the-yamal-tree-ring-affair-plus-rebuttal/
Gavin and friends have put up a “robust” defense (lol).
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/09/hey-ya-mal/
which has been countered by Jeff Id
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/10/01/how-to-read-rc/
Isn’t this fun?
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Tom,
The question “who is Robin Grant” has already been answered by Robin Grant.
He’s an AGW apologist with a mean streak who has visited a contrarian web site to put up a non-existent defence for AGW and Briffa.
His questions about Briffa have been answered twelve times and he doesn’t like any of the answers so he moves on to other things and occasional trash mouthing of some sceptics.
He can’t get any more “factual” responses to his posts because there aren’t any more.
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BV – He’s an AGW apologist with a mean streak who has visited a contrarian web site to put up a non-existent defence for AGW and Briffa.
More to the point, even when you eliminate all proxies and just use direct measurements you still get a hockey stick, just one with a shorter handle.
How sad.
Lol.
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dT(t)/dt=kT(t) T(t=0)=To
=> T(t)=To exp[kt]
lol
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Thinking some more about the McIntyre analysis and hockey sticks, what is really interesting is not the fact that the Yamal chronology exhibits the hockey stick, but that the Schweinberger series (34 samples) does not. The Briffa Yamal series actually correlates with the increase in temperature with 20 century mercury records. So now I really am dying to know why the small Yamal sample was selected over the Polar Urals or the Schweinberger series, without the hind sight of knowing what temperature correlation was expected. If Briffa can’t explain that – he’s got some bad analysis to wiggle out of.
Either the larch tree rings are a good temperature proxy, or they are not. If they are, we got to use all the ones available. I can understand an argument for rejecting obviously diseased trees or something like that, but not for any other reason, because the major bulk of the reconstruction is from sub-fossil records alluvial deposit trees. Can’t reject living 20th century trees using some set of criteria that cannot be applied to the long dead trees.
The combination of the Yamal and Schweinberger is flat. If larch tree rings were a good proxy, I would expect they would reproduce the 20’th century warming of about a degree. Either they are not sensitive enough or they are a bad proxy for temperature (being sensitive to other factors like rainfall, shade,nutrients…).
In either case, the critical result from the McIntyre analysis is that the millennium that preceded the last century cannot be reliably reconstructed from the larch tree rings. Its the flatness of the handle that makes the hockey stick in the 20th century look unprecedented.
Now I have no reason to believe that this century was the warmest in the last millenium.
The Hantemirov and Shiyatov data, also discussed by Steve and Anthony (at WUWT) is consistent with flat as well, although it appears that Briffa inherited the data from the Russian team.
Cheers.
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We knew this was coming. Carbon Financial Instruments are now trading for 10 cents per metric tonne on the Chicago Climate Exchange. I wonder if the investors are reacting to the Hockey Stick Implosion news? As reported on WUWT, less than one month ago it was 25 cents a tonne, and a year ago it was over 1 dollar. The all time high was May 2008 at over 7 dollars a tonne
10 American copper pennies for a Metric tonne of carbon credits. The Hockey stick reaction is measurable on the market. Carbon trading seems to have the look and feel of a scam. Hershey’s chocolate candy which is also carbon saturated is selling for 8,800 dollars a metric tonne.
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Player, I think that’s a good point.
Anyway, it seems to me that any proxy study needs to have extremely clear selection criteria spelled out right in the study.
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Player,
You surmise that tree rings would demonstrate, ipso facto, there was a degree rise in temperature over the 20th century.
Your basis for the assumption there was a degree rise in temperature over the 20th century is:
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Couldn’t agree with you more!
Introducing a bias with selection criteria is nothing new – even very good scientists have fallen victim to that unwittingly. I am willing to grant Briffa the benefit of doubt on that. Maybe he had the best of intentions and really believes that his result is solid. What I fault him for is not disclosing his criteria, and not studying the sensitivity of his result with variation in the selection criteria – what we refer to as systematic error in experimental physics.
Someone else would have realized that moving a few trees in and out of the Yamal sample would make the signal appear and disappear if the data had been made public in a timely manner. That would have established the sensitivity of the result, and perhaps early realization that tree rings are tricky as a temperature proxy.
Its the fact that 10 years have passed to come to this day is what I find inexcusable. The other sordid aspect of this is that this, and other hockey sticks, have been politicized, so that make the stonewalling for 10 years very suspect.
I found the RC response with a large number of hockey sticks highly amusing – that all establish that the temperature increased in the 20 century – Doh! The mercury temperature record shows that!
Its the flat handle that has to be established, not the blade. Leave out bristlecone pines and Yamal series, and a variety of results emerge for the last millennium depending on the technique. Each technique has been critiqued in other forums. Some show unprecedented increase in the 20th century and others show that earlier periods may have been as warm too. The alarmist viewpoint is centered on the unprecedented behavior, and in my mind, that is far from established.
Cheers, K.
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Brian Valentine
“I think the whole thing is just a way to avoid addressing truly global problems – such intermittent famine in underdeveloped regions resulting from bad politics and warfare.
The UN has been quite impotent in dealing with such problems, so that organisation chose instead to invent a problem that could be addressed by developed nations handing over huge sums of money to the developing.”
I hadn’t thought of that. That is a particularly astute observation. And with all the money that Governments around the world have funnelled into Aunty UN they are complicit in the failure and will be well please to try to maintain the charade.
Now, if only we could prove the hypothesis.
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GISS, say. I have my serious doubts based on Anthony Watt’s work – but lets grant that there was some warming.
I’m not going to nit-pick if you say it was only 0.5 degrees.
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The basis for the conclusion that global temperatures were falling over the 20th century that was derived in the early 1970’s was, inter alia, melting of the Arctic that was observed over 1910’s – 1920’s, say. At the time, it was concluded that was a natual part of the arctic cycle. At best, I would say that the “temperature change over the 20th century is unknown until it was measured with some confidence.”
And that ain’t a whole long time.
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Just like to point out that in the latest thread at Climate Audit Steve claims:
“In a comment to the same post, I clearly stated my view that there was no crude cherrypicking of the type that Briffa accuses me of implying.”
Which wonders how a leading science-communicator comes up with the title for a blog post “Cherry Picking of the Highest Proportions.”
Science communication or whipping up a feeding frenzy?
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Also – in your black vs red spaghetti graph yo uclaim Biffra “Left out these 34” and instead “Biffres used 12″… when in fact the point at climate audit is that Steve is trying to demonstrate that the end result is highly sensitive to those last 12 trees, and if you use a different set of trees you get (apparently) a different result. There is NO claim that those other 34 trees provide a better result, or that Biffra “left them out”, or that they should have been used by Biffra, just that using a different set of trees produces a different result.
The flow on being not that there is debate about the hockey stick up turn at the end of the graph, which is confirmed by real 20th century technology, but that tree rings are a poor proxy for historic temperatures (as the 34 trees are in direct conflict with what we actually KNOW is happening), and thus the flat hockey stick handle is unreliable, and that is where claims that the MWP was not as warm as today are based.
There is a good debate going on at Climate Audit, with a response posted at real climate with a link to Biffra’s personal response… I’d recommend anyone with a genuine interest stick to those sites to track the debate and leave sites like this, and a range of other propaganda sites, to the ranters.
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One of these days I’ll spell Briffa correctly too.
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Matt, the “hockey stick” is a manufactured item.
It isn’t backed up by anything except the asumptions behind it – and those assumptions preclude any behaviour EXCEPT a “hockey stick” – the only possible variable in it is THE POINT AT WHICH the slope becomes very large.
My guess is that the midieval warming peoriod was left out intentionally because, the handle would come out way too short – thereby losing credibility.
Truthfully – how many people out reading this, can honestly say, that they believe that the “hockey stick” behaviour of the natural world escaped everyone’s attention,
– naturalists who have devoted their lives to studing this, how many can honestly say that they believe this could have come as some “remarkable discovery of one Michel Mann”?
Folks, that is just plain old IMPOSSIBLE
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http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa/yamal2000/
The Yamal ring-width chronology of Briffa (2000)
My attention has been drawn to a comment by Steve McIntyre on the Climate Audit website relating to the pattern of radial tree growth displayed in the ring-width chronology “Yamal” that I first published in Briffa (2000). The substantive implication of McIntyre’s comment (made explicitly in subsequent postings by others) is that the recent data that make up this chronology (i.e. the ring-width measurements from living trees) were purposely selected by me from among a larger available data set, specifically because they exhibited recent growth increases.
This is not the case. The Yamal tree-ring chronology (see also Briffa and Osborn 2002, Briffa et al. 2008) was based on the application of a tree-ring processing method applied to the same set of composite sub-fossil and living-tree ring-width measurements provided to me by Rashit Hantemirov and Stepan Shiyatov which forms the basis of a chronology they published (Hantemirov and Shiyatov 2002). In their work they traditionally applied a data processing method (corridor standardisation) that does not preserve evidence of long timescale growth changes. My application of the Regional Curve Standardisation method to these same data was intended to better represent the multi-decadal to centennial growth variations necessary to infer the longer-term variability in average summer temperatures in the Yamal region: to provide a direct comparison with the chronology produced by Hantemirov and Shiyatov.
These authors state that their data (derived mainly from measurements of relic wood dating back over more than 2,000 years) included 17 ring-width series derived from living trees that were between 200-400 years old. These recent data included measurements from at least 3 different locations in the Yamal region. In his piece, McIntyre replaces a number (12) of these original measurement series with more data (34 series) from a single location (not one of the above) within the Yamal region, at which the trees apparently do not show the same overall growth increase registered in our data.
The basis for McIntyre’s selection of which of our (i.e. Hantemirov and Shiyatov’s) data to exclude and which to use in replacement is not clear but his version of the chronology shows lower relative growth in recent decades than is displayed in my original chronology. He offers no justification for excluding the original data; and in one version of the chronology where he retains them, he appears to give them inappropriate low weights. I note that McIntyre qualifies the presentation of his version(s) of the chronology by reference to a number of valid points that require further investigation. Subsequent postings appear to pay no heed to these caveats. Whether the McIntyre version is any more robust a representation of regional tree growth in Yamal than my original, remains to be established.
My colleagues and I are working to develop methods that are capable of expressing robust evidence of climate changes using tree-ring data. We do not select tree-core samples based on comparison with climate data. Chronologies are constructed independently and are subsequently compared with climate data to measure the association and quantify the reliability of using the tree-ring data as a proxy for temperature variations.
We have not yet had a chance to explore the details of McIntyre’s analysis or its implication for temperature reconstruction at Yamal but we have done considerably more analyses exploring chronology production and temperature calibration that have relevance to this issue but they are not yet published. I do not believe that McIntyre’s preliminary post provides sufficient evidence to doubt the reality of unusually high summer temperatures in the last decades of the 20th century.
We will expand on this initial comment on the McIntyre posting when we have had a chance to review the details of his work.
K.R. Briffa
30 Sept 2009
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Richard S. Courtney, Post 223, I wish to say “Thank you” for stating this. I truely acknowledge what you state. I saved your Site for future reference.
Thank you for Confirming,
Best of Regards,
Denny
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Well, everybody has a right to speak for themselves, including Briffa,
I hope the man recovers his health; I couldn’t disagree with him more emphatically, and when he does recover I hope he has some good explanations for a pile of very poigniant questions that remain unanswered at this point
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Damien @ 280,
Irrelevant and immaterial.
The primary issue is the nearly decade long absence of availability of data, method, criterion of selection, quantity, and quality of data. Their long absence gives support to the assertion that the scientific ethics of Briffa and those who used his data to push their AGW (stop the future) agenda is more than a little questionable. This makes ANY conclusion they present highly suspect.
An important secondary issue is that a larger set of unselected data gives a startlingly different result. A result that is much more in line with the massively accumulated lines of evidence that the current warming is nothing special, unique, or extreme.
The thing about science is that one must consider ALL the evidence and not just a cherry picked subset that happens to fulfill a desired end result. This is particularly important when the clearly stated motive of the advocates of AGW (aka climate change) panic is to terminate man’s ability to use inexpensive high quality and high intensity energy. Which, if implemented would terminate modern technological civilization and the lives of the vast majority of the people currently alive.
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Brian (#267),
No, that’s not how Mann got his hockey stick. The hockey stick is a composite made up of a number of different proxies. He used Principal Component Analysis to select the proxies to include in the composite and to determine the relative weights of each. He set it up incorrectly, in effect introducing a bias in favour of hockey stick shaped proxies, which then combined give a hockey stick shaped composite.
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By the statistical weight he gave to each one of them, the change in temperature is proportional to the temperature.
That comes out to saying that the end result is exponential.
In his methodology it is not possible to get anything BUT a hickey stick, no matter where he overlaps proxies
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hockey
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Lionell you’re missing the point. Climate Audit is quite clear that there are no accusations of cherry picking data.
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Player (#268),
The central principle of dendrothermology is that some trees are good temperature proxies and some trees are not. Obviously you want to include the good ones in your composite proxy and exclude the bad ones. How to do that? You check each tree against the known instrumental temperature record. If it correlates, it’s a good tree and if it doesn’t it’s a bad tree. So what you are observing is not accidental, it’s “the method” in action.
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On a different matter, how many have read the IPCC Assessment Reports?
I have, and there is a noted difference between the Third and Fourth.
The biggest difference that I noted is, the removal of ambiguities in the Third, which were addresed in the Fourth or left out of the discussion entirely.
I maintain:
– The IPCC assessment reports are true and accurate
– Represent the best knowledge of the science known to that date
– The results are true but misinterpreted
– When interpreted correctly provide very strong evidence AGAINST greenhouse gas climate change.
I’m not the only one who has reached that conclusion, but I don’t know of anyone having written it up carefully.
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So what took you so long to speak up there Matt? Did you have to wait for your buddies at RC to start commenting so that you had some better scientific sounding lines?
I find it amusing that it’s ok for you to impart the motive of cherry-picking to others when it suits your arguments, as you’ve done here often enough.
Steve was explicit in his statement by saying crude cherry-picking.
What Steve said in the main thread was:
my emphasis added
The main problems with the Briffa studies are:
1. Nowhere does he explain his selection criteria
2. He failed to archive the data for almost ten years until cornered
3. What he archived was in an archaic punch-card format
4. He still has not produced the metatdata, which should have been part of what was eventually archived.
5. As a result of the above, several other researchers simply accepted his conclusions and incorporated what appears to be, on statistical grounds, a flawed study into their studies.
While Steve is always careful about imputing motive, items 1 – 4 would leave most normal observers questioning motive. If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and looks like a duck, usually it’s a duck. Except in the strange world of climate science where it is often an aardvark.
If you are going to nit-pick, at least be accurate. It’s not like you had to go far to get it right. The labels read: “Briffa used 12 tree-rings” and “He left out these 34 (averaged here in black).” There is nothing factually incorrect about Joanne’s labels.
No, Matt. Steve is pointing out that there is indeed a divergence problem where it was assumed that the Yamal set had no divergence problem.
Steve McIntyre says:
He’s not talking about just being different.
Say what? Are you implying that Briffa “left them in?” They aren’t in Briffa’s data set and he was not ignorant of their existance, ergo he left them out. What remains to be answered is, why?
Steve goes on to say:
So what Steve is pointing out is a major flaw in the RCS methodology as used by Briffa, even if unintentional.
Tree rings are a poor proxy. Gee, something lots of people on the skeptic side have argued for a long time. And no, the drastic uptick that forms the hockey stick blade is not confirmed by anything in modern technology. The “dramaticness” of the uptick is an artifact of presentation scale even when using GISSTemp, HadCRU or NOAA anomaly datasets. The veracity of those datasets is an entirely different topic.
Matt, you are a hypocrite of the first order. Gavin and the boys are allowing all sorts of invective at RC right now, if it reinforces their view. Gavin’s post is full of ad hominem, red-herrings, name-calling and heated sarcasm with very little real statistical rebuttal. The RC censors are deleting/rejecting posts from those who challenge him or his “Team” or those who simply ask embarassing questions.
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Steve is not making accusations, but that’s because it isn’t his style or his goal. He’s attacking the statistics because that is his field of expertise and interest.
For most observers, however, If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and looks like a duck, usually it’s a duck.
Except in the strange world of climate science where it is often an aardvark.
Indeed there are numerous references to cherry-picking by others at CA.
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I’m assuming you’re making allowance for the writer’s overexposure to the mineral couldifmite.
With weasel words, anything is possible. 😉
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Yes, that is what I mean.
And the Summaries for Policy Makers reflect nothing presented in the Reports themselves.
That was the purposeful design (or lack of knowledge) of one Rutu Dave.
(For jaw-dropping insight into the preparation of the Summaries, check out who she is and what she did. Why there was no screaming over that episode is unfathomable.)
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Brian (#293),
I agree. I had a disagreement with someone on the report. I said I thought it was balanced and contained the sort of qualifications I would expect in such a difficult area, but she said it was totally lacking in any balance at all. It emerged that she was talking about the SPM while I was talking about the body of the report. When I did look at the SPM it was totally unrelated to what I had been reading.
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davidc:
Sounds reasonable… but…. what if there are two variables that correlate with the ring growth patterns? In this case, both C02 and the 20’th century temperature (where we have an independent measurement) are monotonically (more or less) increasing, so the Yamal larch could be see the effect of one or the other, or both. So I can’t say the larch is a good temperature proxy – for all we know it is a good CO2 proxy and a terrible temperature proxy. Is there independent data that gives one reason to believe that tyhe larch isn’t sensitive to CO2?
Thanks, Cheers, K.
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davidc:
Did I misinterpret your answer? When you said “some trees are good temperature proxies” I presumed you meant some species of trees, not specific trees – right?
Cheers.
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Player,
Let me be clear at the outset, I think the method is flawed (but clever).
Yes, it can work down to the level of an individual tree. Tree 6 might have suffered a beetle attack and didn’t respond to elevated temperature, while Tree 7 escaped the insects. So Tree 7 is a good tree, Tree 6 a bad tree. Tree 8 might have lost a major limb in a storm, Tree 9 didn’t. So Tree 8 is out, Tree 9 is in. And so on for lots of events that might have had a different influence on one tree than on others. You don’t need to know these details concerning individual trees, “the method” (correlation with temperature records) tells you which ones to reject regardless of cause.
The correlation with CO2 you mentioned is one problem (but common to all methods relying on correlation) but there’s a deeper problem. If you take a large number of potential proxies, which are in fact unrelated to temperature over the period of instrumental temperature data, you would expect to see some go up, some go down and some stay the same. So if you decide that “goes up” is good (“goes down” works too, but that’s another story) you will always find some good trees (or other proxy). Now if (as I’m assuming) the proxy you’ve measured has nothing to do with temperature, the behaviour of the proxy (eg tree ring width) before the instrumental period should be up, down, the same … regardless of what was going on with the temperature at the time. So if you average these to get a composite proxy (supposedly better, because it appears to use a wider range of data) the period prior to the instrumental period will tend to be flat. That’s because for each proxy that went up there’s likely to be one that went down; averaging the two gives a value closer to “the same”, so flat. There’s the handle of the hockey stick. The blade is there because that’s how you selected the good proxies. Average across a collection of proxies that all go up you get an average that goes up. So the method guarantees a hockey stick provided there are at least some individual proxies that show a hockey stick shape.
But what if your proxies really were a good indicator of temperature? Well, in that case the handle of the stick would not be flat. We know in most parts of the world that temperatures have varied substantially over time (eg medieval warm period, historical fact) and a good proxy should show this, The fact that a composite proxy is a hockey stick, with a flat handle, shows that it is a poor proxy for temperature.
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davidc – may I suggest that your assertion that the MWP is a “historical fact” is not built on solid ground. Obviously if it were categorically a “fact” then all the temperature reconstructions are completely useless, as they don’t show them.
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I had a read of that, quite interesting but no explanation as to the details of the selection criteria.
If you go a google search on “Regional Curve Standardisation” you get this explanation:
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa/Briffa_HB_2008.pdf
It would seem that “Regional Curve Standardisation” is a statistical technique designed by Briffa to adjust for the typical tree lifecycle in a given region (implying that soil type, hours of sun, forest density, etc are all consistent for trees in a given region based on some grouping methodology). As far as I can discover, there is no explanation in this technique as to criteria for omission of samples. I would expect that most statistical techniques benefit from as many samples as possible, since the mean will take care of the exceptional cases.
The above PDF link also details many sources of bias in the final result, in many cases without providing a workaround for that particular bias, but one could presume that once you know the source of bias, perhaps that’s a first step to figuring out which samples to throw away. With a strong background in dendrochronology and a lot of dot joining, it would be possible to come up with some reasonable criteria for rejecting samples.
One obvious source of bias is that wood is primarily made out of CO2 and since we all accept that CO2 levels have been steadily rising, it doesn’t seem too difficult to believe in a direct bias coming from CO2. Briffa doesn’t discuss this, I’m sure it has been considered but in my mind it does make tree ring measurements very difficult for finding long term trends (no problem for finding a single cold year or warm year).
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In the debate between Joanne Nova and Robin Grant on this site, I did not see either of them point to the old but reliable barb; “follow the money”. A career can be enhanced by lying for a time. Many folkes have succeeded in obtaining grants and higher salaries by being part of a lie. Governtmental grants are forthcoming to those who lie in favor of the popular political position of the moment. Global Warming afficianatos get the money. Global Coolers get chilled out. Brrr.
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Actually no, there are strong seasonal variations in CO2 and during the 20th century the early years (1900 to 1910) showed a period of cooling, then another cooling period in the years approx 1940 to 1970. On top of that some years are randomly warmer than others.
Nothing even close to monotonic anywhere in the system, other than CO2 increase, and only then if you average it enough.
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If you hide something for a long time it is invariably the truth.
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C’mon guys, quit the latin quips. You sound like David Brent.
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Joanne Nova: October 1st, 2009 at 2:35 am…
No genius maybe, but…
Login as “admin”, then on the “Dashboard”, find “Plugins”, “Add New”. Use the serach facility to search for “TinyMCEComments”.
When TinyMCEComments appears, click on “install”; it doesn’t install straightaway but shows you a description, installation procedure, sceenshot etc.
Check the screenshot to see if it’s what you wanted.
Good luck; davblo2
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All the temperature reconstructions are not missing the MWP, only the ones trying to prove “unprecedented” warming. The MWP is on very solid ground since there are written records of the people who lived during that time.
The only real value of proxies is to create a very generalized picture of past climate. It’s absolute nonsense to be producing outputs talking about tenths of a degree temperature anomalies based upon proxies as some researchers have done.
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Actually the technique originated in the 1930’s, but Briffa does get credit for “popularizing” it.
The history of RCS is described in the book “Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the Last 2,000 Years, National Academies Press, 2006, page 48.
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Joe G,
I’m afraid there really was no “debate;”
– it was a hopelessly lopsided discussion in Joanne’s favour without so much as a peep from Robin to dispute any point she made
: (
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Tel wrote:
Fair enough. My question was more conceptual – my intention was not to make an assertion on what the actual variation of CO2 and T were over the last century. For the record, I am a big fan of Anthony Watts and his work on WUWT, and have plenty of reasons to doubt the GISS/Hadley version of world temperature. But it isn’t germane to my question.
Pick any two variables that affect a proxy – say A and B. The proxy then is C=f(A,B), which I can actually measure, and the signal S=g(C)is estimated from the proxy measurement. My point is that one can never infer from measuring C whether A or B or both cause the change in C. All the changes in C may be caused by B alone, in which case C is not a good proxy for A. One equation, 2 unknowns. I have to a priori know the affect of B on C, and then perhaps I can deconvolute that using analytical techniques and get the true relationship of A to C. Or use more than one proxy to eliminate the effect of B.
So as both CO2 and Temperature affect ring data, ring data alone cannot be used as a proxy for the temperature. That means that the Briffa conclusion that the 20th century warming is unusually high is invalid, regardless of what the tree ring data shows. He cannot draw any conclusion about temperature either in the 20th temperature or the millennium before it.
Makes me think all tree ring analyses that rely of rings alone are suspect. The Loehle and MuCullogh 2008 type reconstructions with no ring data would seem more robust.
Cheers, K.
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davidc wrote:
That would bias the selection, as we only have a mercury temperature record for the 20’th century. I would have to have some way to reject sub-fossil and alluvial deposit trees using the same “cuts” to this to be an unbiased sample. But as we have no independent temperature record, such a set of criteria cannot be formulated. The only clean way to start is to assert that larch trees are good proxies (whic the arent because of the CO2 effects) and accept all larch trees in a given region. Which is what Steve McIntyre did.
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I would like to encourage everybody to go to this thread on real climate (the thread related to this one),
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/09/hey-ya-mal/comment-page-6/#comment-137002
and reply to MarkB’s post #262, with words to the effect,
“This is likely because your moderator deletes any post that is in opposition to his own views. Only by appearing to be in favor of AGW can you get unmoderated status.”
The moderator, Gavin, is acting like a troll who requires you to pay homage to the AGW religion before he will grant unmoderated status.
His moderating technique is to delete anything that is counter to his flawed perspective about AGW. He has deleted my last few posts, all of which stuck to the science and none of which were inflammatory to anyone, or that talked about anything thing that I could not back up with solid data and analysis. I suspect he added me to a delete with prejudice list. I can only praise Joanne for not treating those with opposing views who post in this forum in the same manner. Feel free to tell him that if he is interested in understanding the climate that he should let me post without moderation.
George
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co2isnotevil: …if he is interested in understanding the climate….
I suggest we need to give up that fond hope. They DO understand but are more interested in their not so hidden agenda than in discovering and understanding the truth. The argument over AGW (aka climate change) has gone way past innocent error, past mere fraud for personal gain, into a full force attempt to take over and, as a consequence, destroy everything that is worthwhile and good.
I will say it again, they do not mean well. They mean to do great harm to anything that is even remotely related to man’s existence as a fully functional human being. Their intent is to return us to a state less than that of a chimpanzee.
Don’t look at their words. Simply look at their actions and the necessary consequences that will result. You will thereby see their purpose.
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Lionell,
Yes, I know their purpose. It’s time for this to be widely exposed. We can’t change their purpose, but we can let others, who are blind to the deception, understand what they are all about. I would like to suggest that all of us attempt to get a few words in edgewise in that blog and document how posts have been deleted and/or edited. I know it’s hard, but try to be civil. The best way to expose this is to offer Gavin and a few others, unmoderated access to a discussion about this. Their unmoderated words in an antagonistic forum, will expose them for the fools that they are. BTW, it seems that they have denied McIntyre unmoderated access to the discussion about the article deprecating his work. It seems pretty cowardly to me.
George
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Why you even bother with Gavin’s page is a mystery, George W.
Other web logs aren’t even “accepting” material related to Briffa.
The National types of media aren’t even discussing this.
“Too controversial” – or something like that.
Here in the USA, anything that Obama doesn’t support or doesn’t like doesn’t get much attention from National media.
So the Obama government has to wait until “Tea Parties” and “Town Hall Meetings” wherein Congresspersons get plastered to find out how much the average US citizen approves of what he does
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co2isnotevil,
Each of us will have to do what we each think best.
I suggest that anyone worth working with will see the irrationality of their approach. They may not know how to counter it but they will sense something is seriously wrong. Those who are taken in by it are generally lost causes anyway. Certainly, they will consume a huge amount of time and effort to teach them to think from the ground up. If I am to do that, I would rather start with a young mind that is not yet so crippled.
A mind that is already crippled by years of unthinking acceptance of the politically correct way cannot be mended or even impacted from the outside. That mind must take the initiative do the lion’s share of the work on its own. I have yet to see it happen to any worthwhile extent on the part of the left, the right, or the militant muddled.
The key difference is the hopeless mind is second handed and works by reflecting others and ultimately has no self generated content (Robin?). The hopeful mind is one that is truly struggling to understand what is, what can be with a significant degree of independence. Such a mind is in the process of building an actual functioning self.
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Brian,
The reason is not because I give any weight to it, but that so many others do. The traffic at that site is huge, which indicates that many do consider it authoritative. It’s this perception that must be knocked down. This is no longer a science debate and even though I abhor politics,
we, as skeptics driven by the science, need to employ a more aggressive offense against the political tactics of disinformation and deprecation, rather than a more passive defense based on our understanding of the science.
George
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Here is what the National Academy paper said on the statistical analysis. It is especially relevant in what is now coming out about Briffa.
“Specifically concerning the reconstructed temperature variability over short time periods
(year-to-decade scale), the committee identified the following as limitations that would benefit
from further research:
• Large-scale surface temperature reconstructions demonstrate very limited statistical
skill (e.g., using the CE statistic) for proxy sets before the 19th century (Rutherford et al. 2005,
Wahl and Ammann in press). Published information, although limited, also suggests that these
statistics are sensitive to the inclusion of small subsets of the data. Some of the more regionally
focused reconstructions (D’Arrigo et al. 2006) have better demonstrated skill back to the 16th
century or so, and possibly earlier. To improve the skill of reconstructions, more data need to be
collected and possibly new assimilation methods developed.
• Accurately inferring the absolute values of temperature for single years and decades
from proxies sensitive to variability at this timescale requires accurate reconstruction of the
longer-term mean.”
There are pages more of these type of criticisms.
If people actually took the time to read the paper and check on the papers listed and references, rather than quote misinterpretations from blog sites, then it shold stop a lot of the garbage being sprouted.
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Lionell,
I agree with your assessment of people like Gavin. I don’t necessarily see Robin in the same way, he seems intelligent enough that once he wraps his head around the science, he could flip. He would actually be easier to flip if he was a paid troll, but then he would stop getting paid… But, it’s not those like Gavin that need to be swayed, it’s the young minds that read the content on his site who must be redirected to the truth, before their minds become just as polluted.
Well, I’m off to the glaciers (I need to get some turns in this month, I’m up to about 30 consecutive months of skiing at least one day per month, without leaving California). Be back on Monday.
George
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Anne-Kit (#228)…
I was mainly struck by Kasmir’s post at #212. I don’t know what you understand by the term ‘ad hominem’, but let’s just say I prefer to read people’s arguments based on content, rather than based on personal attack. Kasmir’s attitude turns my stomach. I’ve had my share of “discussing” with Robin, and now I’m with Brian… leave him to his sad plight, and move on. But casting personal aspersions makes this a less pleasant place.
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For those that think everything has to be peer reviewed to have credibility, Here is what Wegman said about it to Stupak.
“2. How did you demonstrate that in a small discipline, such as paleoclimatology, the peer review process “is likely to have turned up very sympathetic referees”?
Ans: It is precisely in a small specialized discipline that the likelihood of turning up sympathetic referees is highest. Within a small, focused discipline, there simply are fewer referees available. Also, there is always the possibility of the discipline becoming extinct or irrelevant. The referees have a vested interest in seeing that research is published, especially if there is a strong consensus. It has been my experience both in journals as well as with the awarding of grants that 4 staying close to the consensus opinion is most likely to result in funding or publications because the reviewers like to see work that is similar to their own and work that reinforces their position. Peer review, while often taken to be a gold standard, is in fact very conservative and radical new ideas are much less likely to be funded or published. Again, because peer review is typically anonymous, I cannot “prove” that there are sympathetic reviewers, but I maintain that my 38 years of experience in scientific publication gives me exceptionally strong intuition and insight into the behaviors of authors and reviewers.” ”
3. Is it your position that every published scientific article that is subsequently determined to have an error in methodology or statistics, such as in the case of Dr. Mann and Dr. Christy, is a result of a failure of the peer review process?
Ans: Science is a human endeavor and there will always be errors. The peer
review process is an attempt to keep errors to a minimum and uphold the integrity of the scientific literature. Yes, I believe when an error escapes the notice of the peer reviewers, it is a failure of the process. Indeed, the process is prone to failure with the increasing number of outlets for research as well as the limited supply of editors and reviewers. Ultimately, however, it is the responsibility of the authors to acknowledge and correct errors in a timely fashion rather than to argue that an error doesn’t make any difference because the answer is correct.”
“8. You testified that “the fact is that the peer review process failed in the 1998 paper.” Which peer review process were you referring to? Were you
referring to the peer review process conducted by the journal that published
the 1998 paper?
Ans: Yes, I was referring to the peer review process at Nature, which published the 1998 paper.” And for those that claim the North report vindicated Mann, here is what Wegman said
“Ans: Our report does not prove that the hockey stick disappears. Our work
demonstrates that the methodology is incorrect. Because of the lack of proper statistical sampling and correct inferential methodology, we concluded that the statements regarding the decade of the 1990s probably being the hottest in a millennium and 1998 probably being the hottest year in a millennium are unwarranted. Indeed, I repeatedly testified that the instrumented temperature record from 1850 onwards indicated that there is a pattern of global warming. We have never disputed this. We also believe that there is no dispute between our report and the North report in this regard. Professor North in testimony agreed with our conclusions regarding the incorrectness of the methodology. We in turn agree with the fundamental conclusion of the North report, i.e. that the present era is likely the hottest in the last 400 years. We remain silent on the issues related to anthropogenic global warming.”
For the subsequent Wahl paper, Wegman said
“b. Do you agree or disagree with Wahl and Ammann’s finding that the time period used to center the data does not significantly affect the results reported in the MBH98 paper? If you disagree, please state the basis for your disagreement.
Ans: We do disagree. The fundamental issue focuses on the North American Tree Ring proxy series, which Wahl and Ammann admit are problematic in carrying temperature data.”
note that both the Wegman and North report came out about the same time, June 2006, so it is unlikely that they commented on each other in their reports, only in their oral testimonies.
So we have Wegman saying Peer Review in a small field has faults and both North and Wegman saying that the hockey stick can’t be substantiated.
How can all this be reconciled with a lot of the statements made above? And please don’t quote realclimate as by their own words, blog authors have no credibility
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Chris M (#316):
“If people actually took the time to read the paper and check on the papers listed and references, rather than quote misinterpretations from blog sites, then it shold stop a lot of the garbage being sprouted.”
Not sure of your point here. Is this what you mean by “people”?
http://www.climatechange.gov.au/impacts/trends/index.html
and is this what you mean by “garbage”?
“How we use palaeo-records
Palaeo-climate data allow us to test and improve our understanding of natural climate change and variability in Australia, as well as the processes driving climate change.
Palaeo-data can be used to validate the ability of climate models to simulate past climate, giving scientists confidence in predicting future climatic conditions.
The information provided by palaeo-research can help explain how and why our climate has changed in the past and, ultimately, help us to assess and plan for climate change in future.”
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co2isnotevil @ 317:
Its Gavin’s cesspool. Let him have it. He should live and die with it. He has collected some minor mirror intellect types who will echo his position. Posting on his blog would give him a sanction he has not and cannot earn. I suggest we need to find better venues to peddle our ideas.
Keep in mind, it does not take a majority to mount a revolution. It took only 56 committed, informed, and capable men to found the United States. What they did held rather well for the better part of two centuries against enormous odds. It would take less than 10% of the population to turn this current demented situation on its head. It wouldn’t happen over night but it would happen.
Just as its possible to win the lottery, turning Robin is also possible. Just don’t bet the ranch on it. That is unless you want to lose the ranch.
Its extremely difficult to turn a second hand mind committed to the notion that only the sacred *other* can determine the truth. I refer you to the following article I wrote over a decade ago for more detail as to why ( http://arationalhuman.blogspot.com/2008/11/source.html ). One’s intellectual history has a profound impact upon what one can and cannot do with one’s mind.
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Here’s something I think would be adjacent to what you are talking about Gavin and Friends!
Thirty-Eight ways to Win an Argument from Schopenhauer’s “The Art of Controversy”.
http://www.searchlores.org/schopeng.htm
Question? Can you match any of these to RC, Open Mind,Climate Progress??? Uhmm,I wonder! 🙂
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We haven’t heard much from the Catlin team lately.
I wonder if their views on Global Warming have changed at all.
I wonder if they wanted to slug Prince Charles for egging them on for a publicity stunt that turned out to be an idiotic “Arctic Mission”.
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Hi Jo, thanks for your take, and Brian. My take: Keith didn’t cherry pick the data, the set he “inherited” did the job and he didn’t look further.
One outlier dominates the 12 trees of interest.
The thermometer record doesn’t agree the treemometer record and so Keith et al.’s offerings using that data should have been and should now be junked regardless of other considerations.
http://www.greenworldtrust.org.uk/Science/Scientific/Arctic-Yamal.htm for more.
The reviewers should be under scrutiny as well as the various publishers and especially, the IPCC’s vaunted review process, the influence of the outlier should have been (was?) caught.
Catch you later.
This is possibly bigger than the original hockey stick scandal.
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Denny @ 322,
The 38 ways do not seek to discover or communicate the truth. They seek only to overpower another by any means necessary and win the argument. They show a preference for faking, trickery, and aggressive use of logical fallacies. Reason, reality, and logic exist within them in form only.
What is won by such a process? Nothing but the defeat of an inadequate and unprepared opponent. No value is gained. No truth is discovered or communicated. Nothing lasting comes out of it but a momentary excuse to be able to pretend that one is somehow superior to another. It is a second hand win of a con artist.
It should be easy to find that most of the 38 ways are used by the AGW Climate Change groupies. They do pretend science, pretend argument, pretend consensus, and echo each other endlessly. They approximate science in form only. There is more reality in a child’s making mud pies. At least the mud is real and the child learns the properties of mud by direct experience.
I suggest a better exercise would be to correlate the 38 ways to win an argument to the list of the 42 primary rhetorical fallacies at ( http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/ ). It would be an education in what not to do if you were actually seeking the truth and want to discover why the truth is true.
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Not so much.
It not clearly stated to a scientist in the field, is a different standard of not clearly stated for someone like McIntyre.
All we know is that McIntyre can’t work out the selection procedure.
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Tree rings, tree rings, lots and lots of tree rings,
So many tree rings, all across the globe…
Briffa, Briffa, playing with your data,
that Briffa’s such a ‘player’ in his statistician’s robe…
Hey Briffa, Briffa, share your data, could ya?
Share your data NOW, not 10 years down the road…
Oh briefly, could ya, share your reasons, won’t ya?
For tossing out the trees that didn’t match your goal…
Oh Briffa, twister, tweakin’ all the data,
Making all errata this Global Warming muck,
Unprecedented warming used to sound so very charming,
But your shattered hockey stick will never reach that puck…
Oh well, Briffa, as you exit,
just remember these words from a skeptic
Trying hard to forgive you
While murmuring a groan,
Don’t let the back door hit ya
Where the good lord split ya,
And next time please do SCIENCE –
Leave politics alone.
©2009 Dave Stephens
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Jo Wrote:
Not really. They’ve been used a few times in recent temperature reconstructions.
The temperature reconstructions are supported by other temperature reconstructions not using tree rings.
Temperature reconstructions are only one of the ways by which we know that the modern warming is outside the natural range of climate variation. You can also look at the direct effect of anthropogenic CO2 on the climate, for instance.
They are interesting in terms of looking at what likely affects of current climate change on those ecosystems that are remnant from that time, but they are not really a proof that “current temperature change is outside the natural range”, or if they are they are one of many such proofs.
No, and it wouldn’t be expected to. Trees have to be carefully selected so that the limitation of growth is the temperature and not light, water or some nutrient.
No the procedure developed for selecting a the trees that are limited by temperature is much more sophisticated than that. (And that method has clear bias that even, as you say, a non-specialist can spot).
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Robin wrote:
Bullcrap. Produce one so-called “scientist in the field” who can describe the selection procedure based only on the contents on the papers.
Really! Do educate us – what is this magic procedure?
Cheers.
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My take: Keith didn’t cherry pick the data, the set he “inherited” did the job and he didn’t look further.
That’s probably true, Clothcap; he was however Lead Author for his group and none would look further than he did, either.
I read some story about “non-scientists losing ‘faith in science'” because of this.
I think people with such sentiment have confused “science” with “means to an end” – if they can’t see through this immediately.
People are fallible; obviously somebody like Gore could be duped by anything that sounded good to him.
Briffa is nobody’s fool, I don’t think he is guilty of any duplicity – as Clothcap says, he was aware that more data were out there – but he just kept his fingers crossed and hoped for the best.
But – his gamble didn’t pay out.
00
When the premier science journals do not enforce archiving requirements, the process is broken.
When scientists withold data for over ten years even in the face of FOI requests, the process is broken.
When the cornered scientist finally releases his data without the metadata and in an obsolete punch card format, the process is broken.
When the alleged peers/referees don’t insist on transparency, but instead close ranks to block access to data the system is broken.
As for the second part of your moronic comment, nonsense! No one who’s actually read the Briffa studies would make such an asinine statement. You’re reaching…with another ad hominem.
Steve McIntyre is a statistician and eminently qualified to audit statistical technique. RCS is a statistical technique and not that difficult for someone schooled in statistics to understand.
It doesn’t take a “climate scientist” to understand sampling and statistics. On the contrary, “climate scientists” are causing science a great deal of damage with their demonstrated statistical ineptitude.
Really? And you would know how? Please, take the time to describe this sophisticated process for us. But perhaps you should actually read the study, rather than the abstract, before you try.
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“Briffa is nobody’s fool, I don’t think he is guilty of any duplicity – as Clothcap says, he was aware that more data were out there – but he just kept his fingers crossed and hoped for the best.”
I beg to differ. I think he knew exactly what he was doing.
00
“No the procedure developed for selecting a the trees that are limited by temperature is much more sophisticated than that. (And that method has clear bias that even, as you say, a non-specialist can spot).”
With respect, this is crap. Unless you’re monitoring ALL of the many factors throughout the life of the tree, you have no idea what the magnitude of any limiting factor is, in order to select those where the limiting factor was temperature alone.
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Second hand minds:
A second hand mind cannot do anything but accept the word of its sources. It is incapable of forming an independent judgment based upon evidence it has personally evaluated. For it, evidence IS the word from its sacred sources. It is convinced that reality can be known only through the perception of others who know it only through the perception of others who ….. It is a recursive summation of zeros.
How does a second hand mind select its sources? Its sources tell it to select them. After all, it can’t select a source first hand based upon its own judgment. Someone else has to do the selection based upon someone else doing the selection ….. Giving us still another recursive summation of zeros.
Its zeros all the way up, down, and sideways.
Is it any wonder that the politicians love this stuff. It gives them a pretense of an excuse to grab the power they were wanting to grab all along but didn’t think they could get away with. We are watching the greatest power grab in the history of man based upon nothing but a zero. They think they are safe because who can fight a zero?
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Lionell,
Zero (=AGW) times a very large number (=amplification by AGW zealots) is still zero.
Or strictly speaking the gain by log zero, which is negative infinity, and which is the direction we are headed right now.
When the Hockey Stick was chortled by the IPCC, I looked at what Mann did and knew immediately that the result was cooked up to produce a hockey stick because the analysis couldn’t yield any other result.
I told somebody I worked with that the Hockey Stick would never be verified by anything in nature because it couldn’t be – unless the same stupid assumption was applied.
Then Briffa came along.
I still haven’t mentioned the Briffa story to the person I had the discussion with – he knows all about it anyway.
I don’t think I could bring it up anyway. It makes me sick
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Lets put Briffa’s “punch card format” in perspective. (I hope that doesn’t mean he supplied the data on punch cards. Incidentally, there were several punch-card “formats”.)
Consider that In 1986, I was involved with a VERY LARGE system bid for computer equipment for the US Government. The bid required 80 column card readers for, as I remember, about a hundred sites. The company that employed me had discontinued manufacture of these things many years earlier. We discovered that the only card readers available anywhere were rebuilt, and thus did not meet specifications. I remember some joking to the effect we were lucky they didn’t require buggy whips.
00
OK, no hockey sticks to prove global warming.
So – what’s left?
GISS data
HA HA HA
Ocean temps- leaving out ARGO buoys – only if it supports your case. If not, put them in.
Arctic sea ice? Only if you are Ban-Ki Moon, and look around for about 30 minutes at 80 deg N latitude and see only 12 icebergs instead of two hundred, maybe
pretty poor suite of facts to go destroying Western civilisation over, if you ask me
00
Brian,
They don’t care. Their goal is destruction of everything human by any means necessary. They seek a zero – non existence. Their words are nothing but a smoke screen to hide that fact from everyone including themselves.
00
Apologies if this has already been brought up. I haven’t read all 338 posts.
In Briffa’s response to SteveM’s work he stated:
“Whether the McIntyre version is any more robust a representation of regional tree growth in Yamal than my original, remains to be established.”
Here and we all were under the impression that this was supposed to be a temperature proxy????????
I wonder what RC is blathering about if Briffa only thinks he did a growth paper?!?!?!?!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
00
Robin Grant,
ignoring Briffa’s little joke on us for a bit, your claim about the RCS procedures may be correct. Of course similar claims can be made for most statistical procedures. That is, when an appropriate amount and quality of data is input to the correct procedures you can obtain useable results.
Are you intelligent enough to see the many possible problems with this generalisation?? If not, you should go hide. If so, you have just disqualified most of the statements supporting Briffa’s work.
00
Lionell,Post 325, your third paragraph states it all. I thought “38 ways” was a “sarcastic” way to pick at those who allow statement as such to describe any situation! Yes,Lionell, I agree with your last statement. Trust me, I do not operate in such a fashion.
I would like to make a note about “Trees”. Like I have stated in my post 211. Genetics play a big role in what happens to a trees growth in it’s Life time. Question: Is this being considered??? I have read a lot of articles and papers on using “Tree Rings” to correlate with Temperature. Nothing is even mentioned about how genetics affects the tree’s bark, roots, leaves, cross pollination,and branches. So you need “similarities”,for consistency,right? Trees that are a group of “Same”,”Likeness, call it what you may! Genetics determines “everything” as much as it determines Us and the rest of Life on this Planet. Sure, a lot of likness but there are “differences”. This has to be researched for any accuracy to occur, IMHO. Granted, all the rest that has been spoken on this particular article above states the rest. I’m not saying the rest of the influences are not as important. I’m just saying, include “everthing” in your decisions.
This is my biggest beef, now that I’m on a roll. How can Climate Scientists state that Computer Models are accurate?? This is not possible because of “common sense” used to know that there’s no way Man know all the Complexities of Climate. No way can “all” of the inputs be available to us because of what I’ve just stated. You have to be “Real” about this! Just one lousey input missing and forcast 50 or 100 years from now will be wrong. Talk about “compounding error”! It’s like mathematics, miss just one and the result is wrong. As I see at Climate Audit, Steve very strict about protocol. He expects accuracy. It’s too bad it isn’t expected for fellow Climate Scientist’s from the Alarmist Regime!
I feel better now. Thank you Joanne for letting me post this. Isn’t “freedom of speech” great! To bad it isn’t practiced at the Alarmist’s Camps!
Best of Regards,
Denny
00
Uh, no. It’s available online in an obsolete format not used since punch cards. Steve McIntyre converted it for everyone else’s convenience and provided a link to the new format.
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Some poetry to lighten the mood…..
In Memoriam
HOCKEY STICK
Age 11
So. Farewell then
Hockey Stick
Robust Reconstruction
It would seem that
You are dead
But are you?
You have risen
many times before
So why not now?
But then. Do dendro
Theories really die?
And so eternal.
Remain the doubts
with Us.
(E.J Thribb age 17 ½)
(with apologies to Barry Fantoni. In addition, I would also like to add that..
continued page 99)
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[…] like, for the purposes of clearly explaining to others, Joanne Nova’s version of one McIntyre […]
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Thanks for the correction. The implication is that the original references may supply some standard procedure for selection, or at least maybe enough to deduce a reasonable selection procedure.
From the bit of reading I have done, the predominant throttling factor in tree growth seems to be water, thus depending greatly on the exact position of the tree in relation to local water flows (e.g. side of hill, bottom of hollow, etc). Thus, proper selection requires knowledge of the local surrounds for every single tree in the set (metadata).
There does seem to be a relationship between available water and temperature but, far from linear.
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To clear up the earlier issue from #138 above, and to avoid spamming more columns of numbers into the thread, I’ve plotted the entire family of regression curves for a sweep of window sizes. Note that none of them give an estimate of either 1.9 degrees per century or 2.0 degrees per century for 2008 or 2009 and further note that the entire family of curves indicate that we are “over the hump” (with a peak rate of warming round 2000) and we are coming down the other side. No cherry picking, all the data points, and a big sweep of filters.
http://lnx-bsp.net/GISS_regression.jpeg
Just to prove that documentation of methodology is actually very easy, you can generate the same curves at home:
http://lnx-bsp.net/GISS_regression.R
By the way, the red and orange lines show unmistakable cyclic peaks at 1935, 1955, 1980 and 2000, so there’s a reasonable chance the next peak is coming 2020 or perhaps a little later.
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Here’s the same regression estimates against sunspot counts, not a perfect fit but good enough to convince me that solar activity is the primary driver of terrestrial warming.
http://lnx-bsp.net/sunspot.jpeg
Note, the sunspot comparison uses a smaller window width than above (only 8 years). I do understand that any window narrower than one decade does not fit most people’s definition of “climate”; the narrow window merely makes it easier to compare the phase, against the solar cycle. Smoothing on a multi-decade scale wipes out the wobbles but that just comes down to a definitional question, “What is climate?”
Any coupling between solar activity and terrestrial warming must continue to apply at all timescales, regardless of whether you want to smooth out the visible cycle.
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Re: Tel #346 & #347.
Good stuff and very interesting. Thank you.
00
Well, that’s a relief. Once word gets out, birds will go back to nesting two weeks later, trees will resume flowering two weeks later, the dams of the Murray-Darling basin will start to fill, ocean acidity levels will return to normal and we can all go home.
[You confound issues. Trees and plants love CO2 and some are flowering earlier or growing longer just because there is more CO2, and not because it’s warmer. Even where it is warmth causing the changes, that doesn’t prove CO2 did that warming. They are effects, not causes. Rainfall patterns are closely tied to El-Nino’s and the SOI, so those Dams may start to fill anyway. CO2 has been a lot higher, so were temps in the holocene optimum. Reefs, fish, et al did OK. Topsoil erosion and fish stocks are problems, but not due to CO2 –JN]
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Robin Grant Wrote:
“I understand that there are about half a dozen parameters that are poorly constrained by our understanding of physics, but these can be constrained by tuning the model – and that is not as invalid as some people will claim.”
If you need a concrete example of how and why the process of ‘model tweaking’ for ‘best fit’ can lead you seriously astray, look no further than the case of the atmospheric CO2 residence time. In order to ‘enable’ CO2 to accumulate in the atmosphere as a result of relatively small atmospheric emissions like those of human industry, the modeled residence time parameter of CO2 was stretched until the desired or expected result obtained, which is that anthropogenic emissions have caused “all or nearly all” of the atmospheric CO2 rise seen over the last ~100 years.
Another way to state the case is that the only way that CO2 could accumulate as a result of anthropogenic emissions is if atmospheric CO2 had a long residence time. So with the assumption about the origin of nascent atmospheric CO2 increase firmly in hand, the modeled residence time was ‘tweaked’ until the desired ‘best fit’ result was obtained. The outcome was a “modeled” CO2 residence time of 50-200 years.
The problem is, we already knew the CO2 residence time is short because 36 studies based on actual residence time measurements conducted over a period of ~60 years by many different scientists working independently using several different methods all came to a similar conclusion: The atmospheric CO2 residence time is short, likely less than 10 years, and certainly nowhere near the “modeled” 50-200 years.
(This is a foundational pillar of the AGW hypothesis; without a long residence time, it’s simply impossible for anthropogenic emissions to have had a significant effect on atmospheric CO2 levels. This admission forces us to look for another cause for the increase.)
So how many other ‘tweaked’ model parameters are seriously in error as a result of similar assumptions?
Jim Rennison
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#349
Drought at the the Maurray Darling had nothing to do with carbon dioxide in the air. Trust me.
I don’t know who told you that trees were flowering two weeks earlier or the ocean was “acidic”.
The ocean has been alkaline since there were oceans and they will be alkaline for eternity.
There is more than enough mineral in the ocean to neutralise all the carbon dioxide there is.
Don’t believe everything you read in the newspaper. Some of the “jounalists” get their facts and figures goofed up because they have a personal bias toward liking AGW.
Or wanting it, more accurately. But despite their wishes, it’s not going to happen because it is physically impossible for it to happen.
So – people can yearn for AGW all day long, but they can’t have it.
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Brian @ 351: So – people can yearn for AGW all day long, but they can’t have it.
That is right. That is also why I say they are at war with reality. They firmly believe that the purpose of consciousness is to create reality. Given that basic premise and the inevitable discovery it doesn’t work that way, they conclude all they need to to is aggrandize sufficient power to force everyone to act that way. They believe this will make it so.
Force can crush both rocks and people but it can’t turn something into what it isn’t and can’t be. When they discover this, they conclude they didn’t use enough force. The ultimate consequence of this cycle is total death and destruction – including themselves – which was their goal from the start.
The rest of us believe the purpose of consciousness is to identify what is and can be. The use of force is for the re-arrangement of what is to make it what it can be so as to build value and to sustain our lives. We know we cannot win a battle against reality. We strive to understand reality and use that understanding to our advantage and it works.
These two world views are mutually incompatible. There is no possible compromise that can bring about a peaceful co-existence. There is also no possible set of facts that will change their minds. That is unless and until they give up their basic premise that reality must obey their whims and their worship of force used in an attempt to make it so.
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I noticed Steve McIntyre added this graph on Sept 30.
The Green line is interesting. There are quite a few tree chronologies that suggest the 1930’s-1940’s were as hot as today.
00
I can only comment on the USA.
1930-1940 era was destitute in the US Midwest from drought. It was a dust bowl, but a depression made the situation desperate for many.
The US of today has experienced nothing exceptional – excepting record cold and rain over several large regions.
But maybe the US is different. Maybe “global warming” happens everywhere except the US.
00
Brian: But maybe the US is different. Maybe “global warming” happens everywhere except the US.
“Global warming” is happening everywhere except where it isn’t. All you need to do is don’t report where it isn’t happening and its happening everywhere its been reported.
More exactly, all it takes for the AGW crowd to “prove” their theory is that it can be shown to be happening in at least one place even if it takes cherry picking and/or faking the data. I don’t know how they could be more fraudulent but I am sure they will find a way. They are very resourceful about everything except discovering and telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
00
Murray-Darling delta has had seasonal drought
=> global warming is real
Twelve thunderstorms observed in July in the Arctic Peninsula, instead of the 10 in July of last year
=> we need to “stop global warming” immediately
There is a lot of trapped methane in the Siberian tundra (been there since the Jurassic)
=> the 2016 Olympics Games will be the last
or something like that
00
Not only is the Murray-Darling experiencing entirely natural, cyclical drought.
The situation has been exacerbated over a long period of state government mismanagement of water rights in the area.
It’s partly man-made allright, but not of the kind they are implying!
00
Have you ever been this frustrated over anything in your life?
I don’t recall anything.
I was angry about the US war in Iraq, because I knew it was based on false premises.
But for that situation I could do something about it – namely go to war.
For this, I can’t DO anything to change people’s minds!
You ought to read some of the lovely things GISS people have to say about McIntyre.
On second thought, don’t bother.
It’d make ya sick
00
Party Party Party!
Thanks to Davblo we now have have buttons on the comments form!!!
He found the right plugin. It works perfectly (ah… so far).
I’ve wanted this for for a long time. I look forward to people being about to improve the readability of comments – to make the most of their contribution here. Please, use the buttons. 🙂 Enjoy…
Jo
00
In case it’s not obvious…
There are Two ways of using the buttons.
(a) Click a button… write some text… click on “Close Tags” (whichever tag you opened will be ‘closed’ correctly.
(b) Write some text first… ‘select’ the text you want to ‘format’… then click on the appropriate button. Both opening and closing tags are placed around the selected text.
/davblo
00
Let’s test them. Orange Blue
The dash —
H4
H3
We’ll see…
00
[…] have expected scientists to have been a little more careful when trying to do a replica, but no – here is yet another piece of very selective use of data to give the “right” result. This […]
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Malcolm Turnbull (conservative opposition leader in Australia, for our US cousins) is under fire from the climate realists in his own party, and Tim Blair has a great comment on that:
http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/timblair/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/malcontent/
An excerpt from the blogpost:
“The politics are tough now because conservatives years ago allowed the debate to get away from them; frightened of being labelled nature-haters, they declined to attack anti-progress green arguments as they were being formed. Result: in 2009 they’re dealing with a full-blown religion, and they’re discovering that logic isn’t much of a weapon against faith.”
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the crux of the matter!!
I personally am hosting a premiere screening here in Perth of “Not Evil Just Wrong” (Joanne carries a link to the website on her homepage) on the evening of Sunday 18th October. I have seen a preview of the film, and it is brilliant. It does what we need to do: Hits them emotionally with a counter message. There is science, too, but the main message is emotional.
Anyone in Perth is welcome to attend (others too, of course, if you want to travel … :-))
RSVP pls with name and contact number to alittler55 at gmail.com
(Hey, where did the buttons go, Jo?)
00
Oh, they are back … strange.
00
I wish you the best Anne Kit for your DVD showing.
I too plan to show it.
The man who lives across the street from me is professor of environmental sciences at the George Mason University of Virginia, USA and according to his resume, his “focus is on the causes and catastrophic damage to the environment due to unchecked human environmental emissions.”
That to say, this gentleman is a white hot global warmer who teaches college students about this big fraud.
Nice.
I plan to invite him over to watch this DVD.
I don’t expect he’ll stay long or speak to me again when I tell him, in a matter of fact way, that my career consists of battling the misery that arises from his apparently unchecked stupidity
00
I wonder how much heat the Soviet Nuclear tests put into the area near the trees in question?
Novaya Zemlya – about 350 miles from Yamal – which was the Soviet test site for 224 nuclear detonations during the late 40’s through the early 60’s. One was supposedly a 58 megaton test, which I imagine caused a bit of snow melt in the area.
I can testify that many of these tests created lots of “hot” (radioactive) debris in floating around the atmosphere over arctic areas.
What might these tests do to nearby dendro temperature records? Can anyone come up with any estimates?
Do you suppose these tests created more warming than atmospheric CO2?
00
Brian
I am sure your neighbor has an “open mind” about CAGW. Upon consideration having just remembered the other “open mind” wear a flack jacket and make sure your home insurance is up to date.
00
Hi Joanne,
Is this issue worth updating your handbook over?
00
I don’t think so, Rod. Any additional heat was transient and far too short of duration to have any meaningful effect on plant growth.
The cumulative efect of that was probably less than the cumulative efect of continuous night time street lighting on trees exposed to it
00
<span style=”color: #153E7E;”>I’m not sure about this I’m not sure about this
Sorry Joanne, this is new to me! I’m experimenting! Never used this before! You can clip this to which I suggest!
00
Denny – I’ve taken up your suggestion. Check here for info on using buttons. I’ll move comments across to that page Guide for Commenting, because I’d like to test the buttons properly.
Hopefully this makes sense.
00
Robin Grant,
“That’s not true. Amongst people who understand current climate science, and amongst ecologists, respectively.”
Yup, those with an agenda or who won’t accept obvious facts.
You know, like YOU.
By the way, your 99% number is as full of it as you are. Please give us all a good laugh by trying to show supporting documentation for it!!!
00
Robin Grant,
“Well we have seen a 29% drop in biodiversity over the 35 years to 2005.”
Another unsupported guess. You are really the source for propaganda aren’t you. We have to knick name you Robin “PRAVDA” Grant!!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
00
UHHHH ROBIN, please CONCENTRATE!!!
WHERE IS THE LIST OF EXTINCTIONS!!!!
I WON’T EVEN TRY TO NAIL YOU DOWN TO THOSE THAT CAN BE BLAMED ON CLIMATE CHANGE!!!
You know as well as the rest of us that there are continuing discoveries of species that were previously unknown. There are occasional discoveries of species that were thought to be extinct.
How good are those lists that you can’t seem to give me??
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Lotsa noise, no FACTS!!!!!
00
Hey davblo,
Just wanted to take a minute to say great work on helping Joanne with the buttons. Even those of us proficient with HTML appreciate the convenience of automating certain functions. Thanks.
00
Brian Valentine wrote:
I think that this ignores that there is a procedure for selecting relevant dendrochronological data, it has been investigated and refined in a series of studies, and it was followed.
So I agree that he is not guilty of any duplicity.
However the suggestion that this is some king of “gamble” is a bit far fetched.
00
JLKrueger wrote:
Why should a journal archive data?
That’s a specialist calling.
You’re talking about the Hadley Centre again now?
Some of the data was intellectual property. Some of it is available.
If that is the format it is in, then it is up to whoever requested the data to correctly interpret it. A scientist isn’t necessarily the sort of person who enjoys administrating a data library, but that does not mean that their research should be kept from the world.
Perhaps you are confusing closing ranks to block access to data with getting bored with non-specialists repeatedly making unreasonable claims about the ownership and format of data, whilst making a mountain out of the obvious fact that a procedure is used to select the data that best reflects climate and not other factors.
Perhaps you could be more specific and include some content with your general insults … ?
Steve McIntyre is not a statistician. He is a “semiretired Toronto minerals consultant” and strategic advisor of CGX Energy Inc. He has been a policy analyst for the governments of Ontario and of Canada.
But he does not have an advanced degree, and is not a statistician.
Is it? What is RCS, and why does it mean that a random selection of the dendrochronological data would be better than a correctly selected set?
Then, as a non-climate scientist, the thing you need to understand is that the dendroclimatological data was not sampled. It was selected to be that which represents temperature and not any other factor that limits tree growth such as soil fertility, sunlight, or water.
And here we differ.
I would say that what you are calling “demonstrated statistical ineptitude” is the fact that science doesn’t support your chosen position, so you seek to claim the science is faulty, not yourself.
Occasionally people in your position are right, but not often, and the correct forum to convince scientists is at the conferences and in the peer reviewed literature.
Insulting people with a far better understanding of the issues than yourself in an online forum is a poor technique for getting your views heard, from both a scientific and social perspective.
Because the papers that establish these techniques are cited by Briffa.
Or you could read it yourself?
In any case, I think my point stands. Whether you read the whole paper or just the abstract, the technique is more complicated that selecting the data that produces the results that you want.
And I also think that it is pretty obvious that when something other than temperature is limiting the tree growth, this would limit tree growth … so these would not be expected to have the same trends as a random sample.
But I could be wrong. Much like McIntyre, I am not a statistician.
00
Robinson wrote:
With as much respect, that is crap.
Dendroclimatology is all about estimating those factors from what evidence you can find.
00
Brian Valentine wrote:
Not that the National Academies concluded that the shape of the hockey stick was not affected by the incorrect statistical treatment.
So materially, you are wrong here.
It has been verified. There are a dozen papers producing the same shape.
00
Brian Valentine wrote:
There’s still all the northern hemisphere temperature reconstructions. As far as we know Prof. Keith Briffa’s techniques were perfectly correct. And if not there are still half a dozen papers that show the “hockey stick”.
Several temperature data sets.
An extensive carbon tracking network data set.
Earth energy balance data sets.
Basic optics.
Basic thermodynamics.
The greenhouse effect.
Thousands of studies of changes to species ranges.
Hundreds of studies of changes to the timing of spring events.
Glacier retreat data.
Sea ice reduction data.
Greenland ice sheet loss data.
Antarctic ice shelf loss.
Climate modelling analysis of current and past global and regional climate.
(Verified by observations of climate response to volcanic forcing).
Climate prediction modelling.
Sea level rise data.
Ocean heat content data.
Ice core data.
Sea floor data.
… that sort of thing?
Do you think that your appeal to ridicule makes a logical argument?
A logical argument is when you support your case.
“HA HA HA” means, “I have no support for this, but I hope you will believe it”.
It is fallacious.
The fault in some of the ARGO buoys was detected, not decided upon.
I suggest that if AGW predictions are right because the greenhouse effect is real, then the most common thing to happen when you make data more correct is that it will align closer with the theory.
On the other hand, you can swim across the North Pole now (If you’re good). There used to be solid ice there.
You’ve never proven that paying 5% more for energy, with that cost coming down with economies of scale and new technologies is going to destroy Western Civilisation. I claim your catastrophism is a bit hypochondriacal.
00
Lionell Griffith wrote:
Something like that.
All those people who think that maintaining biodiversity is a good thing, and all those people who think that spending 2% of world GDP to avoid a cost of 20% of world GDP is a sound investment are … sociopathic.
Difficult to follow, but I’m sure you’ll convince some people.
00
Another example of how you twist what is said. I said “enforce” as per their publication policy. That is the journal’s responsibility.
We’re talking Briffa. And you are not drawing me after your red herrings.
Yes, well we’re still waiting for you to describe this procedure. And given that Briffa did not state anywhere in his work why he selected certain cores and left out others, you argument is rubbish. Read the paper.
More ad hominem. Steve’s statistical work has been peer reviewed by statisticians with advanced degrees and been found to be statistically correct. So you can demonstrate the flaws in Steve’s analysis? We’re still waiting.
More red herrings. I’m not doing your homework for you and I’m still waiting for your statistical refutation of McIntyre’s work.
Ah, then you admit it was cherry-picked! You betray the fact that you haven’t read the paper, or if you’ve skimmed it, you are clueless as to the statistical discussion therein. Thanks, you’ve made this so much easier.
More side-stepping. The issue happens to be the statistcal techniques used by Briffa. Other ancillary issues like openess and such aside, kindly demonstrate how McIntyre’s analysis of Briffa’s methodology is wrong.
The forum does not invalidate the content. Show me again where Steve McIntyre’s work is wrong? You seem so sure of yourself, how about demonstrating where Steve is wrong?
Not that you’ve actually read them though, otherwise you could decribe this special technique and you wouldn’t be making uninformed statements about sampling and statistics.
I have. It’s clear by your inablity to answer with anything other than sophistry that you have not.
Hmm…and you know what limited a tree’s growth how? That’s one of the reasons RCS requires large sample sizes, as clearly stated by Briffa himself. Thanks again for demonsrating that you haven’t read Briffa’s work.
So you can’t demonstrate any errors in McIntyre’s work! Then why are we wasting everyone’s time? Thanks for the admission. Don’t feel too bad. Gavin Schmidt, Michael Mann and Keith Briffa haven’t been able to refute it either and they actually have some statistical ability.
00
Robin Grant @ 381: All those people who think that maintaining biodiversity is a good thing, and all those people who think that spending 2% of world GDP to avoid a cost of 20% of world GDP is a sound investment are … sociopathic.
There is a strong relationship between the use of energy and GDP. The higher the GDP the higher the energy consumption. Mandating the cutting the use of energy by 50% to 80% “spends” far more than 2% of the world’s GDP. Also it is not clear that continuing the use of carbon based energy source will cost 20% of GDP. Quite the contrary, it will wildly add to the world’s GDP.
However, this is not the real issue. The world’s GDP is not yours or theirs to “spend”. It belongs to the people who created it. If “all those people” were thinking of spending ONLY their own personal GDP, I have no objection. However,to demand the the taking GDP of each of us by government force and spending it on their whims is demanding theft and that is sociopathic.
Since more than 95% of the specie that ever existed are extinct and since we are still finding species that we did not know existed, the biodiversity crap is bogus technobable used to justify world wide theft of peoples lives. That too is sociopathic.
How about the biodiversity of free men making their own choices about their own indepndent lives? Oh we can’t have that, can we now? You and your ever so caring others have decided the sky is falling and such creatures are to be forced into extinction to “save the world”. THAT is not just sociopathic, that is psychotic.
00
Robin: “On the other hand, you can swim across the North Pole now (If you’re good). There used to be solid ice there.”
Oh, you mean there used to be solid ice there – except, of course, for 1903 when Roald Amundsen circumnavigated the NW Passage … oh, and except for 1942 when an American boat repeated the feat, both boats being just that, I might add: small wooden boats, not steel-reinforced icebreakers.
Is that the kind of ice free conditions you are alluding to?
00
Robin:
“Several temperature data sets.
An extensive carbon tracking network data set.
Earth energy balance data sets.
Basic optics.
Basic thermodynamics.
The greenhouse effect.
Thousands of studies of changes to species ranges.
Hundreds of studies of changes to the timing of spring events.
Glacier retreat data.
Sea ice reduction data.
Greenland ice sheet loss data.
Antarctic ice shelf loss.
Climate modelling analysis of current and past global and regional climate.
(Verified by observations of climate response to volcanic forcing).
Climate prediction modelling.
Sea level rise data.
Ocean heat content data.
Ice core data.
Sea floor data.
… that sort of thing?”
Your’e not seriously AGAIN bringing up this kind of list of “look at all these bad things that have happened” trying to imply that any one of them is evidence that CO2 is the culprit? Come on, Robin, how long have you been around these parts? Or perhaps you are hoping to influence casual readers?
Evidence of warming (or climate change, glaciers melting, reindeer migrating, orangutans losing habitat etc. etc. etc.) is NOT evidence of what caused it.
00
“You’ve never proven that paying 5% more for energy, with that cost coming down with economies of scale and new technologies is going to destroy Western Civilisation…”
Do you just make up your own stuff now Robin? Even your precious Rudd-spin government says avg electricity bills will rise by 25%.
“All those people who think that maintaining biodiversity is a good thing…”
Tut tut, Robin, you’re still trying to pull a quick one by equating people who are sceptical about AGW with people who “don’t care about cute animals dying”. This is classic warmist tactics. You do that because you can offer no proof that CO2 causes species extinction.
“… spending 2% of world GDP to avoid a cost of 20% of world GDP is a sound investment…”
Do you pull them out of a top hat, Robin? Have you read Lomborg? Or are you going to tell me HE isn’t a statistician?
(I’m settling down to wait for the predictable ad homs).
00
Anne-Kit Littler wrote:
Anne, I think you know that I am not making stuff up.
And I can let you know that I am not an Australian Citizen, and have no interest, involvement or effect on your selection of governments at any level.
You should know that my interest in global warming is from the scientific and not spin side.
Wind power is, I understand, the most cost effective of the renewable power sources. It’s cost is comparable to gas power generation. About 5% more by the time it reaches the consumer. Coal is, admittedly cheaper than gas, but clean coal is something of a pipe dream. Nuclear is a good option for Australia, if it is a good option anywhere, because we have geological stability, political stability and more uranium that you can shake a stick at.
And this too is cost competitive with other power sources. (Although time consuming to set up).
Interesting. You have an opinion on the subject of the cost of warming, but you seem unfamiliar with the Stern Review.
I have read some interviews with the Gentleman.
This Scientific American interview with him, alongside one with Stern and one with Yohe, is still in my bookmarks.
And while I respect him for his open homosexuality, and for his social sciences acumen, I think that the Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty’s ruling that “The Skeptical Environmentalist,” was scientifically dishonest, but Lomborg himself not guilty because of lack of expertise in the fields in question.
It is not his lack of statistical training that they referred to but to his lack of any training in climatology, meteorology, or the physical sciences.
They also cited The Skeptical Environmentalist for:
1. Fabrication of data;
2. Selective discarding of unwanted results (selective citation);
3. Deliberately misleading use of statistical methods;
4. Distorted interpretation of conclusions;
5. Plagiarism;
6. Deliberate misinterpretation of others’ results.
… So, again, there is plenty of scientifically valid analysis on climate change out there, and while political animals like your good self might like or require dodgy sources, they are not on my ‘to read’ list.
I don’t argue by Ad hom, but by scientific validity.
(I’m settling down to wait for the predictable unscientific political weasel talk, and lack of any scientific points).
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errata: I think that the Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty’s ruling that “The Skeptical Environmentalist,” was scientifically dishonest, but Lomborg himself not guilty because of lack of expertise in the fields in question, should not be ignored.
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Anne-Kit Littler wrote:
Anne-Kit Littler, do you only have straw man in your repertoire?
Loathe as I am to take time to post to you the patently obvious, but the post was in response to a claim that there was no evidence of global warming, not one that there is no evidence that CO2 is the culprit.
The reasons that we know that CO2 is the culprit are different.
They are from our knowledge of the greenhouse effect and other causes of radiative forcing.
From the cooling of the stratosphere.
From the exaggerated warming at the poles.
From the measured increase in CO2.
From the modelling of the relative magnitudes of different causes of climatic change.
From the decreased diurnal temperature range.
From the decreased annual temperature range.
As you will be aware by now, the sources of changes in radiative forcing since the start of the industrial revolution are often studied, and while many of them have quite a large uncertainty remaining there is no genuine question that the strongest is the long lived greenhouse gasses, and the strongest of those is CO2.
I have a memory of posting this chart to you before. Please consider reading the information provided by the nice Sydneysider for your education.
This is similar to my thoughts on your posts. Is it one of your mechanisms of political spin to accuse people are posting scientific responses with whatever machinations you are invoking in order to create the impression amongst the casual reader that both sides are pulling your spin-game?
Not necessarily. But in the current case, we also know what caused it.
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Anne-Kit Littler wrote:
No, I mean the pole itself. And my allusion should be quite clear, because I included a link.
Here it is again for the deliberately obtuse.
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Straw man.
I do not advocate cutting energy 80%.
I advocate switching to nuclear, wind, geothermal, tide and newer clean technologies: possibly algae biofuel, concentration solar power.
It is greenhouse emissions, not energy use that must be cut.
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This is so crazy I don’t know whether to respond to it as if it is simply ignorant or whether you are genuinely trying to create spin for the powerfully ill-informed.
Yes, over the past 400 billion years, most species have gone extinct. The rate is possibly about 1 species per million species per year. We are currently losing about 100 or 1000 times that. This is how biodiversity has dropped by nearly a third recently over the past third of a century.
If you can’t see that losing a third of the world’s populations is a bad thing, I’m not sure where to point you for your education. I guess that you’re a lost case, and I only hope that most of the people who read this can see that the current rate of extinction is unsustainable.
Costing the emission of greenhouse gasses to the emitter rather than the victim is not an infringement on freedom any more than requiring industries not to pour radioactive waste into rivers or sulphates or CFC’s into the atmosphere.
Get some perspective. There are thousands of controlled chemicals. If your sense of freedom is insulted by that you should be campaigning for the freedom to spread arsenic, radioactive waste, CFCs and 245T for starters. One more is not a change in freedoms. It’s a social justice to protect the air and biodiversity that is the commons from those who would exploit the externality that is the destruction of that commons to make certain business practices unfairly competitive.
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No it’s not a twist, and I think my point stands.
It is the journal’s responsibility to publish research that is interesting, significant and not fraudulent.
It is the scientist’s responsibility to keep track of their data. But that shouldn’t be a barrier to publication, in my view. Research needs to be reproduced before it is accepted as part of our understanding of the universe. Publication is the first step in that process.
I had no intention of creating a red herring. I was not aware that the independent universities of the UK were subject to the FOI act, since they are not government bodies, and Prof. Keith Briffa is not a public servant. So I assumed you were referring to the Hadley Centre.
Refusal to comply with a FOI is contempt of court is it not? Do you know why Briffa is not in custody?
Perhaps it is your own lack of expertise that clouds the issue. As Briffa makes clear in his response to McIntyre “The Yamal tree-ring chronology (see also Briffa and Osborn 2002, Briffa et al. 2008) was based on the application of a tree-ring processing method applied to the same set of composite sub-fossil and living-tree ring-width measurements provided to me by Rashit Hantemirov and Stepan Shiyatov which forms the basis of a chronology they published (Hantemirov and Shiyatov 2002). In their work they traditionally applied a data processing method (corridor standardisation) that does not preserve evidence of long timescale growth changes. My application of the Regional Curve Standardisation method to these same data was intended to better represent the multi-decadal to centennial growth variations necessary to infer the longer-term variability in average summer temperatures in the Yamal region: to provide a direct comparison with the chronology produced by Hantemirov and Shiyatov.”
This might be more obvious to the intended audience of the paper than to a member of the public trying to work out the methodology from the basis of no knowledge of the field.
Not an ad hominem. You said he was a statistician. I point out what his occupation is, and that he has no more formal statistics than I. He is not a statistician. What statistical work of Steve’s do you refer to, and in what statistical or otherwise scientific journal was it published?
I was merely asking for a clarification of what you are talking about. I often find that on questioning adamant deniers like yourself and Valentine about points that are not clear to me they say “I’m not doing your homework for you.”
I don’t find this line of argument compelling, especially in the light of the tens of thousands of papers that show the cause, effects and social, political and policy consequences of warming that seem to have been missed by their own research.
No, I admit that there was a procedure for identifying the data that was more representative of temperature.
I would have thought that this was pretty clear. I guess you are attempting to use the straw man fallacy again.
McIntyre’s analysis is wrong because it compares data not representative of temperature with those that Briffa’s methodology selected as representative of temperature.
McIntyre then claims that the data was cherry picked because the trend is significantly different. This is wrong because that would be expected.
Hmm. really.
Whe you read “To remove the growth trend that can obscure climatic influences
on tree growth, a procedure known as standardization
(Fritts, 1976), the ‘corridor method’ was used, as described in
detail in Shiyatov (1986).”
You immediately thought that the data were selected at random did you?
I find that a little difficult to believe. Even the uneducated observer would be able to glean from that that there is a procedure that was followed, that it is called “standardisation”, and would get an idea of what papers to look up to find out more about it.
What were your though processes that allowed you to reach the opposite conclusion that the data were all processed, and those that created a certain result were selected?
Well, no, that was sarcasm. I shall try to avoid such in future posts to you, as you seem to be much to interested in the politics of this discussion to allow yourself to take the meaning of my posts.
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kuhnkat wrote:
Hello kuhnkat.
Thank you for your question.
The number of species and populations on the planet is unknown. The way that the recent decline is calculated is by tracking a wide range of populations and assuming that they are representative of the wider picture.
There is no list of the species lost, and most of them will be undescribed species, because most species are undescribed.
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kuhnkat wrote:
The data is from the living planet report that comes out every few years, and is produced by the WWF, with their partners the ZSL and the UNEP-WCMC. The report is of course available online, but this newspaper article is quicker to read.
Quite.
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kuhnkat wrote:
Of the 928 papers with the ISI keywords “Global Climate Change” published 1993-2003, none of the papers disagreed with the consensus position. (Where the consensus position is that “Human activities … are modifying the concentration of atmospheric constituents … that absorb or scatter radiant energy. … [M]ost of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations”
(Source).
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Spare us your smarmy, condescending remarks on Lomborg, Robin.
Was Bjorn Lomborg proved scientifically dishonest?
No, not in the final outcome. Using the critique written by Lomborg’s critics in the Scientific American (January 2002), the Danish Committee on Scientific Dishonesty (DCSD) found that The Skeptical Environmentalist was objectively scientifically dishonest on January 7 2003.
However, on December 17 2003, the Danish Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation completely rescinded this finding. It released a 70-page evaluation criticizing at least 13 points in the DCSD report, three of which individually would have led to it being rescinded.
It found the DCSD verdict “dissatisfactory”, “deserving [of] criticism” and “emotional.” Most importantly, the Ministry found “that the DCSD has not documented where [Lomborg] has allegedly been biased in his choice of data and in his argumentation, and that the [DCSD] ruling is completely void of argumentation.” The case was finally dropped by DCSD March 12 2004.
In summary:
While Lomborg’s critics continue to quote the DCSD’s 2003 verdict, it has been rescinded and found to be “dissatisfactory,” “emotional” and “completely void of argumentation.” An independent Dutch group of scientists analyzed the DCSD verdict and found that the comittee “delivered an almost totally political verdict.”
A note here on the disgusting behavior of the Scientific American.
The Scientific American attacked Lomborg for eleven pages, yet only came up with nine factual errors despite their assertion that the book was “rife with careless mistakes.” It was a poor display featuring vicious ad hominem attacks, including comparing him to a Holocaust denier.
When Lomborg asked for space to rebut his critics, he was given only a page and a half. When he said it wasn’t enough, he put the critics’ essays on his web page and answered them in detail. Scientific American threatened copyright infringement and made him take the pages down.
To those who may not know the story behind Lomborg’s “The Skeptical Environmentalist”:
It all started in 1997, when Bjorn Lomborg read a Wired Magazine interview with economist Julian Simon claiming that the environment – contrary to common understanding – was getting better, not worse. Lomborg thought this had to be incorrect (“right wing, American propaganda”). Looking for new ways to get his students involved, in the fall of 1997 he organized a study group with some of his top students to prove Simon wrong. Much to everyone’s surprise, much (though definitely not everything) of what Simon said was right. Thus the group set out to write about their results in op-eds in Denmark’s leading newspaper, Politiken. They published four lengthy articles with fifty footnotes in each, sparking a firestorm debate spanning over 400 articles in all the major metropolitan newspapers. The articles led to the publication of a Danish book later that year and to The Skeptical Environmentalist in 2001.
You could learn something from Bjorn Lomborg, Robin (and Damien, and pineapple et al). Here we have an honest man, former Greenpeace supporter and definitely no right-winger, who, when the facts changed, had the courage to change his mind and speak up, although he has paid for it ever since.
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Anne-Kit Littler wrote:
I’m not quite sure how to respond to the line of thought that: It’s entirely natural, and it’s partly man-made. – I don’t suppose you could point me to a scientific source that offers this not only unique, but enlightening conclusion?
I was looking at rainfall data the other year. It seemed then that there has been an increase in temperature, mostly due to the anthropogenic greenhouse effect. However, there hadn’t been a big drop in rainfall, but increased evaporation is the source of the problem. (As well as irrigation taking water from the river).
It’s not an exceptional drought in that the native animals are not dying of dehydration. It is putting a lot of pressure on farmers.
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Anne-Kit Littler wrote:
This is the response is characteristically devoid of any scientific content. Pure spin.
I don’t care to ask what you mean by “smarmy, condescending”, or to which of my comments you refer, and so I have to leave this spin of yours unanswered.
Fine.
I didn’t say he was. I said that the DCSD cited his book The Skeptical Environmentalist for:
1. Fabrication of data;
2. Selective discarding of unwanted results (selective citation);
3. Deliberately misleading use of statistical methods;
4. Distorted interpretation of conclusions;
5. Plagiarism;
and
6. Deliberate misinterpretation of others’ results.
And again, Despite your claims of “smarmy” and “condescending” I like Lomborg, and I think he interviews well, is intelligent, and deserves respect for his efforts to make his sexual orientation known, and understanding that as a public figure that is important. More recently he has been careful to emphasise that global warming is real, and caused by humans; because his views about that have been misconstrued – and he deserves respect for that too.
However he is not an expert on the causes or effects of global warming, and if he feels that investment in R&D is the best solution to climate change, more power to him, because that can’t hurt. But the Stern Review was a much more scientific economic analysis of the effects of AGW.
And there is an externality involved in the combustion of fossil fuels that that should be addressed, so that business practices take the genuinely cheapest option. Increasing R&D funding alone won’t correct the bias in the economics. The cost of CO2 emissions must be made to apply to the person doing the emission, or the market won’t produce the correct solutions.
And again, he is no expert on climate, weather or physics, and those are my interest in AGW.
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Robins 6 points: (in blue)
1.From the cooling of the stratosphere.
Which shows probably that there is more CO2 in the atmosphere, not that it warms the planet significantly. – all the factors of the troposphere can easily undo the stratospheric cooling… And heck, a demonstrated COOLING is hardly much of a warming effect eh?
2.From the exaggerated warming at the poles.
Righto – and the Antarctic which is not warming and has more ice there is not showing that.
3.From the measured increase in CO2.
Which proves that Co2 is increasing and nothing more than that.
4.From the modelling of the relative magnitudes of different causes of climatic change.
Which proves that if you gives guys money to do a complex theoretical estimate based on assumptions and guesses they will give you any answer you want.
5.From the decreased diurnal temperature range.
And wouldn’t increased cloud cover do the same…
6.From the decreased annual temperature range.
Likewise, dang inconvenient clouds…
You got nothing Robin. Piles of “circumstantial” bits that amount to proving there has been a correlation from 1850-2001 between temp and co2 is nothing. That’s the only 150 year correlation out of 500,000,000 million years. There are 499,999,850 years where co2 makes little difference.
Temperatures have been rising since 1800 and no body knows exactly why, but it wasn’t due to coal powered electricity stations.
The “long lived” argument is a confounding meaningless distractor. Name one single day since 1750 where co2 would have had more effect than water.
That’s 94,535 days to pick from…
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Oh, couldn’t find a smart-alec comeback on Lomborg, so you had to go waaaay back to one of my previous comments from weeks ago?
You’re grasping at straws, Robs.
Tell me, are you being deliberately obtuse? To any other reader my post would be clear as day. I really don’t know how to put it any other way (to be able to cut through your ideological blindfold).
I’ll cut it out in cardboard just for you:
The “man-made” allusion was to the government mismanagement of water rights in the area [it says so very plainly in the previous paragraph …]. This is quite uncontroversion, if you check the facts.
Sorry to crush your hopes but there was no “cognitive dissonance” on my part in making that statement so no need for you to scurry after any “peer-reviewed” science.
Read more carefully 😉
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Robin @ 399:
This is unbelievable – You reach new depths. I present a complete, documented rebuttal of your claim that Lomborg was discredited by the Danish Committee on Scientific Dishonesty – and you proceed to …
1) deny that you ever claimed he was discredited [then proceeding to repeat the points of accusation that were specifically dismissed by the Danish Ministry of Science], and
2) blather on at length about unrelated matters, totally clouding the real issue.
This is particularly classy, vintage Robin:
“And again, [Lomborg] is no expert on climate, weather or physics, and those are my interest in AGW.”
???
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And now, ladies and gents, I have to do some actual work, ttfn
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Joanne Nova wrote:
No, Jo; it is the heat kept in the troposphere that is not reaching the stratosphere that is the cause of the cooling.
So the significant cooling of the stratosphere does show a significant warming of the troposphere.
[ Co2 also emits IR out of the stratosphere, which causes cooling, so no, it doesn’t necessarily show that it makes a difference in the troposphere where CO2 competes with water, a much stronger greenhouse gas. — JN]
What factors are these, and what do you mean by “undo”?
[ Water vapor feedback. Clouds et al. Changes in these factors can totally undo any warming effect CO2 might have in the troposphere. (As I have said before maybe 18 times) — JN]
Cute comment, but without substance. As I’m sure you know the warming is significant, and the cooling shows that the cause is one that traps heat below the stratosphere, as opposed to a warming that comes from solar irradiance.
[ See my answer to No1. I’m not only cute, but right. Co2 can cool the stratosphere through emissions, but because the troposphere can be saturated with other greenhouse gases, it may make little difference there. — JN]
As predicted by climate models, the Antarctic continent is protected against climate change by the circulation of the southern ocean and the winds above it. However the Antarctic Peninsular has warmed at triple the rate of the global average, as has the Arctic; And this is also predicted for greenhouse warming, because the overlap between CO2 and H2O reduces the effect of increasing CO2 where there is H2O in the atmosphere. (And at the poles, there isn’t much).
[ Quote your source. The Steig study was shown to be statistical trickery interpolating data where none existed. Real thermometers on Antarctica don’t show warming except for the western peninsula. If there was warming there surely it would reduce sea ice. Not so. Sea ice grows. As usual the baseless assertions don’t add up. — JN]
Right. But we know from optics that CO2 is a greenhouse gas. And when you increase the concentration of a greenhouse gas, you increase the greenhouse effect.
[ yada yada yada. The Robin-broken-record-repeats. Yes Robin, this pointless reasoning hasn’t changed – CO2 absorbs IR in the lab. Congrats. Test Tubes have no clouds. Are you paid to repeat these lines, or is it just faulty neural “software”? Just because something works in the lab doesn’t mean it has the same net effect when all the missing variables apply in the real world. They have to remove the water vapor from the test tubes or the experiment fails. Does that help you make more sense of how limited the “optics” argument is? — JN]
Show me some evidence of this global conspiracy of climate scientists.
[I didn’t mention any conspiracy. Your straw man. Read Climate money again (See doc on left side bar). Sooner or later it will sink in that scientists are human and we have paid them to find a crisis. They are honest and hard working – so they “found” one. No one was paid to find the flaws, or audit the IPCC “synthetic report”. The system is broken. — JN]
Occam’s razor suggests that the best scientific understanding that we have is the one being understood (and published) by scientists. The claims that they are overly affected by money is counter to all we know about human motivation. (See Dan Pink on the surprising science of motivation, perhaps.)
[Robin, we need to start a tally of your arguments from Authority. Maybe other people can help me. The scoring system starts today. Robin – Argument from Authority: 1 — JN]
The suggestion that governments are paying to play up the science in support of climate change is counter to what we have seen governments do with climate research.
[OK. So you “prove” that the paid up scientists are giving us an unbiased and full report of the science, wait for it, ….because governments have not put in massive legislation yet? Not only is this sloppy reasoning, it ignores the EU, where governments have used the biased science to set up giant markets that increase the wealth of big bankers in London and mafioso players in China. — JN]
The suggestion that even if the motivation of the researcher and the government existed, (let me reiterate: this is a suggestion from some other world … it bears no resemblance to this one), this information blockade would not be broken by some young researcher after a Nobel Prize (And the $US1,400,000 money that goes with it), is counter to how science works.
[ OK. Now we are reduced to Proof by Nobel-prize-ology. A totally new form of logical error that counts as another Argument from Authority. Score: 2 — JN]
And the suggestion that climate science is organised differently from any other faculty, and therefore has different motivations is patently wrong.
But you don’t have to believe all of those – any one would clearly sink this “conspiracy of climate scientists” myth.
[Wacko. Brave Robin destroys another myth that only existed in his own head. Onya 😉 — JN]
Increased low cloud cover would do the same.
Low cloud cover has decreased. (See: Clement et al, SCIENCE 2009)
[ We’ve already discussed this. See Spencers view of Clement. They studied a small area, and they mixed up cause and effect. — JN]
Likewise, clouds are inconvenient for your world-view, not the scientific one.
You got nothing, Jo.
[ No, nothing that will fix a faulty brain that keeps resorting to argument from authority, and repeating points I’ve already debunked? No sigh. Can’t help you. — JN]
Please don’t try the straw man, Jo.
To see the relationship between CO2 and temperature one doesn’t look for correlation, there is a 25-50 year lag between the CO2 increase and the time at which 60% of the climatic effect has occurred.
[Verging on nonsensical. “Don’t look for a correlation”, but look for a 25-50 year lag, which is … (or would be if it existed) a… correlation with a lag…. OK. I’ll stand corrected when you show me that graph of 500 million years of data showing the tight 25-50 year lag. — JN]
There are plenty of detailed analyses of what climatic response is due to which forcing. Meehl et al. is a good one.
I’d be interested if you could find that comment in a peer reviewed scientific paper.
Do you have a citation?
My understanding of paleoclimatology is that CO2 is a very significant player.
[Google “Scotese and Berner, graph”. There is no correlation. These are results from two peer reviewed papers put into one graph. — JN]
It is not true that we don’t know why. If you peruse Meehl et al above, you will see a reasonably detailed break down of the reasons why.
[When you have time to explain why Meehl is right, and provide a working link, I might have time to follow the details. Until then, I’ll assume you haven’t read Meehl. — JN]
The one single day counterargument is a meaningless distractor. Water vapor content is a function of temperature. It is a feedback, not a forcing. The change between now and 1750 is primarily due to the long lived greenhouse gasses. Period.
[So there are no single days that you can name when carbon is more important greenhouse gas than water, but it is in the long run, “trust me” (No thanks). Even as a feedback water vapor is more important than carbon, and there’s no significant evidence it’s a positive feedback. If it’s negative, then it can wipe out the carbon warming effect. — JN]
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Anne-Kit Littler wrote:
Yes, I picked that up, Anne-Kit Littler.
It’s entirely natural, and it’s partly man-made is still a contradiction.
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Anne-Kit Littler wrote:
I said that that is what he was cited with and by whom. He was. I was aware that he sued the parent body successfully, and was careful not to suggest otherwise.
It is not meaningless that even the people you cite have a firmly stated grasp of the facts that global warming is real and global warming is man made.
And so I am unlikely to read “Lomborg” as you name his publications. (Apparently in general), seeking a counter to the Stern Review. (Which I have only read the summary of, and am similarly unlikely to delve further).
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Robin I posted replied inline above. Sorry, but I won’t have time to keep replying to someone who keeps rehashing arguments I’ve already debunked, keeps resorting to Argument From Authority, and invents new logical errors like thinking Nobel Prizes mean something scientific. I’m sure the same committee that gave Obama a million bucks for being elected president for 11 days has a good sound ability to judge climate science. I have better things to do.
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re jim karlock: October 1st, 2009 at 9:49 am.
The National Academies did almost completely vindicate Mann et al.
The point about the LIA and the MWP is that they occur at different times in different places, so do not show up very strongly on a whole northern hemisphere reconstruction.
Their existence does not refute Mann. Only their coincidence would do that. This is a well understood point. In the 1990 IPCC report temperature reconstructions were from one paper that looked at one site in central England. It looked like this.
The report mentioned that if the WMP period was not coincident, then this would be a poor picture, and that turned out to be the case.
(This, of course, didn’t stop denialists using the graph in “global warming swindle” and most things Brenchly has written, but the truth is that this view has been superseded by much greater and more detailed data.)
Other reconstructions are plentiful now.
And of course Mann et al 2008, has much more detailed data, and has not repeated the procedures that received justifiable criticism in the past. (And includes an analysis with all tree ring data left out).
Again the general hockey stick shape is present.
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Joanne wrote:
Same goes.
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CO2 also emits IR out of the stratosphere, which causes cooling?
CO2 causes warming because it stops earth-radiation more than sun-radiation. The stratosphere is cooling because the earth-radiation is not reaching it.
I can’t see what you might mean by “CO2 also emits IR out of the stratosphere”, but I can tell you that it doesn’t cause cooling.
CO2’s absorbance does overlap with water, which is a somewhat stronger greenhouse gas. Some of the denialist community have propagated myths such as 99% of the greenhouse effect is water vapour. The true figure is about 36% if overlaps are not included or 66% if they are. CO2 is still responsible for about 1.7W/m² more radiative forcing than before the industrial revolution. That’s counting the fact that water vapour overlaps.
It is important in climate because it is a feedback. The thing that affects how much water is in the atmosphere is the temperature.
Nevertheless the cooling of the stratosphere is an indicator that the cause could be greenhouse warming, and the much exaggerated warming at the poles shows that it is not water vapour. (Because there is very little water vapour at the poles).
Clouds and watervapour are positive feedbacks, Jo. They don’t undo CO2 warming, they reinforce it. I’m sorry if I haven’t noticed you say otherwise the other maybe 18 times. I certainly would have corrected you if I had seen it.
No, the argument that a cooling in the troposphere is not a warming, therefore cannot be evidence of one is not right, it is word-play. Cute, but without logical merit.
The troposphere can theoretically be saturated with greenhouse gasses, but it is not saturated with CO2.
It is true that the climates response to a linear increase in CO2 is approximately logarithmic, and this is due to saturation in the absorbance bands of CO2. This is why climate sensitivity is stated in °C (or K) per doubling, rather than per increase of CO2 – this figure is more nearly constant for difference concentrations of CO2.
It is currently about 3 or 4 °C per doubling – and a long way from saturation.
I haven’t discussed this. And I don’t rate blogs over peer reviewed research. If Spencer thinks that his objections would stand being read by the scientific community, he should write a letter to Science, or present his views at a conference.
As to your arguments, the northern pacific is not a small area, it’s huge. Cloud forcing in the northern pacific would contribute heavily to cloud forcing globally.
But certainly a larger study might overturn this paper. At the moment though, we suspect that cloud forcing is positive. (And the Hadley Centre model is the best at modelling clouds).
Cause and effect are not mixed up. It is known that the net effect of clouds is a cooling. The question was whether clouds increase or decrease in response to higher temperatures.
A correlation is the proportion of the variance of the temperature explained by the variance CO2 concentration. It will be low because of the lag.
It is not a matter of adding 25-50 years. The climate moves in response to the increase in CO2, and 25-50 years later 60% of that movement is completed.
There is lots of evidence for this time lag, both theoretical and modelled, and measured. (And we have discussed these before).
But of course there is not a 500 million year proxy with both temperature and CO2 concentration retrievable, with a resolution of decades. So of course you are safe from that particular proof.
Not quite.
Water vapour is completely unimportant wrt climate change because it just rains out in a couple of weeks. So it makes no difference to climate.
I can name locations where CO2 is more important than water vapour. (The North Pole), and I can name time periods over which CO2 is more important than water vapour (anything longer than a month, such as the last two centuries).
But overall if you remove all the water vapour from the atmosphere you drop the total greenhouse effect by about 36%. If you do the same to CO2 you only drop it by about 9%.
The thing to recognise is that about half the CO2 we have ever put in the atmosphere is still there. It’s residency time is increasing as the more rapid sinks saturate, and is now estimated at centuries. Therefore it affects climate.
The only thing affecting the amount of water vapour in the atmosphere this month is the temperature. Therefore it is a feedback.
It is well known that water vapour causes a positive feedback. There is no question that it is a powerful greenhouse gas.
You just said above that it is a powerful greenhouse gas.
Greenhouse gasses cause a greenhouse effect, which is a warming.
I can only assume that you mean clouds, not water vapour. They are not the same. Clouds are made of liquid or solid water, not water vapour.
It appears that clouds are a positive feedback, and that’s the way to bet. There is no doubt for water vapour. It is a positive feedback.
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And I can tell you that you don’t know what you are talking about.
If I explain why and enlighten you, will you thank me?
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How about a trial of ratings buttons on comments? Let me know how you feel. It’s probably better to discuss the plus’s and minus’s on this thread.)
This is not just about scoring points for either team. It’s a way of saying thanks to the people who do the most research, express themselves well, are statesman-like or entertaining.
I’d rather see lots more “thumbs up”, than feed a flame war. Let’s help visitors find the most useful comments fast.
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Blatant twist, your point is rubbish. I’ll leave it to the third parties to draw their own conclusions on how you twisted the words.
Good questions.
Your condescending BS gets tiring. So you can cut and paste a few impressive-sounding lines from Briffa’s very weak response that you haven’t a clue what he’s talking about and you project your ignorance onto others.
Briffa et al 2008 did not describe selection procedures for various sites. Briffa 2008 does not explain the basis for including the Avam site with Taimyr and excluding the other sites in the area. Nor does Briffa 2008 explain the basis for including Schweingruber Balschaya Kamenka with the Taimyr site and worse, neglects to mention that it was included at all in the body of the report. (That is only discovered by obtaining the data, that Phil Trans B insisted be archived to comply with their publishing guidelines after McIntyre queried them.) Briffa 2008 does not explain why Balschaya Kamenka is included or why Schweingruber’s Aykali River, Novaja Rieja, or Kotuyka River sites are excluded. Briffa fails to explain why Balschaya Kamenka was included with Taimyr, while Schweingruber’s Khadyta River, Yamal wasn’t included with Yamal. These problems extend back to Briffa et al 2000 and may have been brought to light sooner had the earlier “premier peer-reviewed” journal actually enforced their own publication policy. Then perhaps we wouldn’t have had about a dozen other studies citing Briffa.
Yes, ad hominem. McIntyre has a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics. His work as a consultant for the the mineral industry involved heavy use of statistics.
By your line of reasoning, Briffa, Mann, Hansen, Schmidt, Steig, Santer and many others are not “climatologists” either.
McIntyre, S. and R. McKitrick, 2003. Corrections to the Mann et al (1998) proxy data base and Northern Hemisphere average temperature series. Energy & Environment.
Reviewed by: Edward J. Wegman, George Mason University, David W. Scott, Rice University, and Yasmin H. Said, The Johns Hopkins University. We would also like to acknowledge the contributions of John T. Rigsby, III, Naval Surface Warfare Center, and Denise M. Reeves, MITRE Corporation in what is often referred to as “The Wegman Report.”
As if you didn’t know.
A procedure you can’t explain. You haven’t a clue as to why the data sets may or may not have been properly selected. Which is difficult anyway since Briffa himself did not explain the criteria and that’s the point.
Utter rubbish. A lovely circular argument. Yet you are absolutely clueless as what would make a sample “representative.”
Absolute falsehood. McIntyre states: “I did not say or imply that Briffa had “purposely selected” individual cores into the chronology and clearly said otherwise. Unfortunately for himself, Briffa’s tactic of withholding data and obstructing requests for data has backfired on him, as some people (not myself) have interpreted this as evidence of malfeasance, as opposed to my own interpretation that this only shows stubbornness on Briffa’s part and ineffective compliance administration by funding agencies and journals.
I never once said anything about “random data.” Don’t put words in my mouth. You are again projecting your statistical ignorance. Yeah, a strawman.
ROFL! That has absolutely NOTHING to do with the core series selection criteria. I almost feel like I’m clubbing a baby seal!
“Curve-fitting standardizations” are statistical techniques used to compare growth rates of tree rings over long periods of time. However, there are frequency limitations in most curve-fitting standardizations. Regional Curve Standardization (RCS) is popular because other forms of standardization involving fitting linear or curvilinear functions, and even low-pass filtering to core series of individual measurements are more prone to the loss of variance resulting in the loss of longer timescale information even in long measurement series.
Having selected core series by some method (not described by Briffa in his papers), we then apply RCS, a statistical technique which, while better than other curve-fitting standardizations, requires LARGE sample sizes in the range of 50 plus. Smaller sample sizes lead to amplify bias, a problem that Briffa cautions about in Briffa et al, 2008 when he states:
“The count of trees needed to produce a ‘robust’ chronology is often gauged by using the mean interseries correlation to calculate the expressed population signal (EPS; Wigley et al. 1984; Briffa and Jones 1990).” (You need LOTS of samples!)
He also states: “The net effect of potential biases in the application of the RCS method will vary according to the specific makeup of the samples in a chronology. Much of the potential bias may average out, especially when sample replication is high, but the particular problems associated with the reliability of the start and end of chronologies may affect chronology calibration and hinder the study of recent tree-growth forcing trends.” (My emphasis added.)
And yet in both Briffa 2000 and Briffa 2008, the sample size into the modern era is TOO SMALL! He violates his own cautions AND never explains why he thinks that’s OK.
At issue is that the Yamal series as described in the studies didn’t show divergence (we now know it should have) and everyone assumed (since he never stated otherwise) that the sample size met his own stated criteria. Having obtained the data (after ten years of stonewalling) we find out that that basic assumption we had about his RCS methodology (that the sample size was large) used in these studies was wrong.
The irony is that you actually can’t refute McIntyre. Hell, you don’t even know what “standardization” is in the discussion of dendochronology/dendoclimatology and yet you post with dripping condescension toward everyone else as if you actually know what you’re talking about!
Stick to sophistry Robin. It’s your strong suit. Statistics sure as hell isn’t.
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Robin,
You said:
This is incorrect. From Wikipedia:
Do I need to say any more?
George
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NEWS FLASH!
In a groundbreaking study, Robin Grant, using some sort of “standardization” procedure that he can’t explain has found the earth to be two orders of magnitude older than 4.5 billion years commonly accepted by the world’s scientists. Film at 11!
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WANTED: Any rational well informed fans of the carbon dioxide crisis. We need you. Come debate us.
Anyone?
…
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Robin Grant wrote:
The subject of the persistence of the greenhouse gases, particularly CO2 keeps coming up. Everyone should be aware that the residence time of CO2 is not a minor peripheral point in the AGW hypothesis, rather it is a foundational cornerstone. If CO2 has a long residence time, it will accumulate as a result of ‘incidental’ sources like volcanism and human industry. However if the residence time is short, it is IMPOSSIBLE for CO2 to accumulate on account of these incidental sources, and it’s Game Over for AGW, simple as that.
With a long residence time, we can also greatly lower the ‘threshold of significance’ of co2 emissions since even small levels of CO2 emissions will hang around a long time before getting ‘fluxed’ out of the atmosphere, and therefore cause an accumulation. For this reason, we can also stretch the historical time period of significant human CO2 releases all the way back to the start of the industrial revolution. All this is corollary to the belief in a long residence time of atmospheric CO2.
AGW proponents know this and obtained the long residence time needed (to lend plausibility to their assertions about the cause of recent CO2 increase) by simply assuming the corollary effects were already true and then working out what residence time would allow the observed CO2 rise. The number the modelers came up with is 50-200 years. Note that NOT A SINGLE measurement study was used to obtain this supposed long residence time of atmospheric CO2. The FACT that this long residence time is based on computer modeling is freely admitted and not controversial.
The problem with this approach is that we already knew the real, measured residence time of atmospheric CO2 because of the many atmospheric CO2 residence time studies already completed; some recent, some several decades old.
Below is a list of the 35 studies that actually measured the CO2 residence time expressed as half life with their results summarized:
(Study Author(s), Date, Residence Time in Years)
Based on natural carbon:
Craig, 1957, 7 +/-3
Revelle & Seuss, 1957, 7
Arnold & Anderson, 1957, 10
Craig, 1958, 7 +/-5
Bolin & Eriksson, 1957, 5
Broeker, 1963, 8
Craig, 1963, 5-15
Keeling, 1973, 7
Broeker, 1974, 9.2
Oeschger, et al., 1975, 6-9
Keeling, 1070, 7.53
Peng, et al., 1979, 7.6 (5.5-9.4)
Siegenthaler, 1980, 7.5
Lal & Seuss, 1983, 3-25
Siegenthaler, 1983, 7.9-10.6
Kratz, et al., 1983, 6.7
Siegenthaler, 1989, 4-9
Based on the Seuss Effect:
Ferguson, 1958, 2 (1-8 )
Bacastow & Keeling, 1973, 6.3-7
Based on (atomic bomb) C14:
Bien & Seuss, 1967, >10
Munnich & Roether, 1967, 5.4
Nydal, 1968, 5-10
Young & Fairhall, 1968, 4-6
Rafter & O’Brian, 1970, 12
Machta, 1972, 2
Broeker, et al., 1980, 6.2-8.8
Stuiver, 1980, 6.8
Quay & Stuiver, 1980, 7.5
Delibrias, 1980, 6.0
Druffel & Seuss, 1983, 12.5
Siegenthaler, 1983, 6.99-7.54
Based on Radon-222:
Broeker & Peng, 1974, 8
Peng, et al., 1979, 7.8-13.2
Peng, et al., 1983, 8.4
Based on Solubility Data:
Murray, 1992, 5.4
Based on C13/C12 Mass Balance:
Segalstad, 1992, 5.4
As you can plainly see, there is NOT ONE SINGLE STUDY of atmospheric CO2 residence time based on actual measurements that supports the assertion that atmospheric CO2 has a long residence time of “50-200 years”.
So can we FINALLY put the idea of “long lived greenhouse gasses” to rest? Let’s just call it what it is: Fiction. Period.
Jim Rennison
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Jim Rennison: wrote
This is very hard to believe. I wonder how you explain the monotonically increasing CO2 that is observed since the start of monitoring in 1958. (See: Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide – Mauna Loa.) The Keeling curve looks to the untrained eye as if CO2 is remaining in the atmosphere. What with all that CO2 still in the atmosphere.
Surely if the residency time were only 10 years, then 10 years after emission most of the CO2 would have left the atmosphere? And the only increase would be the the increase in the rate of anthropogenic emissions over a decade previously?
Instead we seem to be seeing about half of the CO2 pumped out ever remains in the atmosphere. Isn’t this first order observational evidence that the residence time is more than 10 years?
Given the difficulty I have believing this I did a search for estimates of the CO2 residence time. The first paper I found estimates 30-35 millennia:
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co2isnotevil wrote:
That was my point. CO2isnotevil; The grand conspiracy theory is the more complicated explanation.
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JLKrueger wrote
Materially void. And you’re wrong.
Then do so and stop spouting ad hominems and see if you can answer the points.
The ones that stand before you are:
1) McIntyre is not, as you have claimed, as statistician.
2) The Briffa paper is quite clear, even to a layman, that the data were not selected randomly, but according to a much studied process
And as with my other good questions, you have not answered them. I suspect that you’re overstating the time or legality or existence of these FOI requests.
Then consider how I feel about yours. You claim to have read nearly every paper I post a link to, but you still are ignorant of their content. I point out one of the places where the selection process is discussed, and you still seem to think that if it is different from a random sample this is evidence of fraud.
That is plainly stupid, and I’m over discussing your BS. Let, as you say, the reader decide.
And as to McIntyre’s paper, Energy and the Environment is not a peer reviewed journal, it has no ISI listing. It is listed by Scopus, as a trade jounal – meaning advertising and journalism, not research.
Then we have no argument.
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Try me.
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Did you notice that RCS aligns the trees by the tree’s age and fits the curve to that?
The number of trees in the modern era might not be as important as the number of trees of that type in the region of any era in the study.
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I have often said that there is sufficient climate science in peer reviewed sources to give me enough reading.
What on earth have I said to make you think that I follow the careers of unqualified psuedo-scientists, and their publications in trade magazines of no scientific influence, who like to call themselves “journals”?
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Robin,
Is it not your own standard that if you are not a qualified statistician, you cannot evaluate statistical procedures and results?
Is it not your own standard that if you are not a qualified climate scientists, you cannot evaluate the reports of qualified climate scientists?
Again, by your own standards, if you are neither a qualified statistician nor a qualified climate scientist, how can any of your selections and evaluations be valid?
What are your qualifications that makes your selection of and evaluation of climate science reports any better than random noise?
Show us your CV that proves you are a qualified statistician and climate scientists who is qualified to select the reports to believe and to present as evidence for your position.
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No, it’s even more nonsensical than that.
This is not a …. peer-reviewed-paper-blog… obviously no matter how convincingly we argue points, until it’s in nature, or science, it’s not real.
The earth didn’t go around the sun in 1615. Galileo wasn’t peer reviewed. The orbits switched in Nov 1869, when Nature began. Must have been a big day.
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Robin #420: Sorry “Try Me” is not enough.
You say CO2 IR emissions don’t cause cooling in the stratosphere,so you go find me a paper or text book that shows that. When you google, you’ll find out I’m right. That saves me time explaining the science to someone without enough manners to say thanks.
Good luck goose hunting. Looking forward to seeing you back up your statements.
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Joanne Nova @ 424: No, it’s even more nonsensical than that.
I agree totally. My post at 423 is a ploy to get Robin to make still more claims. We are sure to find numerous inconsistencies and contradictions within them. That is, if they are concrete enough to identify what his claims mean. Then we can chop off still more logical legs and arms off his position.
He has no logical legs for his position to stand. He has no logical arms to hold onto the truth. Robin is like that Knight in the Monty Python skit who had both arms and legs chopped off and was challenging the Knight who did it to come back and “Fight like a man”.
Robin, I challenge YOU to fight like a man. Show us your CV and explain how it justifies you to make the claims you make by your own standards.
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Lionell,
I think you’ve summed up the situation earlier in this thread: we are not dealing with rational people.
Or at least not rational arguments. You can present them evidence and logical arguments, and time and time again they retort with obvious fallacies and often outright lies. They just make stuff up. They know perfectly well what they are doing, and R.G. seems to be well paid to do so.
It is as simple as creating a matrix of responses to given arguments presented in certain lexiconic/linguistic form. This results in the appearance of a valid argument, but as you know it is only an argument in form, but not in substance. R.G is especially talented at this. The words are strung together to sound legitimate and knowledge-based, and many people are easily hoodwinked into it, but upon honest and knowledgeable inspection the arguments are nearly always illogical in some way. You pointed out one of the ways in #423, well played. But I wouldn’t expect him to bite if I were you, he’s better at that dishonest game than you are. You are bound by morality and the knowledge and comprehension of good, he is not. He simply performs the function he is paid or otherwise indentured to. This is why I called him a troll and said we should stop feeding it. And it is an “it”. It is some entity performing some function, and we find it here on this board. R.G. is probably a real human, but what he presents on this board is only a function. R.G. may well have his own life and concerns and we can’t expect him to take this board seriously – he doesn’t need to come here as a human, but many are mistaking it as such. It is coming here to perform a function. Form without substance.
Nice Monty Python reference.
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JP,
Even a non-response contains a useful exposure of his nature.
He presents a uniquely consistent class of intellectual pathology and is very good at it. That is good in the sense that a virus is good at causing people to become ill. If you can get through the experience of being infected by his words, you are immune for life. He is a text book case study of such pathology and well worthy of analysis and understanding.
The moral and rational are practical. The immoral and irrational are not. Its absolutely vital to learn to tell the difference. Studying the Robin’s of the world is an important part of that education.
PS: This is not the first time I have encountered this class of pathology.
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Robin,
My point was that the various naive and obtuse arguments used to support AGW are far more complex than the simple underlying physics that describes how the climate system actually works, which in fact, the AGW arguments often contradict. Occam’s razor tells me that the simpler solution is more likely to be correct despite the existence of ‘peer reviewed’ papers that claim otherwise.
You should also back off your claim that all scientists are lined up behind AGW, While most funded climate ‘scientists’ are behind it, this is only because few scientists have the balls to bite the hand that feeds them. They then construct complex, albeit house of cards, arguments to appease their benefactors so they can continue to receive funding. They rubber stamp peer review on any paper that also supports their source of income. They promote the illusion that the science is too complex to understand, so that people like you don’t even try to understand it for yourself and instead simply accept their arguments based on a misguided faith in ‘peer review’. On top of this, they throw in a fear of catastrophe with a false hope for salvation in order to sucker in the masses who don’t have a clue either way.
George
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co2isnotevil: 429
“You should also back off your claim that all scientists are lined up behind AGW, While most funded climate ’scientists’ are behind it, this is only because few scientists have the balls to bite the hand that feeds them. They then construct complex, albeit house of cards, arguments to appease their benefactors so they can continue to receive funding. They rubber stamp peer review on any paper that also supports their source of income. They promote the illusion that the science is too complex to understand, so that people like you don’t even try to understand it for yourself and instead simply accept their arguments based on a misguided faith in ‘peer review’.”
George and anyone else who would like to respond, my background in science was in chemistry. I worked for 15 years as a chemist before going on to other things. In all that time I never once was required to deceive. I was always employed by pharmaceutical companies never academia. My employers wanted and needed the truth in order to make informed decisions with regards to very large sums of their money. Is the following a correct characterization of the situation regarding private, industrial vs. academic science.
In as much as my employers wanted the results to come out a certain way the fact that they were playing with large sums of their own money they realized they had to accept the truth. If they did not they would just end up setting fire to bale full’s of money. This contrasts with academia/government where the sources of the money also want a particular experimental outcome, the difference being that there is no downside to deception. No boatloads of money are lost in most cases it’s not their money in the first place. Whereas I would lose my job if I provided biased results this seems to be completely turned upside down in academia.
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Ray,
Yes, I agree with your assessment. It has to do with having ‘skin in the game’. The only skin in the game that academic/government researchers have is the self interest in continuing to be funded. If they were liable for unnecessary costs imposed on society based on their findings, for example, the trillions in CO2 mitigation costs, they would be a lot more diligent.
I’m not saying that all AGW research is fraudulent, just that there’s an intrinsic bias to obtain certain results which manifests tunnel vision, especially with regard to contrariwise data and arguments.
George
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Robin Grant entered the Yamal discussion on an ad hominem. Throughout he’s worked to either deflect to other areas of the AGW religion, or stuck to ad hominem, appeal to authority and simple name-calling. When called out to prove or demonstrate why the McIntyre criticisms of Briffa are wrong, he can’t do it.
Even when fully called out on his total ignorance on the statistical technique of “standardization” in my post #412, (where I actually explained what things meant) he comes back with the totally irrelevant:
He doesn’t even recognize the irrelevance. He has no idea what he’s talking about, any rational observer can (and several have) recognize it and yet he keeps it up. A rational person would not keep poking themself in the eye as Robin does.
While Robin feels free to ignore anything not printed in “Nature” and “Science” isn’t it odd that Briffa, Mann, Schmidt and Steig all deemed it worthy enough to respond over the years to McIntyre’s criticisms and not with just ad hominems but with actual statistical argument? Isn’t it odd that the National Academies of Science cite numerous papers published in Energy & Environment if said papers are “useless” as Robin contends?
I’m sure the rest of you have noticed that if you miss answering anything, Robin is right on it. Yet Robin ignores major points all the time. The difference is that Robin is better at keeping track whenever you fail to answer an argument, even if the argument is totally off topic, and happily waves it in your face to score points.
Robin is all about form and sophistry. Ain’t an atom of substance in his arguments. He’s very skilled at “scoring debate points” and muddying any discussion he’s entered here, but very short on substantive content.
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Robin Grant Wrote:
.
Well some find the whole AGW hypothesis hard to believe. I had previously thought that you would have been persuaded by numerous peer-reviewed works of scientific discovery all reaching a similar (if not quite identical) conclusion about a matter in question. Most people schooled in the sciences are persuaded by just this sort of stuff. Noting that CO2 levels are rising monotonically (itself a problem for AGW, since human emissions are rising exponentially) does not refute the previous studies on the CO2 residence time. Rather, the provable, measured residence time needs to be viewed as an anchor point of well-proved science upon which we can build further understandings, rather than something inconvenient to our ‘preferred’ hypothesis to be abandoned in favor of ‘best guesses’ supportive of that same hypothesis.
To wit, we have to find an explanation for rising atmospheric CO2 levels which accommodates the well-trod science of the short residence time. Fortunately, this is not at all difficult, the resulting explanation gibing far more gracefully with several other observed phenomena than does the suite of assertions clustered around the supposed long residence time.
Yes this is pretty much how it works, and BTW the accepted measured average isn’t even 10 years but more like 5. The short residence time means that of the ~750 Gt of CO2 that is in the atmosphere at any given time, about 125-150Gt is fluxed out every year by the natural carbon cycle. Even the rate of our increase doesn’t really matter much; the natural world’s fluctuations are larger than our entire contribution, let alone the changes in our contribution. The natural world already copes with stupendously large influxes of CO2 all the time, influxes which vary by seasonal, annual, decadal and probably longer cycles. There is no ‘delicate balance’ of atmospheric CO2 sources and fluxes that our small emissions have upset. Rather there is a very robust equilibrium state which is extremely stable and self-regulating, governed by interactive sources and fluxes.
Half? The IPCC asserts that more than 21% of the CO2 in the current atmosphere is of anthropogenic provenance, mostly from fossil fuels. This amounts to attributing “all or nearly all” of the increase from 280ppm to the present levels to human industry. With a supposed “50-200 years” residence time, virtually ALL anthropogenic CO2 should still be in the present atmosphere, and the IPCC would then be correct in their assertions.
The problem is, this is exactly where the long residence time assertion starts to break down; if the IPCC’s long residence time is correct, then tabulating our known emissions, the atmosphere should contain ~800ppm CO2 right now. But of course we know it does not. Undaunted, the IPCC believes that a “mystery Sink” has fluxed the “missing CO2” from the atmosphere, which is why we only have 385ppm instead of ~800ppm.
The latest papers by pro AGW modelers are stretching the residence time to longer and longer times, some of them (such as the one you cited) being quite absurd in their assertions. Please keep in mind that NONE of these estimates are based on actual measurements; I cited all the measurement studies in my last post.
If 21% of the CO2 in our present atmosphere is of fossil fuel origins, it should be very easy to prove, as the isotopic mass balance signature of ‘fossil’ carbon is FAR different from recent terrestrial and pelagic carbon. The extent to which carbon from atmospheric CO2 has shifted from the recent carbon signature to the ancient one corresponds to the fraction of atmospheric CO2 which is fossil sourced.
So can you guess what we find? First, the (PDB) isotopic signature of 100% fossil carbon is -26 per mil. The signature of recent carbon is -7.0 per mil. The predicted signature of atmospheric carbon IF it were 21% fossil sourced is -11 per mil. So why does the carbon in our present atmosphere have a signature of only 7.5-7.8 per mil? This corresponds to only a few percent fossil sourced(~3%), nowhere near the 21% the IPCC predicts if “All or nearly all” of the rise from 280-385 is due to fossil fuel burning. So this key piece of potentially corroborative evidence is missing in action. If it were present, it would prove that all those scientists that measured the CO2 residence time over the years all got it wrong, and the CO2 residence time really is long.
But that’s not what the evidence shows. Want more proof? When we substitute the provable short residence time, and then re-tabulate our cumulative emissions, we obtain an atmospheric CO2 fraction that’s a near perfect match for the observed concentration. We also obtain an isotope mass-balance signature nearly identical to the observed signature. In other words, the whole puzzle comes together without any leftover pieces.
So most of the ‘new’ CO2 is entirely natural in origin, NOT from fossil fuels, and this knowledge forces us to find another source for this new CO2, a natural source. For such a source, look no further than the oceans. The warming oceans change the equilibrium concentration between ocean and atmosphere, which ‘allows’ more CO2 to reside in the atmosphere. All the carbon emission cutting we could ever hope to do will not change this.
Jim Rennison
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Jim Rennison: 433
Jim thanks for the short but informative tutorial. One quick question my background is chemistry therefore not well versed in isotopic signatures. What are the units are being discussed when you make a statement “(PDB) isotopic signature of 100% fossil carbon is -26 per mil”?
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Lionell Griffith wrote:
That is a little bit of a straw man.
My point was that McIntyre is not a statistician, and I raised it because JLKrueger has constructed an argument by authority based on his claim that he is.
But certainly I am not a statistician, and I couldn’t evaluate any but the simplest of statistical procedures with any confidence.
I can however understand that a process of selecting trees that best reveal the temperature signal in their ring widths would end up with a set of trees that are significantly different from a randomly selected set of trees.
The reason for this is that the trees that are discarded would tend to be ones whose growth is limited rather than exaggerated by the other factors.
So the answer to Jo’s question at post 25 “Can anyone imagine any reason that Briffa could have selected trees that had larger recent growth rings?”, is “yes”.
Certainly when I come to a conclusion that contradicts 97% of the world’s currently publishing climate scientists, my first thought is “What am I getting wrong?”
When denialists find the same, they think “These experts are wrong!” (And this is often extended to “These experts are dishonest and their work is fraudulent!”). It is this conclusion that I think requires scientific confirmation, and presentation to the scientific community for peer review.
And that is different from saying that the author has to be a qualified climate scientist. It is only saying that they should be able to present their findings in such a way that there are no blindingly obvious flaws, and have a point that is of some scientific significance.
do not “select and evaluate” so much as be aware of what the scientific position is. However, I can understand what is wrong with many of the denialist claims.
Also, as a skeptic, and I think that I am beginning to recognise in AGW denialists some of the common fallacies used by pseudosceintists.
“The scientists are all lying” is a claim also made by creationists.
They also use “The journals are all conspiring to suppress the truth”, which is the call of the perpetual motion/energetically positive electrolysis of water/other snake oil purveyors.
“The government is suppressing the reality” is a claim also made by 911 truthers.
“Scientists are malanthropic, and actively seek our harm” is a claim also made by the anti-vaccers
And the pattern of seeking to circumvent the scientific process, and pontificate directly to the public is also a common sign of pseudoscience. If McIntyre thinks that his analysis would stand peer review, he should present it to the scientific community in a paper or at a conference.
And on this point I agree with the Wegman report, which said:
As mentioned in our introduction, much of the discussion on the ‘hockey stick’ issue has taken place on competing web blogs. Our committee believes that web
blogs are not an appropriate way to conduct science and thus the blogs give credence to the fact that these global warming issues are have migrated from the
realm of rational scientific discourse. Unfortunately, the factions involved have become highly and passionately polarized.
And yourself? How do you judge the relative merits of scientific research versus claims external to the scientific process?
I differentiate between scientific and pseudo-scientific sources by the source, but I am also aware of some of the visible signs of climate change in Australia and the southern pacific.
But even evaluation of climate science reports by random noise would be significantly better than the signal in here. As literature reviews show, of the 928 papers 1993-2003 with the ISI keywords “global climate change” not one found the current warming to be mostly natural. If it were the scientific literature that was being sampled by random, the sorts of positions found in here would not be tenable.
It is only the reliance on counterscientific blogs as sources by which a sober and honest person could reach the opposite conclusion. That position doesn’t exist in the science.
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Joanne Nova wrote:
There are two points to be made there.
Firstly, you have not convincingly argued points. My post 409 responds to most of your inline points. I see that I missed some (or you added them later) I address them below. Your response has been nothing. That’s not convincing.
Secondly, I don’t say that it’s not real until its in science or Nature, so that’s a straw man.
[Ever heard of satire? — JN]
I do say that claims made in unscientific sources that are not made in scientific sources are not generally true, and not worth my time reading.
[ So therefore all our claims are false and yet you read them? — JN]
Again, not what I said. Another straw man. That’s [2].
[Yes. 2 x satire. We are making fun of your reasoning. — JN]
Peer review has evolved as the least worst system that we have. It doesn’t go back forever.
The solar system was known to be heliocentric by Europe, barring Italy, and then only because of the word of the pope. The scientific community, then, as now, had it right.
And climate change is not some untested proposition that when investigated might go either way. There are thousands of research papers published in the field. You claim that they are almost all wrong is no small claim. It would take a lot of new research to come to light, and some pretty hefty explanations of why what we know now about optics and thermodynamics is wrong.
Sorry “Sorry “Try Me” is not enough” is still not convincing.
That doesn’t answer my question. Can you produce any backing from any scientific source that supports your claim that CO2 has made little difference in 499,999,850 of the last 500,000,000 million years.
[Since you fail to use aristotelian logic, or have good manners, or do any research yourself that I suggest, I’ll wait til you show manners, then I might find time to continue your personal tutorial in stratospheric spectroscopy. — JN]
As I have pointed out to you, oh I don’t know, about 18 times before, scientific investigation has concluded that “a climate sensitivity greater than 1.5°C has probably been a robust feature of the Earth’s climate system over the past 420 million years”.
Given that this is counter to your claim I wonder if you made it up yourself, or if you can produce a source.
[Yes, all 18 times were faulty climate models. Glorified opinions. You stil lhavent produced one paper with empirical evidence that extra carbon makes a major difference. 400 comments and you still dodge that question. — JN]
As predicted by climate models, the Antarctic continent is protected against climate change by the circulation of the southern ocean and the winds above it. However the Antarctic Peninsular has warmed at triple the rate of the global average, as has the Arctic; And this is also predicted for greenhouse warming, because the overlap between CO2 and H2O reduces the effect of increasing CO2 where there is H2O in the atmosphere. (And at the poles, there isn’t much).
Strawman again. You score [3] logical fallacies so far. I said that “As predicted by climate models, the Antarctic continent is protected against climate change by the circulation of the southern ocean and the winds above it.” I did not say that it was warming rapidly. (Although the peninsular is, and the aggregation of ice, in conjunction with the increased glacier speed are both signs of increased precipitation and increased warming, both predicted by models under AGW.)
Argument by personal incredulity. [4]
[I am not the Antarctic. I’m flattered that you think I might be a continent. But yet another strawman claim from you of logical errors. – JN]
Not in the Antarctic, Jo.
It is not like the Arctic where there is much perennial sea ice.
The Antactic sea ice forms almost entirely over winter. When you increase precipitation and the flow rate of glaciers, you increase the sea ice.
… Once again your baseless assertions have no science behind them.
Again, not really compelling logical argument.
That’s your argument? Test tubes have no clouds?
That’s another logical fallacy: red herring. You score [5].
[Thanks. Since you keep mistakenly relying on Argument from Authority, I should hope I break many of your invented mis-understood rules of reason. The higher your fake count is ther better. Test Tubes have no clouds is a shorthand summary pointing out that you keep referring to a one variable equation and trying to convince us that the multivariable atmosphere would respond in exactly the same way. Please mark me down 2 points for this one, because you don’t have any answer to that, and making up another fake logical mistake is the only response you can give. (But bad luck if you were hoping we wouldn’t see though it.) — JN]
The greenhouse effect is not known from test-tubes. It is originally known from the fact that the earth is over 30°C warmer than it should be.
[ “30 degrees warmer than it should be” SHOULD be? Who says? And so sayth GOD in his message to robin — the earth shall be -15.2216 degrees, look and marvel at the warmth I have provided through greenhouse gases. — JN]
Since then the science of optics has provided us with much more accurate theoretical understanding of this, and it is one of the most precisely known changes in radiative forcing in the atmosphere since the industrial revolution.
Of course not. I’m only pointing out what the science is.
[Ask for the updater on Parody 1.01 next time you reboot the neurons ok? — JN]
But while we’re asking personal questions about each other’s income, what about you? Have you or companies with an interest in this site an interest in the fossil fuel industry in WA? Have you received compensation for your handbook, appearances or posts?
[Net I have contributed far more money to debunking climate than I have received. My investments are in gold, not energy. Donations to this site don’t even cover a full year of childcare costs, but they do help, and I am very grateful people have been so generous. — JN]
And how much face have you got invested in science denial? Is there any way you could accept science even if you were to know it was true?
[Read my first post. If the evidence changes, I’ll change my mind. What else would a scientist do. My reputation is vested in picking up media bias, monetary bias and poor communication. If new evidence turned up tomorrow that would not change the fact that there is none you can quote today and that you and hundreds of others therefore have a religious belief, based on faith in opinions, simulations, committees and ‘peer review’ by unpaid friends… Name one paper with empirical evidence.— JN]
No, the experiment works fine in highschool labs using normal air.
So this is another logical fallacy: Completely making up rubbish. [6].
[ You’re talking about a different experiment. I’m referring to spectroscopic tests of absorption. They suck the water vapor out of the tubes because it competes with carbon d. I’ll award myself another Robin-Grant-logical-error point. No two! 8! 🙂 — JN]
Not really. But if you can find a scientific source for your claim that “hey have to remove the water vapor from the test tubes or the [greenhouse effect] experiment fails.” I’ll certainly apologise for claiming you are making up rubbish, and subtract one from your fallacy count for this post.
[ http://www.freshpatents.com/Fourier-transform-infrared-spectrophotometer-dt20070607ptan20070125950.php — JN]
How does this “money” affect tens of thousands of scientists from a wide range of financial securities then? It can’t be just personal money, not 100% of them are insecure in their funding, and young students have no promise of secure funding, so the fame of a paradigm shifting paper would certainly outweigh the prospect of continued funding.
In fact a paradigm shifting paper would outweigh the cost for anyone by orders of magnitude. No sober scientist would sit on proof that any known aspect of science is questionable.
Nope, again, completely not convincing.
[ Righto then. Your 5 word reply is not ‘convincing’ against my 4000 word doc. Inane.— JN]
If you were talking about one scientist or research body, that would be libel, but you’re talking about tens of thousands of published scientists from all over the world. That’s the conspiracy theory. And there’s no part of it that is remotely credible.
[Your reply lacks so much detail, actually it lacks a single point of reason. You haven’t even read Climate Money — JN]
No, I note that governments, especially democratic governments, especially that late Howard and the late Bush governments of here and USA, have actively and purposefully blocked the dissemination of climate science, and in no way would have funded this search for global warming that you claim is overwhelming scientists (from all over the six continents) … But only those in the field of climate science.
[Duh. Read Climate money follow the refs to see government docs refuting exactly your point. Apologies will be accepted. — JN]
No it specifically doesn’t ignore the EU. The climate science consensus comes from all over the world. This is strong evidence for why your funding argument is rubbish. The funding arrangements are dissimilar.
The point is that in science the paradigm shifting paper is most respected, gets the most citations, and is best for the career. No one sits on one for the good of their career. And if someone turned over climate science at this stage, it probably would get a Nobel Prize.
And yet you still think that no climate scientist is doing unbiased research.
[No. You made that up. — JN]
Not even unbiased enough to notice the points that you have in your handbook. You must feel very confident in your intelligence and acumen to have noticed that “Temperatures are not Rising” and “Carbon dioxide is doing nearly all it can do” whilst the worlds climate scientists have all remained blinded by bias caused by funding arrangements to notice those points.
[Another invention. — JN]
Meehl’s right within the error stated, because the model hindcasts to within that error. Here is the link. (As I have provided before maybe 18 times).
[First two words are “Ensemble simulations” that’s got it right there. Climate Models are evidence for nothing. Assumptions piled on estimates raised to the power of a good guess. You have not one empirical paper to base your faith on. Religious Robin. — JN]
00
Lionell Griffith wrote:
For instance?
00
If you are interested in the scientific understanding go to scientific sources.
Nature Reports Climate change is very accessible.
I don’t know if you are genuine and actually believe so completely in the anti-scientific positions that you read here that you can’t even credit the scientific position with at least the validity that it is backed by science, or if you are a paid astroturfer.
Taking a recent pole in the UK, 80% of the public believe the scientific position on climate change. Why are there only two or three of us here, do you think? A group of cultists gathering around their insular temple, or astroturfers outnumbering genuine people by orders of magnitude?
Certainly there is no basis to your accusations.
00
Lionell Griffith Wrote:
Indeed. Working and sleeping take up some of my time.
Ad hom [1 … but continual]
00
Such definitive statements about clouds considering the uncertainty in the peer review literature on this issue. Robin can you explain to all here the mechanisms whereby clouds act as a positive feedback to warming. I’m all ears? And be prepared for an in depth discussion on the role of clouds in climate climate.
00
co2isnotevil wrote:
.
Not really CO2. It’s pretty simple. CO2 is a greenhouse gas. Increasing the concentration of greenhouse gasses increases the greenhouse effect, ergo we should observe a warming. This warming has been confirmed by observation.
Yeah, that’s impossible to believe.
For one thing a lot of research is done by academic or NGO bodies. For another those that are funded by governments are not paid or encouraged to find that money has to be spent changing the economy to a less carbon dependent one. Quite the opposite.
For a third it is recognition, not money that is worked for in science, and the former generates the latter.
For a fourth this funding bias effect should be occurring in other faculties too, because the climate science faculty isn’t funded differently from the others. So you should not trust any scientific research if you don’t trust climate science.
For a fifth it would only take one scientist to publish that the world isn’t warming to overthrow global warming. You’d need 100% coverage with this “hand that feeds” thing for the last 40 or 50 years.
But these arguments not to the matter. The science stands because it is repeated and reproduced.
Now that’s very juicy conspiracy theory. Keep that one. “This science is too complicated to understand”. Do you have an example of a few press releases that include a phrase to that effect from climate scientists?
There is a catastrophe. A 30% biodiversity drop in 35 years is unsustainable. Even if you don’t value a species for the research value of its biochemistry.
And the economic cost is also very high.
00
There is an effect in which pharmaceutical company funded trials are more likely to get a significant effect than academic trials. I could find the paper if you’re interested – It would have been Steve Novella or Mark Crislip who I heard talking about it.
But these small differences are not the sort of thing that would overturn climate change, and the funding bodies being governmental would prefer denial of climate change.
00
All of your so called fallacies are merely statements of opposition. There’s no particular surprise that people who believe different things will also believe that the other party is wrong.
Such statements run backwards equally well:
“Creationists are ignorant gits” is a claim made by scientists.
“If these ideas were worth anything they would be published in our journal” is a claim made by publishers.
“Families of 911 victims should give up investigating, we gave them answers and they are fools not to trust us” is the government response.
“Anyone who thinks we put profits ahead of safety has no idea how the industry operates” is the claim made by medical manufacturers.
In every case there is no falsifiable theory put forward, nor any observable data. They are all statements of opinion expressing dislike and distrust. Such statements have nothing to do with science, nor anything to do with scepticism for that matter. Scepticism is not about disliking someone, it is about noticing inconsistencies between theory and practice and about questioning the meaning of those inconsistencies.
That’s the thing Robin, you believe that there exists an anointed inner circle of people and what they do is “scientific”, everything else is “external to the scientific process”.
I believe that the scientific method is a method, a way of doing things, unrelated to whether the person doing the method belongs to any particular club.
When I say that something is “scientific” I mean that the theory fits the observable evidence, and both the data and methods are available for scrutiny and the whole box and dice has been published in the spirit of open exchange of ideas. It need not be a great work, it merely needs to work the correct method.
Your meaning of “scientific” is completely different to mine.
00
JLKrueger entered this argument with belligerence, ad homs, and red herrings.
He has claimed that the only purpose of data is to verify a scientists work, and considers reproducibility and the findings of the research itself to be too sideline to be considered.
His claim to my posting of data was that the Hadley temperature data were not raw temperatures. “That means it’s useless for validating their work, which is the entire point.”
When politely questioned:”I don’t understand that. How are temperature anomalies less easily validated than any other way of presenting the data?
Anomalies are good because they self correct for different temperature collection times and methodologies by the different contributing countries.”
[It’s not about anomalies Robin. It’s about the honest receipts of science. Without raw data we have only the adjusted stuff. We already know that almost all the adjustments are in one non-random direction: Pro Crisis. It’s like a company hiding it’s receipts. (Why do I have to keep repeating myself? Can’t you read the post?) — JN]
His response is belligerent, aggressive and refuses to back up his claims:
“More red herring BS! You’ve got no business lecturing others on the science if you don’t understand it. Quit the BS and get back on the topic of Yamal.”
Other exchanges are the same. His language is “damning” “lies” “BS” it is clear that he is here for a political point scoring not for an interest in science. In fact one gets the impression from his posts that he hates science and scientists. It is fairly obvious that he is not here to consider science or logic.
[Only if you believe that argument from authority is “scientific”. For those of us who are not stuck in tribal logic of the stone age it’s clear that Kruegar is 10 steps ahead of you. He is frustrated that you keep repeating the same errors, never acknowledge the points where you are shown to be wrong, and twist our words in paraphrased quotes that are so worthless, in the great Wolfgang Pauli’s words, they are “Not even Wrong”. Figure out what logic is before you comment on anyone else’s. — JN]
Post 432 (which was “liked” up by three people or sock puppets), has no logical content at all. It is an aggressive ad-hominem rant.
If he wishes to show that the numbers of trees are too low for recent data, he needs to explain how his quotes:
“The count of trees needed to produce a ‘robust’ chronology is often gauged by using the mean interseries correlation to calculate the expressed population signal (EPS; Wigley et al. 1984; Briffa and Jones 1990).” (You need LOTS of samples!)
and
“The net effect of potential biases in the application of the RCS method will vary according to the specific makeup of the samples in a chronology. Much of the potential bias may average out, especially when sample replication is high, but the particular problems associated with the reliability of the start and end of chronologies may affect chronology calibration and hinder the study of recent tree-growth forcing trends.”
leads him to his conclusion that “the sample size into the modern era is TOO SMALL!”, when the RCS method doesn’t curve fit by era.
[No he doesn’t need to explain why 5 trees are too small. Anyone who’s done statistics 101 (and doesn’t have a faulty brain) understands the importance of sample size. If sample size didn’t matter, the inclusion of more trees wouldn’t wipe out the uptick . — JN]
I suspect that he won’t. He may offer a barrage of ad homs.
01
Robin,
Robin, I challenge YOU to fight like a man. Show us your CV and explain how it justifies you to make the claims you make by your own standards.
You have NOT responded to this challenge. All you have done is splashed a repeat of your typical random verbiage. You claim to understand statistics but also claim that someone who is not a statistician cannot. You claim to be able to know what is scientific but also claim we who are not scientists cannot. You repeatedly make the claim “I didn’t say that.” You did not use the exact words but you clearly meant what you say you did not say.
Stand and deliver!
00
Ray Hibbard wrote:
The whole answer is a really long story involving a short foray into isotope geochemistry and the fossils of a group of extinct squid called ‘Belemnites’. Here’s the ‘Crib Notes’ version:
Isotope geochemistry is a geological discipline centered on the study of the relative and absolute concentrations (ratios) of various elements and their isotopes in the Earth. Variations in the concentration of these isotopes can reveal information about the age of a mineral or the origin of a sample of water or air, for example. Isotope ratios can also reveal details about atmospheric chemical processes. The bulk geochemical (isotopic) signature contained within fossilized Belemnite guards(a part of squid anatomy) of the Peedee Formation (Cretaceous period, southeast USA) has long been used as the main standard (“PDB”) against which all other geochemical samples are measured, for both carbon isotopes and oxygen isotopes. Belemnite guards are composed of calcite mineral, thus tending to preserve well.
The field of isotope geochemistry is divided into two main branches: stable and unstable (radioactive) isotope geochemistry. The branch of interest to us in the context of atmospheric carbon isotopes is the stable isotopes. The stable isotopes of carbon are C12 and C13(C14 is the UNstable or radioactive isotope). For most stable isotopes, the magnitude of the fractionation from kinetic and equilibrium fractionation is very small. For this reason, enrichments are typically reported in “per mil” (0/00, parts per thousand instead of % or 0/0 which means parts per hundred), in this case “parts per thousand (or per mil) PDB. This represents the ratio of heavy to light isotopes in the sample over the ratio of those same isotopes found in the standard substance, in this case the PDB standard of Belemnite guards.
Jim Rennison
00
Robin,
Nobody is saying that CO2 is not a GHG or that man isn’t increasing CO2. But why do you keep insisting that these 2 things alone are sufficient to establish a causal link between CO2 and catastrophic warming? Even if a statistically significant warming trend is observed, your ‘facts’ are insufficient to establish cause and effect and especially to catastrophic effect. In the last 25 years, CO2 has increased by 20%, which according to your ‘peer reviewed consensus’ should cause an increase of about 0.8C. Considering that the last 25 years has seen some of the most intense sun spot activity and the associated rise in UV energy on record (which is absorbed by the upper atmosphere and heats the system), the observed trends from satellite data is only about .13C/decade, or 0.33C over 25 years. 0.33C represents a 0.44% equivalent increase in surface energy, while 0.8C represents an equivalent increase of about 1.01%, which is more than 2 times larger than is observed, so clearly, your ‘consensus’ needs some tweaking. Ice core records show peak long term (100 year+) rates of change well in excess of the observed shorter term rate of change, so to there’s nothing to be obsessing so much about. Sure, if we burn through all the remaining fossil fuels, the resulting warming might approach 1.5C, but even that’s nothing to worry about and in fact is likely to be more beneficial than harmful. After all, another thing that history tells us is that man, and life in general, does better during warm periods than during cold periods. Besides, we are still more than 2C lower than the peak temperatures during prior interglacials.
It’s also accepted that the climate is always changing. What is it about the record, i.e. ice cores, that tells you that the climate shouldn’t be changing? Even looking at only the recent interglacial, the temperatures are almost always either increasing or decreasing by rates of about +/-0.1C/decade (you should look at the DomeC data which has a finer temporal resolution than Vostok).
George
00
Robin, I’m totally confused. I guess I’m just dense, but could you please explain how an anomaly “self corrects” a reported temperature value based on collection time or methodology?
Also I’m flabbergasted to hear the the vast majority of world wide temperatures (around 100,000/day surface temperatures) are not taken synoptically as prescribed by WMO – that is with the exception of the small number of climate history networks stations and such ad-hoc things as PIREPS and SPECI.
Thanks in advance.
00
Rod,
This assumes that data collection anomalies are normally distributed. Of course one of the biggest anomalies is that data collection sites are concentrated in urban areas and the heat island effect is an anomaly that pushes all measurements in a single direction. It also biases data towards coastal areas, which under represents temperatures of oceans, polar regions, mountain regions and deserts.
The reason this is a problem, is because the global average temperature is a consequence of an equilibrium driven by incident energy. If one region trends disproportionally warmer, another will trend cooler to compensate. The idea that the climate is static and sluggishly responds to changes is incorrect. If this were the case, there would be little to no seasonal differences.
George
00
Outright lie Robin. Produce the comment where I said that! I’ll admit belligerence on this comment because on this statement you are lying. Period.
Let the record show that at no time did I make the above claim. If you are going to accuse me of saying something like that, you’d better be able show the comment number where I said it.
Actually, it does for the individual samples. That process should be how you analyze a series to determine which individual cores from a series should be discarded as outliers or included.
To create the total curve, cores are in effect “spliced” to create the long range reconstruction. How do you think you’d get the “hockey stick” into the modern era from a subfossil core that’s been dead for a hundred or more years? Doesn’t happen. YAD06 is a modern era tree…a living tree (it was living when cored around 1990) that produces such a dominant signal it overpowers the other 12 modern era trees in the archived CRU series and creates the “hockey stick”.
Nah, some of my bestest friends are scientists, but they’re the kind who don’t stonewall on data and methodology for years. They’re the kind who believe science should be totally transparent and that data and methodology should be available to anyone, not just a chosen clique of buddies and insiders.
I love science. I despise the perversion that so-called climate scientists have made of it.
00
c02isnotevil # 449
First, I think that is a very clever moniker! I like it.
Thank you for trying to explain this to me, but I still have a major problem. I fully understand temperatures vary for a number of reasons, but UHI is only one reason. Consider moisture, winds, altitude, cloud cover, instrumentation error, observer error, and other factors — air conditioner exhaust might be another example.
I have problems with understanding both the “self correcting” and the “methodology” part. It doesn’t seem possible to me that any “anomaly” could detect and correct differences in terrain, elevation, geographical location, of a host of other things, not to mention contributing weather factors.
Have you ever watched a thermometer and/or thermograph react to a sudden down slope wind, for example a Santa Anna? Consider how fast temperatures can change with a sudden cool rain shower. Have you experienced how fast and how far the temperature can drop when the sun sets on a high desert? Have you ever monitored temperatures during a frontal passage?
And by the way, I would contend that temperatures measured during such events are “real” temperatures — not anomalous, although accuracy is another matter entirely.
Making ‘adjustments’ for UHI seems to me to be little more than guess work at best. (I won’t ask what kind of quality control is used here.) But to think that a mere temperature anomaly “self corrects” observed temperatures for UHI is just too much for me to grasp. Self corrects???
00
Robin says yet again The National Academies did almost completely vindicate Mann et al.
No, they did not. You keep repeating this presumably because you feel that repetition of a lie somehow makes it true.
THE NAS Chairman was asked specifically if he agreed with the conclusions of the more detailed Wegman Report. He said that he did, no caveats. The Wegman report (first para of their conclusions) says McIntyre and McKitricks analysis of the MBH papers was correct and that the MBH papers were wrong. No caveats, wrong
00
Robin Grant: 442
“There is an effect in which pharmaceutical company funded trials are more likely to get a significant effect than academic trials. I could find the paper if you’re interested – It would have been Steve Novella or Mark Crislip who I heard talking about it.
But these small differences are not the sort of thing that would overturn climate change, and the funding bodies being governmental would prefer denial of climate change.”
Governmental bodies would prefer denial of climate change? Robin just what do you base that assertion on? Politicians have wet dreams about things like Cap and Trade and Carbon Tax. It is an immense increase to their power. If the government can control your carbon footprint you can’t even break wind without the governments’ permission to do so. Before you claim I am going off about some sort of conspiracy here please note I don’t think this has anything to do with conspiracies. It’s just a very unfortunate alignment of diverse self interests.
00
Robin Grant,
http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=11676
Chapter 4 Page 51
states strip-bark (bristle cone pines) should NOT be used as a temperature proxy. OOOOPS!!!! There goes the original hockey stick!!! That’s without even getting into the fact that Bristlecones were given higher influence and other interesting shenanigans!! There is also an area where it talks about minimum number of trees. OOOOPS!!! There is the second hit on Briffa (2000).
I need to read more and see if they have anything to say about flipping the signs on proxies that were researched and archived by a different author!!! Of course, unless you are really an Apologist, or stupid, you will understand the problem with that type of sleight of hand.
So, that takes out most of the Hockey Sticks in the PaleoClimate world.
Anything else you would like to say Robin???
00
It is incredible how climate sceptics jump to any mistake or misuse of data of anybody except those who claim climate change does not exist. On data manipulation the “sceptics” take the gold medal various times over.
Climate change is a physical response to an increase in CO2 and other gases in the atmosphere, the earth absorbs less than is emitted, so changes are bound to happen eventually. What happens now, is that we run a RISK that climate change is happening. If temperatures rise and pumping billions of tons of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere is certainly not healthy we are going to have fun.
It is also notable that the author mentions that ” it’s also clear things have been warming since 1800 in Yamal”, thus it is a pity the researcher uselessly embellished results.
So, from a precautionary principle and a public health reason, there is a good case to reduce the runaway pollution we create, CO2 included. Because even if climate change was only probably by a certain percent, the socio-economic costs are big enough to justify reducing the risk by reducing emissions. I will not feel sorry for the oil companies either.
00
Jorge,
You have a gross misunderstanding about the existence of any energy imbalance. If you want to understand the Earth’s energy balance, look at this,
http://www.palisad.com/co2/eb/eb.html
You are also mis applying the precautionary principle. By this same logic, winter should be banned because people freeze to death. You also confuse pollution with CO2. CO2 is not a pollutant, despite what the EPA would like to claim. Few skeptics claim that CO2 has no effect, the issue at hand is whether or not the effect is big enough to justify the multi trillion dollar socio-economic effect of making the cost of energy prohibitively high. The probability of it being this big is exactly zero.
George
00
Dear George,
There are projections on impacts. The poles are visibly melting and temperatures have been rising. The link with CO2 is probabilistically speaking more correct than worng. I agree CO2 is not a pollutant, sorry for the slip, but as the man made part I consider is making it one. There are many things you can eat safely, but will kill you in larger amounts. Even essential vitamines which are not poisons. CO2 is essential for life, but is not harmless in large amounts, same with oxygen. It is the balance of elements which makes them stable. Do not tip them unnessarily either.
CO2, methane emission etc are affecting the atmospheric balances with quite a high probability. Acidity in the ocean is also growing, which is not healthy due to CO2 concentrations not being absorbed well enough. There are secondary effects all over on ecosystems, and we are not immune. As humans we like to think that we will always get away with everything… well… why?
The comment on winter is ridiculous, winter is a natural event and the only way to “ban it” is travelling to another place. But if we get an ice age, too much of it, it is also not good for us… no?
So, now, if we have rising temperatures continuing and we cross a 3 degrees mark average, the socio-economic consequences could be vast, by far higher than these energy cost you talk of, and do not forget that new technologies when they deploy get cheaper. Secondary effects of major draughts and flooding cause socio-economic impacts. Imagine the human toll of migrations and resource wars if climate changes tip drastically parts of the world rapidly into deserts. It can happen, and has happened naturally in the past, why generating one that is avoidable? Our present oil conflicts may look feeble compared to the water ones.
At the end it comes to a bet, and I do not like gambling on ecosystem stabilities. Betting on keeping emissions low seems a lot safer, thank you.
But thank you for taking your time to read my comment and answering it.
00
Jorge,
You are confusing evidence for warming for evidence that CO2 is causing it. Just because man is increasing CO2 and that it’s a greenhouse gas doesn’t comprise evidence that CO2 is causing warming. Also, the so called evidence for warming is pretty tenuous. Yes, we have seen a little less ice in the N pole during summer, but there’s significant evidence that during the time of the Vikings, there was significantly less. This is something that has occurred before and will occur again, so why do you think man is responsible this time? We need to understand the physics before we can jump to this kind of conclusion, and the physics doesn’t support a huge amplification by CO2. In fact, if we examine the satellite record for the last 25 years (instead of the proxies favored by AGW supporters), there’s no evident global warming. In fact, recently, there’s been somewhat of a global cooling effect.
I have no problems with pursuing renewable energy sources, but lets do this for the right reasons and not destroy the worlds economies in the process. Trying to force this by making oil artificially expensive with a false scientific justification will backfire big time. First, it will be impossible to enforce globally, so whatever governments are smart enough to understand the underlying science will not buy in to the lie and gain a significant advantage on the foolish governments that do. Second, whenever governments get involved with trying to subvert free market forces, it fails miserably. Third, this seriously undermines the credibility of the scientific method as the arbiter of scientific truth.
I don’t think that we should bet our economy on a pseudo scientific premise that’s demonstrably false. You only concentrate on the downside consequences of an insignificant probability (I would say zero) that CO2 will cause catastrophic climate change. The consequences of regulating CO2, based on a false belief that it does, are far worse. In fact, you also assume that warming is harmful, where I can assure you that kilometers of ice covering much of N America and Europe will be far worse. This is something else that we know has happened before and know will happen again. It’s actually too bad that CO2 doesn’t cause significant warming, otherwise, we might have a change at mitigating the next, inevitable, ice age.
George
00
Jorge,
Here are a couple of more data points for you to consider. The first provides a more highly correlated effect to recent warming and the second disqualifies incremental CO2 as having any significant effect. If you understood the energy balance considerations in the prior link, then you would see clearly that no amount of incremental CO2 can possibly cause 3C of warming.
The last few sunspot cycles have been among the largest on record, where this record goes back to about 1700. Look at ‘yearly sunspot number’ at the following link:
http://sidc.oma.be/sunspot-data/
While this doesn’t affect the brightness of the Sun, it affects the UV absorbed by the upper atmosphere by several W/m^2 and the average since the start of the IR greatly exceeds the ‘forcing’ attributed to increased CO2 absorption.
Prior interglacials have been 2-3C warmer than the current one, even though CO2 levels were 100ppm less. This is because of the way that the phase relationships of the orbital forcings aligned. In the prior few, they all aligned within about 5K years, but in the current one, the peaks of 2 of the significant short term effects (precession of perihelion and axial tilt) are spread out over about 15-20K years, as was the case for interglacials between 500K and 1M years ago. The dotted line represents today’s temperature. which is a little off the peak of the current interglacial.
http://www.palisad.com/co2/domec.gif
George
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George @ #458 – Mate, you’ve said it so well, I couldn’t agree with you more!
Jorge: “… pumping billions of tons of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere is certainly not healthy…”
Who told you that? (see my comments below)
“ … there is a good case to reduce the runaway pollution we create, CO2 included. Because even if climate change was only probably by a certain percent, the socio-economic costs are big enough to justify reducing the risk by reducing emissions.”
I’m sorry, but that doesn’t even make sense. Sounds good at first glance, but it’s meaningless if you read it again.
“I will not feel sorry for the oil companies either.”
Aha! There we have it. The real motivation for your beliefs – and those of many others!
“So, now, if we have rising temperatures continuing and we cross a 3 degrees mark average, the socio-economic consequences could be vast, by far higher than these energy cost you talk of…”
Nope. Here are the facts:
The average global temperature for the tens of millions of years when the dinosaurs and then mammals evolved was around 22°C – 10 degrees higher than today. Guess what? No runaway global warming!
Carbon dioxide levels have been up to ten times what they are today. And yet, somehow, the plants and animals managed to survive. Guess what? No runaway global warming!
In 600 million years the global average temperature hasn’t gone much above 22°C no matter how high the CO2 levels were. That’s because the relationship of CO2 to temperature is logarithmic: the more CO2 you put in, the less effect it has on temperature. You can find references and graphs to back this up in Joanne’s “Skeptics Handbook” available elsewhere on this site. You should read it with an open mind, it’s enlightening. This means there’s no need to fear “runaway” global warming due to carbon dioxide emissions. Guess what? …. !
You fear dangerous climate change? Here’s an example of dangerous climate change: Most of our planet’s species (including us) would face oblivion should temperatures and/or carbon dioxide levels get too much lower. If CO2 dropped to, say, 125 ppm, there would be very little plant life and most forms of animal life would die.
On the other hand, all kinds of plants would thrive if carbon dioxide levels were three or four times today’s levels. That’s why market gardeners deliberately pump carbon dioxide into their greenhouses (the REAL kind) to levels of over 1,000 ppm – the plants love it! Is it dangerous? Ask a market gardener – they work in it, and last time I looked they weren’t wearing masks or any protective gear.
It’s ironic that so many “greens” are on the anti-co2 bandwagon because a world with more carbon dioxide would be a greener world, with more biodiversity, not less.
What frustrates the living daylights out of me is the level of complete IGNORANCE of even the most basic science that exists out there. I’m a linguist not a scientist, but you don’t have to be a scientist to read a graph and understand high school physics and chemistry.
We are constantly being told that “It’s complicated” and we need the experts to explain it to us. Let me tell you: It ain’t that complicated, and the very fact of the earth’s past history and the fact that we’re still here will tell you as much, if you care to listen to your inner common sense!
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Ha ha ha!!
A room full of rabid, science-hating and foaming-at-the-mouth climate deniers taken on and DESTROYED by the scientific prowess and rhetoric brilliance of one man, Robin Grant. These comments are both extremely disturbing and remarkably funny, all at once. I can’t believe the number of denier talking points you guys all cling to like children to pool-floatation-devices; conspiracies, collusions, hoaxes and insinuations yet a distinct lack of any material to substantiate. It’s like reading a UFO or Illuminati website. You all agree that cherry picking is bad, yet you all, dare I say it, cherry pick the little science or the gaps in science that offer you a reprieve, while ignoring to even acknowledge the majority that opposes. Well, that’s some solid work right there.
I guess you’re not called deniers for no reason. Don’t babble your drool all over me too much when you reply, deniers. I find spittle projected in desperation most disgusting!
Well done and keep speaking the truth to all the stupid people, Robin!!
Warm (but not CO2-greenhouse enhanced) Regards
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Wow, what can I say? Brave, erudite, succinct, flawless, to the point, skilfully nailing all our denialist points one-by-one, amply referenced to peer-reviewed science – all under your real name, “co2-can-kill-you”! (Unique name, btw. Did your mum make it up herself; I’ve not come across it before?)
Oh, just one thing: This “scientific prowess and rhetoric brilliance of one man, Robin Grant.” Errr … I think you are on the wrong blog. That description does not fit “our” Robin Grant.
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Robin,
I challenge YOU, again, to fight like a man. Show us your CV and explain how it justifies you to make the claims you make by your own standards.
You have NOT responded to this challenge. All you have done is splashed a repeat of your typical random verbiage.
Stand and deliver!
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CO2-will-kill-fu,
You should go back to realclimate if all you want to hear is the rhetoric and talking points spouted by followers of the AGW religion. You’re clearly not interested in the truth and seem to share a mind with Gavin who censors my posts from gullible people like you because I ask questions whose answers he knows are inconsistent with AGW.
You fail to understand that science is not an exercise in consensus building, but a rigorous process of hypothesis, predictions and tests. In this regard, the AGW hypothesis fails every single test of every one of it’s predictions. The whole AGW religion is based on nothing more than a speculative hypothesis recursively supported by itself.
If you want to ask a question, make a legitimate point and engage in a rational dialog, feel free. If you are going to act like a 2 year old throwing a temper tantrum, go pester someone else. The reason Robin is tolerated and in fact encouraged to post, is because he acts like an adult, you should try it. His posts, while frequently misinformed, are at least well intentioned.
George
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Are you talking about the same guy who has yet to offer a single valid statistical argument to refute McIntyre’s critique of Briffa? Are you talking about the ad hominem, argument from authority, name-calling and strawman guy — the guy who can’t stay on topic? PULEEEEZE!
BTW round these parts we don’t hide behind “handles”. It’s considered a mite cowardly. But as all you offered was ad hominem and name-calling, perhaps you really are a coward. George is right. You ought to just stay over at the RC echo chamber where your buddies will tell you how brilliant your idiotic comments are.
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What any of your comments have to do with Yamal and the Briffa studies is beyond me, but I’ll humor you this once.
Actually no, the poles are not visibly melting. Antarctic sea ice is at an all-time high and except for the wester peninsula where geothermal activity is high, there is no “melting”. The arctic is in the second straight year of recovery from the low of 2007 which was caused, not by temperature, but by wind and ocean currents that pushed the ice out into the Atlantic. This by the way is a perfectly natural occurrence that has happened before. Nor is atmospheric temperature capable of “melting” the poles.
Say what? You are basing this assertion on what?
The point at which this might become and issue is around the 5000 ppm level for CO2, which is what the Navy uses for submarines. However, it should be noted that in a submarine the CO2 has displaced O2 and it is the reduction of O2 in relationship to the increased CO2 that’s the real problem. A sub is closed environment so the comparison to the atmosphere isn’t entirely valid. The impact in the atmosphere would not compare unless there was a significant loss of O2 and N2.
Another, “Say what?” Says who? You are talking .039% of the atmosphere for CO2 — a trace gas. CH4 is only .00017% — a VERY trace gas.
Let’s see, like having longer growing seasons, more land available for farming, lower requirements for heating, and a more navigable Arctic Ocean. And what’s wrong with that?
Imagine the far greater toll in an Ice Age! Cold kills far more than warmth. It can happen…it has happened only about 12,000 years ago. More recently if you include the Dark Age Cold Period (DCP) and the more recent Little Ice Age (LIA).
Temps were warmer in the Roman Warm Period (RWP) and the Middle Ages Warm Period (MWP) than they are today. When it’s warm, it’s more humid and there’s more rain. When it’s colder, it’s drier there’s less rain. When it’s warm, seeds germinate. When it’s too cold, seeds die in the ground or produce fewer crops.
Now we done been around all these trees many times with Damien, Robin, BPL, Boris and others. I suggest we don’t go round them too many times with Jorge…especially since the topic of this particular post is Yamal and the Briffa study. Joanne, maybe you need an “Unthreaded” for going round old arguments. It might help with keeping on topic on posts like this one.
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Dear arguers,
This is an interesting blog… OK, George, I accept your arguments that global warming happened before etc. I will explain a bit why we cannot just ignore there is a risk that is not negligible, that we may soon pay a big price for doing nothing. It is terribly comfortable, also for me to follow your arguments, but is it wise to be complacent your way?
From scientific source I have the following numbers: Anthropogenic burning of fossil fuels sends about 26 gigatons of CO2 per year into the atmosphere. The biosphere and the oceans send about 440 gigatons and 330 gigatons of CO2 per year, so these are today 26 a year from us and 770 natural, and we are increasing them every year. The imbalance is 3,4% a year now and growing, not a negligible amount, an amount extra the biosphere seems has trouble absorbing at this speed without changes we might not like (for example sea acidification increases, affecting marine plants, affecting sea creatures, etc – again with other effects).
CO2 accumulates and we are moving towards having increased concentrations 3x pre industrial levels. Now, that we humans will survive and also animals and plants is OK. The question is the speed of any changes and HOW we face them. Are we going to lose quality of life soon? Do we risk facing costs we rather would not? For me what matters is the moment changes start requiring actions at a speed which we would have preferred (at global scale) to avoid.
I agree with you, ecosystems adapt to everything, but not ultimately to accommodate us. I know that there is even some discussion if human activity has kept temperatures from falling and averting an ice age. So that would have been good without us being conscious of it and I am happy of it as I am sitting in the area of the potentially averted ice age. I also believe that we might face a situation in the future when we may even discuss is we need to avoid concentrations of CO2 falling below a certain threshold.
The question is NOW, for our society over the next decades, are we doing something we might regret – and what is the risk? We have infrastructures and settlements based on a certain weather rhythm, which without excessive emissions could stay stable for much longer. If the temperature ON AVERAGE goes over 3C, Northern Europe, America etc… will most likely be fine. As you say, higher temperatures existed, of course, and lower ones, but what matters is that temperature changes shifts a lot of things, deserts, forests, rivers ,sea levels, etc. Mediterranean countries, India, China, Southern North America will see most likely deserts expanding (maybe also the opposite in some equatorial regions – WE DO NOT KNOW), uncertainty abounds. Frankly speaking, humans do not take decisions on 100% knowledge ever, we do not buy insurance on a 100% certainty we will burn our house. And when it burns eventually we will get another one, but we will probably be scarred and have wasted resources we would have preferred for our pension.
This means that in a geologically very short time period, we may have triggered a change with uncomfortable costly changes. Infrastructures, cities etc need to adapt move etc. This has happened before – naturally – and sometime tragically. Should we make some more ourselves? What about an increased rate of migration, bigger immigration of the US, Europe etc. We care, not the planet itself. There may be human flows and extra crisis we could have kept at bay. It is this risk that even attracts the attention of security quarters. It is the possibility that warning this century makes us face ugly political changes we could have avoided.
You speak of energy costs going to be unrealistic and on market issues. Subsidies for fossil fuels have been also huge, I see no normal market here either. I am worried in fact that subsidies for renewals etc are lead by misconceptions too. I am against misinformation, but I am also against the human tendency of complacency, the we will be fine good feel factor. For me personally, not believing climate change and ignore the hundreds of scientist claiming climate change is an actual problem is very very comfortable. Unfortunately, the scientists have credentials, exceeding in number and respectability the opposite camp (for the moment in any case). There are always clowns and shady figures or people with little rigour both sides, but nevertheless, for the moment and not without resistance for decades from powerful interest groups, they have made a very good case, enough to worry if we are not driving ourselves to a change that will costs a large bunch of humans a lot.
An analogy of the good feel an denial factor, by the way supported by illustrious economists. Look at the financial markets, I was convinced of their solidity. Growing (emitting dollars, euros and yens) to the pleasure of all, me included. Then bang, it collapsed my little firm too. Just a year earlier the best brains in the financial markets promised stability.
CO2 accumulation is the same, do not worry, go on, the world can take it (as WE want?). Ok, go on, I am in an area of the world that should benefit and see who is right, a global experiment. On a betting point, now I prefer to bet for emission stabilisation and keep with as much of the weather we have. If nature is doing some other things to warm it, let it be that alone, don’t foster it.
Finally I would also like in general that we general start considering resource use efficiency, any resource. Because in any case, I do not think we should be always operating as if the planet was a limitless playground, emit, extract use, throw. Unfortunately, we are still a species depending on a rather limited order of elements without yet an efficient exit strategy. The humans cannot affect the weather argument is simply fallacious, we do change a lot of things. The soviets drained a sea and change the weather over a large area, they ignored basic – in -out rules of water flows. It is easy to make big damage, more difficult to get out of the comfort zone while doing it.
Jorge
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Hey, I do not look like the automatic avatar, I am quite mild as a person…
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Sign up for a WordPress account, it’s free. You don’t need to set up a blog. You can then edit your “gravatar” in your user profile (that’s what they call it) by either putting in a different cartoon or your picture. That’s what will then show up when you comment on blogs that have the avatar activated.
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Anne-kit Littler
[
[snip rude comment] — JN]
Back to the essence of my initial comment, can you refute that deniers seem exempt from the disdainful practice of cherry picking, or is it only contemptuous when practised by anthropogenic climate change proponents?
I can provide you with inordinate peer-reviewed papers, studies, climate reconstructions and extensive climate modelling, but at the end of the day would it change your mind? I doubt it, hence the apt moniker, “denier”. And that’s what makes this site seem so dedicated to perpetuating absolute rubbish, at least, to someone who follows the science.
However, if you can reply in kind with some kind of “denier” peer-reviewed science, I’d be happy (and, in step with the comments on this site, perhaps amused) to read some – you never know, I may just be swayed.
[ [We have posted many many peer reviewed articles. If you choose not to look, what can we do?]— JN]
And by the way, my mother is no longer alive, thanks for your concern and your terribly executed attempt at ad hominem.
George (a.k.a. CO2isnotevil)
Ouch, now that hurts! Your attachment of religion to accepted science is really the joke here. I’d hazard a comment to say that proponents are in step with the accumulated knowledge and peer-reviewed science. I don’t know what you follow, but it sure isn’t the science. Religion has always been at odds with science, therefore one could say it’s you who follows your beliefs, rather unscientifically and hence religiously.
I beg to differ with the first part of that comment. Science is exactly an exercise in consensus building. The process of peer-review and, within that, replication of results are all exercises in consensus building and are integral parts of the scientific method.
[ Thus proving that it was “scientific” to say the sun went round the earth in 1600 and unscientific to say it didn’t. Consensus ain’t science. — JN]
Would you care to be a little more specific?
[ Try the tag cloud. Click “evidence”, “hot spot”, “science” etc — JN]
I must say that this sentence seems rather self-reflective. Do you also deny thermodynamics? Quantum mechanics maybe? General relativity perhaps? Suffice it to say that the basic physics is well established. This comment is fit for the bin and reinforces my initial point that deniers love to cherry pick that which suits their tenets and, most disturbingly, often get away with it.
[Sure lab tests are long proven. But knowing whether cloud cover increases or decreases as it warms… clouds are more powerful by far than co2. That’s also well established. They can undo anything CO2 can do. — JN]
JLKrueger
You mean, the guy who provides reasoned explanations, links to primary peer-reviewed science and is clearly very knowledgeable (probably as a result of dealing with deniers over a period of time) rather unlike any of the scientifically inept denier sleight and ad homs thrown back at him, then yes, that’s the guy.
I don’t know about you, but I never use my real name online, anywhere. I’m no coward but am very cautious. You should take a tip, Mr Krueger.
I’d just like to flag that you call me up for the ad homs and name calling, only to do it yourself in reply! In so doing I’d like to put down my initial challenge, once again, that deniers behave in ways acceptable for them, but not acceptable for anyone who opposes them (cherry picking notwithstanding)!
[The difference is we can back up our insults. You can’t. — JN]
Regards,
CO2CanKillYou
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From a precautionary principle we should do something about the risk of alien invasion. I’ve been running some computer simulations on an old machine I found out the back of the arcade and the results are remarkably consistent — they eat through your bases and then they land. People don’t understand, this could happen before 2050! Or at any other date!!
I’m curious to know how you decide that the “best brains” are the ones that got it wrong. Who exactly are the “best brains” in the climate debate right now? How can we identify such people? Can you prove they are not aliens in disguise?
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Tel
Your arguments are not worth a discussion. Alien invasion and CO2 levels are a bit out of place, riskwise too. Insulting arguments are not very useful and play against you too. George before for example, did not insult me, I do not do it to him either. We disagree… fine.
As for scientists involved in climate argument there are hundreds many of them world known specialists, they are published all over, no secret, and no aliens. The sceptics are no aliens either.
CO2 emissions are scientifically verifiable, they have increased. Even the sceptics agree. The question is if they pose a threat or not. Fullstop.
Scientific evidence seems to increase in the YES group, of course all needs to be verified. But just dismissing is wrong. At the end we start writing as it was a political party issue. It is about facts. Are there real or are these wrong… END of story. Hundreds of scientists are concerned, that is a fact. Are they right? I hope we find out the easy way.
Jorge
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Jorge,
The “argument” so far seems to be the following.
Stipulated: The climate is changing, has always changed, and always will change.
Stipulated: The level of CO2 in the atmosphere is currently increasing.
Stipulated: Man as added CO2 to the atmosphere since taking his first breath.
Stipulated: Man’s rate of addition of CO2 to the atmosphere has greatly increased since the start of the industrial revolution BECAUSE he has used fossil fuels.
To be proved: The globe is warming at an unnatural rate.
To be proved: Man’s use of fossil fuels is the primary cause of that warming.
To be proved: The warming will accumulate to an ecological disaster within the century.
To be proved: Man can prevent the disaster by seriously reducing the use of fossil fuels.
Our position on the above is that the “to be proved” items are patently false.
Your position on the above appears to be that the “to be proved” items are true to an extent that warrants shutting off a major portion of man’s use of fossil fuels.
Our position is that if the shutting off occurs, greater harm will come to man and modern civilization than will occur if your worst projected increase in global warming actually occurs. Thus, we believe, your application of the precautionary principle is totally, completely, absolutely unwarranted and poses a very real danger of the highest order.
Issue at hand:
Apparently you view yourself incompetent to judge the science. I infer this from your preference for “world known specialists” and reliance on an unspecified but growing “YES group”. I see nothing of your judging the science first hand based upon the relevant facts and scientific principles.
Question: By what standard are you competent to judge those who are competent to judge the science if you cannot yourself judge the science?
Question: If you do feel you are competent to judge the science, by what principles based upon what facts do you deduce that man’s increasing the level of CO2 in the atmosphere warrants severely reducing man’s use of fossil fuels?
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Maybe you missed it, but Tel’s point was that climate models have about as much relevance and prediction capability as the video game “Space Invaders”. His point is every bit as relevent as you bringing up the financial markets, perhaps more.
BTW the business modellers, upon whose models the financial decision-makers made bad decisions, couldn’t capture all the variables in a relatively simple closed system. What makes you think climate modellers, working in a far newer field are capable of capturing all the variables in a far more complex, chaotic and open system?
Another one of those “say what?” quotes. Tain’t no evidence been presented. Until you can prove causality with evidence, climate models don’t count, you haven’t got a case.
You mean sorta like the AGW crowd does with natural variance involving a host of plausible theories?
Sorry Jorge, you’ve presented a dearth of facts, but you are in good company. Folks like Michael Mann, Eric Steig, James Hansen and Keith Briffa are also consitently coming up short and they’ve all got PhD’s.
Speaking of Briffa, lastly and again, what does any of this have to do with discussing the main topic of Joanne’s post? Have you anything coherent to offer in defense of Briffa and his use of the Yamal core series? Have you any refutation to offer for McIntyre’s criticism of Briffa?
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Jorge Wrote:
If this is the caliber of info your ‘scientific source’ provides, I’d be highly skeptical of other wild claims they may make on the subject. The CIDAC says it’s 8.23 Gt, NOWHERE NEAR your stated “26 Gt.”
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/ftp/ndp030/global.1751_2006.ems
Let’s not forget that 135-150 Gt is fluxed out annually by the natural carbon cycle; it does not just hang around forever as the AGW alarmists would have you believe. The huge annual flux means that CO2 CANNOT accumulate as a result of ‘incidental’ atmospheric emissions. See my previous posts on the residence time for details and proof.
Jim Rennison
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Jorge,
CO2 is a only trace gas and not intrinsically harmful, except at very high concentrations. The current concentration of 380 ppm is less than 50% larger than preindustrial levels. We can’t burn fossil fuels fast enough to get a 3X increase and if you believe that we are close to peak oil, the maximum amount we could possibly add is another 100ppm or so.
You’re objections seem to be rooted in fear and uncertainty. This isn’t surprising as promoting these is the cornerstone of all AGW arguments. The reason fear and uncertainty is used is because the precision of science produces the wrong answer.
The only danger we face from relying on fossil fuels is running out. To that end, we must trust market forces to converge on the best alternatives. Forced legislation locks us along a path, which most likely will not be optimum, or even a sufficient. Fusion is probably our best bet with fission the best plan B. Of course, the same people who wine about CO2 complain about nuclear alternatives as well.
BTW, the only places where oil is subsidized are Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and other oil producing countries. In the west, oil is the most highly taxed commodity that there is. Tax credits that oil companies get for research and exploration are no different that the R&D tax credits that other industries get. R&D is good because it promotes future jobs and growth and is why it’s treated preferentially. Many complain about companies like Exxon-Mobil making a lot of money and forget that they also employ a lot of people.
You are also being misled into thinking that most scientists are in the AGW camp. Of those that have actually made the effort to look at the data and science for themselves, more don’t agree that a catastrophic climate effect is or will occur. AGW hype just gets more visibility, largely because most news outlets are left leaning and this issue has been identified as a left cause (primarily because Bush was connected to oil and because he believed the scientists).
Your mention of the financial markets actually supports me. Here’s a case where government regulation, ostensibly to provide altruistic assistance to those who could not afford a home, encouraged lenders to make loans that they knew couldn’t be repaid, by compelling GSA’s to assume more subprime loans. As financial entities, the GSA’s understand risk, and wrapped a bunch of securities around the subprime loans in order to mitigate this risk, i.e. spread the wealth/risk. Unfortunately, this paper was represented as a government backed security, which others in the financial system happily gobbled up believing that the risk was low. This was a recursive pyramid scheme, which as it crashed (i.e. overflowed the stack), brought down the entire system. It wasn’t the lack of regulation that caused this, but stupid regulation, enacted because some (Barney Frank, Harry Reed, Nancy Pelosi, etc.) thought that the altruistic ends justified the means. This is the kind of thing that happens when market forces are subverted.
As I’ve said many times before, conservation, alternative energy sources, reducing actual pollutants, etc. are all good things to do and they will happen, and are happening, on their own. We don’t need heavy handed regulation, justified by a false sense of a pending climate catastrophe to make this happen. Oil is getting more expensive because it’s becoming scarcer. This is all that’s necessary to drive the market.
George
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Tel,
Some more things to be proved before the AGW case can be made:
1) If warming is even harmful
2) Even if CO2 was causing warming, would regulating it make a difference
3) Thermodynamic theory is wrong
4) Perpetual motion is possible
George
00
I’d like to say that I’m rather insulted that you disregard my argument so thoughtlessly, but I’m willing to forgive. Could you provide me with some guidelines as to how to decide which arguments are “worth a discussion” ?
I would like to see your calculations on the likelihood of alien invasion, which computer models are you using for this?
Have you considered what would have happened if an American Indian back in 1400 had run around telling everyone about the coming invasion of the white men, that would wipe out millions, drive them from their land, and takeover the entire country? Would anyone have believed this?
No, there are other questions you are ignoring. Firstly, can we control CO2 levels in the atmosphere to any meaningful level at all? Will a worldwide ETS scheme achieve this? Secondly, how does the threat or risk from CO2 compare with threat from other possible dangers (of which there are many).
00
Tel,
Thank you. I was not happy about the alien invasion. CO2 concentration incrases are something that is happening and that is for all acceptable knowledge, if this is going to cause changes which are from a socio-economic view important to act upon or not is a real question.
I also accept your question that is very pertinent and I accept that it is important not to forget that many very serious problems are occurring that may be overshadowed by the ETS energy etc discussions.
On the other comments by other posters. Why do I trust some scientists and not others? I have also heard that the credentials of climate sceptics are bad, the same argument as you put. Why should I have an opinion if I cannot verify myself? Well, when you go to a doctor and you are ill, do you trust him? It is difficult, we somehow are patients of experts we unfortunately sometimes depend upon. In all professions there are people that are wrong or mislead, even with good intentions I have to say.
There is a comment on PhD of sceptic scientists… mmm, PhD does not warrant correct answers, as probably the people you criticise most have one. I have one for an unrelated subject, and I can tell you, it actually opens more questions than anything else. The more you know, the more you know you know nothing. I have no interest in peoples PhDs, I do for those who deliver work. There are good people in the yes camp too, PhDs and all, and all serious ones are concerned specially about the uncertainty of impacts. Let’s say that not being able to prove that strong temperature increases are going to happen does not mean they wont unless you prove the opposite also with total certainty. There would be no debate if any side had proven it 100%.
About Briffa, who I suppose also has a PhD, the centre of this story. If he could not substantiate his theory with data, he should not have done so. This is not correct. This counts for all, sceptics or people in favour. In fact, climate impacts are very difficult to predict and the level of uncertainty in all work has to be clear, figures should not be fiddled. Fiddling does not help the yes side at all, as discredits also relevant work. but clearly if his research showed no significant impact, well then so be it, that research is just not proving anything.
Jim,
The CIDAC says it’s 8.23 Gt, NOWHERE NEAR your stated “26 Gt.”
The CIDAC (which CIDAC? The Mexican Centre for Development – sorry I cannot find another one) has got it right? I base myself of the book by a Cambridge Physics PhD that wrote a very interesting book on energy in the UK. MacKay “Sustainable Energy – without the hot air”. By the way his book is about having a clear picture on energy, moving away from imaginary ideas on green power and forgetting the consequences.
But going back to the research fiddling, I agree that should simply not be on and he has done nobody a service from his side.
Regards,
Jorge
00
Final point, I got so many reactions I cannot follow them all easily.
Suspots etc. Yes, I even mentioned I think earlier that we have to see the average effect screening out this changes. I have read articles that do that and find an effect. I mean that your arguments are taken into account by climate scientists.
I read again the temperatures in the past were much higher, Yes the world was lush etc… there were no humans there by the way.
CO2 is not poisonous, it wont kill us. The issue is again. Is there a concern that we might see a jump in temperatures. We are 1% average higher sunspots an all that before the industrial revolution. So, when are we going to reach 2 and when 3. Catastrophic climate change is not about our extinction, but about changes that will displace people and cause important socioeconomic changes societies will have problems adapting too. Also ignored is that ecosystems take some time to adapt to changes. Mass extinctions have been a normal rule before a new round of plants and animals start. It is all timing of adaptation.
So telling me that with 20 degrees more we can life is irrelevant to me, because that is not the question, the question is what it costs to have a 3 – 4 degree increase and is it worth stopping it and can we?
I think we most likely will have impacts we will not like, of course not our extinction and poisoning, just temperature structures of the world will change. I am actually concerned of a possible imminent reversal of the poles magnetism, time-scale form tomorrow to 10000 years of course, but they are moving. That we can do nothing about and we have nothing to do with it. When it happens we will be open to solar flares, radiation etc until the poles fully reverse and we will have fun. Then we may forget a bit the CO2 issues.
Regards,
Jorge
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Jorge argues for Argument from Authority @ 477: Why do I trust some scientists and not others? I have also heard that the credentials of climate sceptics are bad, the same argument as you put. Why should I have an opinion if I cannot verify myself? Well, when you go to a doctor and you are ill, do you trust him? It is difficult, we somehow are patients of experts we unfortunately sometimes depend upon.
He argues possibly in response to my question @ 471: By what standard are you competent to judge those who are competent to judge the science if you cannot yourself judge the science?
Here we have a contrast:
In the first (medical) case we have an inadequately informed/skilled individual seeking the advice from another presumed adequately informed/skilled individual. The advice can be taken or not for whatever reason. The advice applies just to the seeker.
In the second (AWG) case we have all of mankind being subjected to the “advice” of a few self selected individuals who are seeking to FORCE their “advice” on all of mankind at the point of a government gun. It appears that it does not matter that some of the forced individuals are in fact adequately informed to be able to make their own judgment on the matter. They are to be force to comply even though it is counter to their best judgment.
The two circumstances are vastly different. The first in no way justifies the second. In the first case, you are fully responsible for selecting the individual giving the advice and for accepting or rejecting said advice. Only you will pay the consequences if you choose badly. In the second case we are not permitted to select or choose or even to be responsible for our own choices. We will be forced to comply or be fined, imprisoned, or worse. Even if we were fully informed and competent to do so, we would not be permitted to make our own individual choices in the matter.
If you are confused on the matter, when one is faced with the use of the gun of government, choice, reason, and your own assessment of the truth does not enter into the equation. Choosing between complying or being fined, imprisoned, or executed is NOT a choice of how to live. It is choosing how to die: slowly, painfully, or quickly. This is not what choice means in the context of being a living, self responsible, human being.
My second question, “If you do feel you are competent to judge the science, by what principles based upon what facts do you deduce that man’s increasing the level of CO2 in the atmosphere warrants severely reducing man’s use of fossil fuels?” remains effectively unanswered. That is except for a mass of scientific jargon filled equivocating mishmash from which I infer means that he feels he is NOT competent to judge the science.
This leads me to a third question: Jorge, if you do in fact feel you are incompetent to judge the science, why are you posting on this list? Especially, why are you making comments other than asking questions to clarify the science. Your random meandering through the scientific jargon adds nothing but confusion to the conversation. I suggest, ask serious questions and LISTEN to the answers. Then judge for yourself the quality and validity of the answers. Make comments with the purpose to clarify the issues in your OWN mind. Stay clear, focused, and to the point. Your fears and concerns are irrelevant so keep them to yourself. They have absolutely nothing to do with the science one way or the other. Only good science and the identification of bad science and its consequences matters here.
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Lionel,
Point taken. As a normal human being I have to rely however on the opinions of experts, yours or theirs.
Am I incompetent… like most people posting on this site. I rely on what it is written or said as I am not a climate scientist, like most people posting here and 99% of the people having opinions. There are hundreds of areas where opinions are voiced and 99% of the people involved are just saying what they are told, read or see by many advocates of every side. I read your site, some issues help me think about the different arguments, I am not convinced that the climate change issue is just “hot air” and unfortunately science has not come up with a clear result, just uncertainties.
I can also open sites of AWG and they come with scientific points at least as compelling as yours. The problem of course is what you point out, eventually it becomes a political issue and not only of debate. You are convinced that this is a kind of conspiracy to push through subsidies to the renewables etc. But every way the wind blows the lobbies launch themselves. The debate is too clouded. Junk science also appeared for the tobacco industry to protect it and later in the anti tobacco to exaggerate it. Look also in climate the disinformation tacktic of ExxonMobile… not much better…
Anyway, nice debate… and will go on, specially as so many interest groups will make a mess of arguments both sides.
Jorge
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Jorge,
You mentioned that there are compelling scientific arguments from the AGW side. Can you identify what you think is the best scientific argument supporting AGW? Preferably, one that has a basis in first principles physics. Arguments that demonstrate warming or that man is putting CO2 into the atmosphere or that warming will be catastrophic or that models that assume AGW predict AGW don’t count.
The best first principles scientific argument I can think of that precludes any significant AGW effect is as follows:
According to AR4, doubling CO2 causes an increase in atmospheric absorption of 3.7 W/m^2. The atmosphere acts as a black body and half of this extra absorbed energy will be radiated up and half back to the surface. The net result is that the surface receives an extra 1.85 W/m^2.
From the Stefan-Boltzmann Law, the relationship between radiative power and temperature is P = oT^4, where o is the Stefan-Boltzmann constant (5.6704E-8 W/m^2K^4). For an average surface temperature of 289K, the surface energy is 395.55 W/m^2. A surface temperature increase of 3C (292K) corresponds to a surface energy of 412.24 W/m^2, which corresponds to an increase of 16.69 W/m^2.
The AGW hypothesis predicts that 1.85 W/m^2 of additional surface forcing is amplified to 16.69 W/m^2 of outgoing surface power, which corresponds to an amplification factor of about 9.
The incident solar energy is about 341.5 W/m^2, of which 0.3 is reflected, resulting in 239.05 W/m^2 arriving at the surface. The power leaving the surface, calculated above, is 395.55 W/m^2, corresponding to an amplification factor of 1.65.
Incident solar power amplification already includes the feedback from water vapor and the ebb and flow of seasonal snow. There’s no reason to believe that the Earth’s response to radiative forcing from increases GHG absorption would be any different from the response to solar forcing. The amplification factor of 9 is simply not a viable response from the system.
The question I ask every AGW proponent is, “What physical mechanism can supply the amplification required by the AGW predictions?”. Nobody has been able to answer this.
George
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co2isnotevil @ 481: “What physical mechanism can supply the amplification required by the AGW predictions?”
As near as I can tell there are three sources.
1. The magic of the AGW believers saying it often enough.
2. The hot air and CO2 they expel as they say it.
3. Willful evasion of the fundamental laws of nature cancels the laws of nature.
That would do it if the insignificant pesky things known as The Three Laws of Thermodynamics and the Laws of Electromagnetic Radiation and Absorption were not so insisted upon by reality. Reality is such a bitch demanding that we obey the fundamental laws of nature 100% of the time no matter how convenient for it to be otherwise. Its not fair. We gotta get a break once in a while. Don’t we?
Perhaps it would work out for the AGW believers if we were to believe and make the consensus complete. Obviously, its all our fault because we don’t believe in their magic and have reduced their powers by our disbelief.
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Lionell,
Aha, the old Tinkerbell effect. But I wouldn’t characterize this as a physical effect, more of a metaphysical effect, although this distinction often evades the unscientific mind.
George
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co2isnotevil,
Yes, it is the Tinkerbell effect. The label fits. I think it is actually more of a paranormal physical effect rather than a metaphysical effect.
Metaphysics is a primary branch of philosophy that deals with the most generalized nature of reality. Such as: Existence Exists, Existence is Identity, Cause is an inseparable part of an acting entity, and Effect is an inseparable part of the entities reacting to the primary action.
Paranormal physical effects are all those effects that are outside of reality and beyond the ability of normal senses and instruments to detect. Such as gods, devils, spirits, ghosts, magic, miracles, fairies, gremlins, goblins, leprechauns and the like. Most of these effects arise out of the ability of the human brain to see patterns where there are none. Such as patterns in noise.
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Lionell,
Yes, that’s probably more accurate or perhaps pseudo-physics. I’ve always interpreted metaphysical as “of or relating to the transcendent or to a reality beyond what is perceptible to the senses”, but that’s only one definition and isn’t exactly consistent with the use of meta as in the physics of physics or as in a computer language to define computer languages, or in Aristotle’s case, ‘after physics’, which seems to have been mistranslated as ‘beyond physics’, leading to the confusion …
George
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Speaking of cherry picking, what is everyones take on the AP suddenly becoming the newest expert on statistics and AGW, or more specifically, the claim that there is no cooling trend for the last decade, simply that the numbers have been fudged.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091026/ap_on_bi_ge/us_sci_global_cooling
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CO2 can kill you: post 470
“I beg to differ with the first part of that comment. Science is exactly an exercise in consensus building. The process of peer-review and, within that, replication of results are all exercises in consensus building and are integral parts of the scientific method.”
Let’s see how succinct I can be here. NO IT’S NOT!
If all the scientists in the freaking world hold a position that is not consistent with the observed data and just one scientist holds a position which is consistent with the data then he/she is right and everyone else is WRONG.
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Comment #470 just came out of moderation… but only on the proviso that nameless anonymous CO2cankillyou can back up his name-calling.
You say you have peer reviewed papers, so go right ahead. No one so far (and that includes climate modelling professors) has been able to do it. Here’s what might convince us you are not a bullying fool and are genuinely interested in the science. We need to see research results that empirically show that carbon is a major driver of climate, or that water vapor feedback and or cloud changes are likely to amplify carbon’s warming at least two fold.
We won’t accept unvalidated climate models. They are not empirical evidence. They are opinion. The evidence we will accept includes studies of stalagmites, corals, sediments, ice cores, formanifera, isotopes, tree lines, fossils, lake levels, sea levels, satellite records… real stuff.
A climate simulation, or a climate reconstruction is just that. It’s not THE climate but a pale copy based on assumptions and best-guesses.
You don’t have to reveal your name, but we will assume you have something to hide unless you do. Possibly you don’t even believe what you say. People post more carefully if they use their real name.
Manners are the one and only requirement to post here. You are free to insult us but you have to back it up if you want to post again.
Otherwise your comment is just another example of ill-mannered intimidation by an anonymous coward.
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CO2 can kill you,
Here are some more failed predictions.
The 20% increase in CO2 that has occurred since 1982 (when the continuous satellite record started), should cause 4.3*ln(1.2) = .78C. This is not evident in the record. If anything the average temperature in 2008 was slightly lower than in 1983.
To counter this, AGW predicts that the Earth responds very slowly to change and the increase caused by the higher CO2 levels hasn’t happened yet. Thermodynamic violations not withstanding, satellite data tells us that the climate system’s time constant is on the order of weeks and not the decades predicted.
The Earth’s atmosphere absorbs an extra 3.6 W/m^2 or so from doubling CO2. A 3C increase requires over 16 W/m^2 of additional surface energy, Half of the 3.6 W/m^2 is radiated back into space, so AGW predicts that 1.8 W/m^2 of additional forcing directed at the surface will cause 16 W/m^2 of additional surface warming, for a power gain of 8.8. Satellite measurements show that the power gain of the climate system is about 1.7, which makes 1.8 W/m^2 of additional forcing cause about 3 W/m^2 of additional surface energy, which translates into about 0.55C of surface warming, not 3C.
FYI, it’s not the science of how greenhouse gases work that’s being challenged here. In fact, this science can even be derived from QM considerations. What’s being challenged are the models that predict far too much warming You’re deluding yourself if you believe that the GCM’s are based on physics. Certain parts are, but the critical portions that dictate the sensitivity are all based on heuristic assumptions, moreover; the models tend to be very sensitive to these coefficients.
George
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To Whom Does The Ghost Writing
In 470 above I noted the following “Religion has always been at odds with science”. I do not know whether this is a policy statement or a quick grab, but there is inherant in this statement a dual meaning. Religion can be used to describe a repetive act performed at length in the desperate hope that it can be reproduced – or in the equally desperate hope that it cannot be reproduced, what ever it is. Then there is the very swarve way of communicating that a person with a belief system that is alien to your own is practicing a religion. Such is often erroneously dumped at the Christian’s door, for want of something better to do. However it is my understanding that the Christian interest in trying to understand the world GOD had prepared for them brought about the scientific inquiry we should behonouring today. This is where what is different? is followed by is that reproducible? to what does that mean? When you have the answer to the 6 little serving men who taught me all I know then you have the beginnings of a postulation. Only when you have a postulation can it be tested again by others who are challenging your reproducibility statement and looking for the “fudge” factor. In this manner you have the old fashioned “scientia” that I grew old on. The Pope and his co-haughts are not the only font of all knowledge and it pains me and many others that too often the youth reach for catch crys and glib phrases to describe something that they in their juvernile ways do not understand. Insults then become the way of life, nothing is achieved nothing is resolved, but there is a lot of blood on the floor and the odd and even body parts.
This comment is longer than I had intended, but reflects my concern that in backing your organisation we may have to surrender long cherished Christian principles. This we are not prepared to do no matter how good your argument is. We are old enough to be able to distinguish BS when we see it, and we know that you cannot prove your postulation that ” Religion has always been at odds with science”.
This is most disappointing as we have been referred to you site from enquiries we had made in the USA regarding the Climate Change fiasco. It looks as if we will have to report back our disappointment to our referrees, and soldier on alone.
Thank you
Yours faithfully
Clem ROOK
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Ray Hibbard wrote:
A somewhat contrived situation.
If all the scientists in the freaking world hold a position that they consider consistent with the observed data and just one scientist claims that that position is inconsistent with the observed data, then, in all likelihood, the one scientist is mistaken.
But if they’re not, they can present their findings to the scientific community, and if their logic is sound, scientist will investigate the discrepancy, and the problem will eventually be unravelled. This is the great thing about science. It corrects itself whenever it doesn’t match predictions.
But there will always be cults of the like of global warming deniers and anti-vaccinationists and creation scientists who have their own body of science that they point to, and claim that the scientific consensus is wrong.
The capacity of humans to hold irrational belief is phenomenal in itself. Luckily we have science and scepticism to allow us to differentiate the quacks from the evidence based science.
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I just want to point out that it was the global warming “deniers” that had the upper hand for some years and the support of nothing less than the US administration and large global interests. So now bickering on the support of pro-climate change scientists is not very credible.
It is in fact an inconvenient “theory” “truth” “possibility” (I prefer theory or possibility), as we are all fossil fuel dependent. And those who wanted to discredit anthropogenic climate change effect claims used a nice line of instruments and with notorious financial support to discredit any such claims. It would have been a more convenient “truth”, but it did not hold.
It is the slow accumulation of research over years that has brought states to consider action. Now anthropogenic induced climate change has taken the upper hand, and studies are increasing and not decreasing in number showing that the effects are probably faster than expected, not slower. The latest UK meteorological study backed by a large number of scientists shows rather unpleasant results in this respect. You can of course always find way to discredit all of this work, but I just think that there is enough and more numerous peer-reviewed and solid science showing that it is the climate change deniers “religion” that is wrong, and that AGW religion that has accumulated more evidence or better and more solid studies.
I think the weight of evidence is turning against you, I mean evidence, not conjecture.
I will wait for peer-reviewed large numbers of research which proves the opposite, for the moment I keep betting that temperatures will most likely get over 3% average second half of this century if nothing significant is undertaken rather than the opposite. I repeat average, because some people here still pick one year claiming it was colder than one year a hundred years earlier. Fluctuations will continue, it is the average over decades that matters.
Warming has happened in the planets history before due to CO2 outburst of one or another reason, we are just the present trigger, specially if we get negative feedback by releasing some methane from the sea or permafrost.
Regards and good bye
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Clem Rook (493), You misunderstand. The comment “Religion has always been at odds with science” is not Joanne Nova’s (the owner of this blog). Her comments in that post are in blue. You can safely read on; Joanne does not disparage anyone’s genuine religion.
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“… a position that they consider consistent with the observed data …” [emphasis mine]
The observed data are exactly what they are: observed. You and all the freaking scientists and politicians of the world can “consider” and “hold positions” to your jolly little consensus-loving green hearts’ content; it ain’t gonna make an iota of difference to the observed data!
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Robin,
Just about every leap in scientific knowledge came from an individual bucking the ‘consensus’. In this case, we have many thousands of scientifically trained individuals who oppose the ‘consensus’. If it was just one person with a highly speculative theory, you can make the case that this person is likely to be wrong. When it’s thousands, many of whom are independently discovering the same things, you can’t just arm wave it away. When highly speculative science supports the consensus, it’s dangerously irresponsible to ignore the multitude of skeptics.
What makes the consensus science so speculative? We can start by considering what’s not speculative. The physics of atmospheric absorption is not speculative, thermodynamics is not speculative, fluid dynamics is not speculative, Plank’s radiation spectrum is not speculative, black body physics is not speculative. What’s speculative are the couplings in the models that link these known behaviors to each other. The crucial logic error is the blind dependence on the models built upon these speculative couplings to quantify the effects of GHG concentration changes, despite the fact that the models predict things that aren’t happening and don’t predict things that are happening.
In prior instances of scientific advancement, it often took years to centuries before an improved understanding of some physical process was accepted. The more emotionally charged the issue is, for example Galileo bucking religious dogma, the longer it takes. We can’t afford to wait centuries for the scientific truth about how the climate works to become accepted. While AGW proponents often cite the precautionary principle and the doom and gloom that might occur if CO2 was a significant contributing factor, they universally neglect considering the costs of acting and being wrong if CO2 is not culpable, which are at least equally harsh.
Have you seen this?
http://www.palisad.com/co2/eb/eb.html
I’d be interested in hearing how you can wriggle away from these facts. If you’re interested in how to apply Laplace transforms to extract a transfer function from the response (or the other way around), I can help you understand, but then again, you’re a math guy and should already know this.
George
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Robin Grant: post 494
“A somewhat contrived situation.”
Your right it’s contrived because AGW cultists are notorious at missing the point so we are reduced to making them ridiculously blatant.
“If all the scientists in the freaking world hold a position that they consider consistent with the observed data and just one scientist claims that that position is inconsistent with the observed data, then, in all likelihood, the one scientist is mistaken.”
The only thing that gets a vote is the data, not the scientists. It is not that difficult to see when data contradicts the theory. That data unfortunately tends to stick out like a sore thumb and AGW is all thumbs.
“But if they’re not, they can present their findings to the scientific community, and if their logic is sound, scientist will investigate the discrepancy, and the problem will eventually be unravelled. This is the great thing about science. It corrects itself whenever it doesn’t match predictions.”
This is rich in an environment where results are released without data and the attitude of “The science is settled” is considered acceptable.
“But there will always be cults of the like of global warming deniers and anti-vaccinationists and creation scientists who have their own body of science that they point to, and claim that the scientific consensus is wrong.”
Try all you like to attach us to any discredited group you can think of, your ilk have already attempted to paint us as Nazi sympathizers with the ‘denier’ moniker. People such as you no longer have the capacity to surprise. Your reliance on your most holy of holies ‘consensus’ is telling.
“The capacity of humans to hold irrational belief is phenomenal in itself. Luckily we have science and scepticism to allow us to differentiate the quacks from the evidence based science. “
The capacity of humans to be led by the nose like herd animals is also phenomenal. Luckily the scientific method allows us to differentiate B.S. and snake oil salesmen from science.
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Jorge.
“I just want to point out that it was the global warming “deniers” that had the upper hand for some years and the support of nothing less than the US administration and large global interests.”
“Warming has happened in the planets history before due to CO2 outburst of one or another reason, we are just the present trigger, specially if we get negative feedback by releasing some methane from the sea or permafrost.”
The first statement is simply a whopper. The second I will just ask for your links to research that reasonably shows the causality your claim!!
Put up or shut up.
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co2isnotevil wrote:
No, an individual bucking the consensus and being right is vanishingly rare. Just about every leap in scientific knowledge is from some insight gained in pro-scientific investigation with some particularly perceptive moment.
But if you have a leap in scientific knowledge regarding climate change, don’t hold back, and don’t publish here. Send your paper to Nature.
Really? I only see the same couple of hundred over and over again. And 95% of the time the same 60 odd.
Certainly amongst currently publishing research climatologists, most of whose recent papers are on the subject of climatology, the world sports about half a dozen deniers.
Or are you basing your claims on the highly-dubious (and conflict of interest wrung) Oregon Petition?
The least biased figures of late are from Doran and Zimmerman. About 97% of those whose field is climatology and who are currently working are for the consensus, with the fence sitters and denialists being very approximately half each of the remainder.
But we’ve been through this before, and I think we’re each going to continue to believe our own data. Mine because it is a scientific survey starting with a known list of scientists to avoid self selection bias, peer reviewed and published in the scientific literature. Yours because it supports your preconceived world view.
Show me three peer reviewed papers that are by different people, that support each other and are counter consensus, and you will have moved me appreciably towards your claim that there are thousands.
Right. But climate science is not highly speculative, and that’s why there is such a strong consensus. And the publishing skeptics are a possibly valuable community of about six.
The unscientific hordes that increase in proportion as their field and training moves away from climate science, and science in general, are a problem, and out Prime Minister recently pointed out.
Climate science doesn’t hinge on models.
And models are useful even in the absence of perfect prediction. They predict a lot of things that are happening, Hadley cells, seasons, the African monsoon, the Indian monsoon, accelerated warming at the poles, the cooling of the stratosphere, really good global mean surface temperature, regional mean surface temperature of sufficient accuracy to show that the climate of any continent barring Antarctica is seeing anthropogenic warming, the ENSO, the NAO … the list goes on and on.
I’m not sure what specifically you refer to by “predict things that aren’t happening and don’t predict things that are happening”, but its not enough to say that models aren’t usefully reproducing the climate. But denialism requires to ignore much more science than just models.
I think your view of scientific history is skewed, but in the end your argument by analogy is a fallacious argument. If you have this new understanding of a physical process, write it up, and send it to nature. If you don’t then this aspect of history is not applicable, whether or not it is romanticised beyond any genuine reality.
Ahh, the Galileo argument.
We’ve been through this haven’t we?
Galileo’s argument was with the church, not with the scientific community. He had the scientific consensus on his side, and one of his stated concerns was that Italian science was falling behind the Germans, who had been teaching the heliocentric solar system for generations.
So your analogy falls down in two places, one, because unlike Galileo, the climate denialsts don’t have an actual scientific finding. Two, even in your archaic example the scientific community accepts evidence, and adjusts its views to accommodate them. This is more true now with the advent of the peer reviewed system, and the rise of evidence based science in universities and research institutions.
I call shenanigans on two points.
It is simply wrong that they neglect the cost of acting. There have been many studies of this.
And also it is negligible, nowhere near as harsh as the costs of adapting to climate change, even if that money could be found … which I think Bhutan shows that it can’t.
No.
I’ve explained that there is more peer reviewed science on climate change than I can read.
I may need a little reminding, as I haven’t played with Laplace transforms in nearly 20 years. But Ishould be able to do the reminding myself.
The question I have is is this a good use of my time? Who is George White, what are his conflicts of interest, and where has this been presented to the scientific community?
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Ray Hibbard wrote:
Global warming is the one science where the climatologists and particularly the ecologists are more concerned than the general public. So although there may be a bunch of extremists that could be called “AGW cultists”, overall it’s an under-represented position. Probably we should have more of them to counter the denialist cultists.
It is the analysis of the data that is science. I don’t know what you mean by anthropomorphising “data” to the point where you say it gets a “vote”. Science does progress by consensus.
No, that’s your own misunderstanding.
Here, at least, we agree.
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kuhnkat:
CO2 is a greenhouse gas. This knowledge goes back a couple of centuries. Although it’s exact absorption spectrum has been refined in the last 100 years, there’s no recent paper on the causality of CO2 to warming any more than there’s one on the earth not being flat.
There’s hundreds of papers on how much warming there is attributable to CO2, but that’s not “causality”, it’s “how much”. Would some of those do?
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Robin Grant: post 502
More pointless dribble.
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Sure, but only if it’s an empirical measurement. Climate simulations are not empirical.
We want evidence of major warming. We agree carbon may warm us up to 1 degree.
Please Stop talking spectroscopy as if it tells us what clouds and humidity will do. You keep offering straw men. Clouds and humidity trump Co2.
Every time you repeat the line “CO2 is a greenhouse gas” you waste our time because no one here disagrees. After 400 comments you know that too.
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Ray Hibbard wrote (quoted in its entirety):
The obvious irony aside, I think it is telling how much denialists are unable to engage in any discussion.
If you have a mind that is open to facts, you can engage with it.
If your world view is threatened by facts, your only option is to not engage.
________
Whether or nor you are capable of reflecting on it, it is telling that the scientific community are much more concerned about global climate change than the public. And that fact alone shows that the denialists are effective at PR but not science, or that the climate scientists are effective as science by not PR, or some combination of the two.
Certainly is shows that the denialist claims that the press supports AGW against the science is false.
________
It is also true that science does progress by consensus. America’s creation science movement likes to deny this, as well as the climate change denialist movement, for the same reason: They have their small and separate body of “research” that they like to point to, but that has no general acceptance.
But science does progress by consensus. The reason that we know that Newtonian mechanics is true for non-quantum and non-relativistic situations is because there is no significant dissent from this position in the scientific community. That’s why Newtonian mechanics validly appears in school textbooks. Consensus.
________
And those two points are telling:
1) The scientific community is more concerned about AGW than the public.
2) Science does progress by consensus.
And while I’m sorry that you can’t face those points, it should be well noted that your response doesn’t address them.
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Robin,
The link I referenced, http://www.palisad.com/co2/eb/eb.html, has been peer reviewed by several people. For the most part, they have been other skeptics. However, unlike most AGW proponents, I’m unafraid of review from a potential hostile audience, or even those who deny first principles physics.
As I’ve told you before, I have no conflicts of interest. My only goal is to prevent an avoidable case of mass insanity from causing a meltdown of the human race. If you care about how the climate works then it will be a very good use of your time. If you’re only interested in an agenda, it will just make you angry as it raises questions that you can’t answer in a way that’s consistent with a belief that AGW is a significant factor. You might also consider reading Lindzens’s most recent paper, http://www.drroyspencer.com/Lindzen-and-Choi-GRL-2009.pdf, which uses ERBE data to extract the net feedback acting on the system in much the same way I used the ISCCP weather satellite data.
The thing about Laplace transforms is that they allow you to represent complex transfer functions with simple algebraic relationships in the S domain, (e^jwt or e^iwt for you math guys), which allows for easily calculating the response (the function solution to the differential equations) to periodic variability like the seasonal variable solar power applied to each hemisphere. Doing this can quantify time constants based on measured delays between the stimulus and the response, for example, the 2 month nominal delay between min/max solar energy at the solstices and the min/max average surface temperatures. The paper doesn’t dive into the details of the foundation math, as it’s generally beyond the scope of the intended audience, but as I said, this foundation is present.
George
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Jo – do you think it is actually possible to construct an experiment that would give you the empirical evidence that any warming that is occuring is the result of extra CO2 in the atmosphere. Just what could you do to actually demonstrate that it is the CO2 and not some other hitherto unknown climate forcing.
We know CO2 is a greenhouse gas, we have models that suggest what will happen with increasing CO2, and we have temperature measurements and reconstructions that match the models.
Just what would empirical evidence look like do you think?
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Joanne Nova wrote:
There is plenty of empirical evidence, and I’ve posted some of it to you before.
But why do you object to theory? Is this not also scientific?
NASA has put landers on Mars by theoretical calculations. And the climates response to particular changes in forcing are best calculated theoretically. This is because we only have one earth, so we can’t do a controlled experiment where only one parameter (Such as CO2 concentration) is varied and all other causes of radiative forcing are held constant.
But I’ve never heard you give a compelling argument for why the theory should be discounted. Do you have one?
And this has been given lots of times. The examples that I have posted to you in the past are: The magnitude of the response of the climate to the reduction in radiative forcing due to volcanic aerosols has been examined. The magnitude of the response of the climate to past changes in CO2 concentration has been examined over a range of time scales. The magnitude of the energy imbalance has been examined. These are all empirical, and point to warming of 3 or 4 K per doubling of CO2.
Humidity is not atmospheric H2O concentration. Warming will increase the atmospheric concentration by increasing evaporation rate, and by increasing the concentration of H2O for a given relative humidity. The effect of this is also known. H2O is also a greenhouse gas. It will make it warmer.
Clouds also seem to decrease with increasing temperature. (Certainly this is the case in the North-east Pacific). This decreases the earth’s albedo and also makes it warmer.
And no Jo, I am not offering straw men.
The question was about the causality of CO2 to warming. The answer is that optics shows the causality and science has been able to show that for centuries.
You are now saying “we know that there is causality, but I claim that the effect is “up to one degree””. That is a different question, and while that can be answered, it is not the one that was asked.
I don’t think that that’s true.
kuhnkat seems to disagree, or at least needs reminding of the scientific basis of the causal link between CO2 and warming.
Valentine has said that there is no warming from CO2.
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co2isnotevil:
Ah, so George White is you.
Do you mind me asking what your education is and if you have any scholarly papers in the peer reviewed literature?
(I’m not trying to go one up here. I have a single undergraduate degree in Mathematics, and no papers in the peer reviewed literature).
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Robin,
Yes, that’s me, but I’ve made no attempt to hide my identity. I use co2isnotevil in blogs because it’s easier to find in google. As for my CV, I have multiple EE degrees (BS/ME) from Cornell. I have no climate related scholarly papers, although I have contributed to papers related to chip engineering that have appeared in obscure professional journals. My business is technical consulting related to silicon engineering, where I specialize in such things as Delay Locked Loops (digital implementation of a PLL), complex feedback control systems, modeling continuous processes with discrete samples, simulating anything and algorithmic silicon (Montgomery reduction, DES, complex pattern matching, etc.).
BTW, there’s many reasons why so many EE’s are on the skeptical side. First, EE’s must understand physics first, as EE is really just a physics specialty. Second is that EE’s must intuitively understand how transfer functions behave and how to model them. Third is that EE’s often have a strong understanding about how real feedback systems behave. Finally, EE’s understand that to get power out of a system, power must go in first and you can never get more out than you put in.
George
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Robin, time to apologize for calling us denialists since you can provide no evidence that we deny. Sad that you’ve been away so long and your name has been added to the moderated list so fast.
Denialists is name-calling. We are people. There is no subspecies of human called a denier.
Stick to the science, or stay silent. You can’t provide any empirical evidence. Link to a paper or at least an abstract, or apologize and admit you can’t.
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Matt, “Just what would empirical evidence look like do you think? ”
—It would look like radiosondes that showed upper tropospherical warming trend as the models predicted. No missing hot spot.
—It would look like increased relative humidity in the upper trophosphere. The opposite of what Paltridge found in 2009.
—It would show turning points that followed carbon levels instead of leading them. The opposite of what Caillon 2003 found.
—It would show upper cirrus clouds increasing with warming rather than decreasing as spencer showed (spencer 2007).
—It would show outgoing radiation decreasing as the planet warmed – in line with models, and exactly the opposite of what Lindzen found (Lindzen 2009).
That’s just off the top of my head.
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Robin Grant,
you keep wasting our time with drivel so, now it’s MY turn.
You apparently are still stuck on CO2 as a Greenhouse gas. You base this hypothesis on the alledged basic radiative physics that generally goes something like this.
The sun heats the earth primarily in visible wavelengths to which the atmosphere is mostly transparent.
The earth radiates IR due to this heating. The more it is heated the more IR it radiates to cool. A couple small bands of this IR can interact with CO2 in the atmosphere. This is due to the molecular vibrational bond between the atoms. We are told that several things happen due to this. The IR is slowed in its leaving the atmosphere causing a warming of the atmosphere. We are also told that additional heating comes from half of the ensuing reradiation partly coming back to the earth and then going back out to be absorbed… The classical Greenhouse bull.
First let’s deal with the geometry problem. As you move away from the surface of the earth, the arc the earth covers is reduced. This tells us that the higher up in the atmosphere the GHG reradiates, the lesser radiation actually is going back to the surface. I never see this shown in the calcs? Of course, the whole thing is WRONG!!!
Now for the really weird stuff.
IR is electromagnetic radiation. Electromagnetic radiation is really strange according to the physicists that study it. It is described both as a wave (it is actually a 3 dimensional wave front) and as a particle, based on empirical evidence. Unfortunately no one has been able to figure out how it can be both so it is probably neither. So, the smart guys developed quantum ohysics to describe what is happening.
Now how does this apply to our problem. To start, the IR from the earth is not a specific particle going in a specific direction. It is a wavefront that meets the GHG molecule and decides to deposit a photon of energy into it. In other words, that specific wave section localises and acts with the GHG as if it were a particle.
Next, the GHG reradiates the energy from the photon. Which way does it go?? It goes EVERYWHERE. It is another wavefront!!! So, the IR goes in all directions at once. When it reaches the ground, what happens?? Well, based on the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics that no one has falsified yet, NOTHING!!!!!!! The localisation of the wave to a Photon does NOT happen in violation of the second law. Since there is no actual particle that was shot at the ground there is also not an actual violation of physics where energy or matter simply disappears. It was never really there in the first place!! It just happened to actually go the other way!!! Of course, if there was a cooler spot on the surface that the wave could interact with, it WOULD HAVE!!! Ain’t quantum mechanics fun???
Another important question I can’t answer is, how long does it take for the absorption and reradiation?? If too fast there will never be a chance for the energy to be conducted to another particle in the atmosphere through collision. Hopefully someone knows a physicist who can actually answer that little question. I tend to believe it is too fast, but, that’s a WAG.
So, how much of the hypothesis of Greenhouse does this falsify??
An interesting experiment would be to heat an infrared detector to a higher temp than the back radiation and see if it could still be detected!!
Another little point that gets ignored in the Climate debate is that EVERYTHING ABOVE 0K RADIATES IR!!!. It may be vanishingly little, but, it is there. The hotter the object the more it radiates. An object not being heated will conduct and radiate till it is in equilibrium with its environment. So, when there is talk about energy balances, where is all the energy that the non-ghg gasses of the atmosphere are radiating??? I know, it is really small, but, isn’t the actual contribution of GHG’s pretty darned small also??
Greenhouse theory is an error in accounting. While we are talking about accounting errors, have you audited what Chiefio is working on??
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/
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Joanne,
Did you notice in Lindzen’s paper, that dFlux/dSST is just a measurement of the Stefan-Boltzmann equation? If you start at 288K, convert to energy, add 11 W/m^2 and convert back to temperature, the result is 290K. If you look at the graph, a 2C change in Sea Surface Temperatures results from a dFlux of about 11 W/m^2. How about that, theory and measurements actually agree!
In a way, he’s showing the same thing I do when I point out that the averages of the weather satellite data show that the gain of the system reduces as the forcing flux increases. Both happen for the same reason, which is that ocean temperatures increase linearly with total incident energy, i.e. 1 cal/gm per degree, yet energy is radiated away proportional to the forth power of the temperature.
George
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I think the ‘warmers’ such as Robin Grant tend to confuse/interchange the plausibility of their hypothesis with confirming proof of that same hypothesis. It is, we all must admit, plausible that human activity is the primary cause of recently observed increases in atmospheric CO2 concentration. It is also plausible that this increase might cause a small temperature increase. It is further plausible that such warming might cause additional water vapor to be retained in the atmosphere, which would then amplify the small warming caused by the CO2 increase. I don’t deny the plausibility of any of these facets of the AGW hypothesis.
When we watch and are entertained by a cartoon, what makes us laugh is that the humorous situations, as ridiculous as they may be, contain a grain of plausibility. Marge Simpson demonstrated to Homer how she learned to give the ‘bum’s rush’ to an unwanted patron at Moe’s Bar by lifting Homer by his shirt and pants and throwing him through a wall. This is plausible because Marge has arms and hands, and with sufficient strength, she might be able to lift Homer’s ~300 heft with only her hands and subsequently throw him through a wall. But on a more detailed examination, we find that it is highly unlikely that a svelte woman would have the strength lift a ~300 lb man using only her hands; the balance issues alone would preclude this, let alone the question of whether her grip strength was sufficient to support ~150 lbs with each hand. Also, it is unlikely that Homer’s shirt would be strong enough to support ~150 lbs either, although we can probably acknowledge his denim jeans would be strong enough to do so. Once having hefted him, she would still need a reserve of strength adequate to heave him through the wall, which given the difficulties with the lift, it is highly unlikely that she possesses such reserves. But it is all plausible, just not real.
In a similar way, ALL of the assertions (OK, well, MOST of them) of the AGW hypothesis have more than a grain of plausibility to them.
Human industry does release a lot of CO2 into the atmosphere. So is it enough to have caused all or most of the observed CO2 rise? No, on closer examination, it’s not nearly enough because the CO2 residence time is too short due to the carbon cycle. Isotopic studies also fail to confirm the assertion, and show only a very small fraction of atmospheric CO2 is sourced from human industry, far too small for the assertion to be even nearly true.
CO2 does have some potency as a greenhouse gas, so increasing it might cause some warming. But does it have enough greenhouse potential to have caused the observed warming? No, it’s only a minor greenhouse agent, and at spectral saturation at any concentration that our atmosphere will ever see. By itself, it could not have caused the observed warming.
The modest warming caused by small increases in CO2 concentration might be able to drive up water vapor concentration, greatly increasing the greenhouse effect, which would in turn cause a lot more warming than CO2 could cause acting alone. This might be how CO2 could caused the observed warming. But do we observe this sequence of events happening? No, instead we observe that outgoing longwave radiation actually increases during positive thermal perturbations to the atmosphere, meaning that the opposite is actually the observed reality; water vapor moderates temperature changes rather than amplifying them. As a result, the greenhouse effect actually diminishes during these perturbations.
Again, the various facets of the AGW hypothesis, while plausible (like so many of Wile E. Coyote’s catapult capers) just do not prove out when subjected to close scrutiny, though I do admit their plausibility. Even Richard Lindzen recently admitted that he finds this set of assertions is plausible. But plausibility is not reality. We need some confirming proof that the individual facets of the hypothesis are each by themselves true. We can only get this proof or disproof though observing the real world. Fortunately, all the facets of the hypothesis are individually testable, although the entire hypothesis is much harder, if not impossible, to test. This last fact is morphed into the ‘precautionary principle’ whereby we are asked to pretend that since the whole hypothesis is not testable, we must act on the very remote chance that it may be true, despite the fact that each facet fails upon testing.
The whole AGW hypothesis has become like an episode of Mythbusters, where a plausible fiction gets tested out and proved or disproved. Mostly disproved.
Jim Rennison
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Robin Grant: post 506
Finally got a complete quote from you instead of you usual tactic of just taking fragments of what people say and then making some obtuse response to it. Of course I only gave you three words to work with, but none the less, Bravo.
You have not provided any facts to anyone so far.
Like I said, you have not provided any facts so I don’t feel a bit threatened and my “world view” as you put it is very much intact.
Do you live under a rock or do you just want to change the subject?.. or both?
Wipe that spittle from the corner of your mouth Robin. There, now isn’t that better?
From your constant reliance on consensus it is apparent you don’t know the first thing about science.
Your points as you call them aren’t worth the ASCII text used to display them so I’ll not waste time addressing them as this is not a courtesy you afford others.
You may be a skilled propagandist but that is all. I have not once seen you respond directly to a single point made by anyone here or in any other thread. You take bits of what people say instead of responding to the point they were making. If that won’t work you say you don’t understand. If that won’t work you change the subject. It’s not discussion you want Robin its some kind of Chinese water torture with words.
Case in point kuhnkat: post 500, below the entire post is reproduced. In it you can see that Jorge’s statement has to do with CO2 outbursts and subsequent warming in the planets HISTORY.
What does Robin do with this? Let’s see. Robins post 503 reproduced below.
Notice that there is no reference to kuhnkat post number and without the context of Jorge’s statement the reader of Robins post has no idea what exactly kuhnkat is referring to. But hey, it gives Robin a chance to prattle on a bit about CO2 and Global Warming and that’s what you really wanted wasn’t it Robin?
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George, I hadn’t noticed the details of the stefan boltzman calculation in Lindzens paper. But I had noticed how your work and his compliment each other nicely.
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Does anybody here read scientific reports from journals such as NATURE, which is one of the most serious ones?
I am constantly asked to back my claims. I do not make claims, I read articles and research summaries from journals. So Russia has seen the temperature going up considerably (A FACT THAT HAS BEEN WIDELY REPORTED) so the methane under permafrost is getting nearer to be released in masses.
It is not only my responsibility to give you the links, but from you to start reading journals.
A study published in the September 7th issue of Nature authored by Katey Walter of the University of Alaska, and Jeff Chanton of Florida State University reports that greenhouse gas is escaping into the atmosphere from permafrost in the US and risking to go soon out in Russia.
Ah, you may now say the temperature rise is not caused by human emissions of CO2… then the permafrost problem is not our to deal with… well read the reports that say the opposite, there are more than enough scientific ones.
What you mean in fact is that the entirety of the results from the IPCC, the National Academy of Sciences, the American Meteorological Society, the American Geophysical Union, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the equivalents in many other nations, with regards to climate change, is “junk science”.
I can then blindly also claim that any report that denies climate change is junk science… it is easy, lest decide what we want and shout it. I personally do not believe any longer that all these serious academies of science can any longer or are getting it wrong… sorry.
Well, no comment, quite a big statement.
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Robin is trying to claim we deny these “papers”. Here’s the list. I’m holding his comments until he either apologizes for name-calling or provides empirical evidence.
I’ve read this. There is no empirical evidence in it.
Name the paper Robin. Name the instrument the observation was measured with.
As usual, you makes no effort to explain what these mean, just flick us a googled list of papers you may not understand, 5/6 are easy to knock out, 1 is interesting, but very weak.
Douglass found that the paradigm of assuming long response times to Pinatubo was wrong. Response times were 7 months, and he gets a negative feedback.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2005/2004GL022119.shtml
http://www.pas.rochester.edu/~douglass/papers/reply_WAST_2005GL023695.pdf
Wow. He takes climate model results, applies Bayes Theory and produces a narrowing of wild guesses based on estimates and assumptions? Did you think this was empirical?
It uses debunked hockey sticks. You must be joking?
Better. At least this is empirical. But Forster and others assume that clouds don’t force the climate they only respond to it, which is invalid and produces a higher sensitivity than it should.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/research-articles/global-warming-as-a-natural-response/
“But before a comparison to the PDO can be made, one must recognize that the total radiative flux measured by CERES is a combination of forcing AND feedback (e.g. Gregory et al., 2002; Forster and Gregory, 2006). So, we first must estimate and remove the feedback component to better isolate any radiative forcing potentially associated with the PDO.
As Spencer and Braswell (2008b) have shown with a simple model, the radiative feedback signature in globally-averaged radiative flux-versus-temperature data is always highly correlated, while the time-varying radiative forcing signature of internal climate fluctuations is uncorrelated because the forcing and temperature response are always 90 degrees out of phase. This allows some measure of identification and separation of the two signals.”
Climate sensitivity constrained by CO2 concentrations over the past 420 million years
OK. This is interesting and I’d like others who have time to read it to comment on it. It’s paleocarb data back 420 million years suggesting (as usual) a big range for sensitivity of 1.5 – 6 degrees.But frankly, knowing that the oceans unleash co2 as they warm means that data from this far back can’t be used to calculate climate sensitivity, especially when temperature would respond within months. I mean seriously, we know temperatures have a major effect on CO2 so why the heck wouldn’t we see some correlation, but driven by temperature? It’s near impossible to know cause and effect at this distance. This is not evidence that co2 drives the climate. Indeed I’d say it counts pretty strongly against it.
I’d take Lindzen et al 2009 over an 400 million year analysis because of accuracy and because we can work on timescales where cause and effect is obvious.
So Robin, you can apologize any-time. Our “denial” amounts to what? You’ve found one weak paper and a bunch of irrelevant or poor papers? Is this what the oft stated “thousands of papers” comes down too?
Obviously the case for man-made global catastrophe is not well supported.
I know it’s hard for someone who reads the rabid name-calling AGW fan sites to switch out of it and treat us as human, but “sorry” is not that hard to say.
Then you can see if you can dig up any better papers supporting a climate sensitivity of 2 -11 degrees.
Joanne
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So Jorge since you are the font of Nature knowledge, go right ahead and back up your assertion that your faith is based on science. Can you find THAT MYSTERY paper that no one else can with empirical evidence supporting a large climate sensitivity or strong feedbacks?
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Please note that the UNFCCC is already demanding that wealthy nations pay the global cost of adaptation both in direct finance, and in technology transfer and free intellectual property. This provision has been in place since 2001 and looks set to remain in place regardless of whatever CO2 tax framework gets agreed.
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Joanne, I think there is a more likely chance of John Galt walking into your office and giving you the blue prints for his machine than an AGW alarmist apologizing in a public forum. The rest of his gang would take away his KoolAid.
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Matt,
I know you directed this question to Jo, but allow me to address this question.
As I’ve pointed out, each facet of the AGW hypothesis is by itself a testable sub-hypothesis. The assertion that humans have caused the increase in atmospheric CO2 over the last~100 years is testable, and it fails.(equilibrium concentration, mass balance studies)
The assertion that the warming observed over the last ~100 years is due mostly or entirely to a change in the greenhouse effect is testable, and it fails the test. (‘hot spot’ missing)
The assertion that the admittedly small amount of additional greenhouse warming attributable to the observed CO2 increase causes a far greater warming by causing the atmosphere to retain more water vapor is also testable, and it also fails.(Outgoing longwave radiation increases during thermal perturbations; greenhouse effect actually diminishes. Assumption about the cause/effect of warming and clouds proved wrong; assumed causality reversed)
The question of whether or not CO2 causes warming on any timescale is really the core of your question. All we need do is find a data set which shows CO2 increases preceding temperature increases; the other way around won’t work as causes always precede effects. Since we can’t find any such data sets, we must count this as ‘failed’ also, except that believers will point to ‘confounding factors’ that make these failures invalid. So you can’t conclusively test the entire hypothesis; it’s just not practical. With so many variables affecting climate, there’s just no way to ‘distill’ a useful conclusion from all the inevitable ‘noise’. No matter what the result, one side or the other could always point to some ‘confounding factor’ that makes the test results invalid.
But it’s another story altogether with each individual facet of the AGW hypothesis; we CAN conclusively test each of these and as I’ve pointed out, they have ALL failed their respective tests. Why then, should we believe that the entire AGW hypothesis based on these individual assertions, that each turn out to be untrue, is still nevertheless true?
Jim Rennison
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Jim Renison,
You claim that it is not testable that CO2 concentrations have not increased due to human activity. Sorry but the rapid increase in CO2 emissions due to human activity are perfectly proven, tested and published by all respected scientific teams, see the data by the US department of energy, source of data:
“Marland, G., T.A. Boden, and R. J. Andres. 2007. Global, Regional, and National CO2 Emissions. In Trends: A Compendium of Data on Global Change. Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, United States Department of Energy, Oak Ridge, Tenn., U.S.A.
From this US department of Energy it is clearly stated that since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the concentrations of most of the greenhouse gases have increased. For example, the concentration of carbon dioxide has increased by about 36% to 380 ppmv, or 100 ppmv over modern pre-industrial levels. The first 50 ppmv increase took place in about 200 years, from the start of the Industrial Revolution to around 1973; however the next 50 ppmv increase took place in about 33 years, from 1973 to 2006.
There is in nobody’s head a doubt that concentrations have increased and the discussions is closed. Some people claim Elvis is still alive too and will forever, but this is really well established.
The fact of hot spots etc… story is always the same, you misunderstand the wrong from the possible. Hot spots do not invalidate the greenhouse effect link, many things affect the temperature, but we have put more CO2 in the atmosphere and this add to any other effect.
On the rest, now I cannot go for the data and publications, which abound, because I need to do a job now, so I am off…
But I feel that you are cherry picking at monumental scale for anything that may minimally put any doubts on anything. You seem to invalidate the AWG position because of uncertainties. Well, I go back and say that claims of the opposite are also full of uncertainties.
I just remember the actual figures well 26 GT of CO2 out from human activities, compared to 770 non-human. The second were managed well by the ecosystem in place, the human extra is in part not and is accumulating.
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Jorge,
It warmed my heart that data from CDIAC has been rehabilitated to a level of trustworthiness such that you now include it in your own posts! Let me suggest that their tabulations of total anthropogenic CO2 emissions are likely accurate as well at ~8 Gt annual as of 2004, NOT the 26 Gt you attributed to your other “scientific source” back at post #467.
No one disputes the total emissions figures posted at the CDIAC site; indeed I rely on these from time to time. The fact that there is a rough parity between these emissions and the increase in atmospheric CO2 leads to a plausible hypothesis, to wit, that these same emissions are the cause of the observed rise. This is a testable hypothesis, and we will test it.
But first, let’s look at how and why these two parameters may plausibly be asserted to have a causal link. The assumption made by the believers is that each unit of CO2 released to the atmosphere stays there a long time so that releases that are ‘unexpected’ by the natural system tend to accumulate. If this assertion about the residence time is true, then a simple tabulation of total anthropogenic emissions is all we would need to reconstruct the current atmosphere; this will become our first ‘test’ of the assertion that CO2 has a long residence time. All we need do is start with the ‘original’ (pre-industrial, 280ppm) atmosphere, add the tabulated total from CDIAC and (if the assertion about residence time is right) Voila! You get 380ppm. Oh how the believers WISH it worked out this way! Instead, when we do the tabulations, and we include the anthropogenic sources AND all the NATURAL sources of CO2 (can’t forget those; they would share the same residence time, you know!) we get ~800ppm instead of 380ppm! This ‘problem’ is admitted by the IPCC who nevertheless insist that some “mystery sink” must be gobbling up all the extra CO2 they can’t seem to find.
We can mark this as the first failed test of the assertion: Failure to reconstruct.
Gosh, what went wrong?!
I’m going to just C & P the paragraphs from my previous post, #$416:
“The subject of the persistence of the greenhouse gases, particularly CO2 keeps coming up. Everyone should be aware that the residence time of CO2 is not a minor peripheral point in the AGW hypothesis, rather it is a foundational cornerstone. If CO2 has a long residence time, it will accumulate as a result of ‘incidental’ sources like volcanism and human industry. However if the residence time is short, it is IMPOSSIBLE for CO2 to accumulate on account of these incidental sources, and it’s Game Over for AGW, simple as that.
AGW proponents know this and obtained the long residence time needed (to lend plausibility to their assertions about the cause of recent CO2 increase) by simply assuming the corollary effects were already true and then working out what residence time would allow the observed CO2 rise. The number the modelers came up with is 50-200 years. Note that NOT A SINGLE measurement study was used to obtain this supposed long residence time of atmospheric CO2. The FACT that this long residence time is based on computer modeling is freely admitted and not controversial.
The problem with this approach is that we already knew the real, measured residence time of atmospheric CO2 because of the many atmospheric CO2 residence time studies already completed; some recent, some several decades old.
Below is a list of the 35 studies that actually measured the CO2 residence time expressed as half life with their results summarized:….”
A list of the 35 studies followed. They average to about 5.6 years, BTW, NOT “50-200 years”.
The next test will be as follows:
Given that ‘fossil’ carbon and recent terrestrial and pelagic carbon have markedly different isotopic signatures of -26.0 and -7.0 0/00 PDB respectively, and assumed in the AGW hypothesis that “all or nearly all” recent CO2 rise is due to anthropogenic emissions from the burning of fossil fuels,
Then the atmosphere must now contain ~25% fossil carbon (105/385), which would give us a isotopic signature of -11 to 11.5 0/00 PDB.
So what do we actually observe?
The current atmosphere reads about -7.5 to -7.8 0/00 PDB, NOWHERE NEAR the amount expected if all or nearly all of the 105ppm CO2 rise since the industrial baseline of 280ppm was attributable to anthropogenic emissions. This figure amounts to about 3% fossil sourced.
I count this the second failed test of the assertion: Isotopic signature missing.
Jorge,
If you can find an isotopic mass-balance study that shows the ‘expected’ signature of fossil carbon is present in our atmosphere which supports the “all or nearly all” attribution, please cite it. All the ones I’ve seen, including
Also, if you know of a study of CO2 residence time (an empirical measurement study please, NOT one based on computer model outputs) that shows that the residence time is long, please cite it.
Jim Rennison
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WOW! Amazing how this thread died immediately before ClimateGate.
JoAnn et.al.; It’s amazingly difficult to get a man to notice something he is paid not to notice.
This will be a great deal of fun to observe; The elephant has just walked into the room, and all of those paid to deny the existence of the elephant (The elephant is a metaphor for natural variation trumping AGW) continue not to notice it.
Meanwhile, the elephant is really screwing up the place; The temperature continues NOT to increase, their data manipulations have been discovered, and are therefor no longer tenable. What fun, sorry this thread died though. It’s been great fun catching up as the AGW disciple continued his inane testimony in the face of deep scientific understanding to the contrary.
All for now.
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perhaps clem tacca had mcgurk hit for messing with his amazing fortune
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39:
Of course. Excluding the truth can reduce them to zero.
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Deborah Cameron a.b.c talk show host in Sydney yelled at Kevin Rudd in 2007 befroe the election. She said the word is that the Arctic will be ice free in 2010. A.B.C news radio 17 sept 2010. The Arctic has had it’s 3 lowest melt ever recorded.
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Quoting from nsidc.org
“The 2010 minimum extent is 240,000 square kilometers (93,000 square miles) above 2008 and 630,000 square kilometers (240,000 square miles) above the record low in 2007. This is 340,000 square kilometers (130,000 square miles) below 2009.”
This tells me that despite a minor rebound from the massive increase last year, the trend for the N hemisphere ice pack is for it to be growing, or at least that’s what the data since 2007 tells us. Of course, we don’t have data going far back enough to know what should be expected as normal variability and the record you speak of goes back only to 1979. We do have evidence that during the medieval warming, Greenland was much warmer and suitable for agriculture that it’s unsuitable for today. If that was the case, it’s reasonable to infer that the N polar sea ice was far lower than today. There’s a lot of historical evidence for a Northern passage to be temporarily open for short periods in the past. In our time, the passage through the North Arctic can only be achieved with ice breakers and other strong ships and only through the waters near the shores of Russia and N America. Your typical yacht, tanker, barge or container ship will never make it. The N pole itself is still solid ice and in the center of an ice sheet 2000 miles across. A little additional melting towards the shores of Russia and N America is nothing to worry about since most of this has always melted during the summer anyway.
George
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If you use one of the alarmist own sites it shows that the Artic Sea Ice is not an issue. Plus it is a fun to do the comparisons and notice how the polar bears will not be extinct in a couple of years due to loss of sea ice.
http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh?fm=07&fd=01&fy=1990&sm=07&sd=01&sy=2010
So I guess more evidence/rhetoric goes down the tube for AGW KoolAid Alarmist Society.
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