(Part of the How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic guide)
Objection: Temperatures plummeted over the last year (2007-2008). If you look at this data from the Met Office Hadley Centre you can clearly see that in one year alone global temperatures dropped .6°C, an amount equal to the entire warming over the 20th century claimed by the IPCC.
Answer:
This argument represents a fundamental misunderstanding of the difference between weather and climate. Climate is generally defined as the weather conditions averaged over a long period, usually around 30 years. One can not discern a trend in climate change by looking at small numbers of years, much less a single one. On top of that, this fallacious objection is using global temperatures in a single month, not even an entire year! An even cursory look at the graph above reveals the very noisy nature of monthly temperatures, even when averaged over the entire globe. The particular Jan. 2007 to Jan. 2008 drop used for this argument is indeed large, but it is by no means the only place you could pick to draw a steep line, either up or down. Look at the huge leap up from month 219 to month 231 or the sudden drop from month 152 to month 164 (I am only using intervals of 12 months to avoid seasonal bias). This is very noisy data and those dramatic fluctuations turned out to be just that: noise.
Discerning a trend from noisy data is one of the most basic processes in scientific research, so even though this argument has a naive appeal to the majority of us with no statistical training, you can be sure that any scientifically trained individual trying to make a case for cooling out of this graph is not being intellectually honest. Please consider any source of this argument as very unreliable, either by being very uninformed about basic scientific processes, or very dishonest, hoping to take advantage of less informed people.
So what do we see when we step back and look at the whole picture?
Clearly the last few years, far from erasing the entire warming of the 20th century, have remained far above the global baseline (1951-1990 average). We can also see that even in globally and seasonally averaged and smoothed data, there are still numerous peaks and troughs that are irrelevant to the long-term trends. On this graph, the last four or five years do look as though the trend has paused and even reversed but this is actually a misleading artifact of how the graph was produced. If you look at the page on the Hadley site that describes the smoothing method used, you will see that it is actually too soon to know what the real 2007 trend direction is. The smoothing they use requires 10 years of data on either side of the year in question. So though the trend today may in fact be down, we will not know this for sure until 10 years from now. Hadley Centre made the decision to continue the line until 2007 to avoid the appearance of incomplete data despite the fact that the last 10 years are less and less meaningful.
There is no convincing reason to think that the well established and attributed long-term trend has reversed nor that it is likely to for many years to come, even if effective global actions were taken today to stop emissions of greenhouse enhancing gases like CO2 and CH4 (methane). Short term influences like La Nina and volcanic interruptions may cause dips and slow downs but the elevated levels of greenhouse gases already in the air will eventually overwhelm the long-term.
And before you let anyone argue that the uncertainty about today I just described just means we need to wait 10 more years, please recall that we have done that and more already. Twenty years ago James Hansen was telling the U.S. senate that warming was real, significant, and anthropogenic (human caused) and the projections he provided have been largely borne out by what has been observed. The skeptics have already made us wait, and the three IPCC assessments that came out in the meantime have been more and more emphatic in their conclusions. The wait is over, the trend is clear and the cause is well understood.
It is a telling and egregious double standard for those voices that for the past 20 years have told us to wait and see are now claiming the trend is over based on such a small blip in the mountain of data.
This is just one of dozens of responses to common climate change denial arguments, which can all be found at How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic.
"Temperatures in 2008 have plummeted" is also posted on A Few Things Ill Considered, where additional comments can be found, and where the author, Coby Beck, is more likely to respond.
Skeptics claim global warming is fake after top scientists’ emails hacked at CRU
Comments
View as Flat
mreinbold Posted 9:58 am
09 Sep 2008
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Delay And Deny Posted 10:29 am
09 Sep 2008
Now you tell us that a significant value of that range "doesn't count".
Great...let's split the difference and get rid of 1998 from any and all models.
Oh, you don't want that...do you?
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Robco1 Posted 11:16 am
09 Sep 2008
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Pangolin Posted 11:42 am
09 Sep 2008
I'm curious how the melting in Greenland and the Arctic average out.
Put the Carbon Back
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mreinbold Posted 1:31 pm
09 Sep 2008
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saluki Posted 1:56 pm
09 Sep 2008
"Climate is generally defined as the weather conditions averaged over a long period, usually around 30 years."
The 30 year number is a fraudulent number that has been cherry picked by the warmers because they can make the most hay from it. When it suits their needs, the warmers will use much shorter numbers. Here is a paper by the godfather of AGW, James Hansen, and his liutenant Gavin Schmidt.
"This imbalance is confirmed by precise measurements of increasing ocean heat content over the past 10 years."
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/308/5727/1 ...
"One can not discern a trend in climate change by looking at small numbers of years, much less a single one. On top of that, this fallacious objection is using global temperatures in a single month, not even an entire year!"
Of course this is a false assertion. No one is trying to make anything out of a single month or a single year. The truth is that there has been no warming over the past 11 years while CO2 has continued to rise as it normally does. Click on the chart to blow it up:
http://reallyrealclimate.blogspot.com/2008/06/11-year-tem ...
"This is very noisy data and those dramatic fluctuations turned out to be just that: noise."
There is no such thing as noise in the climate system. The climate system is not a computer model. Everything happens for a reason - in both the short term and the long term. What the observed "noise" is, is the interplay of various elements of natural variation. ENSO, PDO, Solar, Milankovic cycles, albedo, cloud formation, and to a very small extent CO2 and aerosols, etc. In addition there are probably many factors that we don't yet understand.
"Hadley Centre.Clearly the last few years, far from erasing the entire warming of the 20th century, have remained far above the global baseline (1951-1990 average)."
The warming of the last century didn't build in ten years and it won't disappear in ten years. What is important at this point is that it appears to have stopped. And what is even more important is that there is no explanation among the natural elements of variation for why it should have stopped - especially considering that CO2 has continued to rise.
"We can also see that even in globally and seasonally averaged and smoothed data, there are still numerous peaks and troughs that are irrelevant to the long-term trends."
The long term trend of the earth is cooling. Your long term trend is not a long term trend, but rather a case of using a given period, claiming it's a long term trend, and then using circular arguments to say that anything that varies from it is not a part of the long term trend that you are trying to prove in the first place.
"On this graph, the last four or five years do look as though the trend has paused and even reversed but this is actually a misleading artifact of how the graph was produced."
There is no rule that says we have to use a 20 year smoothing. In fact, trends are generally shown using linear regression. And that is what is shown by the chart that I linked.
"Short term influences like La Nina and volcanic interruptions may cause dips and slow downs but the elevated levels of greenhouse gases already in the air will eventually overwhelm the long-term."
The false claim that is made by warmers is that the recent 11 year trend of no warming is caused by the fact that there was an El Nino at the beginning of the period and a La Nina at the end. But the truth is that there were 7 ENSO events over that period, and when they are all accounted for ENSO had very little effect and does not explant the 11 year flat trend. Gavin Schmidt of Real Climate came up with a set of ENSO adjusted data for the past decade. But he was too ashamed to publish a chart of that data because it didn't show what he expected. He did publish the raw data, so here is a chart of Gavin's data created by others.
"http://reallyrealclimate.blogspot.com/2008/07/gavin-schmi ...
As you can see, the ENSO effect is minimal.
When confronted with this discrepancy and asked to explain why the trend was flat - in other words, when asked to explain what the elements of natural variation were that were overcoming the effects of CO2 forcing, Gavin Schmidt ran away from the question. If we don't know enough about natural variation to explain that question, then we also don't have enough information to extract climate sensitivity from the data.
"Twenty years ago James Hansen was telling the U.S. senate that warming was real, significant, and anthropogenic (human caused)"
Of minor interest is that the month when Hansen testified this year, the temperature anomaly was lower than when he testified 20 years ago.
"and the projections he provided have been largely borne out by what has been observed."
This is simply untrue. Hansen provided three possible scenarios for future temperature. One of them involving no increase in CO2 at all after a certain date. I think it was around 2000. In any case, we are currently cooler than all three of Hansen's scenarios. In fact, his predictins have been so poor that there is now argument to decide if they have already been falsified.
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Biodiversivist Posted 2:56 pm
09 Sep 2008
A smart person would have been skeptical the first time they heard about global warming. I was. I slowly moved from skepticism to agnosticism as the science built up, as did many scientists. Skepticism is the backbone of the scientific method but at some point the skepticism ends. At this point in the game continued skepticism implies ignorance, willful or otherwise. I've made the same argument debating creationists, and surprise, it doesn't make a dent on them either.
The theory of evolution went through the same process, and as with global warming, only the willfully ignorant refuse to accept it today. I suspect there are hundreds of websites debunking the theory of evolution. You can cut and past their arguments till hell freezes over.
You don't seem to realize that legitimate debate over whether or not the planet is warming ended long ago. Somehow, you missed that. The next argument up was that this warming was natural and not a result of human activities, which is also history. The only legitimate argument left is what to do about it. You are still parroting the nutjobs arguing that the planet isn't warming. The Republican party even acknowledges it. Just curious. What is your take on the theory of evolution?
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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Coby Beck Posted 3:16 pm
09 Sep 2008
Hi Robco1
An increase in noise might indicate that, but I have never heard anywhere that such an increase is ocurring. I haven't heard that about the LIA either, I don't think we have enough data from that period to tell either!
"What if this weren't a hypothetical question?"
-- unknown
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Coby Beck Posted 3:32 pm
09 Sep 2008
I suggest you research the term "chaotic system", something that the weather falls under. I agree that climate is broadly deterministic, but year to year temps are weather.
Well Coby certainly knocked the stuffing out of that self created straw man
I wish I could make up that kind of stuff..
http://www.google.ca/search?num=20&hl=en&safe=off ...=
"What if this weren't a hypothetical question?"
-- unknown
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saluki Posted 12:53 am
10 Sep 2008
Somebody forget to tell the climate. It doesn't seem to want to cooperate.
So, first let's deal with the goofy web sites argument. Do this. Go to the Hadley Center web site in the UK (hopefully you don't consider them creationists) and get their raw global temperature data set - HadCrut3 - for the last 11 years. Take their data and plug it into an Excel spread sheet. Ask Excel to plot the data for you, and then ask it to run a linear regression trend line through it. It's not that much work, and you can make an easy 1000 bucks doing it, because I'm willing to bet you 1000 bucks that you get the same result as is posted in the web site that I gave you.
http://reallyrealclimate.blogspot.com/2008/06/11-year-tem ...
How about it, do we have a bet?
Now, let's look at an article on some of that consensus we are always hearing about.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,243151 ...
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PolluteLessDotCom Posted 1:27 am
10 Sep 2008
I have no trouble with individual scientists (or even laypersons) being skeptical or challenging theories. That is their job. I would be scary to have non-skeptic scientists and they would be ridiculed (and rightly so) by their peers. Open to wonder is one thing - believing without evidence is another. Non-accepting despite not being able to contradict is yet another. Continuing with the old even though there is (at least) serious doubt that it is beneficial in the long run is selfish, plain stupid, and irresponsible to future generations.
Don't wait and watch.
Karsten
http://www.polluteless.com
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saluki Posted 2:42 am
10 Sep 2008
Each of those large organizations that you are speaking about do not do their own research on AGW. They simply defer to the results of the IPCC. And the AGW conclusions within the IPCC basically come from a small and very incestuous group of modelers. Did you read the link I gave you? Here it is again.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,243151 ...
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Biodiversivist Posted 3:35 am
10 Sep 2008
This website link you provide, run by some guy posting graphs, has drawn a total of six comments this year. Peer reviewed it isn't.
Somebody should tell him to submit his findings to Science and Nature. Oh, wait, I forgot about the conspiracy theory.
I can just see it now. An email with your above link racing to the inboxes of all of the scientists who made up the IPCC.
"Gosh. Look at this website, Bob. We were completely wrong. The Earth is actually cooling. How did we miss that? Oh well."
I read every publication of Science and Nature as they arrive in my inbox. Been following the global warming issue for some time now. There simply is no longer any legitimate scientific debate in either of those publications about whether or not the planet is on a warming trend.
As with the theory of evolution, the recognition that the earth is warming was made by the global scientific community. There will always be scientists who will deny it, as there are, and probably always will be, scientists who support Intelligent Design.
The debate about what caused it waxed and waned for a while but that also ended. Rear guard skirmishes about details will always exist, as with the theory of evolution.
The debate has moved on to what the impact is going to be and when, along with debates over what can be done about.
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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Coby Beck Posted 4:44 am
10 Sep 2008
There are no specific organizations mentioned either by you or by the commenter you are responding to, so I can only respond with generalities.
Generally, it is not true what you have said. These organization do not "defer" to the IPCC when they publish their position statements, they do independent evaluations of the IPCC reports and independent evaluations of the relevant literature and then comment on how that turned out. Without exception, all major scientific institutions that have relevant areas of expertise acknowledge that the IPCC has got it basically right and they all conclude that:
1 the earth is warming
2 the primary cause is anthropogenic
The next step is less emphatically and unanimously supported, but is usually there as well:
3 this poses a significant threat to human welfare in the future.
You can add to that list the National Science academies of the major pollutting countries, among others. This also includes the previously die-hard sceptical American Petroleum Institute.
Find me one that does not.
(Skeptic guide article "There is no consensus")
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/11/13/221250/49
"What if this weren't a hypothetical question?"
-- unknown
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saluki Posted 5:24 am
10 Sep 2008
"Garbage in = Garbage out."
If you consider HadCrut3 surface temperature data as garbage, then you are obviously a clueless lightweight in the climate debate. All of the people that you consider to be the mainstream climate consensus rely on that same data.
Please don't waste any more of my time.
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saluki Posted 5:28 am
10 Sep 2008
1 the earth is warming
2 the primary cause is anthropogenic
Show me where these organizations did this based upon their own research instead of just a review of the IPCC results.
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GlobalWarmingInc Posted 6:08 am
10 Sep 2008
So many AGW zealots think that past weather data, quoted in so many AGW articles, is just as sound as today's, but there has to be huge discrepancies in past measurements.
BTW, we're in the warm period of a 1500yr cycle.
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MClemens Posted 6:33 am
10 Sep 2008
But inquiring minds need to know, so I had to check them out. Turns out, they're not exactly the "genuinely independent source of research and commentary" that they claim to be - as noted by Sourcewatch.
It drives me nuts when people just take information as it's presented to them - at face value. I'm seeing a lot of people do that with Sarah Palin. Oh, she's such a supporter of the environment, so anti-corruption, such a small-town girl against earmarks who will certainly stand up to Big Oil and save our nation. Seriously people, dig a bit deeper and get the whole story. I can guarantee that a lot of people who are forwarded the link to Heartland Institute are going to take its information at face value and not actually look into its sources. That shallowness and propensity for perpetual ignorance is why it is so hard to really debate issues. It's hard to change someone's understanding when they neither want to change, nor are they willing to accept the real information that would cause them to change.
/soapbox.
MClemens
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saluki Posted 6:47 am
10 Sep 2008
"But inquiring minds need to know, so I had to check them out. Turns out, they're not exactly the "genuinely independent source of research and commentary" that they claim to be "
So basically you are saying that you don't know enough to decide if the information that they are providing is right or wrong. But you found and excuse to blow them off, so that's all you need. Typical.
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Coby Beck Posted 7:31 am
10 Sep 2008
These discussions go nowwhere if you shift your position without saying so and saying why. So you have dropped the idea that "these organizations" defer to the IPCC, good. It would be tremendously timeconsuming fo them to try to reproduce all of the work that has brought us to the understanding we have today, rather unreasonable to require it. In reviewing the IPCC report, typically they look at the research in the field and determine if the IPCC conclusions reflect that body of work. Seems reasonable. Plus don't forget that most of the research is done by people who are members of one or more of these institutions, so maybe that qualifies as "based apon their own research". Science does not function, nor should it, by everyone doing everythingfor themselves. It is a network of trust and verification called peer reviewed journals. False finding do happen but they do not last. AGW is a conclusion drawn very slowly over 100+ years, demanding that every individual institution redo all that work before endorsing it is silly.
They make these statements (again, note that they all agree) so that we lay people can be more confident about the scientific evidence when policy decisions need scientific input.
"What if this weren't a hypothetical question?"
-- unknown
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saluki Posted 9:13 am
10 Sep 2008
When, exactly, did I do that.
"demanding that every individual institution redo all that work before endorsing it is silly."
No what is silly is to claim that the majority of the world's scientists support the AGW findings. It's really just a domino situation where one knocks down two which knocks down four, etc. Their support is nothing but an agreement that the science is probably right without reproducing the science, without contributing to the science, and in most cases without doing a skeptical review of the findings. They say, "hey, it was peer reviewed, published in a prestigious journal, and accepted by the IPCC, so it must be true."
But if you look at Steve McIntyre's work you find that the peer review was next to worthless because it overlooked many errors and because it was done by friends or associates of the author. You find that people like Caspar Ammann publish papers that refer to the authority of others of their own papers that have not been published. You find that they reference "Supplementary Information" that they never provide and that their prestegious publishers never challenge them to provide. You find that they refuse to archive their data and their methods so that others can attempt to reproduce them. You find that they stonewall requests for data, methods, Supplementary Information, etc. And their publishers do nothing. This is not how science is done. This is how scientific hoods operate. There are mountains of this kind of abuse, and at least in a few cases, the IPCC is party to the deceptions.
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saluki Posted 9:14 am
10 Sep 2008
When, exactly, did I do that.
"demanding that every individual institution redo all that work before endorsing it is silly."
No what is silly is to claim that the majority of the world's scientists support the AGW findings. It's really just a domino situation where one knocks down two which knocks down four, etc. Their support is nothing but an agreement that the science is probably right without reproducing the science, without contributing to the science, and in most cases without doing a skeptical review of the findings. They say, "hey, it was peer reviewed, published in a prestigious journal, and accepted by the IPCC, so it must be true."
But if you look at Steve McIntyre's work you find that the peer review was next to worthless because it overlooked many errors and because it was done by friends or associates of the author. You find that people like Caspar Ammann publish papers that refer to the authority of others of their own papers that have not been published. You find that they reference "Supplementary Information" that they never provide and that their prestegious publishers never challenge them to provide. You find that they refuse to archive their data and their methods so that others can attempt to reproduce them. You find that they stonewall requests for data, methods, Supplementary Information, etc. And their publishers do nothing. This is not how science is done. This is how scientific hoods operate. There are mountains of this kind of abuse, and at least in a few cases, the IPCC is party to the deceptions.
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mreinbold Posted 12:04 pm
10 Sep 2008
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mreinbold Posted 12:08 pm
10 Sep 2008
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MClemens Posted 12:52 pm
10 Sep 2008
Gristers, I'm going to need some help here - I am new enough to the scene not to be able to reference other scientific reports not tied to IPCC and I know the folks which I'm feeding here are going to ask for them. Rynn, Romm, Roberts, Beck - what do you have for me? I'd like to see a rebuttal here anyway, Saluki poses an interesting (albeit to me, an inconvincing) point. I unfortunately don't have the time to go searching them out myself if I ever intend on getting in on this thread before it dies. One of the main reasons I follow this site is because there are often links to good information through which I can learn more on the subject.
And for that matter, Saluki, how about some references to back up your claim of "No (sic) what is silly is to claim that the majority of the world's scientists support the AGW findings"? I don't know if your participation in these threads is to change others' perceptions/beliefs on the issue, but assuming it is, do like most of the other commenters here and back up your claims with science (yes, I did look at the one Science reference you posted above but it doesn't address the 'silly claim' mentioned here). Inquiring minds need to know so give me an excuse to accept your claims or to "blow them off" which apparently would be "typical" of me.
MClemens
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PolluteLessDotCom Posted 11:18 pm
10 Sep 2008
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PolluteLessDotCom Posted 11:23 pm
10 Sep 2008
Karsten
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mreinbold Posted 11:55 pm
10 Sep 2008
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vakibs Posted 12:02 am
11 Sep 2008
I don't know what procedures they adopted to obtain this figure at this level of accuracy (sic). But this is a freak opinion, not supported by a majority of scientists.
If you want to study the CO2 concentration data, I refer you to this website. This argument is addressed by Coby Beck here.
I am more and more getting convinced that Saluki is a shill. We cannot expect scientists to come down onto forums such as grist and refute all the arguments of shills, point by point. Their time is more precious than that.
This is where grist is awesome, because it maintains a repository of documents addressing each single argument. It will be great if the shills make their comments on the appropriate webpage. But it is too much to expect of them :)
Let's think in terms of eco-dollars.
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MClemens Posted 12:22 am
11 Sep 2008
MClemens
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PolluteLessDotCom Posted 1:39 am
11 Sep 2008
Karsten
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saluki Posted 1:46 am
11 Sep 2008
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2008/gavin-schmidt-correc ...
Now, look at this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:1000_Year_Temperature_ ...
It constitutes 1000 years of temperature reconstructions by a large number of climate scientists. Most of these have been peer reviewed and published at one time or another.
Something should jump out at you right away. Notice that all of the lines are temperature reconstructions except for the black one. The black one is a modern instrument record. Notice that almost all of the reconstructions stop at about zero or less in the modern era. Only one of them goes up to about .2C above zero. The modern temperature record goes .4C above zero. Now if you go to he Hadley instrumental temperature record that has existed since 1850, you find that the global temperature increase in the last 157 years is about .8C. So basically, all of those temperature reconstructions that you are looking at are missing half of the temperature increase of the modern industrial era. How can this be? One of two conclusions must be assumed. Either the modern instrument record is overcooked, or the proxy records are incapable of showing modern warming. If the proxy records are incapable of showing modern warming, then how can they be capable of showing past warming. In other words, how can we trust them to show the magnitude of the Medieval warming period if we know that they cannot show the magnitude of the present warming period?
Of course that is not even mentioning that the huge variation between all of those reconstructions should in itself make you question their accuracy.
When you look at things like that your own common sense should tell you that something is wrong.
There is a further issue of using temperature proxies that do not so much reflect temperature change as they do moisture availability. But I'll leave that to another time.
For right now, if you want to get a record of the scientific thuggery that has gone on in the AGW community, go the the Climate Audit web site. They have a huge archive of material that you can review. Read what they have to say and decide for yourself if they are telling the truth.
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saluki Posted 2:21 am
11 Sep 2008
So you are going to show us what the CO2 level was 500 million years ago by providing us with a record that goes back 400,000 years.
Talk about freak opinions.
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Biodiversivist Posted 2:43 am
11 Sep 2008
Never said that. Let me spell it out for you in simpler terms. The conclusion you draw from that data, that it debunks global warming, is garbage.
then you are obviously a clueless lightweight in the climate debate.
Calling debate partners lightweights and clueless is poor debate technique. You just lost four points. Look down. See the grass through your shoes?
I am very much a lightweight in the climate debate, in the same way that I am in the UFO debate, the faked moon landing debate, and any number of other "debates" carried on blogs and forums across the internet. I'm not going to memorize how may UFOs have been sighted so I can debate with UFO enthusiasts. There are no aliens probing random victims, there is no Deity guiding evolution, and we did land on the moon.
The real global warming debate was conducted by the scientific community by scientists specializing in fields related to it, using the scientific method, peer reviewed articles, and by collecting physical evidence from all around the globe. That debate is over. All we have left are the echoes from contrarians and fruitballs. Which one you are I'm not sure yet but I'm starting to draw some conclusions.
All of the people that you consider to be the mainstream climate consensus rely on that same data.
Correct. That's what I said. They have all seen the same data, yet inexplicably, they didn't draw the same conclusion as an anonymous internet contrarian arguing that global warming is a myth. I think I'll go out on a limb and side with the IPCC.
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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Biodiversivist Posted 3:02 am
11 Sep 2008
Your arguments on climate change, Palin, abortion, whatever, all follow a stereotypical conservative pattern. You're not the maverick free thinker you think you are. You're a sheep who has wandered into a different flock of sheep. It's all about mirror neurons.
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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RDMiller Posted 3:15 am
11 Sep 2008
As I said in my first post about Saluki, it is impossible to get her to agree with the points you are making because she is incapable of significantly changing her point of view on global warming and many other environmental and social issues. Facts will be argued against; conclusions of experts denied or worse.
It's all about good judgment, which is not something Saluki has demonstrated and not something she is capable of accessing, because it doesn't come from intelligence, smarts or studying data.
In my opinion, Saluki lost her credibility here when she said that, even after all we know now about Mr. Bush's history as president, she would STILL vote for him. That puts her in the 30% (or less) of the voting population who still support Bush's policies and decisions. You folks can label these people whatever you want. I simply call them untrustable.
Saluki is certainly not a bad person. Just a very confused one... and she hasn't a clue that this is the case.
Richard
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Biodiversivist Posted 3:18 am
11 Sep 2008
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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saluki Posted 3:28 am
11 Sep 2008
Here is a list of 10 good papers on the subject of climate science. If you have any interest on what the skeptics view is, they are a good starting point.
1. Steve McIntyre's Ohio State University Address;
How do we "know" that 1998 was the warmest year of the millennium? (May 16, 2008)
http://www.climateaudit.org/pdf/ohio.pdf
This is a seminal paper which synthesizes all the errors and obfuscations to do with the Hockey Stick. It also demonstrates McIntyre's methodical, scientific and unadorned approach to the issue.
2. Craig Loehle's paper;
A 2000-year global temperature reconstruction based on non-tree ring proxies, Energy & Environment 18(7-8): 1049-1058. 2007
http://www.ncasi.org/publications/Detail.aspx?id=3025
This paper was important because it was a counterpoise to Mann's tree-ring data and provided good support for the Medieval Warming Period, a major obstacle to AGW.
3.Douglass, Christy et al; this is the first of the GCM critiques;
A comparison of tropical temperature trends with model predictions. International Journal of Climatology, 2007
http://www.scribd.com/doc/904914/A-comparison-of-tropical ...
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=3058
This paper really touched a nerve and the level of hostility leveled at it was astounding; it mostly boiled down to nit-picking about Raobcore data and whether a falsification was distinct from a bias. The second link is to an addendum to the paper; comments 69-74 are entertaining.
4.Koutsoyiannis et al;
http://www.itia.ntua.gr/en/docinfo/850
Assessment of the reliability of climate predictions based on comparisons with historical time series. Geophysical Research Abstracts, 2008
This link is to the first presentation. This was a crucial paper; it covered the 18 year predictive history of the GCM's on a regional basis; regionalism is the Achilles Heel of AGW.
5.Stockwell;
http://landshape.org/stats/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/art ...
Tests of Regional Climate Model Validity in the Drought Exceptional Circumstances Report. 2008
This paper did the job on CSIRO and demonstrated the political imput into the AGW science.
6. Misckolczi;
Greenhouse effect in semi-transparent planetary Atmospheres. Quarterly Journal of the Hungarian Meteorological Service, Vol. 111, No. 1, January-March 2007, pp. 1-40.
http://met.hu/doc/idojaras/vol111001_01.pdf
This is my favourite. It has everything; the dead hand of AGW censorship, and the demolition of the AGW's semi-infinite opaque layered atmosphere. People have quibbled about the Kirchhoff equations but Miskolczian -ve feedbacks have been established.
7. Essex, McKitrick, Andresen;
Does a Global Temperature Exist? Journal of Non-EquilibriumThermodynamics, 32 (1) 1-27. 2007
http://www.reference-global.com/doi/abs/10.1515/JNETDY.20 ...
The fallacy of a global average temperature was taken to task in this paper, and, again, the reaction was hostile. This paper wittily compared averaging temperature to averaging the phone book; an important addition to the regionalism lexicon.
8. Spencer and Braswell;
Potential Biases in Feedback Diagnosis from Observational Data: A simple Model Demonstration, Journal of Climate.
http://ams.allenpress.com/perlserv/?request=get-abstract& ...
No list would be complete without Mr Cloud and -ve feedback. As well, Spencer has been a bastion of reliable temperature data. This was still a close call. Minschwaner and Dessler's paper on RH decline as a response to increasing CO2 is a crucial paper, conforming to Miskolczi's feedbacks.
9.Chilingar;
Cooling of Atmosphere Due to CO2 Emission, Energy Sources, Part A: Recovery, Utilization, and Environmental Effects. Volume 30, Issue 1, January 2008 , pages 1 - 9
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15567030701568727
An important paper about convective heat transfer which relegates CO2 radiative heating to its proper subordinate position; and incorporates atmospheric pressure as a heating factor. Thanks to Louis for alerting me to the paper. An honourable mention to the Gerlich and Tscheuschner paper on the fallacy of the greenhouse concept and a host of other errors AGW science makes.
10. Pielke Sr et al;
Unresolved issues with the assessment of multidecadal global land surface temperature trends. Journal of Geophysical Research, Vol 112. 2007.
http://climatesci.colorado.edu/publications/pdf/R-321.pdf ...
An elegant paper which uses Stefan-Boltzman to support regionalism and show that the notion of a radiative imbalance is defeated by regional temperature based energy differentials. Somewhat superfluous since AR4, FIG 1 shows no global radiative imbalance.
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Biodiversivist Posted 3:34 am
11 Sep 2008
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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saluki Posted 3:35 am
11 Sep 2008
Your argument is that the majority of climate scientists must be right. I have heard this, oh, maybe a million times. Another million is going to have the same effect. If that's all you've got, why waste everone's time. If you have any specific responses to the evidence that I have provided, let's talk.
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PolluteLessDotCom Posted 3:51 am
11 Sep 2008
Karsten
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RDMiller Posted 3:55 am
11 Sep 2008
You make a valid point. I didn't quite appreciate that strategy until you made it. In that case, it would seem to make sense to continue putting out the facts and accepted conclusions of scientists so that others with an open mind can become better informed.
At the same time, I hope the "spectators" (as you call them) will come to realize the futility of talking to people whose minds are closed. As intelligent as they may sound (ex. Karl Rove), poor judgment leads to poor conclusions... and then to poor actions.
Richard
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314159265 Posted 4:02 am
11 Sep 2008
Mars J. Pictor Florifulgurator, Western Bavarian Forest.
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Biodiversivist Posted 4:05 am
11 Sep 2008
The theory of evolution isn't valid just because 90% of all scientists accept it. Quality, not quantity. Although most Americans think global warming is real, the majority of Americans also think a Deity will intervene on their behalf if they properly ingratiate themselves to it, and its attendant angels and demons.
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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314159265 Posted 4:06 am
11 Sep 2008
Mars J. Pictor Florifulgurator, Western Bavarian Forest.
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Biodiversivist Posted 4:13 am
11 Sep 2008
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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MClemens Posted 4:36 am
11 Sep 2008
I'm aware of the Skeptic series on this site and that has been very instrumental in shaping my knowledge base thus far. However, in garnering knowledge, I become ever more aware that the more I learn, the more I realize how little I actually know. I intend to give due diligence to Saluki's links contrasted to what is posted on the Skeptic series. Which stance on the issue I take personally, I believe, is less important than being aware of the information that manifests the stance itself. My attempt here is nothing more than to gain that awareness. And I may be beating a dead horse, I'm aware of that; and this may not be the thread in which to pursue this endeavor. But this is the thread I'm following now and being the impatient person I tend to be, I'm going with it.
Saluki, thank you for the links. I've bookmarked them all and will be certain to follow up on them, though it appears that will take a considerable amount of time. Thus, I likely will not be able to post questions/rebuttals before the interest in this thread expires. Yet I'm sure there will be others in the future.
For the other commenters out there, keep the rebuttals coming. Mars, just what do you mean by "Miskolczi, Gerlich, Tscheuschner...Hahaaaaaaaaahahahaha."? Again, I'm seeking knowledge on both sides of the issue and I find it hard to believe I'm the only spectator out there.
MClemens
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David Roberts Posted 4:44 am
11 Sep 2008
I recommend doing what sensible people do: accepting what the scientific community tells you, pending contrary peer-reviewed scientific evidence.
The trolls want to suck up your time and create the impression of serious debate. You can see from this thread how easy it is and how good they are at it. Get your science from reputable scientific organizations, all of whom are saying the same thing. Go to blog threads for entertainment, but not for science.
grist.org
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saluki Posted 6:06 am
11 Sep 2008
Nice argument that you made against yourself there.
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saluki Posted 6:19 am
11 Sep 2008
Why has there been no warming for the last 11 years when there were no elements of natural variation to cancel out the supposed effect of CO2.
Why do the proxy records not reflect the same warming as the instrument records?
As an aside, are you aware of Lenah Ababneh's doctoral dissertation?
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Coby Beck Posted 7:14 am
11 Sep 2008
"Why has there been no warming for the last 11 years when there were no elements of natural variation to cancel out the supposed effect of CO2."
I do not except the premise. It is too soon to say what the long term trend is over the last 11 years, we need ten more years to know what the trend is today in the CRU data. NASA's analysis has a strong positive trend until 2005, the last year possible to calculate a the 5 year mean they use.
But on the short term (weather, not climate), one explanation a bit more satisfying than just saying "natural and chaotic variations" is that you are using a period of time beginning with a large El Nino event, ending with a La Nina event. El Nino's are known to raise global temperatures, La Nina's are known to lower them. A personal speculation of my own is China's filthy economic growth filling the air with particulates may also be playing a part.
Why do the proxy records not reflect the same warming as the instrument records?
You may wish to search on RealClimate for the "divergence problem". The problem is not as great as you get the impression from from the wikipedia graph you cited, AFAIU, but it is real. I am sure the issues vary greatly from proxy to proxy but it is not surprising to me that any delicate natural signal we may look at might be significantly perturbed by the incredible impact human development has had on the globe this century. For tree-rings, let's just start with elevated CO2 levels, this is a likely candidate for changing the relationship between ring width and average temperature. Stalactite formation is dependant on ground water tables, another thing humans have had a tremendous impact on. I would expect it to be a challenge finding some natural process we have not altered in some way.
The devil will be in them, but I have not spent alot of time on the details of paleoclimate reconstructions, I don't think it is of fundamental significance to understanding today's warming. Studying past climate changes is definately informative, but it is not explanatory of today's climate change, nor predictive of tomorrow's.
"What if this weren't a hypothetical question?"
-- unknown
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JeffId Posted 7:25 am
11 Sep 2008
I bet you dont know how the hockey stick was made!
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2008/09/11/ten-things-ev ...
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turanga leela Posted 8:48 am
11 Sep 2008
Before you tell me that it's going into the ocean because the ocean is a carbon sink (which is true), I would like to point out that the ocean has also warmed by 1 degree centigrade as much as a mile deep over the last 30 years.
The best response will earn you a cookie made with vanillin and high fructose corn syrup.
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saluki Posted 9:13 am
11 Sep 2008
That's really silly Coby. I would have expected better from you. The purpose of smoothing is not to learn what the temperature is after a given time. It isn't even to discover a trend. It is simply to get a better idea of what is going on without looking at all of the variation in the detailed data. We have the temperatures for the past 11 years now. A future smoothing process is not going to change that. The trend for the past 11 years is defined by a linear regression trend line for those 11 years. Not by a smoothed curve.
"NASA's analysis has a strong positive trend until 2005, the last year possible to calculate a the 5 year mean they use."
NASA's analysis diverges strongly from the temperature record that we get from that Hadley center as well as what we get from RSS and from UAH. It is basically an outlier. But even as an outlier it doesn't give us the expected .2C per decade that we are currently suppose to be seeing as a result of CO2.
"But on the short term (weather, not climate), one explanation a bit more satisfying than just saying "natural and chaotic variations" is that you are using a period of time beginning with a large El Nino event, ending with a La Nina event."
My god Coby, didn't you read my first response to your thread. There were 7 ENSO (El Nino/La Nina) events over that period. Gavin Schmidt (an AGW advocate) took the HadCrut3 data and adjusted it for the entire period for the ENSO effects. When you plot that data against the original HadCrut3 data you see very little divergence. In other words, we had a flat 11 years even after adjustments for ENSO. See my graphs in my first response on this thread.
"For tree-rings, let's just start with elevated CO2 levels, this is a likely candidate for changing the relationship between ring width and average temperature."
Sorry Coby, you are going in exactly the wrong direction with that. CO2 feeds trees and makes them grow faster. So in theory, the lines for the proxies should show even more temperature increase than the instrument record.
Here is a dirty little secret for you Coby, Mann, as well as many of the other proxy climate reconstructions, use a North American tree ring series, a bristelcone series, that was produced by two climate scientists named Graybill and Idso. When these two gentlemen were collecting that data they did not do it with the intention of producing a long term temperature proxy reconstruction, but rather they did it with the intention of proving CO2 feeding of the trees. Their proxy consisted of mainly strip bark trees, and they did get the tree feeding that they were looking for. Unfortunately, due to Lenah Ababneh's doctoral dissertation, we have found out that going strip bark causes the trees to accelerate their growth. So what Graybill and Idso thought was CO2 feeding was mostly a stripbark effect with a small contribution from CO2 feeding. Then Mann saw that this series had a nice hockey stick at the end (due to a strip bark effect), so not only did he use it as a temperature proxy, but he made it his most heavily weighted series. In fact, he weighted it 200 times as much as his least weighted series.
"Studying past climate changes is definately informative, but it is not explanatory of today's climate change, nor predictive of tomorrow's."
That climate is changing is not the issue. Climate has always changed. The important element is the assertion that climate has changed in an unprecedented way. And you can only establish that fact using paleoclimate reconstructions. Unfortunately, the current reconstructions cannot support that assertion because they are so deeply flawed - as well as the fact that they do not reflect the instrument record. In addition there are also reconstructions as well as historical records that show that the current warming is not unusual.
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saluki Posted 9:24 am
11 Sep 2008
Let's be clear on the debate. Everyone agrees that the level of CO2 in the atmosphere is still rising. Everyone agrees that CO2 is a greenhouse gas. The place where we disagree is on the feedback effect of the CO2. CO2 by itself, in a test tube environment, has been shown to have a warming effect of about 1C per CO2 doubling. The warmers claim that the positive feedback from the CO2 causes a total effect, called climate sensitivity, of about 3C per CO2 doubling. This is where the fight is. The skeptics believe that this number is much too high. They believe that there is little if any positive feedback - meaning that the total effect of CO2 doubling is still about 1C. And there are a few who even believe that there is a negative feedback causing the total effect to be about .6C per CO2 doubling.
Hope that helps.
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Pangolin Posted 9:35 am
11 Sep 2008
While the atmospheric temperature and even the surface temperature can stay the same during all this melting phase changes in ice and permafrost will release gasses the contribute to overall warming.
A stable temperature does not equate to overall stability of energy flows within the system. That's high-school physics.
Put the Carbon Back
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saluki Posted 9:48 am
11 Sep 2008
The question you have to ask yourself, is when warming happened in the past, why didn't it continue to warm until all of the CO2 and methane was released. And why didn't it reach a stable point at that much higher temperature level. Why didn't all of that CO2 in the are produce a climate where there would be no permafrost and where it couldn't form.
The records show that temperature in the past increased long before CO2 increased. Sometimes by as much as 800 years. Then, when CO2 was also still increasing, temperature simply turned around and went in the opposite direction.
I think that it is safe to say that CO2 can effect the climate, but not that it can dominate it.
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JeffId Posted 9:50 am
11 Sep 2008
Turanga Leela said
..but would all the skeptics in the room please care to explain where all the CO2 in the atmosphere that came from fossil fuels/land conversion/etc is going, if it's not causing warming?
All the evidence ever gathered has shown that CO2 increases typically lag the data. And by all, i mean really all. From ice cores the 018 to 016 ratios vary indicating (to some) a temperature change. Lag means CO3 happens after not before temperature change. It was quite an important issue for skeptics when we noticed al gore shifted the curve for his movie.
There's pangolin on the bottom. Still denying, I have an idea, if the cows are causing global warming maybe we should eat them faster!
Hey I bet you didn't know how the hockey stick graph above was made!
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2008/09/11/ten-things-ev ...
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Coby Beck Posted 11:10 am
11 Sep 2008
[saluki]That's really silly Coby. I would have expected better from you. The purpose of smoothing is not to learn what the temperature is after a given time. It isn't even to discover a trend. It is simply to get a better idea of what is going on without looking at all of the variation in the detailed data.
These are such ridiculously argumentative statements! Now you say we aren't even trying to find a trend, so what are you even on about?? Oh yeah, an 11 year trend... :-
We have the temperatures for the past 11 years now. A future smoothing process is not going to change that. The trend for the past 11 years is defined by a linear regression trend line for those 11 years. Not by a smoothed curve.
This is my last comment to you on this issue. 11 years of data does not tell you /anything meaningful. You are not making any point that is not specifically addressed in the original post. Hadley need 10 years before, plus your 11 years, pluss 10 years after to make their plot, sorry it is a simple fact. And why would you want to throw away data we do have, ei 100 years of pre-1998 data and focus on a single 11 year window? The only reason to do that is to fool yourself or your audience.
I am not saying that what effects the global temperature on small timescales is not an iteresting question to ask, but it is not a question about climate, it is a question about weather.
Your further use of Hadley Centre data to make statements about decadal trends in the 21st century is simply willful ignorance (eg "NASA and Hadley disagree"). Please read the original post again and follw the link to the description of their smoothing process. We do not know where that trend line will fall until the data are complete. That is an unassailable fact, ignoring it simply makes everything you write after intellectually worthless.
Here is a dirty little secret for you Coby, Mann, as well as many of the other proxy climate reconstructions, use a North American tree ring series, a bristelcone series, that was produced by two climate scientists named Graybill and Idso. When these two gentlemen were collecting that data they did not do it with the intention of producing a long term temperature proxy reconstruction, but rather they did it with the intention of proving CO2 feeding of the trees. Their proxy consisted of mainly strip bark trees, and they did get the tree feeding that they were looking for. Unfortunately, due to Lenah Ababneh's doctoral dissertation, we have found out that going strip bark causes the trees to accelerate their growth. So what Graybill and Idso thought was CO2 feeding was mostly a stripbark effect with a small contribution from CO2 feeding. Then Mann saw that this series had a nice hockey stick at the end (due to a strip bark effect), so not only did he use it as a temperature proxy, but he made it his most heavily weighted series. In fact, he weighted it 200 times as much as his least weighted series.
My god, that study is tens years old now! Get over it and move on. I don't believe what you are saying here, btw, but how can it matter now, except to Soap Opera addicts? There have been dozens of other reconstructions with all kinds of proxies beside tree rings since then, one very comprehensive and recent one that (uses but) does not depend on tree rings at all for its major conclusions. Harping on about MBH98 serves no purpose whatsoever anymore, even any constructive benefits M&M could have provided are outweighed by the vicious and personal nature of their attacks.
But I already regret even getting into this mess...
In addition there are also reconstructions as well as historical records that show that the current warming is not unusual.
Please provide some references to global reconstructions that show previous changes similar or more extreme than today's. And we will of course assume you have put them (if they exist) under the same microscope you have put MBH98. I know there are not enough historical records to cover the globe for the past 500 years, let alone one or two thousand.
"What if this weren't a hypothetical question?"
-- unknown
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Coby Beck Posted 11:11 am
11 Sep 2008
2008 is not on the graph because it is not over yeat. We need all 12 months of data to determine the average for the year.
"What if this weren't a hypothetical question?"
-- unknown
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saluki Posted 1:08 pm
11 Sep 2008
I said that you don't use smoothing to find a trend. You use a linear regression trend line.
"This is my last comment to you on this issue. 11 years of data does not tell you /anything meaningful. "
Of course it does if you can't explain why it looks as it does in terms of the elements of natural variation.
"My god, that study is tens years old now!"
Mann is still using the same proxies and he has never admitted the problems with his old reconstructions.
"There have been dozens of other reconstructions with all kinds of proxies beside tree rings since then"
Mann's new reconstruction is currently in the process of being deconstructed and it is beginning to look like it has as many, if not more, problems than his earlier version.
As far as all of the other reconstructions in the interim go, they still don't show the same warming as the instrument record.
"Please provide some references to global reconstructions that show previous changes similar or more extreme than today's. "
Mann's original reconstruction had hardly anything from the southern hemisphere and yet he called it a global reconstruction. He explained this by saying that the global climate averages out after a few decades. If you want a reconstruction that shows an MWP that is warmer than today, then Craig Lohele does that. Moberg's reconstruction shows an MWP that is nearly as warm as today. And Moberg himself said that there was nothing unusual about today's climate. In addition, there are regional studies that show the MWP to be warmer than today, and while they may be regional, these regional studies showing that the MWP was warmer come from all over the world.
"Hadley need 10 years before, plus your 11 years, pluss 10 years after to make their plot, sorry it is a simple fact. "
That's really dumb Coby. There are a thousand different kinds of plots. Hadley picked one. Doing a twenty year smoothing has no significance. It doesn't give you a trend. When you do 20 year smoothing you use temperatures from 10 years earlier and ten years later to smooth, not to change the actual value of what the temperature was at the time. Do you really think that if I go outside and take a temperature reading that I'm going to make that reading more accurate by taking another in ten years and adjusting what I took. The idea of smoothing is to SMOOTH not to yield a trend line and not to yield more accurate data.
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Biodiversivist Posted 1:38 pm
11 Sep 2008
You'll have to explain why you think so (I'm just not that bright). Until then I'll add that one to my collection of other nonsensical statements you've made.
Dave could not have put it better. Saluki is not debating climatologists in peer reviewed journals for a reason.
The first question you should be asking, "What is a practicing climatologist/scientist doing here on the Gristmill looking for "meat" (as he puts it).
Is he one of these people who spend most of their waking hours sitting around in their pajamas combing the internet for links and articles that support their contention (which could be just about anything) specifically so they can parrot those findings and arguments at lay people who are foolish enough to engage them? Hmmm.
Global warming is a debate for scientists, between scientists, using the scientific method.
If you want to learn about UFOs, you can talk to a guy who has been probed by one or you can talk to the scientists who have looked for them, concluded there is no evidence for them, and published those findings in peer reviewed journals.
Next question. What is his motivation?
He has publicly stated that he despises progressive thinkers (my term, his were much more derogotory). It is common knowledge that a lot of conservatives have got it into their heads that global warming is a "liberal" lie. He's obviously a flaming conservative. Too bad for him because that "coincidence" just puts another nail in his credibility. Science isn't supposed to split along political lines.
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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amazingdrx Posted 2:46 pm
11 Sep 2008
As warming increases expomentially drought patterns tend to strike heavily vegetated areas. Fire storms result. These massive fire storms, on a scale of human caused nuclear winter, could kick in like a thermostat and start a new ice age.
Just a guess of course. But witness the dying forests of the drought stricken western US. Could a firestorm 10 miles acrossm that burns for months, traveling like a huge tornado, throw up particulate matter comparable to that of a super volcano?
But what are we really talking about here? The danger of a shift in the human friendly relatively stable climate, that normally changes slowly enough so humans can adapt over millenia.
An ice age that kicks in over a decade or two, would disrupt human civilization in a devestating fashion.
The aim in preventing human caused GHG climate change is to allow relative human prosperity and peace to continue. Large scale crop failure, water shortage, climate change related pandemic, and wars over massive exodus from devestated regions of the planet to more survivable areas, are not conducive to human survival and progress.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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amazingdrx Posted 3:14 pm
11 Sep 2008
I was googling up some key phraes from your jargon laden sophistry saluki, and found this blog. Argue with this guy, hehey. he goes through the tree ring thing.
He's most likely smarter than all of us put together. Appeal to authority? Guilty. But he's a Tom Waits fan too. That proves he's right.
He has some interesting stuff on ocean current energy. Evidently a big energy dude on the level of that swiftboating nut Pickens is big on ocean current power, one of my favorites too.
No storage required with ocean current power, it's constant, nothing visible above the waves, and it's source of power is earth rotation, wind, and moon cycles for tidal current, a close cousin.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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JeffId Posted 1:58 am
12 Sep 2008
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2008/09/12/global-warmin ...
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314159265 Posted 2:24 am
12 Sep 2008
BS. Have a look at the latest comments by george and Jolliffe at Tamino's Open Thread 5.
OT. You probably hit the wrong thread.
Mars J. Pictor Florifulgurator, Western Bavarian Forest.
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turanga leela Posted 2:52 am
12 Sep 2008
Why is it that the only people who use the "time lag" graphs, the one in which temperature rises precede CO2 rises, are those who get it from the Junkman's site or those who frequent it? You would think that if this were truly a smoking gun, NOAA would have found it long ago. But the fun thing about conspiracy theories is that they speculate ad infinitum and can therefore speculate answers to tie the ends off of every conceivable argument, thereby remaining in their hermetically sealed chamber of speculation. So you can claim that NOAA, IPCC, and all of those are the ones who have doctored the graphs, moving the CO2 curves behind the temperature curves, instead of in front where they belong--and meanwhile, the Junkman, rather like the Templars, represents the small group of people who keeps representing the truth in the face of 99% of the scientific community's attempts to silence it. At this point it is painfully clear to most of us that climate change denial is less about climate science, or any kind of hard science really, and more about soft science--specifically psychology.
Saluki--You showed your stripes when you used the word "believe" to talk about modeling. Science has nothing to do with belief. What NOAA and others are trying to do is share information about their modeling, which shows the likelihood of a variety of scenarios from negative feedback to no feedback to positive feedback, through the use of probability curves. So, you are right--there are error bars around feedback cycles, which is part of the reason why climate model projections are communicated in terms of probability, which is the language of science, and not prediction, which is the language of belief. Nobody is arguing that the worst case scenario is the most likely to happen--although if you look at the fact that there is equally a 10% chance of midcentury warming being 2 degrees C and a 10% chance of it being 10 degrees C, with the most likely scenario being around 5 degrees C, then you can see roughly how the probability curves are graphed. And that is why if you extend the error bars just a little out from that likely 5 degree C scenario, your high estimates are more worrisome than your low estimates with an equal degree of uncertainty. And that is why people are taking action--because the consequences of being wrong on the high end are worse than the consequences of being wrong on the low end. And that is because the costs of doing nothing are higher than the consequences of mitigation.
Besides, with the increasing scarcity of fossil fuels, energy costs are going to go up anyway--whether we mitigate or not.
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JeffId Posted 3:08 am
12 Sep 2008
Ian Jolliffe, a noted principal components authority, has posted a comment at Tamino's, which repudiates Tamino's (and Mann's) citation of Jolliffe as a supposed authority for Mannian PCA. He wrote to me separately, notifying me of the posting and authorizing me to cross-post his comment and stating that we had correctly understood and described his comments in our response here: :
[Jolliffe quote]
I looked at the reference you made to my presentation at http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/MM-W05-backgrou ... after I drafted my contribution and I can see that you actually read the presentation. You have accurately reflected my views there, but I
guess it's better to have it `from the horse's mouth'.
I have read his recent comments and detect no change of view.
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turanga leela Posted 6:44 am
12 Sep 2008
McIntyre on SourceWatch: http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Stephen_McInty ...
McKitrick on SourceWatch: http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Ross_McKitrick ...
I see that the skeptics have targeted Mann for political reasons, similar to the way they have pilloried Al Gore. The difference being, of course, that Mann is not saying anything different than the majority view on climate change. But in selecting and singling out a particular person, one can create a bogeyman/straw man (in this case with a particularly unfortunate name--he has been called Michael "Piltdown" Mann in a number of the right wing blogs) that is easy to caricaturize and attack.
By the way, the comment about Ian Jolliffe is taken out of context. He claims in this blog (http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=3601) that he is no climate change skeptic but feels that there is much more important and persuasive evidence than the hockey stick graph, with which I tend to agree. Most people will not be affected by a rise in the global mean surface temperature. They will be affected by a change in climate--such as no more rainfall on their crops or no more drinking water in their aquifers.
This is where I would like to follow David Ahlport's (seeming) advice and bow out of this discussion, because it is clear that every attempt to discuss issues gets dragged into a discussion of personality and I am seeing such disingenuous manipulation of the facts that it is clear that no one can ever convince people for whom science is a matter of "belief." It does feel like an exercise in futility. However, it is for those who have a fingernail's depth of knowledge of science that I keep doing this--those who would like to understand but are constantly being lied to and manipulated by cherry picked information. And it becomes more clear to me all the time that unless people are truly convinced that we may be slowly killing ourselves with the continued release of GHG, we are going to hit a wall in about 10 years in regards to what we can accomplish in our GHG reduction strategies.
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turanga leela Posted 6:46 am
12 Sep 2008
The foremost rule in attribution is accuracy.
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Pangolin Posted 7:14 am
12 Sep 2008
If Saluki was a novelist it'd be producing a book a month.
Put the Carbon Back
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