Comments John A has made

  • And the real climate change deniers bore on

    It seems that no amount of data can actually change the opinion of the green opinionated so we'll keep this light and to the point

    I fully understand why spreaders of climate disinformation have hyped up a (sort-of) cold January as if it somehow provided scientific evidence to support their campaign to undermine the well-established scientific understanding of human-caused climate change.

    Of course, it isn't possible for dedicated smear artists at Grist to actually truthfully articulate the arguments of their opponents. Its a toss-up whether they're either too stupid to work them out or they just enjoy malevolently erecting towering straw men that fall on the slightest breath of hot air for yet another easy win in front of their acolytes.

    In this case, I don't recall a single commentator claiming that this past winter which was severe in the Northern Hemisphere was in itself evidence of anything.

    In point of fact, the actual argument was pointing out that over the course of one calendar year, all four global temperature indices recorded large falls - the two most complete and accurate (the satellites) recording a cooling equal to the entire supposed rise during the 20th Century.

    If the fall is natural (and we've yet to hear any squealing to the contrary) then that means that a) the rise is within the natural variability of climate and b) the climate models fail YET AGAIN to predict even the next year let alone pretend the next 50 or 100. Something is rotten in GCM-land.

    So what to do? Gristmill drags out the most inaccurate, unaudited and frankly false reconstruction of the 20th Century (by the wretched Hansen, no less) to try and give "context" to this fall. Except of course, that the fall isn't being recorded in Hansen's data because Hansen keeps mysteriously fucking about with the data with mysterious positive and negative adjustments. Its not that the early 21st Century is getting warmer, its that the early 20th Century (with that troublesome 1930s warming that had nothing to do with greenhouse gases) keeps getting colder after the fact thanks to those mysterious adjustments.

    You'd think that someone, somewhere would like to know why Hansen keeps screwing around with the data, but after all since Hansen only takes money from mysterious financial engineers like Soros and the charitable trusts controlled by the wives of Democratic candidates that Hansen then endorses, his hands are clean and his data is pure.

    All you see from Gristmill is yet more Real Climate Change Denial. Nothing to see here - move along.On A (sort of) cold January doesn't mean climate stopped warming posted 1 year, 8 months ago 10 Responses

  • Wake up Dessler, the Hockey Stick is dead!

    The IPCC gave the hockey stick conclusion a low probability of being true by categorizing it as "likely."  Given the peer-reviewed literature, there's no reason to think that assessment was in error.  In fact, it's still the view of the scientific community.  Thus, I still contend the IPCC didn't make a mistake there.

    Really? It appears as Figure 1b in the Working Group 1 Summary for Policymakers, Figure 5 in the Technical Summary, twice in Chapter 2 (Figures 2-20 and 2-21) of the main report, and Figures 2-3 and 9-1B in the Synthesis Report.

    Even Al Gore used the Hockey Stick (which he misleadingly referred to as Dr Thompson's thermometer) in his polically biased and flawed climate schlockfest "An Inconvenint Truth" to "prove" that the Medieval Warm Period was insignificant compared to 20th Century warming.

    The view of the scientific community is that the Hockey Stick is dead, that its errors invalidate its claims and that Steve McIntyre is a force to be reckoned with when it comes to statistical analysis. Many of the Hockey Team are too petrified of him to even respond to simple requests for data used in their statistical models.

    Oh, and just to make things nice and neat, there is no evidence in any ice core record that carbon dioxide rise drives temperature rise or indeed that it has any effect. Rather, the temperature rise precedes any carbon dioxide rise by around 800 years, and has done for as long as we have ice core records.

    So a central assumption of the climate models (which cannot predict any climate phenomenon even 1 year in advance) is not supported by any empirical evidence.

    Now back to sleep Andrew, where the Hockey Sticks rule the Earth and the IPCC never makes mistakes!On The fourth IPCC report is still going strong a year later posted 1 year, 9 months ago 65 Responses

  • O RLY

    Wegman has been totally discredited as a reliable and unbiased critic of anything having to do with AGW.

    You should know this. The fact that you go on supporting this biased and in correct information shows that you are not interested in gaining knowledge but are only interested in distributing malicious nonsense.

    Really? How?

    There's not a statistician of any known ability who disagress with Wegman's analysis, so how is Wegman  "reliable and unbiased critic of anything having to do with AGW". Even the NAS Panel as I've already quoted had no criticism of Wegman, either stated or implied.

    In your fevered imagination anyone who contradicts the Hockey Stick and its conclusions is discredited because they don't follow a party line.

    You should be ashamed of yourself, but I've seen enough biased and disgraceful alarmism to know that you don't have any shame. On The fourth IPCC report is still going strong a year later posted 1 year, 9 months ago 65 Responses

  • I need no carping about trolling from Dessler

    Let's check the dictionary:

    plau·si·ble - adjective
    1.    having an appearance of truth or reason; seemingly worthy of approval or acceptance; credible; believable: a plausible excuse; a plausible plot.
    2.    well-spoken and apparently, but often deceptively, worthy of confidence or trust: a plausible commentator.

    Synonyms 1. Plausible, specious describe that which has the appearance of truth but might be deceptive. The person or thing that is plausible strikes the superficial judgment favorably; it may or may not be true: a plausible argument (one that cannot be verified or believed in entirely).

    Just like Andrew Dessler being a "plausible commentator"

    Mann et al 1999 didn't exactly dance around the bushes on their claims. How "likely" did they really think their result was?

    (page 1) [t]he 1990s was the warmest decade, and 1998 the warmest year, at moderately high levels of confidence.

    Of course those expressions of confidence turned out to be based on false claims made about Mann's exciting new method.

    Oh, and then there's the Wegman Report, which Dessler studiously avoids in favor of the NAS Panel's remarkable ability to speak out of both sides of its mouth.

    Here's what North had to say when he's in front of Congress under oath with a TV camera pointed at him:

    CHAIRMAN BARTON. I understand that. It looks like my time is expired, so I want to ask one more question. Dr. North, do you dispute the conclusions or the methodology of Dr. Wegman's report?
    DR. NORTH. No, we don't. We don't disagree with their criticism. In fact, pretty much the same thing is said in our report. But again, just because the claims are made, doesn't mean they are false.
    CHAIRMAN BARTON. I understand that you can have the right conclusion and that it not be-
    DR. NORTH. It happens all the time in science.
    CHAIRMAN BARTON. Yes, and not be substantiated by what you purport to be the facts but have we established-we know that Dr. Wegman has said that Dr. Mann's methodology is incorrect. Do you agree with that? I mean, it doesn't mean Dr. Mann's conclusions are wrong, but we can stipulate now that we have-and if you want to ask your statistician expert from North Carolina that Dr. Mann's methodology cannot be documented and cannot be verified by independent review.
    DR. NORTH. Do you mind if he speaks?
    CHAIRMAN BARTON. Yes, if he would like to come to the microphone.
    MR. BLOOMFIELD. Thank you. Yes, Peter Bloomfield. Our committee reviewed the methodology used by Dr. Mann and his coworkers and we felt that some of the choices they made were inappropriate. We had much the same misgivings about his work that was documented at much greater length by Dr. Wegman.

    So what does a top-ranked statistician say about Mann and about McIntyre and McKitrick's criticism? Take it away Dr Wegman:

    "Where we have commonality, I believe our report and the [NAS] panel essentially agree. We believe that our discussion together with the discussion from the NRC report should take the `centering' issue off the table. [Mann's] decentred methodology is simply incorrect mathematics .... I am baffled by the claim that the incorrect method doesn't matter because the answer is correct anyway.
    Method Wrong + Answer Correct = Bad Science.

    The papers of Mann et al. in themselves are written in a confusing manner, making it difficult for the reader to discern the actual methodology and what uncertainty is actually associated with these reconstructions.

    It is not clear that Dr. Mann and his associates even realized that their methodology was faulty at the time of writing the [Mann] paper.

    We found MBH98 and MBH99 to be somewhat obscure and incomplete and the criticisms of MM03/05a/05b to be valid and compelling.

    Overall, our committee believes that Mann's assessments that the decade of the 1990s was the hottest decade of the millennium and that 1998 was the hottest year of the millennium cannot be supported by his analysis.

    So where does this leave Dessler's claims that there have been no mistakes made in the last 18 years?

    I can only describe them as "plausible" and certainly no higher than that. Probably specious as well.On The fourth IPCC report is still going strong a year later posted 1 year, 9 months ago 65 Responses

  • Dessler in a different universe to the rest of us

    In fact, it is quite amazing to me that essentially none of the IPCC documents produced over the last 18 years has been found to contain any substantive errors.

    No of course not. In Andrew Dessler's universe the Hockey Stick was not obviously and completely debunked, its inner workings shown to be the result of bad statistics, bad math and bad data, a conclusion made by multiple independent investigators.

    Back in the real world, Andrew Dessler is simply delusional if he believes that the IPCC's reports contain no errors. All of the multiproxy studies quoted in the latest IPCC report similarly fail statistical tests for significance, and most, if not all, use the Hockey Sticks PC1 or the tainted and unreliable Sheep Mountain bristlecone pine proxy that even the NAS Panel said should be avoided.

    But at least as far as delusionalists go, Dessler is one of the happy kinds.On The fourth IPCC report is still going strong a year later posted 1 year, 9 months ago 65 Responses