Professor Phil Jones unwittingly(?) reveals that the global warming emperor is, if not naked, scantily clad, vindicating key skeptic arguments
Annotated Version of the Phil & Roger Show – Guest post by Indur M. Goklany
Readers of WUWT are already familiar with the remarkable series of questions and answers between the BBC’s Roger Harrabin at right, and Professor Phil Jones at left (see the posts by Willis and Anthony). [In case you don’t already know, Phil Jones is the climate scientist at the center of the Climategate e-mails, and whose compilation of historic global temperature data from the late 1800s to the present is a key element of the IPCC’s reports.] These Q-and-As, as readers of the two earlier posts recognize, reveal (a) the lack of empirical support for claims that recent warming is exceptional and (b) the flawed logic behind assertions that “Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations.”
Specifically, the Q-and-As confirm what many skeptics have long suspected:
- Neither the rate nor magnitude of recent warming is exceptional.
- There was no significant warming from 1998-2009. According to the IPCC we should have seen a global temperature increase of at least 0.2°C per decade.
- The IPCC models may have overestimated the climate sensitivity for greenhouse gases, underestimated natural variability, or both.
- This also suggests that there is a systematic upward bias in the impacts estimates based on these models just from this factor alone.
- The logic behind attribution of current warming to well-mixed man-made greenhouse gases is faulty.
- The science is not settled, however unsettling that might be.
- There is a tendency in the IPCC reports to leave out inconvenient findings, especially in the part(s) most likely to be read by policy makers.
In the following, I have annotated some of the more critical Qs-and-As. Note that the following version of the Q-and-A was “last updated at 16:05 GMT, Saturday, 13 February 2010”, and is a little different from the original that appeared on line. The questions, identified by A, B, C…,are in bold. I have added emphasis to PJ’s responses (also in bold). My comments are italicized and in bold within square brackets.
So that one can follow the thrust of my annotations, I should note that my general approach to problems or phenomena that human beings have observed in nature is that human observations — whether they span a few decades, a few centuries or even millennia — cover only a brief span in the existence of the earth. Thus, with regard to any observed change, where direct cause-and-effect cannot be verified, the null hypothesis should, in my opinion, be that the changes are due to natural variability. This is why it is important to figure out, among other things, whether the changes that have been observed are, as far as we know, likely to be within (or outside) the bounds of natural variability. If the current warming period (CWP) is not as warm as the medieval warming period (or the Roman and other Warming Periods), then it is impossible to make the argument that CWP is exceptional. Second, if earlier periods were warmer, this indicates natural variability is greater and it is harder to make the claim that we have a “stable” climate. Most importantly, if the earth and its species survived, if not thrived, despite these other warmer periods, then it becomes harder to make the argument that species cannot adapt or the end is nigh.
Excerpts from the Q-and-As, with annotations [in brackets], follow.
Q&A: Professor Phil Jones
… The BBC’s environment analyst Roger Harrabin put questions to Professor Jones, including several gathered from climate sceptics. The questions were put to Professor Jones with the co-operation of UEA’s press office.
A – Do you agree that according to the global temperature record used by the IPCC, the rates of global warming from 1860-1880, 1910-1940 and 1975-1998 were identical?
An initial point to make is that in the responses to these questions I’ve assumed that when you talk about the global temperature record, you mean the record that combines the estimates from land regions with those from the marine regions of the world. CRU produces the land component, with the Met Office Hadley Centre producing the marine component.
Temperature data for the period 1860-1880 are more uncertain, because of sparser coverage, than for later periods in the 20th Century. The 1860-1880 period is also only 21 years in length. As for the two periods 1910-40 and 1975-1998 the warming rates are not statistically significantly different (see numbers below).
[This indicates that the recent warming is not exceptional. Moreover, even if it had been “exceptional,” that would not prove it is due to greenhouse gas emissions?]
I have also included the trend over the period 1975 to 2009, which has a very similar trend to the period 1975-1998.
[The fact that the magnitude of the trend for 1975-2009 is smaller than the trend for 1975-98 indicates that there has been no warming OR A DECLINE IN THE RATE OF WARMING from 1998-2009, which is not necessarily the same as saying there has been cooling during this period. HOWEVER, SEE KERR (2009), WHICH INDICATES NO WARMING FROM 1999-2008. Regardless, this is at odds with the IPCC’s model-based claim that were emissions frozen at 2000 levels then we would see a global temperature increase of 0.2°C per decade. This, in turn, suggests that the IPCC models have overestimated the climate sensitivity for greenhouse gases, underestimated natural variability, or both. This also suggests that there is a systematic upward bias in the impacts estimates based on these models. See here.]
So, in answer to the question, the warming rates for all 4 periods are similar and not statistically significantly different from each other. [This indicates that the recent warming is not exceptional. Moreover, even if it had been “exceptional,” that would not prove it is due to greenhouse gas emissions?]
Here are the trends and significances for each period:
| Period | Length | Trend
(Degrees C per decade) |
Significance |
| 1860-1880 | 21 | 0.163 | Yes |
| 1910-1940 | 31 | 0.15 | Yes |
| 1975-1998 | 24 | 0.166 | Yes |
| 1975-2009 | 35 | 0.161 | Yes |
…
D – Do you agree that natural influences could have contributed significantly to the global warming observed from 1975-1998, and, if so, please could you specify each natural influence and express its radiative forcing over the period in Watts per square metre.
This area is slightly outside my area of expertise. When considering changes over this period we need to consider all possible factors (so human and natural influences as well as natural internal variability of the climate system). Natural influences (from volcanoes and the Sun) over this period could have contributed to the change over this period. Volcanic influences from the two large eruptions (El Chichon in 1982 and Pinatubo in 1991) would exert a negative influence. Solar influence was about flat over this period. Combining only these two natural influences, therefore, we might have expected some cooling over this period. [Not necessarily — what about “natural internal variability” as well as other sources of “natural influences”? This response also assumes that we know all the modes and magnitudes of internal variability and pathways—both qualitatively and quantitatively—by which the sun, for instance, affects our climate.]
E – How confident are you that warming has taken place and that humans are mainly responsible?
I’m 100% confident that the climate has warmed. As to the second question, I would go along with IPCC Chapter 9 – there’s evidence that most of the warming since the 1950s is due to human activity.
[However, the key question — unfortunately unasked — is what fraction of the warming is due not to human activity but to well-mixed man-made greenhouse gas emissions (such as CO2, CH4, and so forth but not including land use, land cover, soot, etc.). This is the key question only because the majority of the policy discussion is centered on reducing well-mixed greenhouse gases.]
…
G – There is a debate over whether the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) was global or not. If it were to be conclusively shown that it was a global phenomenon, would you accept that this would undermine the premise that mean surface atmospheric temperatures during the latter part of the 20th Century were unprecedented?
There is much debate over whether the Medieval Warm Period was global in extent or not. The MWP is most clearly expressed in parts of North America, the North Atlantic and Europe and parts of Asia. For it to be global in extent the MWP would need to be seen clearly in more records from the tropical regions and the Southern Hemisphere. There are very few palaeoclimatic records for these latter two regions.
Of course, if the MWP was shown to be global in extent and as warm or warmer than today (based on an equivalent coverage over the NH and SH) then obviously the late-20th century warmth would not be unprecedented. On the other hand, if the MWP was global, but was less warm that today, then current warmth would be unprecedented.
We know from the instrumental temperature record that the two hemispheres do not always follow one another. We cannot, therefore, make the assumption that temperatures in the global average will be similar to those in the northern hemisphere.
H – If you agree that there were similar periods of warming since 1850 to the current period, and that the MWP is under debate, what factors convince you that recent warming has been largely man-made?
The fact that we can’t explain the warming from the 1950s by solar and volcanic forcing – see my answer to your question D.
[1. Notably, Phil Jones doesn’t dispute the premise that “the MWP is under debate.” See Harrabin’s accompanying report. 2. The response is based on laughable logic. It is an “argument from ignorance”! See comments on answer to D. What about internal natural variability and other “natural influences”? How well do we know the external and internal sources of natural variability?]
…
N – When scientists say “the debate on climate change is over”, what exactly do they mean – and what don’t they mean?
It would be supposition on my behalf to know whether all scientists who say the debate is over are saying that for the same reason. I don’t believe the vast majority of climate scientists think this. This is not my view. There is still much that needs to be undertaken to reduce uncertainties, not just for the future, but for the instrumental (and especially the palaeoclimatic) past as well. …
Q – Let’s talk about the e-mails now: In the e-mails you refer to a “trick” which your critics say suggests you conspired to trick the public? You also mentioned “hiding the decline” (in temperatures). Why did you say these things?
This remark has nothing to do with any “decline” in observed instrumental temperatures. The remark referred to a well-known observation, in a particular set of tree-ring data, that I had used in a figure to represent large-scale summer temperature changes over the last 600 years.
The phrase ‘hide the decline’ was shorthand for providing a composite representation of long-term temperature changes made up of recent instrumental data and earlier tree-ring based evidence, where it was absolutely necessary to remove the incorrect impression given by the tree rings that temperatures between about 1960 and 1999 (when the email was written) were not rising, as our instrumental data clearly showed they were.
This “divergence” is well known in the tree-ring literature and “trick” did not refer to any intention to deceive – but rather “a convenient way of achieving something”, in this case joining the earlier valid part of the tree-ring record with the recent, more reliable instrumental record. [1. Given the divergence problem, how can it be assumed that tree rings are valid proxies for temperature for other places at other times? 2. The divergence problem may be well known among tree ring researchers but laymen and policy makers for whom the IPCC Summary for Policy Makers was supposedly written are generally ignorant of it. I also suspect that scientists in other disciplines were not aware of the divergence problem. They were owed this information up front, in the only document on climate change they were likely to read. Another sin of omission.]
I was justified in curtailing the tree-ring reconstruction in the mid-20th Century because these particular data were not valid after that time – an issue which was later directly discussed in the 2007 IPCC AR4 Report.
The misinterpretation of the remark stems from its being quoted out of context. The 1999 WMO report wanted just the three curves, without the split between the proxy part of the reconstruction and the last few years of instrumental data that brought the series up to the end of 1999. Only one of the three curves was based solely on tree-ring data.
The e-mail was sent to a few colleagues pointing out their data was being used in the WMO Annual Statement in 1999. I was pointing out to them how the lines were physically drawn. This e-mail was not written for a general audience. If it had been I would have explained what I had done in much more detail. ….
Some brief answers have been slightly expanded following more information from UEA.
Sponsored IT training links:
Complete package for 1Y0-A05 and RH202 exam. Guarantee pass real test with 350-018 online course.
Phil Jones now admits that there has been no global warming since 1995. But the warmists will reply that this proves nothing, as neither was there a warming from 1940 till 1970, though afterwards the warming came again “with a revenge”. So there we are.
Mann is going to be furious. Jones is going to be excommunicated by his colleagues for this. I kind of have to feel sorry for the guy if that actually happens.
Someone please take the shovel away from poor phil, or soon he wont have any dinner paties to go to
should read parties
When will RealClimate cover this and try to do damage control?
My prediction: “Um, variability, err robust climate unequivocal etc forcings” – Gavin Schmidt
Brilliant annotations, I hope that many people read this. The concise annotations reveal the depth that we have yet to explore behind each of Jones’ answers. Indeed, they could be considered not answers but actually questions.
When he’s not threatening suicide in search of sympathy, he’s busy sticking icicles into his friends’ backs. Nice man. I guess now we know why he hasn’t yet quit. He’s a straw-clutcher, and is obviously hoping that his confession will put him in a good light when the iceberg finally hits the fan.
The CRU at the University of East Anglia is not fit for purpose and suffers from institutionalised alarmism. The BBC also suffers from institutionalised alarmism and it is therefore not surprising that Professor Jones is allowed to air his views, in advance of the inquiry aided and abetted by a sympathetic BBC journalist?
When will they release all of the temperature data?
“Regardless, this is at odds with the IPCC’s model-based claim that were emissions frozen at 2000 levels then we would see a global temperature increase of 0.2°C per decade. This, in turn, suggests that the IPCC models have overestimated the climate sensitivity for greenhouse gases, underestimated natural variability, or both. ”
I posted on the ‘Daily Mail’ thread the link to Hansen’s 1981 Science Paper:
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/1981/1981_Hansen_etal.pdf
I wonder if this paper forms the basis for the IPCC models. If it does, there are a few ‘interesting’ consequences:
– Hansen predicts CO-warming will dominate other climate drivers after 2000. This prediction is with a 95% confidence interval (2 SDs). What this implies, as far as I can tell, is that any warming prior to the year 2000 may be due to CO2 or other causes of climate change or a mixture, and cannot be attributed to CO2 alone with any statistically significant degree of confidence.
This alone is a bit mind-blowing. Any declaration that global warming up until the year 2000 is unprecedented and due to CO2 is, according to Hansen’s own paper, wrong.
– Hansen draws a graph showing when CO2 warming starts dominating other causes of climate change. What this implies is that we should only be looking for statistically significant warming AFTER 2000, and the absence of such warming falsifies his hypothesis of CAGW
– Jones’ admission on the absence of statistically significant warming since 1995 appears to be evidence against CAGW as per Hansen’s original paper.
If Cause is outside of Dr PJ’s area of expertise then Dr PJ should have refrained from making those comments. Also he should have refrained from making any statements regarding expected climate variations. By admitting the lack of knowledge of past climate (Still being debated) Then current and future climate is within natural variable bounds.
I call the debate over because have lost their foundation which was made of smoke and mirrors to begin with.
Seems the world just came into being in medieval times and nothing existed before that period. That’s why we get this clunker “On the other hand, if the MWP was global, but was less warm that today, then current warmth would be unprecedented.”
No mention of the Holocene Climate Optimum, Roman Warm Period, etc which were warmer than the MWP and present. Therefore the science of EAU, CRU and the BBC has concluded that the age of our planet is roughly 1100 years old.
Its not over until its over.
Keep the pressure up and a great job done by all at WUWT!
And why has the Roman Warm Period’s page from Wikipedia been deleted???????????!
This feels very much like an attempt by Harabin and the BBC to temper their decades of abuse and lies in preparation for the expected greywash which Muir and his team have been told to do.
At no point in this interview do I see a ” I go it wrong and I’m sorry”. What I do see is I didn’t keep very good records, my databases are rubbish but the science is correct and that will be what Muir says in his report. Global warming is real and will continue unless we change. That will be the bottom line of the CRU report.
Minor correction? what fraction of the warming is due not to human activity but to well-mixed man-made greenhouse gas emissions perhaps should be
what fraction of the warming is due to human activity but not to well-mixed man-made greenhouse gas emissions.
You’re in the papers again, Anthony.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7026317.ece
Looks like he is dodging, bobbing and ducking as hard as he can. And he obviously avoids addressing the issue of WHY if the tree ring data “were not valid after that time” (hide the decline) we should assume they were valid for several hundreds of years ago when there was no way to validate against thermometer data — since we already know the data diverges in one case (the present). I think the whole question as to the validity of dendroclimatology as valid discipline has not been addressed.
Even as we speak the chaps over at realclimate will be re-interpreting the words to distribute to the highly organised and well funded climate warmist movement. Just like the “out of context” mantra we saw when the emails, with primary facie evidence of scientific and legal (FOI) malfeasance came out.
To be truthful I have all along thought the real reason Jones didn’t want to share the data was that it was “badly organised” because there’s been a lot of money in selling the “adjusted” data and if it became clear how crap the source data was the money would stop.
As for Dr Jones and the rest of the Team, they pursued a political agenda, they still are, and they were and are ruthlessly purging climate science of dissenting voices either by intimidation, or by excluding those who dissent from the published literature. It has been a folie a plusieurs, each participant has taken strength from the seeming certainty of the other, which in turn gives this participant a seeming certainty the others take strength from – positive feedback. What they face if not now, certainly in the future, as cooler (excuse pun) heads assess this science, is to go down in history as scientific scoundrels, who manipulated the scientific facts to pursue a political end.
It won’t go away soon, too many other scientists have staked their reputations on the CO2/AGW theory, too many politicians have been made to look gullible to backtrack, the MSM won’t want to admit that they have deliberately suppressed contrarian scientists. A battle has been won, and a milestone passed, but the end of the journey is not in sight. Obama will have to go in the US before those with the egg on their faces will be put out to grass, the same for all the European leaders and their oppositions, all have accepted this theory lock stock and barrel. The science must be cleaned, the IPCC changed and led by people who want to get to the facts not to present an agenda which finishes with world government and redistribution of wealth.
The British Met Office will have to be cut down to size and returned to the duties of weather forecasting and the activists who inhabit its upper echelons put out to grass with the scientific colleagues. The BBC has been little more than Pravda in its suppression of contrarian views, one of a number of major blunders the current management has managed over the last 5 years or so, and once the embarrassed politicians are out of the way those that replace them will exact an awful revenge on this once peerless institution.
And the MWP’s Wikipedia page has been completely hijacked and includes the hockey stick.
In reading the linked full text, I see he has not really crumbled. His responses do allow for less certainty about AGW. But, he does not give much comfort to skeptics like me — the “end” of the global AGW movement is not near I fear.
His e-mails and his responses are something the AGW “machine” can paper over. Hopefully, the official investigations will arrive at the truth — whatever that may be. But, the air is so charged — how will one know the “truth” when one sees it?
First His Book ……
Now, His Movie:
The AGW Untouchable, aka The Survivor: Choo-Choo Pachauri.
A caste of million$$$$ and “blood” and “scalp” and ….. metaphors, mixed and unmixed.
…-
“UN climate change chief escapes the heat
Any hope that climate change sceptics had of claiming the scalp of the United Nations climate change chief, Rajendra Pachauri, seems to be melting away.
They smelt blood last month when the Indian chairman of …”
“Despite the attacks, he has survived. Voluntary resignation is uncommon in Indian politics and Dr Pachauri, from the highest Hindu Brahmin caste, has scoffed at calls to step down.”
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/un-climate-change-chief-escapes-the-heat-20100214-nzf5.html
This is a brilliant article. Thank you ever so much.
The intro, with the phrase “scantily clad,” was hilarious. The entire thing provides flawless logic for those of us less able to articulate our suspicions, which, in my case, revolve around my unborn great-grandchildren living miserably so a lucky few can profit and live like feudal lords.
Kudos to the author. To WUWT, thanks a million! (Make that trillions!)
Want evidence these guys are living in a fantacy world of their own making?
Kevin Trenberth: “We also have physical changes like the fact that sea levels have risen around five inches since 1972, the Arctic icecap has declined by 40 percent and snow cover in the northern hemisphere has declined.”
I give professor Jones a lot more credit than most skeptics. He believes he is doing the right thing and just from his one statement I thought it was quite clear that he wasn’t altering data in an attempt to deceive. He would never have got away with it so he had no reason to attempt it but also he had no motive. He believes he has the forces which will guide his beliefs to become reality for us all. His admissions are becoming quite astonishing though. He wouldn’t have dared to utter such words just a short while ago.
I think I can see light out there.
In Scotland today the levels of pure irrational witch hunt tendency is stronger than ever.
Remember this is a country where to ask someone to take a oath of allegiance to the country is thought to be too intrusive.
However if you are not a “true believer” in AGW its enough to get sacked.
From today’s Sunday Herald…….
Critics say Sir Ian Byatt should reconsider his position as Scotland’s water regulator
Exclusive by Paul Hutcheon
14 Feb 2010
Ministers have been urged to sack the chairman of Scotland’s water regulator after he became an adviser to a group that is sceptical of climate change.
Sir Ian Byatt is helping the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), a think-tank set up by former Conservative Chancellor Nigel Lawson.
Campaigners say the Scottish Government, which has backed tough targets to cut carbon dioxide emissions, should replace him immediately.
Sir Ian took over as chairman of the Water Industry Commission for Scotland (WICS) in 2005. The quango determines the prices charged by Scottish Water, the publicly-owned utility, as well as monitoring its performance.
Scottish Water also has a key role in meeting the climate change objectives laid out in law.
However, Sir Ian’s own commitment to the environment has been questioned after he signed up to the GWPF think-tank, which questions the scientific assumptions behind climate change.
Set up last year, the GWPF lists Sir Ian as a member of its academic advisory council. According to its website, the foundation aims to “bring reason, integrity and balance” to a debate on climate change it says has become “seriously unbalanced, irrationally alarmist, and all too often depressingly intolerant”.
GWPF director Dr Benny Peiser said the foundation believed carbon dioxide in the atmosphere did have a warming effect, but said: “If we are sceptical in one area, it is the predicted impacts or disasters. That’s where we think the science is not good enough. There’s too much uncertainty.”
The foundation rents office space in London from the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining, but does not disclose its income sources.
Environment campaigner George Monbiot said the foundation drew “heavily on the arguments, tactics and strategies” of American anti-climate change lobby groups.
“The whole effort is to try to look as credible and as mainstream as possible, while spouting truly incredible claims.”
Sir Ian’s decision to advise the GWPF comes after he made a number of statements criticising the scientific case behind climate change.
In a paper to the House of Lords in 2005, he said: “It is premature to conclude that any human-induced global warming would necessarily occur rapidly and further, that any such warming would be catastrophic.
“I do not, therefore, agree that drastic and far-reaching action is justified, especially without more careful consideration of the type of action appropriate, and of the costs associated with it.”
Sir Ian and Lord Lawson also co-signed a paper in 2006 critiquing the science behind climate change.
However, Sir Ian’s views directly contradict the commitment shown by the SNP Government towards addressing environmental concerns.
MSPs last year approved targets for cutting carbon emissions by 42% by 2020, compared with their 1990 levels.
Dave Watson, Scottish organiser for trade union Unison, said: “I will be writing to John Swinney, calling on him to sack this regulator … It beggars belief that the regulator of Scotland’s water industry, which has a key function to play in delivering the Scottish Parliament’s ambitious climate change target, should ally himself with this group.”
A spokesman for the WICS said: “Sir Ian’s involvement in this group is personal and has nothing to do with his role at the WICS.”
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2010/02/12/lawrence-solomon-who-am-i.aspx
Al Gore’s Holy Hologram,
This should give you some answers… In case you didn’t know about William Connolley, head censor for ‘the hockey stick team’ in charge of memory hole operations for the ‘adjustment’ of Wikipedia articles…
Thank you M. Goklany and of course Anthony. Even with all of the light shining on the foolishness of AGW it seems as if the magic taxable gas CO2 is still the darling of government.
We don’t need Jones to tell us the data was unorganised. Harry told us that back in November. It`s not rocket science to organise data – especially when millions of dollars are available. Being the climate data store of the world – this is scandalous.
Everything was stored in files – instead of a large database repository where you can extract the data you want with queries. This sort of data system has been widely used for at least 25 years. The cost involved is proper data achitecture and hardware.
So this is what the Piltdown man looks like in a blue sweater.
I think Jones strategy is to admit a lesser crime and hope that the big one is never found.
“Marvin (06:38:32) :
I give professor Jones a lot more credit than most skeptics.”
May i quote: “In an odd way, this is cheering news”. That’s the man you’re giving credit to. You know the context of that quote.
“Al Gore’s Holy Hologram (05:32:18) :
And why has the Roman Warm Period’s page from Wikipedia been deleted???????????!”
Here’s a remainder:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warm_period
The Chinese are not so shy:
http://ff.org/centers/csspp/library/co2weekly/2005-06-09/roman.htm
The Roman Warm Period and Dark Ages Cold Period in China
Looks like it wasn’t a local phenomenon.
Wikipedia is the new Prawda.
Watch out, Connolley! The german Wikipedia still has a very small writeup on the Roman Warm Period:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimum_der_R%C3%B6merzeit
It mentions a german book Connolley couldn’t delete:
Wolfgang Behringer: Kulturgeschichte des Klimas. Seiten 86-88, C.H. Beck, München, 2007, ISBN 9783406528668
Marvin:
As you know, much error in science comes from “confirmation bias”. In a field with large masses of data that has to be cleaned and adjusted, the scope for unconscious or semi-conscious tweaking is huge – hence the calls for (a) the separation of the collecting and archiving of the raw data from the generation of adjusted data series and (b) free and easy access to raw data (including the associated metadata).
Without (b) PJ and others have in fact “gotten away with it” for nearly 25 years. There is no reason to impute motive – the tendencies of scientists to see what they want to see never go away. We simply trust that they are held in check by ill-defined institutional processes. In the case of climate science and the temperature record, that trust is ill-considered, misplaced and undeserved.
As to your sentiment that PJ deserves credit, perhaps. It is equally possible that this is a fairly cynical PR-inspired move. The move may backfire but that does not change its intent. It is also possible that these “true confessions” are prompted by information that we do not have access to yet – such as the identity of the leaker, his/her motives and additional related information. We shall see.
This guy, Jones, is like some child.
He was cocky and full of himself, until he got caught.
Now he’s all humble pie.
” This “divergence” is well known in the tree-ring literature and “trick” did not refer to any intention to deceive – but rather “a convenient way of achieving something”, in this case joining the earlier valid part of the tree-ring record with the recent, more reliable instrumental record. ”
Bullcrap! Any scientists would know this is illegitimate. That’s not how curves are drawn. The aim was to deceive.
And what about the peer-review process hijacking?
What about his glee over John Daly’s death?
What about his FOIA circumventions.
Are supposed to bring up all them e-mails again?
He still has a lot of questions to answer.
This guy committed climate science murder, and all he’s willing to fess up to is stealing from the cookie jar.
Fire him!
Do you think Phil Jones has read
GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 29, NO. 14, 1667, 10.1029/2001GL014580, 2002
Cook Palmer and D’Arrigo
Evidence for the MWP in New Zealand
http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/res/fac/trl/staff/…/ERCindex.html
“It won’t go away soon, too many other scientists have staked their reputations on the CO2/AGW theory, too many politicians have been made to look gullible to backtrack, the MSM won’t want to admit that they have deliberately suppressed contrarian scientists.”
Maybe not. All that is needed is one major G8 country to get a government elected that decides enough is enough, and denounce AGW. It could be the next UK elections, it could be the AU elections, it could even be right here in Canada.
They are all waiting for a country to make the first move against AGW, then the rest will fall like dominos. And the major reason governments really do want to abandon AGW? They are all broke and can’t afford the actions demanded of them.
We are living in a unique time in human history. The collapse of the biggest scam of all time. Enjoy the ride!
>>“Despite the attacks, he has survived. Voluntary resignation
>>is uncommon in Indian politics and Dr Pachauri, from the
>>highest Hindu Brahmin caste, has scoffed at calls to step
>>down.”
Of course he is not a racist, but would never touch an Untouchable.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalit
.
Climate science now needs:
– Thorough and methodical review of all records: temperatures, rainfalls, ocean currents properties (velocities and paths), ice shelf movements, glaciers etc.
– Attempt to formulate and separate causes from consequences.
– Establish bidirectional feedbacks, if and where they exist.
– Reconsider ‘sense’ (or nonsense) of global averaging.
– Produce verifiable regional analyses of the past (regional trends, long or short term, are not necessarily synchronous).
Once there is verifiable ‘history’, than it is more likely to be a clearer present.
Any long term predictions based on computer models should be treated with due skepticism (always consider possibility of a GIGO).
@Al Gore’s Holy Hologram
Re: MWP@Wiki
It seems William Connelly has been playing silly games again. See the discussion:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Medieval_Warm_Period&oldid=343230686
/Mango
“We know from the instrumental temperature record that the two hemispheres do not always follow one another.”
We also know that most of the major, urbanised and industrialised centres, includng airports, are in the Northern Hemisphere. We also know about the Urban Heat Island effect.
Regarding the divergence problem — meaning, Jones says that you can’t trust tree ring records after about 1960, at least for the trees in the original hockey stick, e.g. the “hide the decline” trees — there are two important problems.
Goklany hits the first one well — how sure can we be about what the tree rings tell us 1,000 and 500 years ago, if we can’t trust the last 50 years?
But the other problem, as far as I can see, hasn’t been much remarked on.
That other problem is that the hockey team includes, and loves, more recent tree ring records, if and only if they give the desired answer.
The Briffa Yamal tree rings for example. These are 5 to 10 records which show sharply rising temps through about 1995 — hockey stick shapes. Why are the most recent Yamal tree ring records trustworthy, but the tree rings in the original hockey stick papers not trustworthy for the same time frame?
To go further, as readers of Climateaudit.com know, there were a much larger number of tree ring records near the Yamal trees Briffa used, and these showed a temperature decline in the same period. Why were these other, more numerous records not appropriate to use, while the small number of Yamal trees with rising temps appropriate to use?
Unless Jones or Mann or somebody can show why the precise tree rings in the “hide the decline” debate were untrustworthy, but the Briffa Yamal trees but not the ones near them are in fact trustworthy, on scientific grounds, it is obvious that all these “scientists” are doing is cherry picking the records that give answers they like. I and we await that scientific justification.
“….it was absolutely necessary to remove the incorrect impression given by the tree rings that temperatures between about 1960 and 1999 (when the email was written) were not rising, as our instrumental data clearly showed they were.”
This begs the obvious question:
If tree rings were good enough prior to 1960 then why weren’t they good enough after 1960? ;o)
I think the interview might just as well have ended after question one and the table provided by Jones.
The whole AGW thesis relies on the assumption that the late 20th Century warming was UNPRECEDENTED
Jones shows proof, by way of the table he provides, that it was NOT unprecedented. Game over. No more needs to be said or debated.
Who in their right mind could possibly argue in favour of UNPRECEDENTED warming now? They can’t even argue the figures in the table are wrong. They have been provided by the very gate keeper of these figures.
0.163
0.15
0.166
0.161
There they are, effectively the four pillars that support the “NOTHING TO SEE HERE FOLKS, go home and rip up your carbon trading schemes and alarmist press releases.
game over.
Anthony: This is the perfect cue for you (or whoever did so) to re-post that hilarious cartoon of the preposterously snooty 18th century emperor marching along under a shade (labeled “IPCC”) held aloft by four uniformed flunkies!
Amazing.
People, no one has ever denied there was a MWP. OK?
Please stop spreading myths.
The confusion apparent here may stem from the reality that the magnitude and extent of the MWP (LIA) is, like all science, open to discussion – so most climatologist think the evidence is it might have been muted, but no one knows for sure. Otoh, I am sure most sceptics (like those here) are convinced (utterly convinced, not open to debate – but go on surprise me) the MWP was warmer than now.
But, like I say, go on, surprise me – show me you are scientists. Lets see everyone here say ‘Oh, it is indeed possible the MWP was muted and now is warmer like Dr’s Jones and Mann think‘. How many takers and how many rebuttals?
John (07:56:16) :
John, AFAIK it was the inclusion of one (ONE!) freak tree together with Mann’s statistic skills that made the hockey stick:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/04/jo-nova-finds-the-medieval-warm-period/
regarding wikipedia’s deletion of the roman warm period:
you can check the deletion log….
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALog&type=delete&user=&page=Roman+Warm+Period&year=&month=-1&tagfilter=
We should all remember Phil Jones has had a tough time over the past few months. To some extent he has been left to hang out to dry by other members of the Hockey Team.
Out there in the wilderness he may have had some kind of a Damascus Road Experience. I don’t think he has had any kind of blinding conversion, but he has been something of a “gatekeeper” for both Mike Mann and Keith Briffa. Perhaps the Hockey game has become too rough and he has decided to stop playing for the team and sit out on the sideline for a while.
There is no shortage of data to indicate that the MWP was global. The Idso’s have collected hundreds of peer reviewed studies that show the global nature of the event. Granted, not all of the ‘warmest years’ for every proxy record coincide with the warmest years of every other record, but all records are generally warmer during the MWP. Of course, we find the same thing in the current warm period. Some regions have not had any warming over the last 50 years and some others even show cooling, while the majority do show some warming. It is entirely disingenuous to demand more universal and synchronized warming from the older proxy data than we do from the newer instrument data, in order to conclude a warm period.
Next AR from IPCC will be very easy to produce. Every “warming” word will be replaced with “cooling”. Everything else stays the same.
“Peter Hearnden (08:12:00) :
Amazing.
People, no one has ever denied there was a MWP. OK?
Please stop spreading myths.”
Did anyone on this thread assert that, Peter? Did anyone spread this myth you are accusing us of spreading? What exactly is it that you accuse us of, Peter? The position of the AGW crowd is this: The MWP was a local phenomenon. That’s what they have been saying for years and we have disagreed for years. Any problems, Peter? What myth are you talking about?
The problem is that the metrics and methodologies for capturing historic measures such as temperatures and percentages of atmospheric constituents are being developed by climate researchers who are trying to support a hypothesis. This leads to (un)intentional choice of data that supports the hypothesis and/or processing that enhances that support. (The values must be wrong they disagree with my computer model!)
It is time that in ‘climate science’ that the metrology was carried out by disinterested metrologists validating proxies and producing validated historic metrics with raw and unadjusted data, documentation of the reason and method of any adjustment and software code. All available open source to be replicated or challenged.
Then climate researchers as a totally separate group could carry out their research trying to hypothesize on the reason for the metrics’ values and variances reported by the metrologists.
Re: Peter Hearnden (Feb 14 08:12),
Peter I don’t give a chit about the MWP. That is now irrelevant.
See my post at (08:05:40) :
Now go on, show me YOU ARE A SCIENTIST and explain to me why you think the present so called warming (1975-2009) is UNPRECEDENTED.
The figures are there, from the very man who has been working on this longer than just about anybody else, since 1984 in fact. Go on, show me.
Peter Hearnden (08:12:00),
You are the one who is ‘utterly convinced’:
“We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period.”
http://epw.senate.gov/hearing_statements.cfm?id=266543
In a Fox News interview, Dick Morris predicted the other day that the GOP could re-take the Senate in 2010. That would almost do it.
On the MWP as observed in the tropics and southern hemisphere, CO2 Science (one of the links listed on the top right of this page) has a good collection of peer-reviewed articles on the MWP in all regions of the world. I would say their coverage has a better claim than, say, Mann’s of being global.
DirkH (07:16:55): I have seen a few German papers on the Roman Warm Period; I think ithat is connected to the German focus on the “Voelkerwanderung”, ie the migration of peoples towards the Roman Empire from around the 5th century AD onwards, when studying that period. I have the impression that the concept of the Roman Warm Period, perhaps more so than the MWP, has a strong tradition in Germany and couldn’t be erased very easily.
A good example is this presentation (http://hexagon-series.org/html/pdf/Bluemel_DGVN_Buchvorst_Stuttgart_090724.pdf) by Prof. Bluemel of the University of Stuttgart. He estimates that the RWP was 1C warmer than today (I have seen higher estimates). Having said that, he also buys into AGW in saying that until ~2000 it was all natural cycles; from now on it will be driven by CO2 – –
Phil Jones seems like an honest person. I have a favorable opinion of him. It’s not his fault he’s wrong. Lots of people are wrong. It’s the anti-capitalist zealots that cite these climatologists and then try to bring down the system because it doesn’t correspond to their romantic pre-industrial world view. Which I guess I can’t fault either since I’m a pro capitalist zealot who opposes massive government intervention in the market because it doesn’t correspond to my world view of maximizing welfare through the expansion of mutually beneficial voluntary exchange. I just wish people would stop pretending this was ever about the environment and admit we just have fundamental disagreements about the role of government in society.
PH 6:12:00 We don’t know, do we? That should be more unsettling to you than to me.
===================
It strikes me that Dr. Jones, and the vast majority of those scientists touting the AGW claim, are not very good scientists. Despite all of the letters piled up after their names, they seem to have an inability to draw logical conclusions from all of the evidence, preferring to pick the evidence that supports their conclusions and ignore the rest. For PJ to mention internal variability as a contributer to climate change, then ignore it as a potential factor in recent climate change is just irrational or intentionally duplicitous. Yet, that omission is almost universal inside the IPCC. No matter the motive, we can conclude that they are not good scientists!
To drive the point home, I am reminded of the many polls over the years that showed skepticism was most widespread in the ‘weather forecasting’ community, particularly with TV meteorologist. This often ridiculed class of atmospheric scientists have been speaking the obvious truths about climate change that Phil Jones is now only (very reluctantly) admitting.
Hard to believe, but the evidence indicates that your local TV meteorologist may be a better scientist than the ‘vast majority’ of those supporting the AGW Crisis scenario!
Then there is the late John Daly. Without any formal training, he was obviously a much better scientist than Phil Jones, Jim Hansen, Mike Mann and so on.
I think we should welcome this more moderate and measured tone. I like to see more climate scientist adopt this approach. But I still have many issues with Dr Jones.
What’s clear is that most of the leading climate scientists have no background or understanding of stochastic process methods.
It really is quite amazing that it had to come to this for Jones to admit what any level headed person familiar with the scientific method should already know… holy crap, there is uncertainty in climate science and we don’t now everything (majority speaking at least) to the point where it is written in concrete. The admission of any notable uncertainty has essentially been the third rail of the discussion.
I’m really starting to suspect that the elephant in the room might be the line of thinking that historical data and statistically derived computer models can explainand predict complex systems where the fundamental functions and relationships in said systems are not well understood. It has never worked for Economics, and I have yet to be convinced that Climate Science is significantly different in that regard.
“Otoh, I am sure most sceptics (like those here) are convinced (utterly convinced, not open to debate – but go on surprise me) the MWP was warmer than now.”
Well, then, you haven’t been paying attention. The only ones claiming things are not open to debate are the AGW alarmists. The whole point of this blog and many like it is that there should be a debate, that many of these questions are complex and unsettled, and the full court press to prematurely shut down legitimate inquiry that doesn’t happen to buy into the catastrophic AGW hypothesis is scientifically reprehensible.
“show me you are scientists.
Lets see everyone here say ‘Oh, it is indeed possible the MWP was muted and now is warmer like Dr’s Jones and Mann think‘. ”
Do you really think that’s a demonstration of someone being a scientist? Emulating a model that has been shown wanting. Drs. Jones and Mann think that the Medieval Warm Period was muted. Well, then, let’s go ahead and spend trillions of dollars on AGW-mitigation because two professors think there wasn’t a MWP of note. If thinking something true is all that’s needed to act, we can solve all sorts of scientific questions right now.
How about they go out and prove it beyond all reasonable doubt before we decide how unprecedented current temperatures are.
“no one has ever denied there was a MWP”
The hockey stick graph implicitly denies it. That’s the whole point of the hockey stick graph.
Peter Hearnden (08:12:00) :
“People, no one has ever denied there was a MWP. OK?”
Good grief, talk about Hockeystick-denier!
The phrase ‘hide the decline’ was shorthand for providing a composite representation of long-term temperature changes made up of recent instrumental data and earlier tree-ring based evidence, where it was absolutely necessary to remove the incorrect impression given by the tree rings that temperatures between about 1960 and 1999 (when the email was written) were not rising, as our instrumental data clearly showed they were.
I’ve read, reread, re…re…re…
How can Gavin, Mann, Briffa or anybody else interpret this statement other than:
1. The tree data indicates temperature not rising.
2. The instrumental temperature indicates increasing temperatures.
3. Since either 1 or 2 above is incorrect, to me (Dr. Phil Jones) it logically
must be the tree ring data because my temperature data is correct.
4. It was therefore “absolutely necessary” to “remove the incorrect
impression” (as determined by Dr Phil Jones) by fabrication of the tree
ring data.
5. Ergo; either tree ring data is a flawed proxy for temperature (I’ve stated
before that growth is correlated better with available water), or the
temperatures aren’t rising.
How can they spin this????
In Jones’s interview there is a table of numbers. Could someone please tell me what instrument will measure temperature to an accuracy of two decimal places. And if you can measure to only one decimal place, what is the meaning of three decimal places.
Period Length Trend
(Degrees C per decade) Significance
1860-1880 21 0.163 Yes
1910-1940 31 0.15 Yes
1975-1998 24 0.166 Yes
1975-2009 35 0.161 Yes
“Peter B (08:51:23) :
[…]
I have the impression that the concept of the Roman Warm Period, perhaps more so than the MWP, has a strong tradition in Germany and couldn’t be erased very easily.”
Oh, you don’t know the German Wikipedia. They erase like crazy under the excuse of “irrelevance”. But they don’t have a Connolley so the climate section is not as ravaged as the english one. I would say it’s a lot of unorganized censorship fiefdoms in the German Wikipedia.
I agree completely with
P Gosselin (07:30:59) :
“This guy committed climate science murder, and all he’s willing to fess up to is stealing from the cookie jar.
Fire him!”
AND take away his pension, try him, fine him, GIVE HIM SOME JAIL TIME. We cannot live in a representative democracy if there are no consequences to misbehavior. Since this serious, malicious misbehavior, he deserves serious consequences. He should not be judged alone. The heads should continue to roll. (Don’t you love that metaphor — does suggest serious a serious consequencen doesn’t it!)
Can someone explain how the MWP could NOT be global? The extra energy over europe just decided to suspend the laws of physics for a few centuries and not redistribute itself like it did for a few billion years before that?
Well let me think…. we know the earth was flat back then, perhaps it wasn’t a plane but a cube… now the natural greenhouse gas layers would have been present back then, but they would have extended beyond the boundaries of the cube face, creating a vertical wall surrounding the faces of the cubes and reflecting energy back in. so a temporary increase in temp in one of the faces of the cube could in fact have been localized. My gosh, how could I have missed this before? This explains all those earthquakes and continental drift things too! when the earth was morphed from sphere to cube and back again it would have put enormous stress on the edges resulting in earth quakes and so on. All those missing ships from the medieval period actually did get to the edge of the cube face, probably busted right through the greenhouse gas wall (its only gas after all) and slid down the side.
Omigosh! What if it happens again? what if the earth morphs back into a cube? We need to study this NOW! and we need to start taking precautionary measures NOW! We might even cause it! Stop all the drilling for oil and mining, stop EVERYTHING we can’t take the risk of disturbing the deep earth structure and triggering a cubing!
Al Gore’s Holy Hologram (05:32:18) :
And why has the Roman Warm Period’s page from Wikipedia been deleted???????????!
The Little Age page has a note attached that is to be reviewed, is this next.
My “dog ate the homework”.
There hasn’t been any warming in the last fifteen years.
The current temperatures are in keeping with past climate cycles.
Still, ‘the narrative is correct”.
Right…………..Let me tell you about this bridge I have for sale!
It’s times like these that confirm I’d rather be a simple red neck than a member of the anointed intellectual elite.
Regards,
Steamboat Jack
And now, for something completely different!
I found this review of Hansen’s book “Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity” errrr….interesting!
http://www.tnr.com/book/review/politics-and-the-planet
I mean, who voted these guys in to be the most influential scientists ever??
From the Guardian
“Prime minister Gordon Brown today accused climate change sceptics of going “against the grain” of scientific evidence, as he launched a new group to raise billions of pounds for the fight against global warming.
Mr Brown will co-chair the United Nations High Level Advisory Group on Climate Change Financing with Ethiopian prime minister Meles Zenawi.
The group aims to raise $30bn (£19bn) over the next three years – rising to $100bn annually by 2020 – to help poor countries limit their contribution to global warming and adapt to its effects.”
All this of course to help POOR countries…
I wonder if Sourcewatch, Jim Prall and consorts will denounce the donations…
LOL
The version of Mann’s hockey stick that goes back to 1000AD – as per the IPCC TAR – and that Al Gore presented in “An Inconvenient Truth” (mistaking it for a graph of Lonnie Thompson’s ice core data) – certainly “denied” that there was a MWP, in the sense of something significant globally. Gore made a point of mocking the MWP in his presentation. The whole claim to fame of the several versions of the hockey stick was precisely the Orwellian erasure of the MWP. I am baffled that anyone could claim otherwise.
TerryBixler (06:53:28) :
Thank you M. Goklany and of course Anthony. Even with all of the light shining on the foolishness of AGW it seems as if the magic taxable gas CO2 is still the darling of government.
————————————————-
It seems that here in America the general public just has to be made more aware of ClimateGate and this interview with Phil Jones. After that sinks in with them then Cap N Trade is finished and so will be all the politicians that push for Cap N Trade—including Lisa Jackson at the EPA.
The Brown victory in Massachusetts is a clear portent of the feelings of the general population towards ‘business as usual’ in Washington. People from all over America sent money to Brown to help him win.
It is ludicrous to say that we took the bits of the series that we liked then threw away the part we didn’t. You either take the whole series or throw away the whole series. There is still no rigorous theory of how to interpret tree ring data with regards to temperature. Until there is a testable theory, then that data should not be used at all. Period.
Peter Hearnden (08:12:00) :
I’m sorry Peter, what did you say? I don’t think many are listening to you. I do hear clicking shoes though; looks like you’re tap dancing.
Perhaps Phil should start making guest posts at WUWT.
Peter Hearnden (08:12:00) :
“Amazing.
People, no one has ever denied there was a MWP. OK?
Please stop spreading myths.”
Peter, which hockey stick are you looking at?
Obviously, it’s not the same one I’m looking at.
I think Jones is returning to a more careful scientific position that (if the Climategate emails are indicative) he held before Michael Mann’s half-assed work compelled so many to circle the wagons and harden their rhetoric.
The now requisite pompous certainty combined with snark that warmers exude seems to have evolved largely in response to the intolerable fact that the evil McIntyre & McItrick were absolutely correct that (a) Mann is an incompetent statistician (b) the incidental weighting of the anomalous bristlecone pine series was the only reason the hockey stick handle was flat and thus (c) Mann really offered nothing substantive with respect to understanding past climate.
Rather than concede the weakness of the Hockey Stick, they (including Jones) dug in and oversold the quality of their work and are now experiencing a comeuppance that could have been averted. The pernicious influence of the agenda-driven influence of the IPCC and the concomitant need to defend their cover-boy Mann has become a nightmare own goal scenario.
In retrospect, was it really worth all this trouble to defend the work of one politicized hack? What a waste.
PJ makes some statements here on the lack of statistically significant differences in the other warming periods since 1860 and not denying the existence of the MWP that are eye opening, but he also couches his answers in vague terms that give him wiggle room. Still I’d like to be a fly on the wall of people like Mann and Hansen and ALGore to hear their responses to these statements.
Better yet I’d like to see another batch of emails similar to our 11/19/09 present to see how the Hockey Team is plotting and scheming along.
————
What many sceptics claim is that Mann’s Hockey stick graph wiped out the medieval warm period. The graph looks more dramatic when the MWP is removed.
The other argument made by Warmists was that MWP was not global. However, others disagree. Even if the MWP did not exist you can see that the warming towards the end of the 20th century was not unprecedented. Do you aree with me?
Links arguing the MWP was global and not localised to the NH.
http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/archive/pr0310.html
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/291/5508/1497
http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/res/fac/trl/staff/…/ERCindex.html
http://joannenova.com.au/2009/12/fraudulent-hockey-sticks-and-hidden-data/
Re: Peter Hearnden (08:12:00) :
“But, like I say, go on, surprise me – show me you are scientists. Lets see everyone here say ‘Oh, it is indeed possible the MWP was muted and now is warmer like Dr’s Jones and Mann think‘. How many takers and how many rebuttals?”
Response:
This from Woods Hole Institute sediment studies: “A new 2,000 year long reconstruction of sea surface temperatures (SST) from the Indo-Pacific warm pool (IPWP) suggests that temperatures in the region may have been as warm during the Medieval Warm Period as they are today.”
That one was conclusive enough to cause Woods Hole to issue a stern warning that the IPCC temperature profiles being used in their climate models were WRONG!
Then there are the Stalagmite studies:
http://www.ncpa.org/pub/st279?pg=6
The contention by AGW proponents that the MWD was localized has been convincingly refuted by hard evidence to the contrary. It is “possible” that pigs could fly were the laws of physics were to magically change, but I wouldn’t put any money on that possibility.
Smokey (08:43:15) :
“We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period.”
http://epw.senate.gov/hearing_statements.cfm?id=266543
————————————————————————-
Thanks for the link about Mr Deming. I wish the whole world knew what he had to say.
I’m not a wikipedist, because I’ve already long ago gave up struggling with morons there, but concerning the MWP Wikipedia entry I would suggest to fully cite there at Wiki MWP entry the recent Jones’s takes on MWP – as he and the CRU respectively is in fact sources for the “hokey blade” there -for which they now aren’t able to produce raw data to substantiate it. This would be something Connolley can hardly edit without risking ban.
davidmhoffer (09:14:23) :
“Can someone explain how the MWP could NOT be global?”
David, it’s only ‘not’ global if someone completely ignores the obvious.
Machu Picchu
One of the more damaging things to the credibility of AGW proponents is the way that they defend faults as a normal and reasonable part lof scientific endeavour, whilst all these years they’ve derided sceptics as flat earthers.
Could this be why BBC Radio 4 have a hagiography of Pachauri under the title Profile? Appalling.
It looks that about 5% of Jones brain started implementing basic rules of logic and common sense. Good. I do not think that this “5%” can balance years of lies, deception, falsification, fudging, fraud, bullying and more.
Too little to late. His change of mind=trying to save his a$$.
The public apologys in order to all “deniers”, “flat-earthers”, “non-scientists”, particularly to all who were fighting with this new religion using real science, like M&M, Mosher, Bishop Hill, Watts, JeffId just to name the few.
I agree with the comment on Phil Jones’s answer to Question “H”. Phil’s response is indeed laughable and demonstrates the tunnel vision of global warming believers.
The “Intergovernmental panel on Climate Change” is by definition created to report on “Climate Change.”
Anything less would be considered a failure. Had they reported “don’t worry be happy” they would be out of business – meaning no more fun meetings, money, nice hotels, travel and celebrity status.
I find it interesting and horrifying at the same time that he can with a straight face say that his premise that recent warming is due to the anthropological influence is that they cannot explain it with solar and volcanic forcing.
That’s it, their sole proof that mankind has anything to do with current warming (which he admits is not unique or unusual), is because they have no model that explains it without resorting to conjuring up an outside forcing to make the model work. The outside forcing they happened to settle on was CO2, but they literally have no clue what the true cause is, and have apparently expended very little effort into finding other causes.
It is the logical equivalent of an 8 year old boy saying he is sure there is a monster under his bed that steals his cloths at night, because he cannot explain why he cannot find his shirt in the morning, and both of his sisters tell him they did not hide it.
Larry
People here could do well to read this before they criticise me.
No where does Dr Mann deny there was a MWP or a LIA, he just find that they were muted. He did research and reported that – what a scientist should do – like Dr Jones does as well.
I’ll ask again:
But, like I say, go on, surprise me – show me you are scientists. Lets see everyone here say ‘Oh, it is indeed possible the MWP was muted and now is warmer like Dr’s Jones and Mann think‘. How many takers and how many rebuttals?
Summing up:
[“…Do you, Mr Jones?” – Robert Zimmerman, aka Bob Dylan]
It matters not how many severe fatal flaws stack up against AGW.
With each and every layer the loyal fools dismiss them as not sufficient by themselves to disprove the theory and movement.
Having advocated this Cause of all Causes so far down the road to their Destination of all Destinations it’s too much to face it’s collapse.
Cult members cling to their favorite bromides as they panic, turn aggressive and zombie along in a trance.
E – How confident are you that warming has taken place and that humans are mainly responsible?
I’m 100% confident that the climate has warmed. As to the second question,
( I would go along with IPCC Chapter 9 ) – there’s evidence that most of the warming since the 1950s is due to human activity.
The IPCC relied on a particular paper published in 1990 by Phil Jones in Nature that basically said the UHI effect was trivial, which in turn relied in large part on data from China supplied by professor Wang of Albany, State University of New York.
In describing this data, Jones et al. said “The stations were selected on the basis of station history: we chose those with few, if any, changes in instrumentation, location or observation times.” which in turn was based on the similar statement in Wang et al. “They were chosen based on station histories: selected stations have relatively few, if any, changes in instrumentation, location, or observation times…” The truth of these statements was essential for the papers to be valid, which in turn was relied on in part by the IPCC report. The problem is, they’re not true. And what’s more, somebody must have known it.
SO Jones would go along with the IPCC who relied on the China paper published by Jones himself, as this fraudulent paper stated that the UHI and land use change was trivial Jones is still implying the main cause of any warming is CO2.
You cannot trust this man.
Dr. Robert (05:22:59) :
Thanks for your brilliant charicature of Schmidt.
“Peter Hearnden (10:01:34) :
People here could do well to read this before they criticise me.
No where does Dr Mann deny there was a MWP or a LIA, he just find that they were muted. He did research and reported that – what a scientist should do – like Dr Jones does as well.”
Oh come on Peter. That’s The Son Of Hockey Stick, isn’t it?
See here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/04/jo-nova-finds-the-medieval-warm-period/
One of the most intriguing of the Climategate e-mails is the request by Jones to colleagues to delete their communications with the IPCC. Harrabin didn’t adress this but it leads to the heart of the IPCC problem . That is the disrepancy between the AG1 science report and the scary predictions of the Summary for Policymakers. The key part of this is referred to in the
climatesense-norpag.blogspot .com blog quoted below.
IPCC Scientific Malfeasance.
The entire IPCC evaluation process is flawed to the point of fraudulence. The Summary for Policymakers was finalised and published before the WG1 (Science) section. The editors of the latter were under implicit pressure and in some cases ,I believe explicit instructions to make the latter fit the former instead of the other way around as should have been the case.Where this was not done the conclusions of WG1 were simply ignored by the editors of the Summary. The most egregious case goes to the heart of and in fact destroys the entire AGW paradigm. The key part of the science is in section WG1 8.6 which deals with forcings, feedbacks and climate sensitivity. The conclusions are in section 8.6.4 which deals with the reliability of the projections.It concludes:
“Moreover it is not yet clear which tests are critical for constraining the future projections,consequently a set of model metrics that might be used to narrow the range of plausible climate change feedbacks and climate sensitivity has yet to be developed”
What could be clearer. The IPCC says that we dont even know what metrics to put into the models to test their reliability.- ie we don’t know what future temperatures will be and we can’t calculate the climate sensitivity to CO2.This also begs a further question of what mere assumptions went into the “plausible” models to be tested anyway.
Nobody ever seems to read or quote the WG1 report- certainly not the compiler of the Summary. In spite of the WG1 8.6.4. conclusion the Summary says:
“The understanding of anthropogenic warming andcooling influences on climate has improved sincethe TAR, leading to very high confidence7 that the global average net effect of human activities since 1750 has been one of warming, with a radiative forcing of +1.6 [+0.6 to +2.4] W m–2 ”
This statement is fraudulent on its face when compared to 8.6.4.
Those of us interested in objective science should try to see that the 8.6.4 conclusion gets as much exposure as possible. It deserves to be on the front page of the NY Times, The Guardian quoted by the BBC and read into the Congressional record in the USA.
Peter Hearnden (10:01:34) :
See also here
http://sonicfrog.net/?p=2849
[The fact that the magnitude of the trend for 1975-2009 is smaller than the trend for 1975-98 indicates that there has been no warming from 1998-2009…]
The magnitude of the trend for the longer period is only 0.005 (degrees C per decade) smaller than for the shorter period. That is not a statistically significant difference. So the trends are effectively identical. That does not mean there has been no warming from 1998 – 2009. It means that, within the limits of the statistical significance of the data, the warming has continued at the same rate in the latter period as in the former.
I think it is about time we start calling RC “scientists”, the global cooling deniers
Cause and correlation? There are reports in the UK that following the BBC’s Harrabin interview with Prof Jones that people in the Norwich and Westminster areas of the UK are experiencing unprecedented difficulties with the application of whitewash.
A spokesman said that there was evidence that this was becoming a worldwide issue with similar difficulties being experienced as far west as Penn State and as far east as New Dehli.
“There is much debate over whether the Medieval Warm Period was global in extent or not. The MWP is most clearly expressed in parts of North America, the North Atlantic and Europe and parts of Asia. For it to be global in extent the MWP would need to be seen clearly in more records from the tropical regions and the Southern Hemisphere. There are very few palaeoclimatic records for these latter two regions.”
So, because there’s no substantial record of temps in that side of the world, they get to imagine a “cold spell” in the other hemisphere to balance out the MWP and make it go away in a “global” sense?
It would appear to be the first time that inconclusive evidence is considered untrustworthy instead of being declared to be absolutely true in this whole affair.
Peter Hearnden writes:
” Peter Hearnden (08:12:00) :
Amazing.
People, no one has ever denied there was a MWP. OK?
Please stop spreading myths.
The confusion apparent here may stem from the reality that the magnitude and extent of the MWP (LIA) is, like all science, open to discussion – so most climatologist think the evidence is it might have been muted, but no one knows for sure. Otoh, I am sure most sceptics (like those here) are convinced (utterly convinced, not open to debate – but go on surprise me) the MWP was warmer than now.
But, like I say, go on, surprise me – show me you are scientists. Lets see everyone here say ‘Oh, it is indeed possible the MWP was muted and now is warmer like Dr’s Jones and Mann think‘. How many takers and how many rebuttals?”
You forget once again,that Dr. Mann’s Hockey Stick paper was for the NORTHERN HEMISPHERE part of the planet ONLY,as clearly labeled at the top of that silly chart he made up.One where there is no visible MWP anywhere on it.
There is a website that has for a while showing that MWP was GLOBAL and that it is based on PUBLISHED science papers over the years.
Medieval Warm Period Project
http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/mwpp.php
You need to catch up Peter.
Peter Hearnden (10:01:34) :
I’ll ask again:
But, like I say, go on, surprise me – show me you are scientists. Lets see everyone here say ‘Oh, it is indeed possible the MWP was muted and now is warmer like Dr’s Jones and Mann think‘. How many takers and how many rebuttals?
Can you read? Try the comments since you first asked.
To your question I answer:
1. Although there are serious issues with the current temperature statistics, see here: http://chiefio.wordpress.com/ , if it is warmer by a few tenths degree it is only following the trend from the last ice age, for which we are blessed.
Somewhat on topic, Glantz and Pielke take Trenberth’s finger pointing to task in today’s Boulder Daily Camera – letter to the editor.
http://www.dailycamera.com/letters/ci_14390674#axzz0fXJOLAe2
Peter Hearnden (10:01:34) :
We did mention this one, or didn’t we? sonicfrog has his graph from here:
http://climateaudit.org/2005/03/16/the-significance-of-the-hockey-stick/
And no, i don’t buy Mann’s conclusions, and it’s good that you dropped the initial myth-spreading accusation, Peter.
There appears to be plenty of “evidence” that it was world wide.
Peter Hearnden (10:01:34) :
See this
From: Phil Jones
To: ray bradley ,mann@xxxxx.xxx, mhughes@xxxx.xxx
Subject: Diagram for WMO Statement
Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1999 13:31:15 +0000
Cc: k.briffa@xxx.xx.xx,t.osborn@xxxx.xxx
Dear Ray, Mike and Malcolm,
Once Tim’s got a diagram here we’ll send that either later today or
first thing tomorrow.
I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps
to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from
1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline. Mike’s series got the annual
land and marine values while the other two got April-Sept for NH land
N of 20N. The latter two are real for 1999, while the estimate for 1999
for NH combined is +0.44C wrt 61-90. The Global estimate for 1999 with
data through Oct is +0.35C cf. 0.57 for 1998.
Thanks for the comments, Ray.
Cheers
Phil
Prof. Phil Jones
Peter Hearnden (08:12:00) :
The Viking burial grounds in Greenland are under the present day permafrost. The Vikings, as far as we know, didn’t have pneumatic drills to use to bury their dead. This, not being a computer model, is, presumably, to be regarded as ‘anecdote.’ (Hope I’m not going too fast for you) But the evidence is there in the ground that Greenland was a lot warmer then than now.
Now, try convincing me that in the MWP, which lasted ~400 years, all this heat was held behind a force field generated by the Star Ship Enterprise.
Alternatively, try looking at:
http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/mwpp.php
They list a lot of papers about a lot of places.
George Steiner asked “Could someone please tell me what instrument will measure temperature to an accuracy of two decimal places.”
These are calculated values for trend lines.
It is a statistical technique used to estimate the trend line from a group of variables. It is often called a “least squares” tecnique.
The excellent site shown below can be used to calculate the trend lines (OLS on their site) from HadCRU data
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/
Hey, I found Al Gore!!!!
http://www.globalwarminghoax.com/e107_plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?1951.0
As I have said before many times the MWP database at CO2 Science is an invaluable resource for those interested in the MWP: and whilst sparse it has some good data on the MWP in the southern hemisphere.
http://www.co2science.org/
Kindest Regards
I am glad to see a minimal of gloating in the posts. At the end of the day, all we are after is credible science & the best analysis possible so proper decisions can be made.
WUWT posters are to be congratulated for their decorum & continued focus on the science
Peter Hearnden (10:01:34) :
Define:”muted”.
Cimate Science is the epitome of Postnormal Science, i.e., the epitome of Propaganda as “science” along with the mechanisms of power to enfoce it.
So where is Judith Curry and the rest of these alleged climate “scientists” to admit it – granting, of course, that they won’t because they don’t think rationally enough to have the attached component of responsibility that comes with rational thinking in the first place.
Know thy Enemy.
We all know what “no MWP” means in context; it means that period was, however warm in some regions, less warm that it is globally today.
We all know what the hockey stick did; it showed that globally the recent warming is unprecedented for at least a 1000 years.
And we all know what these revelations mean; the case for unprecedented (therefore CO2 caused) warming is built on a very weak scientific case. Sure it is scientific, it is just very weak. It is so weak that whether one believes it or not rests largely on one’s personal agenda–ie. it is so weak that one has to WANT to believe it.
Dr. Robert (05:22:59) asked: “When will RealClimate cover this and try to do damage control?”
Likely, they won’t.
There is no “damage control” on a series of admissions like this.
Better to hope their followers don’t see the interview and, therefore, don’t question the lack of response.
What would RealClimate say?
“Pay no attention to Phil Jones…he’s gone insane…”
Re: Peter Hearnden (Feb 14 10:01),
That the question is now posed as the “possible” prospect that the present is warmer than the MWP is a “muted” victory for anti-Mann denialist scum (like me). Seems like only yesterday the Hockey Stick was a certainty that only a knuckledragging paid Exxon stooge would dare to question.
As for evidence, I would recommend the collection of MWP studies cited by the Idsos brothers at http://www.co2science.org. Most, but not all of the proxy studies cited there indicate that the MWP existed and was a warm or warmer than the present. Those studies may not be conclusive but they sure as hell make it impossible to claim that current warming is certainly unprecedented. Phil Jones and I agree on that.
It is indeed fascinating that the medievals were able have such an impact on climate without a single SUV. And I suppose we should all be grateful to all that Rennaisance green technology that brought us back from the brink.
Antonio San (09:17:23) :
“All this of course to help POOR countries…”
Would that be the countries using the Euro like Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain?
I know about Connolley but am surprised he is still up to his usual tricks.
I also vividly remember that the Roman Warm Period’s Wiki page was a long and detailed article. I have it as a PDF on a back up DVD. Deleting it from Wikipedia is a HUGE act of censorship and vandalism of history that needs public attention.
Here’s i nice mention of your work with regard to urbanisation of weather stations Anthony.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7026317.ece
Peter Hearnden (10:01:34) :
Maybe we don’t want to bother with trolls Peter.
From Reuters:
“U.N. climate panel admits Dutch sea level flaw
OSLO
Sat, Jan 23 2010OSLO (Reuters) – The U.N. panel of climate experts overstated how much of the Netherlands is below sea level, according to a preliminary report on Saturday, admitting yet another flaw after a row last month over Himalayan glacier melt.”
I wonder if there was a “consensus” on the previous claim?
Before we all get too excited about Jones’s apparent conversion to a degre of scepticism, it is worth noting that Harrabin’s ‘interview’ was conducted ‘online’
…not F2F. (Vide Harrabins R4 discussion on Today)
As we already know that it was done with the help of the UEA press department, there is absolutely no proof that any of the views expressed bear any relationship at all to Jones’ actual views, and leaves him free to claim later that he was under a lot of pressure (eg suicide attempt) and ‘his thoughts at this difficult time were unclear and confused’.
Harrabin also says that he hopes to post more Q&A later. Suggest we send him some further ideas fro questions.
But also beware…I’m not sure that with the dying of interest in the John Terry scandal that Max Clifford isn’t taking a working holiday in Norfolk 🙂
Dr. Jones seems to have lost some of the arrogance he displayed in those emails. Good show old chap. You’ll be a better scientist as a result.
re Roger Knights @ 8:44 – As a lifelong Republican, I can say with certainty that Dick Morris is an idiot. Whenever Morris says something, assume the opposite is true and your friends will consider you brilliant.
re Kailor @ 8:53 – Excellent theory. Not quite complete but excellent nonetheless.
Peter Hearnden (10:01:34) :
I did a Google on your name. I found this from 8 years ago:
Bias of global warming sceptics
http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/00000002D3F0.htm
You are really committed for years now. So what’s your angle? Environmentalism?
Peter Hearnden-
I am glad to hear you and mann think there was a medieval warm period and little ice age. Now my question is: How do you know the rest of the world wasn’t warm? How much data is there and how clear is it? Can we make a confidence assertion about Northern versus Southern Hemisphere temperature proxy record? To me, the hockey stick is clearly in shambles. In light of the Dr. David Deming testimony, I am beginning to wonder if its inception wasn’t due to some overture Al Gore made to government scientists who picked up the ball and ran with it. Will you agree that people who watched Al Gore’s award winning movie featuring the hockey stick and people who glanced at all the hockey sticks in the IPCC reports were probably mislead?
When Climate Cultists’ Grand Poobah hisself repudiates fundamental tenets of AGW’s reigning orthodoxy, the torch will pass to hard-line Warmist ideologues who brook no compromise, defend deficient incoherencies unto very death. As the Gore-blimeys indulge rants ever more extreme, Green Gang propaganda will be exposed for what it as: A collusive attempt by death-eating Luddite sociopaths to sabotage global energy economies with the object of reducing human populations to a primitive rump. (See Keith Farnish, “Time’s Up”, endorsed by GISS/NASA’s excrescent James Hansen.) The sooner AGW’s detritus wafts away, borne on breezes of honesty and sanity, the better every well-meaning citizen will be.
“According to the IPCC we should have seen a global temperature increase of at least 0.2°C per decade”
Cite?
We have seen global temperature increase of around 0.2°C per decade:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1980/to:2008/plot/rss/from:1980/to:2008/trend
= 0.18°C per decade according to the ‘raw data’ link (http://www.woodfortrees.org/data/rss/from:1980/to:2008/plot/rss/from:1980/to:2008/trend).
@ DirkH (08:13:37)
If one accepts McIntyre’s and Wegman’s work then your comment re Mann’s statistical skills should have had quotes around the word “skills.”
Let me state the fact that Jones appears unable to see the 700 lbs gorilla in the room. If he thinks that volcanoes and the Sun are the only two sources of natural variation, the guy needs to go back to undergrad school and get a few meteorology classes under his belt. This certainly lends credence to my contention that the proper undergrad degree for climatologists is a meteorology focused program. Without these classes, these people should not be given the title of climatologist.
Kolya (10:20:16) :
RESPONSE: It is pretty hard to go from a higher slope for 1975-1998 to a lower slope for 1975-2009 unless there has been some drop off in temperatures during the 1998-2009 period. Although I hesitate to say that is due to a (significant) cooling, I would certainly not claim that there has been warming in the 1998-2009 period, significant or not.
OT:
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/thinktanks-take-oil-money-and-use-it-to-fund-climate-deniers-1891747.html
>>Peter Hearnden (10:01:34) :
People here could do well to read this before they criticise me.
>>No where does Dr Mann deny there was a MWP or a LIA, he just find that they were muted. He did research and reported that – what a scientist should do – like Dr Jones does as well.
I’m not sure this is the hill you want to die on.
… making more money by investing in global warming scepticism than has been made from the tens of billions invested so far in so-called clean technologies.
Brilliant.
Jones says the MWP may not have been global ( as we don’t have the data to know) and therefore may not be significant if only large parts of the NH had warmed up.
However global temperatures are averages. If part of the Earth is warmer and the rest is the same, then the average is higher!
( This seems to be what warmists are telling us now – the bits of the world where most people live are not warmer, but coincidentally the bits where nobody lives, like the Arctic, Antarctic and the Pacific Ocean, are hotter, sending the average up)
ML (10:22:15) :
“I think it is about time we start calling RC “scientists”, the global cooling deniers.”
Let those who claimed the moral high ground and labeled all who disagreed with them with this abhorrent term keep it.
Slinging mud back at a debate opponent may be politically in vogue, but that term is not mud. It is the rhetorical equivalent of throwing acid in the face.
So please, lets NOT throw it about. Rather, lets remember to what the term really refers – the deaths of millions of innocents in the name of a political ideology.
Peter Hearnden (08:12:00) :
Amazing.
People, no one has ever denied there was a MWP. OK?
Please stop spreading myths.
The confusion apparent here may stem from the reality that the magnitude and extent of the MWP (LIA) is, like all science, open to discussion –
Oh, so now you’re “open to discussion” … Amazing what a few “gates” can accomplish, isn’t it. I guess “the science is settled” just doesn’t work anymore.
ROTFLMAO.
Kolya,
The punch bowl is gone. You can go ahead and try to refill it with tap water, but the party is over. Give it up. Let the scientists work for a while to validate the surface temp adjustment, which Jones admits are a mess, before your attempt to make deductions to the nearest thousandth of a degree from it.
@Al Gore’s Holy Hologram (05:29:39) :
“Therefore the science of EAU, CRU and the BBC has concluded that the age of our planet is roughly 1100 years old.”
It’s MUCH older than that, closer to 6000 years! October 23rd, 4004 BC as I recall.
“The fact that we can’t explain the warming from the 1950s by solar and volcanic forcing”
Boy, it should be obvious that man is causing warming if Jonesy can’t explain it. On that basis, man must also be responsible for the weather.
I think that Michael Mann is clearly a tougher villain than Phil Jones. He still doesn’t want to feel that his distortions and nastiness against those who disagree with him have been immoral.
If you read the CRU e-mails, you will see that he is actually much more concerned about his career growth, and the ways how to achieve it, and he [Mann] was always the first one who has breached another so far unbroken moral mantinel.
His conscience is next to non-existent. You will have to shoot him thrice *and* push him with your hand before he collapses. I hope it will be soon, too.
My email today to Professor Phil Jones:
Credit where credit is due.
I am slightly uneasy about one particular point. Can we just clarify the “no statistically sigificant warming since 1995” issue.
This just means we cannot rule out the possibility of a ‘flat’ trend since 1995. However, neither can we rule out the possibility of 0.2 deg per decade warming since 1995.
This is the problem with short term trends, i.e. the confidence interval can be so large it’s of little practical use. The warmers are right on this one. You do need 20-30 years data to determine a consistent trend.
Let me get this straight, we are supposed to spend trillions of dollars based on their inability to explain the warming from 19075 through 1998 without a fudge factor based on changes in CO2 concentrations.
Ignorance of natural forcings is no excuse to blame CO2 and to make the whole world change their lifestyles because the climate scientist had to ASS/U/ME that increasing CO2 concentrations was the only possible suspect! What shoddy science! When the model does not fit observed data, you must conclude the model is wrong and change the model! But if you do that, then you have no reason to make the populace give up their lifestyles, liberties and money! Dr Jones, Al Gore and a host of other AGW proponents should go to jail for their duplicity in this cruel HOAX!
Bill Yarber
New Smyrna Beach, FL
Phill Jones is going down and he’s taking every alarmist with him!
Bull Yarber wrote:
“Ignorance of natural forcings is no excuse to blame CO2 and to make the whole world change their lifestyles because the climate scientist had to ASS/U/ME that increasing CO2 concentrations was the only possible suspect!”
It’s not a question of ignorance – it’s downright denial. Post about SITs, ENSO, cloud variance etc on a warmist websit and wait for the barrage of denial…
Peter Hearnden (08:12:00) :
“Amazing.
People, no one has ever denied there was a MWP. OK?”
Personally speaking, I’ve met many and been flamed by hundreds.
Andy D
Why has the Roman Warming Period been deleted from Wikipedia? – someone asked – because Wikepedia is actually Wickedpedia.
“Neil Hampshire (10:33:41) :
These are calculated values for trend lines.
It is a statistical technique used to estimate the trend line from a group of variables. It is often called a “least squares” tecnique.”
Mr. Hampshire
I am surprised that it is ok to express a calculated value to a greater precision than the original measurement it was based on. It is not easy to measure temperature to better than one tenth of a degree centigrade. What is the justification of expressing it to three decimal places as Jones did? Which is to one thousands of a degree centigrade. And why stop at three decimal places then?
As a denialister I’m still waiting for my oil money cheque but it never comes. Probably because Phil Jones gets it all.
www. cru. uea. ac. uk/cru/about/history/
From the Climate Research Units own web site you will find a partial list of companies that fund the CRU.
It includes:
British Petroleum, ‘Oil, LNG’ (BIG OIL)
Broom’s Barn Sugar Beet Research Centre, ‘Food to Ethanol’ (BIG ETHANOL AKA STARVE POOR PEOPLE NOW)
The United States Department of Energy, ‘Nuclear’ (BIG NUCLEAR + BIG CARBON TRADING)
Irish Electricity Supply Board. ‘LNG, Nuclear’ (BIG NUCLEAR + BIG CARBON TRADING)
UK Nirex Ltd. ‘Nuclear’ (BIG NUCLEAR + BIG CARBON TRADING)
Sultanate of Oman, ‘LNG’ (BIG OIL)
Shell Oil, ‘Oil, LNG’ (BIG OIL)
Tate and Lyle. ‘Food to Ethanol’ (BIG ETHANOL AKA STARVE POOR PEOPLE NOW)
Nuclear Installations Inspectorate, ‘Nuclear’ (BIG NUCLEAR + BIG CARBON TRADING)
KFA Germany, ‘Nuclear’ (BIG NUCLEAR + BIG CARBON TRADING)
World Wildlife Fund, ‘Political Advocates’ (BIG ANIMAL HUNTING PRINCE PHILIP)
Greenpeace International, ‘Political Advocates’ (BIG CRAZY)
Marc Sheppard: Climategate’s Phil Jones confesses to Climate Fraude
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/02/climategates_phil_jones_confes.html
Willis:
I have admired your contributions here because they are concise and nicely to the point. So why was your email to Professor Davies so long winded and repetitive? I understand your anger – but it seems you’ve allowed it to cloud your judgement. A pity.
CORRECTION
My response in Indur M. Goklany (11:20:41) is not quite correct. It is possible for the longer slope to be less steep if temperatures stagnate or if there is a drop-off in the rate of temperature increase. Therefore, we need more information to determine how precisely the temperatures behaved. At least from 1999-2008 there doesn’t seem to have been any significant warming (based on Hadley Center data, which I believe uses CRU info.]. See the figure in: Kerr, Richard A. (2009). Global warming: What Happened to Global Warming? Scientists Say Just Wait a Bit, Science 2 October 2009: Vol. 326. no. 5949: 28 – 29, DOI: 10.1126/science.326_28a. That is behind a firewall. A free version of the figure can be seen in the document at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID1548711_code1327811.pdf?abstractid=1548711&mirid=1. [See figure 6.] My apologies for my sloppiness.
John Finn (11:57:20) :
I am slightly uneasy about one particular point. Can we just clarify the “no statistically sigificant warming since 1995″ issue.
This just means we cannot rule out the possibility of a ‘flat’ trend since 1995. However, neither can we rule out the possibility of 0.2 deg per decade warming since 1995.
This is the problem with short term trends, i.e. the confidence interval can be so large it’s of little practical use. The warmers are right on this one. You do need 20-30 years data to determine a consistent trend.
No, we cannot rule out much of anything with a 20-year gap.
No, the warmers are not right on this one, they are vindictive on this one:
to wit: the destruction of the rural station network is blasting a crater in the data.
i.e. – if it doesn’t say what they want it to say, they are making sure that it never says anything period.
Re: Peter B (Feb 14 08:51), IIRC the Volkerwanderung was as a result of the COOLING following the MWP. Unsurprisingly, those most affected were from the mid-Asia continent; they pushed west and drove all the others before them in a kind of cascade, Magyars, Goths, Huns, and so on, who eventually overran a Rome who could no longer draw on local produce so well, let alone the bread basket of North Africa.
You probably wont hear about it soon on Auntie (Australian ABC).
http://abcnewswatch.blogspot.com/2010/02/jones-bbc-interview-missing-in-action.html
Peter Hearnden (10:01:34) :
“People here could do well to read this before they criticise me.’
Half truths and sophersty are not science. Mann’s ignorance is not science. And yes ignorance can be peer-reviewed. Mr. Mann failed to do his homework. He igonred (and still ignores) research which documents the MWP to be a world wide event. He still pretends that it was just a regional issue.
Who else can you reference? You have to do better than that.
But, what exactly is it that you want to debate? Are you claming that there was no effort to discredit the MWP? Or are you claiming, like Mann, that the MWP was not a global event? Or are you claiming that on this site people will not discuss and challenge your opinions?
Regarding the MWP you have already received answers.
Regarding the effort to discredit the MWP you have already reveived answers.
Regarding our willingness to respond to you you already have answers.
Please specify what is your point? Or if you perfer respond to the answers you have already reveived.
Paul
From Icecap.us
“The climate consensus promoted by Big Business, Big Government, Big Media and Big Academia has come unstuck. The shoddy work and partisan promotion by IPCC and its cronies has been exposed, the romantic idea of powering the world with sunbeams and sea breezes has collided with engineering reality, and the public has caught a whiff of the true meaning of green politics – taxes, ration cards and big brother controlling every aspect of our lives.
But it has not been mainstream media illuminating the dark corners of the global warming castle – it is the fast moving people’s media – the internet and the blogosphere. Independent thinkers, retired scientists, amateur detectives and ordinary voters are spreading information and changing public opinion”.
Re: Al Gore’s Holy Hologram (Feb 14 05:32), well, AGHH, would you like to write/retrieve the missing article for Neutralpedia instead????????
John Finn (11:57:20) :
“This just means we cannot rule out the possibility of a ‘flat’ trend since 1995. However, neither can we rule out the possibility of 0.2 deg per decade warming since 1995.
“This is the problem with short term trends, i.e. the confidence interval can be so large it’s of little practical use.”
You’re right. Goklany was incorrect to state “Regardless, this is at odds with the IPCC’s model-based claim that were emissions frozen at 2000 levels then we would see a global temperature increase of 0.2°C per decade.”
In fact temperatures are currently in the middle of the range of IPCC predictions.
Icarus (11:12:23) :
Isn’t the latest consensus that it is worse than expected, and warming faster than expected?
If Jones was contemplating suicide, this is very sad. He may have been over-zealous in defense of his positions, but he had a lot of reinforcement from pronouncements by his colleagues on all fronts (sea level rise, polar bears dying, species shifting/extinction, Arctic melting, drought predictions, Kilimanjaro, tropical forest degradation, demonization of the opposition as sell-outs to the oil lobby, disfunctional computer models, yadda, yadda). While it’s his name in the forefront of Climategate, there should be many, many others in the dock with him on this issue. He shouldn’t feel it’s all on his shoulders.
Just so that no one here gets too carried away – check the responses to this question on Reddit:
http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/b20b8/im_a_global_warming_skeptic_and_i_invite_you_to/
Its going to take a long time to change minds – as this topic has entered realm of belief. People are going to believe what they want. Irrespective of facts or how we got here.
That’s because these sc#m have been caught red-handed and rather than be thrown out and lose power by a citizen’s revolt,they feel it is better to pretend to eat a little humble pie yes keep the agenda alive.
In the future, it would help for Jones’ to consider the individual contributions to global warming from all possible factors:
Soot (black carbon)
CO2
SO2
CO
NO2
Methane
Halocarbons
Ozone
Volatile organics
Cosmic rays
PDO
AMO
El Nino
La Nina
Solar variations/sunspots
Clouds
Water vapor
Planetary albedo variations
De-forestation
UHI
Agricultural tillage practices
Permafrost
Clathrates
Volcanoes
Malenkovitch cycles
Recovery from the LIA
World biomass growth
Defective thermometer positioning
Rural temperature surface stations removal
Defective GW theory
Government pro-AGW grants
Unintentional group-think
Corrupt scientists
Corrupt bureaucrats
Corrupt governments
Some natural or human- or nature-generated influences we haven’t even imagined yet
Willis, another great letter.
Paul A Peterson
Paul, you dismiss Dr Mann’s work “Half truths and sophersty … Mann’s ignorance … yes ignorance …. Mr. Mann … igonred (and still ignores) … pretends…you’ll have to do better than that” . Fine (and I note the your insult – he is Dr Mann) but you leave your views open to a similar response. But, I don’t think science is about simply dismissing other viewpoints?
Wouldn’t it be better to answer my question viz I would like someone here to say ‘Oh, it is indeed possible the MWP was muted and now is warmer like Dr’s Jones and Mann think‘. No one yet is prepared to be the open minded – are you?
My view of the evidence is that the MWP and LIA were muted, of small magnitude, I think that is what the evidence shows. I might be wrong, so might you. I wont have my mind changed by name calling or dismissal of my view but by evidence, reasoned argument and data. Fwiw, I wont go on to accuse YOU of ignonrace, sophistry, pretending, and half truth – I just think you are wrong.
Why do I think that? Because there IS evidence of warmth world wide but at different times. Indeed, I think you should look at the evidence!
Will the CRU at East Anglia U. (what does the “U” connote? “Unprincipled”?) get “snowed” some more by the the latest blast of UK cooling? Will they ever learn? See below also from today’s Daily Mail:
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Met Office warns Britain to brace itself for more heavy snow.
By Kate Loveys
Last updated at 8:50 PM on 14th February 2010
If you dared to think that we have seen the last of the Arctic conditions, think again.
For Britain faces yet more winter chaos with people expected to wake on Wednesday to another blanket of snow.
The South East is forecast to see the worst of the freezing weather with up to 4 inches falling on high ground in Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire Sussex and Kent.
Eastbourne, East Sussex, last Thursday. Kent and East Sussex were deluged with falls of up to 10cm
Lower ground, including London, can expect up to 2 inches of snow to fall overnight.
The rest of the country is set for cold, showery weather which will continue for the remainder of the week with frosts most nights and snow hitting the west coast during the day on Wednesday.
This return of the harsh winter conditions on Tuesday and Wednesday will once again test the UK’s ability to cope with snow and ice.
“Tom P (13:08:29) :
[…]
In fact temperatures are currently in the middle of the range of IPCC predictions.”
Very funny. Which report? Which scenario?
Peter Hearnden (10:01:34) :
People here could do well to read this before they criticise me.
No where does Dr Mann deny there was a MWP or a LIA, he just find that they were muted. He did research and reported that – what a scientist should do – like Dr Jones does as well.
——-
And other have found the opposite ie MWP was worldwide and as warm or warmer that the late part of the 20th century. So what is your point?
“Lucy Skywalker (12:59:40) :
Re: Peter B (Feb 14 08:51), IIRC the Volkerwanderung was as a result of the COOLING following the MWP”
Thanks! That’s actually what I meant – ie if you mean the cooling following the *RWP* (rather than the MWP). There’s even a suggestion (not confirmed as far as I know) that the great barbarian crossing of the Rhine frontier on 31 December 405 or 406 was facilitated by the Rhine freezing over for the first time in living memory, something that caught the Romans by surprise. If true, it would be another evidence of sudden climate change.
Correction:
“And others have found the opposite ie MWP was worldwide…”
George Tobin (09:27:53) :
I think Jones is returning to a more careful scientific position that (if the Climategate emails are indicative) he held before Michael Mann’s half-assed work compelled so many to circle the wagons and harden their rhetoric.
Although the US gets blamed for lots of things unjustly, this is one instance where I’d love to see the full force of the world’s opprobrium rain down on the narcissistic megalomaniac in Pennsylvania, and all who’ve helped to enable him here, especially since the University of Pennsylvania appears to be on a whitewash mission.
If you look at the British Climate Change Email Review’s Issues for Examination, Mann is prominently mentioned in four of the eight issues being investigated. Will he be required to respond?
http://www.cce-review.org/pdf/CCER%20ISSUES%20FOR%20EXAMINATION%20FINAL.pdf
Indur M. Goklany (12:48:57) :
CORRECTION
My response in Indur M. Goklany (11:20:41) is not quite correct. It is possible for the longer slope to be less steep if temperatures stagnate or if there is a drop-off in the rate of temperature increase. Therefore, we need more information to determine how precisely the temperatures behaved. At least from 1999-2008 there doesn’t seem to have been any significant warming (based on Hadley Center data, which I believe uses CRU info.]. See the figure in: Kerr, Richard A. (2009). Global warming: What Happened to Global Warming? Scientists Say Just Wait a Bit, Science 2 October 2009: Vol. 326. no. 5949: 28 – 29, DOI: 10.1126/science.326_28a. That is behind a firewall. A free version of the figure can be seen in the document at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID1548711_code1327811.pdf?abstractid=1548711&mirid=1. [See figure 6.] My apologies for my sloppiness.
That’s clear now. But, Phil Jones’s figures in the Q&A indicate that the rate of temperature increase from 1998/99 to 2009 is only marginally lower than 1975-1998. This is needed to sustain the decadal rate of increase (0.166 to 0.161). As you say above, this is not what most of the temperature records indicate. Have I missed the point here? Is this some strange characteristic of trends over different periods, is it an error, or is it a coverup of the reduction in rate of increase over the last 10 years? Help anyone!
Icarus (11:12:23) : The cite is IPCC WG I Fourth Assessment Report Summary for Policy Makers, page 12.
John Finn (11:57:20) : See my correction at (12:48:57). I would have acknowledged your comment had I seen it earlier. I had taken my dog for a walk, during which it dawned on me I had made a mistake, so I rushed back to correct it without checking the thread properly.
John Finn (11:57:20): rbateman (12:50:06) : I am very queasy about using trends gathered over even 20-30 years, that is why in the preamble to this post I noted that observations spanning “a few decades, a few centuries or even millennia” cover only a brief span in the existence of the earth. The 30-year “rule” for climatic data was based on practical necessity when longer term data were generally unavailable. I hope meteorologists reconsider this, and go to a site-by-site definition. If data are available for 50 years, use 50 years to characterize the climate; if it’s only available for 15 years, use 15 yrs (what other choice does one have?) [Yes, one could develop all kinds of algorithms etc., but then one ought to verify these on the ground before using them. As followers of the AGW debate know, that’s a can of worms].
Tom P (13:08:29) : See above, and correction at (12:48:57). Why don’t you share your calculation that temperatures are running in the middle of the IPCC range?
can people STOP deciding which side of the fence they are on, and then claiming that ‘there is evidence to support it’?
Of course there is evidence to support any position you care to name. You will find evidence to support the notion that the sky is green if you look hard enough. What you should be doing is considering if there is any evidence AGAINST your position, or determining what evidence would completely prove your position, agreeing that with your opponent, and then setting about finding it…
Peter Hearnden (13:39:30):
“I would like someone here to say ‘Oh, it is indeed possible the MWP was muted and now is warmer like Dr’s Jones and Mann think.’ No one yet is prepared to be the open minded – are you?”
No offense intended, but it appears to be you who are not prepared to admit that the MWP was warmer than today: click
[It’s an interactive chart: mouse over the item you want to see. Click on it if you want it expanded.]
My GOD, the flood-gates have opened! Here’s another:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7026932.ece
“The UN body that advises world leaders on climate change must investigate an apparent bias in its report that resulted in several exaggerations of the impact of global warming, according to its former chairman.
In an interview with The Times Robert Watson said that all the errors exposed so far in the report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) resulted in overstatements of the severity of the problem.”
Per PJ: “…it was absolutely necessary to remove the incorrect impression given by the tree rings that temperatures between about 1960 and 1999 (when the email was written) were not rising, as our instrumental data clearly showed they were.”
If the instrumental data showed “not rising” from ’60 to ’99, contradicting the ring data, that invalidates ALL the ring data.
No, I’m not a climatologist; I’ve just spent 20+ years designing and auditing data integrity controls for complex database systems. If part of a data set is unreliable, it is all unreliable.
Mr. Jones statement is the essence of cherry-picking. In a corporate or financial environment, it would be justification for firing and possible criminal charges.
I’ve questioned treemometers since I stumbled across wider rings in the same bristle-cone pine grove being used in one “peer-reviewed” study as a warming proxy, and in a near simultaneous one as a water proxy.
Dendrochronology is solid science for timing. For extended uses, it is guesswork, supported only by other suspect proxies.
Smokey,
No, I said “My view of the evidence is that the MWP and LIA were muted, of small magnitude, I think that is what the evidence shows. I might be wrong, so might you. ”
Is it possible you might be wrong and the MWP was muted?
It aint over ’till the fat lady sings!
Keep on posting/commenting/writing to elected representatives/talking to folk in queues (lines) or wherever… the emotional, political and financial investment in AGW “solutions” is so vast, it won’t stop just because of Prof Jones’ highly nuanced confession.
OT, but amazing that since we now pretty much know that China and India will keep on producing more and more CO2 (and Indonesia and Brazil too unless slash & burn ceases) then any reductions we make – or even the USA- would be useless if AGW be true…. and politicians still want to ruin us!! Demise of Europe & the US, rise of China. Where’s my “learn mandarin” CD?
OOPS! That should be instruments showed “rising.” Sorry.
Smokey, re you image. I’ve looked, the labelled MWP happened at different times! How can you have a MWP, a Medieval Warm Period (a time) at different times? How, well because when it was warm somewhere it was cooler somewhere else. It wasn’t warm in enough places at the same time to give, on average across either hemisphere, more than a muted MWP.
DirkH (13:46:46) :
See for example RA Pielke – Nature Geoscience, 1, 206 (2008). He looks at all the IPCC predictions and compares to the surface and satellite temperatures.
Peter Hearndon –
I agree with you there is evidence that the MWP was muted.
And it was Mann who muted it.
Peter Hearnden (10:01:34) :
People here could do well to read this before they criticise me.
No where does Dr Mann deny there was a MWP or a LIA, he just find that they were muted. He did research and reported that – what a scientist should do – like Dr Jones does as well.
I’ll ask again:
But, like I say, go on, surprise me – show me you are scientists. Lets see everyone here say ‘Oh, it is indeed possible the MWP was muted and now is warmer like Dr’s Jones and Mann think‘. How many takers and how many rebuttals?
Do you deny that Dr. Mann’s “hockey stick” plot of the past millennium’s temperature shows that temperature remains essentially flat until about 1900, then shoots up, like the upturned blade of a hockey stick? Do you deny that Dr. Mann claims that the global temperature at the time of the Medieval Warming Period was less than the peak of the 20th century?
Rubuttals, lets see …
“A 2000-YEAR GLOBAL TEMPERATURE RECONSTRUCTION BASED ON NON-TREERING PROXIES”, Craig Loehle, Ph.D.
http://www.ncasi.org/publications/Detail.aspx?id=3025
Abstract
Historical data provide a baseline for judging how anomalous recent temperature changes are and for assessing the degree to which organisms are likely to be adversely affected by current or future warming. Climate histories are commonly reconstructed from a variety of sources, including ice cores, tree rings, and sediment. Tree-ring data, being the most abundant for recent centuries, tend to dominate reconstructions. There are reasons to believe that tree ring data may not properly capture long-term climate changes. In this study, eighteen 2000-year-long series were obtained that were not based on tree ring data. Data in each series were smoothed with a 30-year running mean. All data were then converted to anomalies by subtracting the mean of each series from that series. The overall mean series was then computed by simple averaging. The mean time series shows quite coherent structure. The mean series shows the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) and Little Ice Age (LIA) quite clearly, with the MWP being approximately 0.3°C warmer than 20th century values at these eighteen sites.
—————-
“Tree-ring and glacial evidence for the medieval warm epoch and the little ice age in southern South America”, Ricardo Villalba
http://www.springerlink.com/content/x0214563n1n44731/
Abstract
A tree-ring reconstruction of summer temperatures from northern Patagonia shows distinct episodes of higher and lower temperature during the last 1000 yr. The first cold interval was from A.D. 900 to 1070, which was followed by a warm period A.D. 1080 to 1250 (approximately coincident with theMedieval Warm Epoch). Afterwards a long, cold-moist interval followed from A.D. 1270 to 1660, peaking around 1340 and 1640 (contemporaneously with earlyLittle Ice Age events in the Northern Hemisphere). In central Chile, winter rainfall variations were reconstructed using tree rings back to the year A.D. 1220. From A.D. 1220 to 1280, and from A.D. 1450 to 1550, rainfall was above the long-term mean. Droughts apparently occurred between A.D. 1280 and 1450, from 1570 to 1650, and from 1770 to 1820. In northern Patagonia, radiocarbon dates and tree-ring dates record two major glacial advances in the A.D. 1270–1380 and 1520–1670 intervals. In southern Patagonia, the initiation of theLittle Ice Age appears to have been around A.D. 1300, and the culmination of glacial advances between the late 17th to the early 19th centuries. Most of the reconstructed winter-dry periods in central Chile are synchronous with cold summers in northern Patagonia, resembling the present regional patterns associated with the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO). The years A.D. 1468–69 represent, in both temperature and precipitation reconstructions from treerings, the largest departures during the last 1000 yr. A very strong ENSO event was probably responsible for these extreme deviations. Tree-ring analysis also indicates that the association between a weaker southeastern Pacific subtropical anticyclone and the occurrence of El Niño events has been stable over the last four centuries, although some anomalous cases are recognized.
Mike Ramsey
Indur M. Goklany (14:03:20) :
Here’s an update of the Pielke comparison:
http://img13.imageshack.us/img13/811/ipccprojections.png
The 1990 IPCC report projected high compared to observed, but current temperatures are very close to the subsequent IPCC projections.
“Peter Hearnden (14:18:32) :
[…]
Is it possible you might be wrong and the MWP was muted?”
Peter, let’s accept for the moment that Vikings were colonizing Greenland and doing agriculture etc. Europe, England, Greenland were a degree warmer than today. Which mechanism should then explain that the rest of the world remained colder than today? Do you know one? By Occam’s razor, i would much rather choose an explanation that doesn’t require such a mechanism, namely that the world in its entirety was warmer than today. Do we have evidence for this? Plenty, see all the links above. Mann comes to a different conclusion, but we know from the Hockey stick controversy that he has a very distinct approach towards the truth. So he’s not exactly trustworthy.
By which mechanism was, in your opinion, Europe and Greenland warmer than today and the rest of the world colder?
What’s kind of interesting to me is when he says this:
“Temperature data for the period 1860-1880 are more uncertain, because of sparser coverage, than for later periods in the 20th Century.”
Ok, this may well be true. Given the difficulties inherent in gathering a long term temperature record due to changes in thermometer technology, calibration, siting, over/under-representation in certain regions, etc., I have my doubts about the accuracy of any “global temperature” record from that time period as well.
But, what then does this say about using freaking tree-rings as temperature proxies? I mean, at least they were using thermometers from 1860-1880, for crying out loud. And “sparse coverage”? C’mon! Please. How many proxy sites were relied upon to make the hockey stick? A lot few than there were weather stations in 1860-1880 I’ll bet.
Seems to me these guys want to have it both ways. Ask pesky questions about something that casts a bit of doubt on their conclusions and they start talking about accuracy and error bars. But if they can mine some data out of some mussel shells that purports to show unprecedented rising temperatures, they’re more than happy to leave it at that and start shouting that the end of the world is nigh.
Dirk ‘H’
“Peter, let’s accept for the moment that Vikings were colonizing Greenland and doing agriculture etc. Europe, England, Greenland were a degree warmer than today. Which mechanism should then explain that the rest of the world remained colder than today? Do you know one? By Occam’s razor, i would much rather choose an explanation that doesn’t require such a mechanism, namely that the world in its entirety was warmer than today. Do we have evidence for this? Plenty, see all the links above. Mann comes to a different conclusion, but we know from the Hockey stick controversy that he has a very distinct approach towards the truth. So he’s not exactly trustworthy.
By which mechanism was, in your opinion, Europe and Greenland warmer than today and the rest of the world colder?”
Dirk, look at the map Smokey has kindly provided. The answer is staring you in the face! Warm spell happened at different times at different places.
Change to atmospheric circulation have a big effect around NW Europe – we can see that this winter 🙁 . Normally wind blows of the Atlantic, this year it harly has = cold winter. But, while Europe and much of west Asia have been cold, very much so, in January, few other places across the globe have. I might ask you why hasn’t everywhere been cold…
So do you agree that it is NOT SETTLED Peter? Have you bothered to read some of the links offered up to you showing the non-mutedness of the MWP? Let the AGW thing go, fight for forest preservation or something similar.
look at this remark from the BBC Q&A
“The phrase ‘hide the decline’ was shorthand for providing a composite representation of long-term temperature changes made up of recent instrumental data and earlier tree-ring based evidence, where it was absolutely necessary to remove the incorrect impression given by the tree rings that temperatures between about 1960 and 1999 (when the email was written) were not rising, as our instrumental data clearly showed they were.”
Here he is admitting forcing the tree ring data into line with the instrumental data.
If the tree ring data shows something, why hide it.
Peter Hearnden (08:12:00)
There is no certainty that the MWP, or any other earlier warm period, was warmer or cooler than the present.
It follows that the IPCC claim that the recent warming is without precident,
is complete nonesense.
There is no case for carbon dioxide abatement.
Peter Hearnden
Do you know the writings of Hubert Lamb? He was the first Director of CRU.
He compiled many books opf which the most relevant for the purposes of the MWP discussions is
Climate, History and the Modern World
ISBN 0-415-12735-1
In it he assembes a great deal of information from around the world to demonstrate a MWP warmer than today that was global. His view was that parts of the world warmed at different times, but there was a core period around 1000-1250AD when the WHOLE world was warmer.
Al Gore in his 1992 book ‘Earth in the Balance’ came to much the same conclusion.
Lambs book is well work seeking ouit as the depth of his evidence is impressive.
Tonyb
Daily Mail 14 02 09 7.00pm Quote:
“Anthony Watts, an American meteorologist and climate-change sceptic, said: ‘It can be shown that they systematically and purposefully, country by country, removed higher-latitude, higher-altitude and rural locations, all of which had a tendency to be cooler.
‘The thermometers were marched towards the tropics, the sea and airports near bigger cities.”
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1250955/Climate-change-doubters-say-UN-data-tampered-grossly-overstate-case-Earth-warming-up.html#ixzz0fYTS1sfJ
In fact I’ve had enough Peter Hearnden. Read these then get back to me.
http://www.si.edu/about/documents/testimony_Soon_7-29-03.pdf
http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/archive/pr0310.html
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/291/5508/1497
http://pages.science-skeptical.de/MWP/MedievalWarmPeriod.html
http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/mwpp.php
http://www.ncpa.org/pub/st279?pg=6
http://joannenova.com.au/2009/12/fraudulent-hockey-sticks-and-hidden-data/
http://tinyurl.com/ye4y73x
http://www.mnh.si.edu/vikings/voyage/subset/vinland/archeo.html
http://www.welt.de/print-welt/article177591/Steinzeitliche_Handelswege.html
http://climateaudit.org/2005/11/18/archaeological-finds-in-retreating-swiss-glacier/
Mike Ramsey
“Do you deny that Dr. Mann’s “hockey stick” plot of the past millennium’s temperature shows that temperature remains essentially flat until about 1900, then shoots up, like the upturned blade of a hockey stick?”
If you look at it, it declines from a muted MWP to a muted LIA. Re Loehle’s paper, again, look at the data provided by ‘Smokey’ – and then find me a contiguous and large magnitude, MWP….
If, regardless of his blindness, he’s found an acorn, won’t you be happy in November?
If 1860 – 1880 are more uncertain, 1990 -201x are growing in forced uncertainty, due mainly to the ongoing policy of removing more and more stations of historical length.
If we have not reached the culling magnitude of a complete disconnect requiring a “hide the declice splice” yet , it’s not far off.
Continuity of Record: Meet the Modern Shredding Period.
Based on my reading of Climategate: The CRUtape Letters, it seems quite unfair that Jones is the only one that should suffer after all the years of corruption in climate science. Indeed, based on the Climategate emails I attend to agree with the authors Steven Mosher and Thomas Fuller, that he is not “the leader of the gang”. Who could it be? No need to elaborate – we all know…
“All that is needed is one major G8 country to get a government elected that decides enough is enough, and denounce AGW. It could be the next UK elections.”
Hahaha! I only wish that were the case. Both the main opposition party (the Conservatives) and the UK’s third biggest party (the Lib Dems) are firmly in the pro-AGW camp with Labour. As to who actually wins the next election: my money’s on The Government.
What does mr. president think about this? Is he as bad informed as our Dutch minister who was an blind activist herself? Or does he want to be laughed at, at every speech to come?
Hmm, I see now it’s best to not read the ‘comments’ sections of these articles. What a shambles.
When climategate first started I predicted it was just a matter of time before one of the major players made a dash for the exit sign. On the basis that they would be the only one to come out smelling of roses and have a chance to make money out of it.
Although the real ‘trick’ here would be to go through the exit door whilst shedding all the rubbish and leaving it in the room for others to trip over.
Sounds like Phil could be inching towards the door..
Peter Hearnden, I am glad that you admit you may be wrong. I will admit this also. A good first step. Please explain to me why policy is being based on what you may be wrong about and not what I may be wrong about? Seems to me that policy should be based on what is actually happening. No one knows with absolute certainty what drives climate ( I happen to think there are many) and if we are outside of natural variability. If anyone makes the claim to know with absolute certainty, they are lying. You are confusing weather with climate regarding the MWP. It is very likely that there were cold events during the MWP, just as there are today. Both warm and cold events which you are using to muddy the waters of this discussion. Your goal it seems is to throw a wrench in the discussion and not actually discuss anything. The “evidence” you have provided is under serious dispute, and has lost a substantial amount of credibility which you seem to be ignoring. You feign admission of being mistaken, but it is actually a distraction tactic, albeit a poor one.
I still believe Jones has not gone far enough. He should now denounce the AGW theory completely and start again. Any other course of action still means he should be charged with fraud, and if found guilty be punished accordingly. To me at least his actions thus far smells of trying to excuse this past actions and escape punishment. I suppose next we’ll see Al Gore doing the same? Perhaps, perhaps not. BUt if Al Gore does the same then it’s really a trick to get us off their backs, and leave open the possibility to re-charge the AGW myth down the track when people have gone tired of it and the world warms again. No, they must be brought to account NOW and they must pay the piper. They have already wasted hundreds of billions of dollars, we don’t want them to repeat it again in the future.
“Tom P (14:44:14) :
Here’s an update of the Pielke comparison:
http://img13.imageshack.us/img13/811/ipccprojections.png
”
It’s a pity the graph doesn’t say which scenario from IPCC AR3 it uses. All i can tell is all the scenarios from IPCC AR3 seem to have overestimated actual CO2 emissions to a certain degree. And the range of the scenarios is about 0.3 to 0.5 deg C rise compared to 1990, and according to the graph we’re at 0.4. So it looks like you’re right, Tom. For the time being…
Tony’b’
I have a copy of another of his books ‘Weather climate and human affairs’. H.H. Lamb knew of the problems raising greenhouse gas concentrations would bring – he makes that clear in the book. What i don’t understand is why is it so unthinkable that research into past climate had to end with his view? And why does the map provided by ‘smokey’ show the MWP to happened in different places at different times if it was contiguous?
Peter Hearnden, re: Smokeys Link looks like it blasts any claim you are making about the MWP. I guess that it was good that you admitted you might be wrong, since you clearly are.
David Ball
“Peter Hearnden, re: Smokeys Link looks like it blasts any claim you are making about the MWP. I guess that it was good that you admitted you might be wrong, since you clearly are.”
Does it? How can it if the MWP’s happen at different times – as the map clearly shows?
Re policy. Hang on I though nothing came out of Copenhagen and it was a triumph for inaction?
Peter Hearnden (14:18:32),
You completely misquoted me; maybe you were quoting someone else. But no matter. Your question is:
“Is it possible you might be wrong and the MWP was muted?”
It is always possible that I’m wrong. I’m wrong as much as Bohr, Tesla, Einstein or anybody else.
But before declaring me wrong, what exactly are we talking about? Please quantify or define “muted.” As I understand the debate, the question is whether the MWP was, or was not, warmer than today, and whether it was a global event or a local event.
I think it is a fact that Michael Mann was wrong with his Hockey Stick algorithm, which produced a hockey stick shape even when random red noise or baseball scores were the input. And Mann’s Hockey Stick chart showed no noticeable MWP or LIA.
Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick showed the result when Mann’s data errors were corrected: click
Is Harvard also wrong? click
Finally, love him or hate him, Viscount Monckton presents a thoroughly researched pdf file showing the MWP was both global and warmer than now. No ad homs, please. Dispute the data he presents, if you can.
Tom P:
Here is a graph showing the IPCC’s projections [they don’t make predictions, which must be validated]: click
Indur M. Goklany (14:03:20) :
Icarus (11:12:23) : The cite is IPCC WG I Fourth Assessment Report Summary for Policy Makers, page 12
Thank you. That page says:
“Since IPCC’s first report in 1990, assessed projections
have suggested global average temperature increases
between about 0.15°C and 0.3°C per decade for 1990 to
2005. This can now be compared with observed values
of about 0.2°C per decade, strengthening confidence in
near-term projections.”
0.18°C per decade as measured from the satellite record is well within the IPCC’s 1990 projection. The page also says:
“For the next two decades, a warming of about
0.2°C per decade is projected for a range of SRES
emission scenarios.”
Obviously we shall have to wait and see what happens in the next two decades, but as we have seen a warming of 0.18°C per decade over the last three decades, that doesn’t seem unreasonable. The IPCC have been right for the last two decades and that can indeed give us some confidence in their projection for the next two decades as well.
Peter Hearnden (16:05:17) :
“…the MWP’s happen at different times – as the map clearly shows…”
The MWP extended over more than 400 years.
I have a suggestion for all the readers here at WUWT. For some time now, I have been sending messages to the Nobel Prize website….http://nobelprize.org/contact/index.html
To the Nobel Prize Committee, I am just wondering about something: Has a recipient ever been asked to give back a Nobel prize? Specifically, now that global warming has been proved beyond a shadow of a doubt to be nothing but a scam, when can we expect that you will be asking Al Gore for his Nobel prize back?
I would love to see this site bombarded with questions like this. If nothing else, it would be very entertaining if some sympathetic media found out that they were sloughing off thousands of emails.
“Icarus (16:20:36) :
[…]
The IPCC have been right for the last two decades and that can indeed give us some confidence in their projection for the next two decades as well.”
Well. IPCC AR3 came out in 2001 and has a span from 0.3 to 0.5 compared to 1990. We were at 0.3 in 1990 already. So don’t be too confident. Projecting 9 years into the future is childs play when you have such large spans.
I don’t think Phil Jones “confirmed what skeptics have long suspected” (to quote the poster), at least not all of those.
– Neither the rate nor the magnitude of recent warming is exceptional: fair enough, as the rate in 1910-40 was the same. There is a caveat, though, that that is not the main argument for the case for AGW, and – if GG AGW was true – this alone would neither prove nor disprove it.
– There was no significant warming from 1998-2009: Jones claims the opposite, that the trend from 75-98 is essentially the same as the 75-10 trend (0.166 to 0.161 with error margins presumably larger than 5/1000ths of a degree). That means that the past 10 years have warmed just as much the previous twenty years (otherwise the trend should be lower).
– IPCC models may have overestimated warming: this conclusion is drawn in the same boldface from the previous conclusion. One may argue that 0.16 C/dec is lower than the 0.2 C/dec predicted, but there is different models, some more sensitive than others (with the complications that the more sensitive the model is, the longer the time-constant/transient of the response). Anyway, I don’t think one can conclude that based on anything Jones said
– Systematic upward bias in impacts: This is also a sequitur from the last two claims, since neither of them hold based on what Jones said, this can’t be made based on what Jones said.
– The logic behind attribution to well-mixed greenhouse gases is faulty: again, not based on anything Jones said. Jones said he would go along with Chapter 9 of AR4 (http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-chapter9.pdf) which attributes AGW to the greenhouse gas emissions of the A in AGW. Jones just didn’t say explicitly that greenhouse gas emissions are the main driver.
– The science is not settled: I am not sure where this is in the bold italics used by the poster, perhaps that Jones said that the MWP is still under debate? I wouldn’t summarize this as “the science is not settled”
– There is a tendency in IPCC reports to leave out inconvenient findings, especially in the summary for policy makers: Jones said that his “trick” is well-known to specialists in the field and the divergence is discussed in the relevant IPCC chapter. Perhaps the second half of the argument can be made.
In any case, I was a little disappointed in this post, because from the title and the introductory summary (with the bullet points that I have tried to address) it seemed that Jones had said unexpected things in that interview. What he said is actually the run-of-the-mill arguments so to speak (for AGW proponents because those are the arguments they are making).
Which brings me to my final point: I frequently visit this site, but, sometimes I get a irritated by the, how shall I say, sensationalism that I feel leads to this reading things into what people said, that they really didn’t say or ascribing sinister motives to the “other” side (which is what AGW proponents are also doing) . The theory of AGW is not a “hoax” and scientists like Jones are not (consciously) trying to fool the public, they are – in my opinion – wrong in their conclusions (for some of the same reason that the poster alluded to) just like many very intelligent scientists and majority of scientists have been before (with one patent clerk being right in one case).
Hopefully, my comment is seen as constructive. Based on the arguments above, I don’t see that Jones revealed anything new – wittingly or unwittingly.
And my apologies if I have repeated some points already addressed by previous posters/repsonses (e.g. Icarus). No need to repeat those.
Al Gore’s Holy Hologram (05:32:18) :
And why has the Roman Warm Period’s page from Wikipedia been deleted???????????!
Google ‘Connolley wikipedia’ in order to get a straight answer.
Prior to the AGW hysteria, the prevailing view was that climate change is cyclical – 25 to 30 year cycles, in fact, of alternating warming and cooling.
We have just been through a warming cycle, so if this theory is correct then it is reasonable to assume we are now slipping into a cooling cycle. Further, there is largely ignored, but nonetheless peer-reviewed, published material available supporting the notion that this will be a particularly harsh cooling cycle. The increasingly severe winters in the northern hemisphere for the past three years would tend to support that theory.
If that is indeed the case, then over the next two decades the world will desperately need three things in excess: food, energy and finance. Food to replace failed crops in places where agriculture has been impaired, energy to provide warmth, transport and so on, and money to ease the suffering of those worst affected.
Is it just then coincidence that we are entering this period with:
– a looming food crisis due in no small part to the diversion of food to the production of ethanol, largely in response to AGW hysteria;
– a looming energy crisis due to a Quixotian fascination with windmills for the past decade, rather than building REAL power stations – again in direct response to AGW hysteria;
– most western nations technically bankrupt due to the global financial crisis, a situation now being exacerbated by governments’ preoccupation with the “need” for carbon taxes, again in response to AGW hysteria?
Is it not just possible to foresee us looking back in a decade or so at what will then be regarded as the greatest human catastrophe in our 30,000 year history?
The backers and perpetrators of the monstrous hoax known as AGW come from many and diverse groups and backgrounds, with many diverse agendas. What they virtually all share however, is an unshakable belief that the world is dramatically overpopulated, and a vast “culling of the herd” is required.
Is it possible that this is precisely what is going to happen, and what was actually intended all along?
Hearnden, you have a talent for obfuscation. Muddy the waters and blur the points of contention. There is no discussion going on here whatsoever. Your statement “I may be wrong” was an obvious cover for your real intention. You take advantage of the general public’s lack of knowledge in climate, but it will NOT wash here. Funny how you also focused only on Copenhagen when refering to policy. Another attempt to control the discussion. Fail.
Given the magnitude of the fraud, it would seem incumbent upon the Attorney General to investigate an prosecute the scientist and institutions that have knowingly perpetrated and defrauded the taxpayer of their taxes. I understand that we have an international audience at WUWT and would suggest that the relevant authority be sought out to prosecute the individuals and institutions that have conspired in this clear abuse of the publics trust. Perhaps it will temper those individuals and institutions against further betrayals of the faith that the public has vested in them.
Is it time to look for evidence where in the past 15 years Dr Jones made statements that contradict his Q&A. If the Q&A represents his true understanding of climate, then why was he not saying that publicly for the last 15 years? While his Q&A is refreshing we really need to understand what was driving the push towards “climate panic”.
This man is excremental. There is no credibility in anything he might say now. He, of course, should go. But the ‘big boys’ who make money on all the carbon trading are still there making monkeys out of the governments and all of us. They only thing that might turn the tide on all this insane carbon trading game is that the western economies are all more or less backrupt. Marvellous ain’t it. We are already stuffed! Can we be doubly stuffed? Don’t hold your breath!
oops – should be bankrupt.
Peter Hearnden (15:19:16) :
Mike Ramsey “Do you deny that Dr. Mann’s “hockey stick” plot of the past millennium’s temperature shows that temperature remains essentially flat until about 1900, then shoots up, like the upturned blade of a hockey stick?”
If you look at it, it declines from a muted MWP to a muted LIA. Re Loehle’s paper, again, look at the data provided by ‘Smokey’ – and then find me a contiguous and large magnitude, MWP….
You have a strange definition for the word muted. What is your definition for the word “is”?
Mike Ramsey
Jimbo (15:17:42) :
In fact I’ve had enough Peter Hearnden.
But Peter Hearnden doesn’t want an answer. He wants to be able to tell his mates that he’s been on WUWT, and we couldn’t answer him. So everytime we do, he changes the question.
Phil has engaged in a “limited hangout”; admitting that, oh, the data may be haphazard, but AGW still exists!
Bollocks! Admit that you made up that data, Phil! Repeat after me: “There is no truth to my claims of anthropogenic global warming.”
“I lied to reap untold millions.”
“Michael Mann and I gamed the peer-review system.”
from realclimate blogger:
Sorry, but you chaps still aren’t getting “it”. I am on your side and I see that you still aren’t getting “it”. The problem is the defensiveness and obfuscation of the Team (as they call you). I see it and I am on your side. Let the “deniers” have what they want – data; code; public debate. Surely you all will “win” in that process with the facts. Only then will they relent.
[Response: Maybe on a different planet. There is more data than you can poke a stick at, millions of lines of code in the public domain, and climate scientists tripping over themselves to do outreach at schools, churches, clubs, museums, TV, radio and music hall. I’m collecting ‘we surrender’ emails from the sceptics as we speak…. – gavin]
Dr. Jones should reflect a little more on what he’s saying at the end. His last answer when he defends his use of the words “trick” and “hide the decline” is really not satisfactory. Jones can call it hiding a “well known” divergence instead of hiding a decline if he wants to, but the operative verb is still hide…. that is hide as in hide from the reader and hiding something from the reader is not just a trick of convenience it’s trickery.
Florian (16:47:48) : Thank you for your comments, which I think are very good. In the following I have repeated (most of ) your points, with my response following each in brackets.
[The rate may not be the main argument but it is one that various groups have used. See, e.g., http://www.evergreen.edu/sustainability/docs/globalwarmingthescientificevidence.pdf. Regarding the magnitude, it now seems the magnitude of the MWP is under debate. If the CWP were exceptional, there would be no basis for further debate.]
[See comments at 11:20:41 and 12:48:57).]
[See comments at 11:20:41 and 12:48:57).]
[See responses to the previous two.]
[
Take a look at Jones’ answer to question H: “The fact that we can’t explain the warming from the 1950s by solar and volcanic forcing – see my answer to your question D.” I’m sorry but this is based on poor logic, as noted before. There overlooks the possibility that there may be other forcings, as well as sources of internal variability. ]
[(In addition to his response to question H, which accepts the premise that the MWP is under debate (see also Harrabin’s accompanying report at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8511701.stm, see question N (and response.) In that he says, “I don’t believe the vast majority of climate scientists think this. This is not my view”, where “this” seems to be referring to “the debate is over”.]
[Please read my comment in the post. It suggests that this fits into part of a pattern where critical factors/caveats are omitted. I don’t pin this just on Jones.]
For Vern:
I don’t know of any examples of taking Nobel prizes back but there is some kind of precedent with respect to Zimbabwe’s dictatorial president Robert Mugabe. Shortly after coming to power he was mistakenly awarded 3 or 4 honourary degrees from universities in the UK and the US.
Mugabe was handed a flourishing viable country on a plate and he has wrecked it totally by vicious acts of genocide and ruthless violence towards his own citizens — almost completely destroying both the agricultural industry and the economy. All for no good reason.
And, to the best of my knowledge, all his honourary degrees a have been revoked.
Certainly Al gore in no way deserved a Nobe Prize nor did his co-recipient who heads up the IPCC. And both should certainly have their prizes revoked.
I’ve just been checking this guy Peter Hearnden out. Seems to be a ‘birk’ from way back judging by the numerous irksomely irrelevant and pedantic comments he’s wont to make. You get ‘birks’ like this from time to time I’m afraid. Just needs to be ‘treated with ignore’ methinks.
Doug
Peter Hearnden,
you are being silly here because that link to Dr.Mann and his H.S. paper has long been discredited,not only that the “muted” MWP as YOU put it was invented by that same man.Nobody else thinks it is a feeble warm period except for a few fanatical AGW believers.
Just about everyone else who has published papers about the MWP have shown it to be much warmer than the LIA (which also barely show up in Mann’s paper).I posted the link to a website that has a growing list of published science papers attesting to the existence of a GLOBAL MWP,and yet you continue to hang onto a discredited paper published by Dr. Mann.
Greenland was far warmer than today,800 years ago.A few Viking colonies were able to GROW crops there,where it is now frozen today.How can you ignore that fact and many more attesting to a MUCH warmer climate?
That is sad.
I think you are running on empty here and I suggest that you drop the absurd weasel words you have been using,in the continued defiance of decades of published papers,that clearly documents a warmer climatic period over 800 years ago.
Imagine that anyone still thinks that Dr. Mann has something credible to say after all these months exposing him as a compromised scientist with a political agenda to slide on.
That is sad.
For many years (since the mid 1970’s), I have known that both the MWP and the LIA climatic periods were way out of the ordinary,and history alone shows that,and yet we have some people idiotically try hard to minimize them to to a mere blip,for the purpose of pushing pseudoscience that are for sale in some parts.
I for one no longer give a dam what Dr. Mann,Dr. Jones and other of that group who have been operating far below the standard of what a honest scientist is supposed to be,because frankly they are full of it!
Peter when will you let go of the AGW ideology and rediscover the joy of science research?
“muted”
ROFLMAO!
Try Climate Audit.
Peter Hearnden (14:18:32) :
Are there problems with the Mann Hockey Stick?
Sunsettomy: “Nobody else thinks it is a feeble warm period except for a few fanatical AGW believers.”
I don’t think climate scientists would describe the MWP as a “feeble warm period”. Here is one description:
“Period of relative warmth in some regions of the Northern Hemisphere in comparison with the subsequent several centuries. Also referred to as the Medieval Warm Epoch (MWE). As with the ‘Little Ice Age’ (LIA), no well-defined precise date range exists. The dates A.D. 900–1300 cover most ranges generally used in the literature.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/11/medieval-warm-period-mwp/
And: “…the period A.D. 1300–1900 (LIA as defined by SB03) contains a discernible warm period in almost all series, although rarely at the same time. Similarly, the period A.D. 900–1300 (MWP as defined by SB03) contains a discernible cold period in almost all series, though, again, rarely at the same time.”
http://iri.columbia.edu/~goddard/EESC_W4400/CC/jones_mann_2004.pdf
So it may be that, as with many general terms, “Medieval Warming Period” is a catch-all expression used to encompass warmer climate events at different times and places within a period of time that is open-ended rather than strictly delineated.
Ball,
Your attitude is exactly why few people ever come here and offer an alternative (ie the science) view here.
I wont be driven away but, for the time being, I’ve had enough of the contempt for other views that passes for debate in this place.
Do people here want to debate?
[Reply: Yes, they do. Very much so. ~dbs, mod.]
Re: Indur (20:25:20)
Thank you for taking the time to respond. I probably slightly misread your post as I took it to mean that Jones himself made all those claims. As to
(1) Rate of change: fair enough. Advocacy groups (evergreen.com I assume is one) may use such arguments, but the main argument used by AGW proponents is – as you said – lack of other “explanations”. This wasn’t news to me, but perhaps to many other readers.
(2) – (4) Again all hinge on the trend, and we don’t really have enough information based on what Jones says. However, if the trend flattened in 98 and was a straight line from 75-98 it should have dropped. What happened instead is that there is this jump around 1998, and then temperature stayed roughly at that height. I did a regression with HadCrut3v (http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/hadcrut3vgl.txt) just now, here is what I get (2009 is only through August):
75-1998 : +0.181 oC / decade
75-2009 : +0.171 oC / decade
98-2010 : +0.007 oC / decade
that means that most of warming for 2001-2010 mostly happened at once at the beginning of the decade and temperatures then stayed put. Apart from that I get slightly higher trends (I used annual averages to calculate trends), Jones can both truthfully say that the trend is (mostly) uninterrupted and that temperatures have not changed since 98 (or 95 for that matter). This jump is actually quite noticeable in the numbers.
I don’t think that models for AR4 have been disproven have this point, it takes longer than that (more like 20+ years, e.g. Hansen’s forecast from 88 can be safely said to have been disproven)
(5) My disagreement over the attribution has more to do with language. I do agree with you (and Lindzen) that the logic is faulty. It was more that AGW proponents (climate scientists, not Greenpeace) have claimed before that the lack of a better explanation is evidence – so I disagreed with the word “confirmed” at the beginning of your bullet points (since that had – to me – already been confirmed), but this is splitting hairs.
(6) I overread that in my second reading of the post, plus it’s the title of your post, so maybe, overall, I overreacted a little.
(7) There is a tendency to leave out/brush over important information in IPCC reports: Jones claims it’s in the report in Chapter 9, not every detail can be repeated in the summary. What’s important or not is perhaps open to argument (and Jones is a dendrologist, and I am not). But this is again splitting hairs, since I think for two much is inferred about temperaturs within fractions of degrees hundreds of years ago from tree-rings. Boreholes and icecores seem far better to me.
One thing I did notice now is that Jones makes a rather specious claim regarding the MWP which was the biggest news to me, namely that the NH shows a clear MWP, but that NH and SH are not always in lock-step, based on our current temperature record. However, the MWP spanned 200yrs, and for the instrumental record temperatures have moved in lock-step (i.e. global warming has occured in both hemispheres) on those time-scales.
Climate Science – You’re Doing It Wrong
http://www.greenbusiness.co.uk/2010/02/climate-science-youre-doing-it-wrong.html
(Demotivational Poster)
Peter Hearnden, please note that Michael Mann himself said that he has an inbuilt bias towards forced climate change. Yet you reference this self-confessed, biased scientist. Read this below and tell me you still have faith in his work. I don’t!
—
“Modellers have an inbuilt bias towards forced climate change because the causes and effect are clear.”
“General circulation modelling of Holocene climate variability”,
by Gavin Schmidt, Drew Shindell, Ron Miller, Michael Mann and David Rind, published in Quaternary Science Review in 2004.)
http://www.meteo.psu.edu/~mann/shared/articles/Schmidtetal-QSR04.pdf
Given the Q & A and the responses from PJ (and maybe even Harrabin being the questioner), I am fascinated not only by the answers but trying to guess what is going on.
1. Why Harrabin?
2. Why now?
3. I assume that the written answers will have been the result of much work and thought with a full understanding of the implications of the answers given. Therefore, why has he given the answers he has given?
4. PJ will know that he has “flung the door wide open” on The Hockey Stick, The Hockey Team, MWP and the accuracy of temperature records. So why did he allow himself to get involved in the Q & A and why has he chosen this platform to state his views and why now?
My best guess? PJ is a human being just like the rest of us. He has enjoyed a successful career, position and status. Over the years he has involved himself in a process that, bit by bit, has thrust him forward as a “world expert”.
Along the way he has made small compromises in accuracy, method and objective and associations (none of which were particularly wrong or bad at the time). Then, suddenly, he is looking at a whole chain of these events, that together, add up toto a false representation of his current perception of the true position.
PJ, at the human level. now has serious issues to face. These range from dealing with his career, his ability to earn money and maintain a reputation – through to keeping himself out of trouble with his employers and the law.
I would therefore assume that this Q & A is entirely to do with the paragraph above and will form the basis of his strategy for his future.
In any future interview or questioning, he will restate his answers and say that these have always been his views. He has admitted his human flaws and who hasn’t got them (I should be working now – but I am writing this because it is more interesting!) so he is positioning himself as slightly disorganised, misquoted and misunderstood.
He is clearly “dumping” the rest of the Hockey Team and leaving them to look after themselves as he has more important issues to attend to.
Because i am a nice person, I am now starting to feel sorry for PJ (i.e. the fact that he is in this “spot”) – and that, I would suggest, is the strategy.
Where’s Al Gore?
Peter Hearnden (08:12:00) :
“But, like I say, go on, surprise me – show me you are scientists. Lets see everyone here say ‘Oh, it is indeed possible the MWP was muted and now is warmer like Dr’s Jones and Mann think‘. How many takers and how many rebuttals?”
The biggest single icon for CAGW hypothesis was the Mann et al 2000y mean global temperature anomaly chart based on tree ring data – the infamous ‘hockey-stick graph’. This chart was published endless times in the MSM and, I suspect helped convince a large number of people around the world that the hypothesis was correct.
We now have good reason to suspect that the graph is incorrect. Jones says that you can’t trust tree ring records after about 1960, at least for the trees in the original hockey stick. The CRU cabal were confused that the Briffa Yamal tree ring data showed strong cooling for the recent period and had to use the ‘trick’ of grafting thermometer data after this point to retain the steady upward warming trend of the graph. So tree ring data cannot be trusted to give correct measurement of temperature.
Therefore if Mann et al were honest, they would have immediately told the world their graph was suspect, rather than trying to conceal the truth. Other ‘non-tree ring reconstructions show a completely different picture:-
“A 2000y Global Temp Reconstruction Based on Non-tree ring Proxies”, Craig Loehle, Ph.D.
http://www.ncasi.org/publications/Detail.aspx?id=3025
Mann and Jones: the Milli Vanilli of Climate Scientists!
http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2010/02/phil-jones-and-michael-mann-milli.html
For Ted Swart
….Certainly Al gore in no way deserved a Nobe Prize nor did his co-recipient who heads up the IPCC. And both should certainly have their prizes revoked.
Eggszactly…. So, let’s get this campaign started!
Song of the Cru.
Fudging, shedding
Culling, shredding
Hiding, losing
Denying, abusing.
@ Lucy Skywalker (12:59:40) : Re: Peter B (Feb 14 08:51), IIRC the Volkerwanderung was as a result of the COOLING following the MWP. Unsurprisingly, those most affected were from the mid-Asia continent; they pushed west and drove all the others before them in a kind of cascade, Magyars, Goths, Huns, and so on, who eventually overran a Rome who could no longer draw on local produce so well, let alone the bread basket of North Africa.
Lucy, I think you mean the Roman Warm Period. What followed were the Dark Ages. It was during this period that the Huns and the Goths overran Europe, sacked Rome, and generally pillared and plundered. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the Plague of Justinian took place at this time also. Cold means disease..,just as it would 800 years later when the Black Death occurred at the onset of the Little Ice Age.
Tenuc (02:34:07) :
“…the Briffa Yamal tree ring data showed strong cooling for the recent period and had to use the ‘trick’ of grafting thermometer data after this point to retain the steady upward warming trend of the graph. So tree ring data cannot be trusted to give correct measurement of temperature.”
No it doesn’t. The Yamal data became hotly debated precisely because its chronology is consistent with the recent observed warming.
Loehle’s paper includes his later correction in which he shows that his proxies are predominantly in the northern hemisphere (fifteen out of eighteen). In spite of this he takes a simple mean of the proxies in order to extract a single plot – hardly a global analysis. Finally he states that the MWP was not significantly warmer than today.
This hardly paints “a completely different picture” to that described by Jones.
Corrected Yamal data: click
The single tree [YAD061] that made a hokey stick: click. Without YAD061… no hokey stick pattern.
Nice trick, eh? Too bad he was caught.
Smokey (07:55:01) :
Corrected Yamal data: click
The single tree [YAD061] that made a hokey stick: click. Without YAD061… no hokey stick pattern.
Nice trick, eh? Too bad he was caught.
————-
Reply:
How geographically limited is just one tree? (and are they sure they didn’t get the wood core backwards??)
Smokey (07:55:01) :
“Without YAD061… no ho[c]key stick pattern.”
Not true!
http://img514.imageshack.us/img514/413/oyad06.png
Mann corrected by his intellectual superior.
Vern, we are talking about the Nobel Peace Prize, not one of the Nobel prizes for real accomplishments. How Nobel Peace Prizes have been awarded for peace in the Middle East? Do we have peace in the Middle East?
Look at some of the other winners of the Nobel Peace Prize. You’ll find mass murders and terrorists in that group. The Nobel Peace Prize is an entirely political award.
Tom P,
You’re just funnin’ with us, yes? Using a graph based on CRU data?? Produce the raw treemometer data.
Florian/b> (00:30:22) : Thanks for your responses, and the regression calculations. I was planning to do something like that. Your calculations:
75-1998 : +0.181 oC / decade
75-2009 : +0.171 oC / decade
98-2010 : +0.007 oC / decade
clearly indicate that one should look askance at the mantra, “things are worse than we thought.”
And I agree that “Jones can both truthfully say that the trend is (mostly) uninterrupted and that temperatures have not changed since 98 (or 95 for that matter).”
Regarding “I don’t think that models for AR4 have been disproven have this point, it takes longer than that (more like 20+ years, e.g. Hansen’s forecast from 88 can be safely said to have been disproven),” let me make two points.
Firstly, I don’t think one should have to disprove the AR4 models. The modellers should have to prove that they give the correct results, and not only for projections of the average global temperature. And in fact these models have not been validated using data outside of the range that were used to formulate the models.
I have a discussion of this (on pages 12-13) in a draft paper that is available at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID1548711_code1327811.pdf?abstractid=1548711&mirid=1. I’m of the opinion that they have failed validation in that they are unable to express accurately, in sufficient geographic detail, temporal variations in temperature and precipitation simultaneously (according to even the IPCC and a report on modeling from the US Climate Change Science Program Office) even for historical observations. If they cannot do this for historical data, why should one trust it for future projections? The burden of proof should b on the modelers. [BTW, as you probably well know, this is ine of the reasons why it is important to contain the magnitude/extent of the MWP.]
Secondly, notwithstanding the previous point, I was careful to not say that the trends disprove the models, rather what I said was that IPCC models “may have overestimated the climate sensitivity for greenhouse gases, underestimated natural variability, or both,” and that it “suggests that there is a systematic upward bias in the impacts estimates based on these models just from this factor alone.” [Emphasis added. Also, there are other sources of systematic upward bias that were discussed here at WUWT.]
Regarding the issue of the logic used for attribution of GW to human activities, in my mind this is central to “climate science”. I’m glad that we agree that the logic is faulty. What I don’t understand is why others don’t see this. But we don’t need to get into that. An explanation probably lies in the realm of sociology (and theology).
Finally, I agree with you that tree rings are probably not an appropriate proxy – too many variables have to be controlled for and, besides, the response to temperature is non-linear, probably shaped like an inverted-U (for growth on y-axis v. temp.) Tree-line may be a better indicator. A higher tree-line in the past would suggest a longer and more consistent period of greater warmth in the past. For the present, the movement of the tree-line may be complicated by the fact that we have, in recent decades, been furiously pumping out tree fertilizers worldwide, namely, CO2 and nitrogen. Therefore, to compare past vs. present tree-line at present would have to disentangle these factors. {Good luck doing that!}. There’s also some information that cloud cover and diffuse sunlight can be an important variables for tree growth. For all these reasons, tree-lines may be a good qualitative, but not a quantitative, indicator for length of the warming period and magnitude of warmth. In any case, since tree-lines have been higher in the northern latitudes previously, it does indicate that it was most likely warmer (and for longer) than it has been during the current warming period. Unfortunately, I am ignorant about research on this in the southern hemisphere.
Sorry for the numerous typos on the previous piece. I could certainly use an editing function on this “Leave a comment” box.
Smokey (08:37:45) :
That plot came straight out of Steve McIntyre’s code. If you have a problem with it, why don’t you take it up with him?
Hearnden, you are delusional. You do not seem to understand even the basic tenets of debate. The fact that you believe you are “debating” shows the depth of your delusion. You have to realize that the foundation of your argument is based on flawed data. You seem to have skipped that step (examining the source of your evidence, right down to data collection, before presenting it as evidence. FYI- tree ring proxies are BUNK). And now you turn to run. Must be too hot in the kitchen. By the way, what kind of world is it that you would like to see? Let’s stop all use of fossil fuels and rely solely on altenative sources right now. You and I both know the implications of this. I know that you think that what you are doing is noble, but have clearly not thought the ramifications of this ideology through. You also believe that we are all idiots who cannot see the destruction of man by his own hand. Civilization has advanced exponentially in the last century. We have never been more comfortable than we are now. You refuse to see that the world has improved on many different levels. Two of the most important are efficient use of energy and control of pollution. I have never met anyone who wants to pollute more. We cannot go forward by going backward. It is sad that you do not have the capacity to come up with a better solution than “cull the herd”.
It is sad that you do not have the capacity to come up with a better solution than “cull the herd”. Just wanted to repeat this for emphasis.
Tom P (09:26:40) : HUHHH??!???
Peter Hearnden (00:24:49) :
“Ball,
……….
Do people here want to debate?”
————–
Debate what for goodness sake?
– Whether the MWP was muted? You have received numerous rebuttals and references showing it was not muted.
– Whether the MWP was global? You have received numerous rebuttals and references showing it was global.
You said:
“It wasn’t warm in enough places at the same time to give, on average across either hemisphere, more than a muted MWP.”
Are you saying that all references I pointed to you don’t understand temperatures.
“Cambridge, MA – A review of more than 200 climate studies led by researchers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics has determined that the 20th century is neither the warmest century nor the century with the most extreme weather of the past 1000 years.”
“Medieval Warm Period from 800 to 1300 A.D. appears to be rather well-confirmed and wide-spread, despite some differences from one region to another as measured by other climatic variables like precipitation, drought cycles, or glacier advances and retreats.”
….
“The different indicators provided clear evidence for a warm period in the Middle Ages. Tree ring summer temperatures showed a warm interval from 950 A.D. to 1100 A.D. in the northern high latitude zones, which corresponds to the “Medieval Warm Period.” Another database of tree growth from 14 different locations over 30-70 degrees north latitude showed a similar early warm period. Many parts of the world show the medieval warmth to be greater than that of the 20th century.”
http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/archive/pr0310.html
http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/archive/pr0310image.html
In the nice table with “Significant” as the column head and “Yes/No” as the answer, normal scientific practice is to state the level of significance or “p Value” for the test (as well as the test, although I’ll assume that that is Student’s t for the null hypothesis of no net change). Maybe this has been removed by the BBC (on account of the fact that it is too “hard” a concept for the general public) but, frankly, 95% confidence limits are not acceptible for the dramatic consequences of this work and I’m guessing that that is what he’s working with.
I’m not old enough to remember a century, but I’m old enough to easily remember half a century ago–back when we didn’t have TV (even though it was invented in my home town), didn’t have seatbelts, didn’t have microwaves, didn’t have cell phones (we used a “party” line), didn’t have about a bazillion things. And I can say uncategorically that my half century of recollection has seen some amazing examples of progress the world over (excluding Cuba and N. Korea which seem to be stuck on stupid)
http://www.paulnoll.com/Korea/History/Korean-night.html
So anybody that wants to turn back the clock might want to spend a couple of years in those two countries before making such a recommendation.
“The fact that the magnitude of the trend for 1975-2009 is smaller than the trend for 1975-98 indicates that there has been no warming OR A DECLINE IN THE RATE OF WARMING from 1998-2009, which is not necessarily the same as saying there has been cooling during this period. HOWEVER, SEE KERR (2009), WHICH INDICATES NO WARMING FROM 1999-2008.”
I’m sorry, what? The blogger promised explicitly:
“Specifically, the Q-and-As confirm what many skeptics have long suspected:
. . .
* There was no significant warming from 1998-2009.”
The Q-and-A specifically says the contrary. In the annotations, the author says “YES, THE Q-AND-A SAYS THERE WAS WARMING, BUT LOOK AT THIS OTHER PAPER THAT SAYS THERE WASN’T.”
Why should Phil Jones swing alone? My opinion is that he is going to take others down with him. That will be when things get really interesting.
Tom P (09:26:40) :
“Smokey (08:37:45) :
That plot came straight out of Steve McIntyre’s code. If you have a problem with it, why don’t you take it up with him?”
And McIntyre got the data from CRU. We all believe the CRU data, don’t we? You know, the temperature data that they make up as they go along.
Fraud.
“We all believe the CRU data, don’t we? You know, the temperature data that they make up as they go along.”
Source for this assertion?
All the global data sets — sat and ground-based — show unequivocal warming over the last 30 years. Are they all “made up”? That’s some conspiracy.
Robert (11:17:52) : Take a look at the Q-and-As at
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8511670.stm, specifically at Jones’ response to question B. The difference is between warming and “significant warming”. See also Florian’s comment at (00:30:22), who provides magnitude of trends for various periods.
Robert (12:25:28) :
“Source for this assertion?”
Answer: the Harry_read_me file from Climategate:
There are other acknowledgements of data fabrication in the Harry_read_me files and in the Climategate emails.
Apparently you were unaware that they admitted to inventing thirteen years of temperature data sets in this particular instance – and now Phil Jones is claiming that he “lost” the raw data that the temperature record is based on.
I recommend getting up to speed by reading everything under the “Climategate” heading at the top of this page before making assumptions.
Other informative sources: The CRUtape Letters, and Caspar and the Jesus Paper.
Robert (12:25:28) :
“We all believe the CRU data, don’t we? You know, the temperature data that they make up as they go along.”
Source for this assertion?
All the global data sets — sat and ground-based — show unequivocal warming over the last 30 years. Are they all “made up”? That’s some conspiracy.
————
Reply:
That’s why the legal aspects of this whole AGW mess are going to be so interesting.
My own take on the whole affair is that if the data sets are so sterling, why have they worked so hard to deny FOI requests? I know they could supply them if they wanted to because they access them for their own purposes. The alternative is that they’re just running seat of the pants which gives them even less credibility (if that’s possible).
LET’S SEE THE LAND TEMPERATURE DATA AND ALL THE ALGORITHMS USED TO PRODUCE THE FINAL RESULTS. THANK YOU!
(I hate to shout, but nothing else has worked so far.)
Kay (06:50:49) : Of course, my bad. RWP not MWP.
David Ball, spice your remarks with enough relevant science – or ignore Hearnden, his spots never change. Consciously or blindly, he’s trolling – he
spat atanswered you but ignored the perfectly scientific responses from Smokey and from Sunsettommy.It’s good to see Tom P again drifting out of the shadows
to be a bouncy cheerleader for the “Team”.
Last year an entity calling himself Tom P bloomed for a
while to comment on Climate Audit issue threads re:
Briffa/Yamal/Mann and Mc&Mc until the CRU emails
brought an individual also called “Tom P” by Mann, Jones,
et alia to light as a probable CRU correspondent and
direct Climategate participant.
It’s well documented that this past weekend Doctor
was directly quoetd as saying very uncomfortable
things about 15 years of no warming (since 1995)
and the hidden cooling he considers at this point in
time to be “statistically insignificant”.
Over the weekend on WUWT an entity called Tom P tried to
imply Dr. Jones was “misquoted” by the Mail
concerning that 1995 date. He seems to have hoped no
one actually read the Harriban Q & A piece.
Under WUWT “Daily News – The Jones U Turn”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/14/daily-mail-the-jones-u-turn/
Tom P (04:32:53) wrote:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1250872/Climategate-U-turn-Astonishment-scientist-centre-global-warming-email-row-admits-data-organised.html?ITO=1490
[Dr. Jones never stated any such thing in the Harriban
Q & A interview, or hinted that subsequent warming is
being lost as “noise”.]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8511670.stm
AS with GISS, NASA, CRU and NOAH, Tom P is filling in the blanks as he wishes to make reality conform to his vision.
The Climateers and Warmistas are bringing their in second
string teams and lame pal-reviewed daisy chain research
to try to pitch the same old story with pom poms and pizzazz.
How very sad.
Adding an ending to ‘Song of the Cru,’ my response to Peter Hearnden.
Fudging, shedding
Culling, shredding
Hiding, losing
Denying, abusing.
That’s what we have to do,
To bring the science to you,
Oh that’s what we have to do-o-o
To bring global warming to you.
Smokey:
“Apparently you were unaware that they admitted to inventing thirteen years of temperature data sets in this particular instance”
Maybe because he admitted nothing of the sort? If you read the file, he explained in great detail how he had to make up CODES (not temperature data sets) in order to compile his data. He goes on to explain how the temperature sets were reconstructed:
“You see? The leading zero’s been lost (presumably through writing as i7) and then a zero has been added at the trailing end. So it’s a 5-digi WMO code BUT NOT THE RIGHT ONE. Aaaarrrgghhhhhh!!!!!! I think this can only be fixed in one of two ways: 1. By hand. 2. By automatic comparison with other (more reliable) databases.”
Like the rest of the supposed scandalous e-mails from “Climategate,” this is an example of deliberately misconstruing a completely normal work-around given the real-world realities of messy data. There is not one example of faking scientific data referenced in the entire body of the hacked e-mails, and endlessly repeating that discredited libel doesn’t change the facts.
Jimbo (10:03:45) writes:
“Debate what for goodness sake?
– Whether the MWP was muted? You have received numerous rebuttals and references showing it was not muted.
– Whether the MWP was global? You have received numerous rebuttals and references showing it was global.
You said:
“It wasn’t warm in enough places at the same time to give, on average across either hemisphere, more than a muted MWP.”
Are you saying that all references I pointed to you don’t understand temperatures.”
So what’s Jimbo’s source? It warrants a closer look:
“Cambridge, MA – A review of more than 200 climate studies led by researchers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics has determined that the 20th century is neither the warmest century nor the century with the most extreme weather of the past 1000 years.”
This assertion comes from a paper published in “Energy and Environment,” a trade journal, according to Scopus, not a peer-reviewed publication. It’s not listed in the ISI; you can find it in less than 50 libraries worldwide (another few dozen have electronic subscriptions). The authors have long and storied histories as industry shills, taking money from Exxon, the Western Fuels Association, etc.
This is the wrong paper to try and hang a bluff on. It has the scientific credibility of something scrawled on the back of a greasy spoon placemat by a six-year-old.
Interesting now how Dr Jones clearly remembers the details of “the trick” when at the very beginning of Climategate he was defensive and stated along the lines of “how am I supposed to remember what I wrote back then?”
Also striking is the great degree of similarity between the trends of the four time periods (Q.A), yet at Question H, he is stating that his belief in AGW is based on something else, how they can’t explain the warming since the 1950s “by solar and volcanic forcing.” Aren’t those two matters inconsistent? If the trend is not out of bounds with regard to a much earlier period (i.e., 1860-1880 or 1910-1940), why is the rate from 1950-???? so exceptional?
I must be missing something in translation.
As to if the WMP was or was not global, it seems that Dr Jones is saying because there are no data [from certain areas of the world] to confirm it did exist as a global phenomenon, then it must not have been so. But isn’t it an equally valid assumption that it WAS global or nearly so, and wait for data to be unearthed to prove otherwise?
Eugene Langschwager
Executive Director
Climate Science Coalition of America
http://www.climatescienceamerica.org
Surely there must be tree-ring data for temperature analysis in the Southern Hemisphere during the Mideival Warm Period
Robert (17:28:50),
Of course, that would be your spin.
But it is clear to even the most casual reader that 13 years of data are missing in that instance, and that the “Harry” writer is going to make up the data.
And when you claim:
You’re being an enabler for scientific misconduct. Do you actually believe that Phil Jones is out of a job, and there are multiple ongoing investigations, because this is all on the up-and-up, and just a simple misunderstanding??
The problem with Peter H. …
He wants others to debate a muted MWP. Does anyone think he would be willing discuss a stronger MWP than presently indicated? Personally, I believe the MWP has been severely UNDERESTIMATED. So, next time you drop by, Peter, be prepared to discuss whether the MWP was much stronger than currently estimated.
Be prepared to discuss what temperatures would be required for farming in Greenland as a start.
Lucy Skywalker writes:
“David Ball, spice your remarks with enough relevant science – or ignore Hearnden, his spots never change. Consciously or blindly, he’s trolling – he
spat atanswered you but ignored the perfectly scientific responses from Smokey and from Sunsettommy.”Yeah it is too much for him to reply me or Smokey,who had the gall of being reasonably civil AND post information as part of a counterpoint against what he wrote.
Instead he chose to reply a dead on arrival post,thus giving attention to someone who was being less than civil to Peter.
But I am not surprised,since I see this happen many times in various places over the years.
Sad really.
By the way lucy,will miss your forum when you make the change.
I thank you for your advice Lucy Skywalker (16:31:06) as I hold you in the highest esteem. Perhaps you might be missing that I am posting for everyone reading this blog, not Peter Hearnden. Their ideology is as flawed as badly as their science. It is what motivates them since they believe their cause is noble (moral high ground). There are plenty here who fight the scientific fight much better than I can. They are good at that, but science is not the only battle front involved, is it? The trolls that come here are not fighting on the scientific level at all. If you feel that my role is unnessecary or does damage to the credibility of WUWT?, I will humbly defer to your recommendation.
Case in point Robert (17:49:03) : dismisses Soon and Baliunas’s paper as worthless, even though they hold teaching positions at Harvard. Robert also knows that John Holdren has tried to marginalize and prevent both authors from gaining peer review status, forcing them to find ways to publish elsewhwere. He knows all this yet is using this misinformation to his advantage when those who are unaware of the back story might believe him. This is schoolyard bully tactics, and I am not afraid of the bullies.
sunsettommy (19:41:18) : Thanks for that tommy. Really nice. I watched as Hearnden mocked many posters here and I waited. He continued to do this and I realized he was not here to debate the science at all. He took off pretty quickly once he was revealed. So think what you will of me.
Nah, I myself would disagree with you on this, Dirk. For the AGWers to claim that the MWP was local IS to claim it didn’t happen. That has been Mann’s position all along with the Hockey Stick – that the other temps globally brought down the “local” MWP to be average – erasing the MWP from the record. Mann has been denying it all along by playing with all the data, and as we’ve found from the emails, fudging it.
If someone wants to say we have heard them denying it, I am not going to give them a pass on their pretending it didn’t exist. In the artificial absence of that MWP bulge, Mann got away with murder. I see no reason to play nice guy. These people were lying to the world. Let’s see how they like the term “denier” applied to themselves.
When I first heard of Climategate and started reading the emails and saw that Jones stepped down, pending who-knows-what, I got some sense that Jones might have been the leaker. I said so much somewhere in the comments at CA. Much speculation was on Keith Briffa at the time, but something in Jones made me suspect him. I can’t recall the exact combination of inputs that led me there.
This Q&A doesn’t exactly surprise me, and makes me want to throw that idea back out there. To hear what he says here, one must wonder how he could keep on selling “The Sky Is Falling! The Sky Is Falling!” SOMEONE at UEA was having second thoughts. Here Jones shows that he was. Therefore, it seems to me that he is a likely candidate for being “Deep Leak.”
You all can count this as anecdotal if you want, because – like Phil Jones – I was not able to keep track of all my data, but here is something:
It isn’t just in climate science that this occurs. I long ago had a source that claimed that 85% of Carbon 14 dates that come out of the labs were thrown away, because the results were seen as spurious or outliers. Why? Because they didn’t fit into the expected time scheme.
Do I know this as fact? No. It was footnoted, sourced from some paper that I did not have the wherewithal to pursue at the time. It was quite a bit before the internet came along. If true then, is it still true? Could I find something about it now? I will try. I can’t promise any results, but I’ll try.
Re: Icarus (Feb 14 16:20),
Obviously we shall have to wait and see what happens in the next two decades, but as we have seen a warming of 0.18°C per decade over the last three decades, that doesn’t seem unreasonable. The IPCC have been right for the last two decades and that can indeed give us some confidence in their projection for the next two decades as well.
Underline mine.
Below is a pretty curve
Suppose you were the IPCC living and projecting in the year 1025AD, just before the peak in these NOA data. Even if you have been projecting correctly from 800AD, in 20 ye intervals, you would fail in the prediction at the top.
The plot is interesting for two reasons:
1st, there is nothing unprecedented in a continuous rise in temperature, and one living in 800AD would not need the IPCC to project continuous warmth, just the feeling of his bones would be enough.
2nd There will always be a top after which a fall starts.
If the plot does not appear, here is the link:
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/wuwt_icecoreanim_image21.png?w=510&h=198
To those asking about trends. Trends are dangerous! There are two problems with them. A trend is a smoothed representation of a time series that purports to show you the overall tendency of the data over a period. So, we have two problems. How to do the smoothing, the most common way is a linear regression giving a straight line through the data. This is usually very misleading and can be heavily influenced by erroneous extremes in the data. My preference is some form of locally-weighted regression, also known as loess. This gives a more accurate representation of what is going on without obliterating the variability in the data. The second problem is what plagues this discussion. Over what period do you calculate trend. Any point in a time series will be above or below the average value of the series. So, it is very easy to select periods for trend that support whatever point you are trying to make – in this case, warming or cooling. In my view, trends should always be calculated over the whole period of reliable data. Then you can’t be accused of selecting the most appropriate subset of the data for your purpose. Also, forget statistical significance, it’s a red herring in this context. If you’ve dishonestly chosen a period that shows what you want, then the fact that the trend is significant is irrelevant – it’s still crap! Looking at trend over the last 5 or 10 years of a 150 year record is the ultimate in special pleading and has nothing to do with science. If you can’t look at the whole record and summarise your conclusions, you are no scientist.
Smokey (11:50:44) :
“And McIntyre got the data from CRU. We all believe the CRU data, don’t we? You know, the temperature data that they make up as they go along.”
You asserted that the shape of the Yamal chronology rested on one tree. I’ve shown that it doesn’t. Your tortuous attempt to link this analysis to any temperature data is irrelevant.
Robert (17:49:03)
Oh, yeah, and the peer-reviewed Hockeystick from the prestigious publication “Science” was such solid science … peer-reviewed, top journal, utter crap. Go figure …
You don’t understand, do you. Your scorn is scientifically meaningless. It doesn’t matter where something is published. It only matters whether it is true or not. When you attack a paper based on where it is published, you are merely revealing that you have no substantive issues. It could be written on a bathroom wall, for all I care, that’s meaningless. Learn to ask the right question – is the science solid? That’s the only thing that matters, not your puerile attack on Energy and Environment.
Next, having published in E&E, I can assure you that it is in fact peer reviewed. Or you can believe Dr. Tom Osborne, who says in the CRU emails,
So not only is your claim scientific nonsense, it is factually incorrect. You’re batting two for two …
“A – Do you agree that according to the global temperature record used by the IPCC, the rates of global warming from 1860-1880, 1910-1940 and 1975-1998 were identical?
An initial point to make is that in the responses to these questions I’ve assumed that when you talk about the global temperature record, you mean the record that combines the estimates from land regions with those from the marine regions of the world. CRU produces the land component, with the Met Office Hadley Centre producing the marine component.
Temperature data for the period 1860-1880 are more uncertain, because of sparser coverage, than for later periods in the 20th Century. The 1860-1880 period is also only 21 years in length. As for the two periods 1910-40 and 1975-1998 the warming rates are not statistically significantly different (see numbers below).
[This indicates that the recent warming is not exceptional. Moreover, even if it had been “exceptional,” that would not prove it is due to greenhouse gas emissions?]
”
I never thought I’d ever be in a position to be in agreement with the good Dr. Phil, but have a look at this.
I don’t like anomalising and gridding raw data just so you can see a trend but instead I prefer to just look at the trends in the raw/adjusted data for individual stations. I’ve therefore produced a series of ‘interactive maps’ showing the trends (in deg.C/century) over a number of different time periods (1880 to 2010, 1880 to 1909, 1910 to 1939, 1940 to 1969 and 1970 to 2010) in the form of colour coded ‘dots’ for each individual sttsion in the GISS raw (unadjusted) and adjusted (homogenised) datasets.
It takes a little while to load the trend data into these Flash maps but it is well worth the wait. If you receieve a prompt say that it is taking Abobe Plash Player a while to load the data into the map please click the ‘No’ button (perhaps several times) until the full map is loaded.
You can then zoom in and out and pan left/right and up/down using the map and if you click an individual coloured dot it will show the chart of raw/adjusted data for each time period for that station. It’s best to load each map into a separate tab within your browser and that way you can click between tabs and contrast the difference in the maps for each time period. here are some links to the ‘interactive maps’.
GISS raw data trends 1880 to 2010
GISS raw data trends 1880 to 1909
GISS raw data trends 1910 to 1939
GISS raw data trends 1940 to 1969
GISS raw data trends 1970 to 2010
In particular compare the trends during the 1910 to 1939 period with those for the 1970 to 2010 period. No wonder Dr Phil thinks that the warming trends during the 1910 to 1940 and 1975 to 1998 are not statistically significantly different from one another. It looks to me like the 1910 to 1940 trends in the US stations are greater than those for the 1975 to 1998 period. What do you think?
Now what is going on with all those ‘dark red dot’ Canadian stations between 1970 to 2010 and all those ‘dark red’ stations in Greenland, Iceland, northern Norway and Russia between 1910 to 1939? Please note ‘dark red’ is >+5 deg.C/century and ‘dark blue’ is <-5 deg.C/century – thats right they are the upper end of the IPCC's '21st century catastrophic global warming' range.
Do we really need to 'anomalise and grid' the raw data in order to see clear evidence of (non-global) warming/cooling on an approx 30 year multi-decadel cycle of warming (1910 to 1939) followed by cooling (1940 to 1969) followed by warming (1970 to 2000) followed by cooling (perhaps from 2000 onwards?)? I don't think we do.
Ah! but this data hasn't been adjusted yet? What effect do the adjustments have on the trends? Well have a look for yourself.
GISS raw data trends 1880 to 2010
GISS raw data trends 1880 to 1909
GISS raw data trends 1910 to 1939
GISS raw data trends 1940 to 1969
GISS raw data trends 1970 to 2010
See any signifcant differences? Not really as the warming (and cooling) is real, it’s largely in the Northern Hemisphere and is largely Northern Hemisphere winter warming and has very little to do with man’s emissions of CO2 and everything to do with natural climatic variability due to things like the AMO/PDO/ENSO that the GCMs choose to ignore.
Spencer: Natural variability unexplained in IPCC models>
Now isn’t it about time for the GCMs to be re-programmed to take full account of natural climatic variability rather to to be deliberately programmed to tell a ‘doom and gloom’ future catastrophic global warming story as they are now?
Tom P (23:48:39) :
“Smokey (11:50:44) :
“You asserted that the shape of the Yamal chronology rested on one tree. I’ve shown that it doesn’t.”
No, you haven’t.
Lucy Skywalker sets you straight here: <a href=Tom P (23:48:39) : edit
Smokey (11:50:44) :
“And McIntyre got the data from CRU. We all believe the CRU data, don’t we? You know, the temperature data that they make up as they go along.”
You asserted that the shape of the Yamal chronology rested on one tree. I’ve shown that it doesn’t."
No, you haven't. Lucy Skywalker sets you straight here.
“Something is happening here but you don’t know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones?”
Smokey (04:10:44) :
Saying it twice doesn’t make you right!
Here again is the Yamal chronology with and without YADO6:
http://img514.imageshack.us/img514/413/oyad06.png
Are you are really claiming the hockeystick disappears without it!
Lucy Skywalker doesn’t even try to construct a chronology. She just overlays the tree-ring plots. That proves nothing about the contribution of any one tree to the chronology.
Do you need a primer on how these chronologies are constructed? There’s plenty of information and code over at Climate Audit.
KevinUK (03:53:05) :
For those who are struggling loading the interactive maps and who do not what to interact with th emaps to see the trend charts for the individual stations then you can instead view images of the maps by clicking on the following links:
GISS raw data trends 1880 to 2010
GISS raw data trends 1880 to 1909
GISS raw data trends 1910 to 1939
GISS raw data trends 1940 to 1969
GISS raw data trends 1970 to 2010
The following two images also show the trends for the 1970 to 2010 period for the December/January/February (i.e NH winter) mean and June/July/August (i..e NH summer) mean.
GISS DJF mean raw data trends 1970 to 2010
GISS JJA mean raw data trends 1970 to 2010
Vern, we are talking about the Nobel Peace Prize, not one of the Nobel prizes for real accomplishments. How Nobel Peace Prizes have been awarded for peace in the Middle East? Do we have peace in the Middle East?
Look at some of the other winners of the Nobel Peace Prize. You’ll find mass murders and terrorists in that group. The Nobel Peace Prize is an entirely political award.
To John Galt
Oh, I understand the concept. What you are saying essentially is that it is a useless award. That’s apparent when somebody like Jimmy Carter gets one to slide on to his mantle. However, not everyone is prepared to a) accept as fact that it is totally useless or b) allow an American to be a winner of the prize simply on the grounds that they even give it to ‘mass murderers and terrorists’.
Tom P (06:06:42),
Again, this shows the shenanigans used to produce the Yamal Hokey Stick: click
And thanx for the tip on Climate Audit. In fact, that’s where the chart above came from. BTW, where did your anonymous chart come from? Realclimate? Scientology? Al Gore? Leo DiCaprio?
Heh, Yad 061 was simply the most egregious of the twelve cherry picked larches in Briffa’s Enchanted Grove of Yamal.
==========================================
would the good professor likewise
hid the increase if the tree ring record show a increasing temperature
and the measured temperature show a decline?
Smokey (08:04:29) :
“BTW, where did your anonymous chart come from? Realclimate? Scientology? Al Gore? Leo DiCaprio?”
You’ll find the plot and code at Climate Audit:
http://climateaudit.org/2009/09/30/yamal-the-forest-and-the-trees/
kim (08:13:21) :
“Heh, Yad 061 was simply the most egregious of the twelve cherry picked larches in Briffa’s Enchanted Grove of Yamal.”
You haven’t been paying attention to Steve McIntrye: “I clearly stated my view that there was no crude cherrypicking…”. What evidence that he missed do you have to back up your accusation?
Tom P 10:12:28 So what caused the growth spurt in those younger trees?
===================================
Yep, I’ll agree the cherry-picking was not ‘crude’. What about all the trees in Siberia that don’t show what those in Yamal do?
==========================
Instead of ‘Hide the decline’, Briffa’s enchanted larches ‘Show the (phony) incline’.
================================
kim,
Reasonable questions. A possible answer would be the varying temperatures experienced by the trees at different sites.
There’s an in-depth discussion by Briffa concerning these questions here: http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa/yamal2009/sensit.htm
In the end what’s probably needed is a field trip to the Yamal peninsular to resample the current and fossil tree growth.
kim (15:46:52) :
Completely unwarranted. There is no evidence that Briffa did anything phoney here.
Doubt is not a pleasant state of mind, but certainty is ridiculous.
H/t, the Swiss Gardener.
==============
Tom P, it would be useful to know why Briffa used this series. There is an incline shown which is not in the temperature record. Briffa’s use is phony until he explains otherwise.
===============================
Tom P is the perfect representative for RC. Note however he did not link to this thread at CA.
Gavin’s Guru and RCS Standardization
Did you ever get that grade 6 level report finished for Steve M? 🙂
>Al Gore’s Holy Hologram (10:48:27) :
I know about Connolley but am surprised he is still up to his usual tricks.
I also vividly remember that the Roman Warm Period’s Wiki page was a long and detailed article. I have it as a PDF on a back up DVD. Deleting it from Wikipedia is a HUGE act of censorship and vandalism of history that needs public attention.<
Anthony, could you please post a link to the PDF, thanks
>George Steiner (09:10:41) :
In Jones’s interview there is a table of numbers. Could someone please tell me what instrument will measure temperature to an accuracy of two decimal places. And if you can measure to only one decimal place, what is the meaning of three decimal places.
Period Length Trend
(Degrees C per decade) Significance
1860-1880 21 0.163 Yes
1910-1940 31 0.15 Yes
1975-1998 24 0.166 Yes
1975-2009 35 0.161 Yes<
UM…, an old 'trick' of the data manipulators, add more 'precision' to add more credibility –
Oh, what the heck, while were at it lets move all the stations around, use a base of 6,000 or so stations (including arctic ones) and reduce that to…say 1,500 stations… but of course we have to have the same size dataset so us scientists just do some interpolation… and throw some adjustments in for good measure (funny how they always adjust upward) — I almost forgot, lets relocate some of the stations on top of 120 deg roofs and place others in exhaust blasts from JETS or just AC units!
The "DATA" is ALL GARBAGE.
You simply can not base "science" on Garbage Data (chemistry 1).
Lets all help Anthony finish his surface stations project and then E.M.Smith to purge the data and maybe eventually have some reliable data to see what is going on… if we don't freeze first!
kim (17:55:44) :
“Tom P, it would be useful to know why Briffa used this series. There is an incline shown which is not in the temperature record. Briffa’s use is phony until he explains otherwise.”
Yamal has a good correlation to the temperature record, specifically during the growth season. Northern Siberia has seen some of the highest recent warming.
DR (18:33:06) :
Yes, there was a lot of gratuitous insults bandied about at Climate Audit. Some commentators there obviously felt rather uncomfortable and, unable to respond on scientific grounds, resorted to personal attacks. It’s a shame you feel the same.
Tom P 00:51:25 Ha, ha. Let’s see that plot for YAD 061 again, please.
=====================================
Also, wasn’t Briffa’s series supposed to be one of those validating Mann’s work? Does the Enchanted Grove in Yamal, with your supposed temperature spike, give a hockey stick you can apply to the world, as has been done.
And show me the proof that Yamal is a temperature proxy at all.
=================================
Oh, yes, not crude at all. Pick a series from an area of ‘some of the highest recent warming’ and ignore nearby series which do not have such a dramatic rise. On second thought, very crude. Whatever possessed him to think he was elucidating the truth?
============================
Tom P, I asked you months ago, why do you defend these practices. You should know darn good and well that this is not science being practiced. So are you simply ignorant or is it disingenuousness?
==================================
Are we talking about this interview?
[BBC:] E – How confident are you that warming has taken place and that humans are mainly responsible?
[JONES:] I’m 100% confident that the climate has warmed. As to the second question, I would go along with IPCC Chapter 9 – there’s evidence that most of the warming since the 1950s is due to human activity.
Denial….yeah right.
Hansen’s rebuttal will be something like:
The increase was not seen to come on Jan 1, 2000, like a bolt from heaven. It was a gradual increase in influence. And sociopolitical events moved the date forward in time – the advent of China and the end of the Soviet Bloc caused increases in industrialization unforeseen at the time.
It is clearly doing exactly that. The question might really be this:
How long has Jones had such thoughts, and is he the only one among the Hockey Stick Team or others at CRU?
This puts Jones squarely among the probables for being the leaker. His stepping down so readily after the emails were leaked always implied to me that he didn’t want to fight those battles on their behalf. It seems there has been a falling out among thieves. It appears Jones has a conscience.
Mann is basically Captain Queeg, and Jones is at least abandoning ship, if not participating in the mutiny.
kim (04:23:48) :
One valid question amidst your ranting:
“And show me the proof that Yamal is a temperature proxy at all.”
From Steven McIntyre, in discussing the Polar Urals and Yamal:
“Both chronologies have statistically significant relationships to June-July temperature, but the t-statistic for Polar Urals is a bit higher (Polar Urals t-statistic – 5.90; Yamal 4.29; correlations are Polar Urals 0.50; Yamal 0.55).”
Tom P
You had your ears pinned back and despite several requests to unravel the mess you left at CA, you decided to not present a line-by-line exposition of your argument, a report. It was entirely impossible to follow your posts. You expected Steve/RomanM et al to go through each post and do it for you. That’s not how it works.
Why did you fail to provide a report? It appears your MO is to simply be an agitator with nothing substantive.
From Horatio Sanz to Real Climate courtesy of mondo at Tom Fuller’s Examiner: follow Phil Jones lead ‘stick to the science, come clean, and stop with all this twee fluff’.
===================================
In your introduction, you write: “Most importantly, if the earth and its species survived, if not thrived, despite these other warmer periods, then it becomes harder to make the argument that species cannot adapt or the end is nigh.”
I cannot remember any climate scientists predicting the end of the earth and it species. Could you cite a reference for this?
In response to ansewr A, you write: “This, in turn, suggests that the IPCC models have overestimated the climate sensitivity for greenhouse gases, underestimated natural variability, or both. This also suggests that there is a systematic upward bias in the impacts estimates based on these models.”
If, as you point out in your first sentence, this may be due to natural variability, how then can you conclude that there is a systematic bias?
After answer E: “However, the key question — unfortunately unasked – …”
Fortunately, it is answered: if most (>50%) is due human action, a smaller fraction (<50%). This statement may seem vague, but quite clearly expresses the amount of uncertainty. This may be a good place to point out what a scientist means with 'uncertainty'; it is in fact a synonym for 'accuracy'. In the case of this statement, it may be that the human factor contributes for 55%, 80% or 100% – we can't tell, but certainly not for 40%, 10% or 0%.
After answer H: "Phil Jones doesn't dispute the premise that 'the MWP is under debate.' … The response is based on laughable logic. It is an “argument from ignorance”! … What about internal natural variability and other “natural influences”"
Note that Jones addressed the MWP debate in answer G: he tells us it is unknown whether the MWP is a global phenomenon, and hence it cannot (yet) be compared to the current warming, which is global.
You can call it an "argument from ignorance", but it doesn't make it "laughable". As shown in answer D, "human and natural influences as well as natural internal variability of the climate system" are taken into account. This statement tells us that the current climate anomalous trends cannot be explained by natural causes (such as solar and vulcanic driving), but they can be explained when taking into account human influcences. As for the "natural variability", this explains the earlier, non-anomalous behaviour of the climate.
After answer Q: "1. Given the divergence problem, how can it be assumed that tree rings are valid proxies for temperature for other places at other times?"
The data from tree rings at other times are compatible with data from other sources, e.g. ice cores.
After answer Q: "2. The divergence problem may be well known among tree ring researchers but laymen and policy makers for whom the IPCC Summary for Policy Makers was supposedly written are generally ignorant of it."
Correct – this phrase comes from a personal email that was stolen from a Climatic Research Unit server, not from an IPCC report.
And finally (I shan't go into commenting on all comments), and answer to Stacey's important question (14/02/2010-05:28:17): "When will they release all of the temperature data?"
The temperature data are released by the various institutions around the world that measure them. They can be found for example on the website RealClimate founded in 2005): http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/data-sources/
DR (09:37:01) :
Steven McIntyre seemed to have few problems reading my posts, and in fact dedicated a couple of articles in attempting to answer them. Not quite the response that might be expected to an agitator with nothing substantive.
But what exactly of any substance are you bringing to this discussion?
Tom P
Steve McIntyre, who with Ross McKitrick debunked Michael Mann’s hokey stick, is “an agitator with nothing substantive”? Really? Too much Kool Aid, me boy.
And Apollon (11:43:15),
In response to the question “When will they release all of the temperature data?” Appolon falsely claims that it’s available at realclimate.
As if.
Further, skeptical scientists have been requesting, both informally and through FOI requests, all of the data, methodologies, code, etc., from those making the AGW claims, with little success. Partial disclosure amounts to cherry picking what they want people to see, nothing more or less.
The rent-seeking AGW purveyors hang on to their data and methods like a primogeniture inheritance. Then when push comes to shove, they claim it was “lost.”
Are you really that credulous?
Smokey (11:58:10) :
Please, lay off the Kool Aid and reread my post a little more carefully.
Hint: the preposition is “to” not “from” an agitator.
Tom P (12:47:36),
Sorry, you’re right. That’s what I get for assuming.
Smokey – I have seen compilations of these data and they suggest global warming. I am sufficiently sceptical not to believe that you did the same and found the opposite, unless you show your results, so no worries about my scepticism.
As you point out, I shouldn’t have written that the data are available *on* http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/data-sources/ which is clearly a contradiction with my previous sentence, but *from* this website. Thank you for pointing out this technicality. Luckily, anyone who visits the site would see that for herself.
But perhaps we should stick to facts and the topic of this forum, rather than searching for other people’s splinters.
Regarding rescinding a Nobel prize, FYI Canada recently rescinded an “Order of Canada” award because the recipient no longer met the character criteria. (A sad case of falling into substance abuse and violent behaviour since the award.)
Awarding peace prizes to someone who has talked but not achieved, let alone to known tyrants etc,. simply shows that the selection process is corrupt thus the prize is worthless. (Perhaps even worse – it may become a negative on the reputation of recipients.
One problem out there is the many awards from biased groups – one neo-Marxist responded to my criticism of a speaker’s thesis by rattling off a list of her awards, which were all from groups supporting her ideology, instead of addressing the issue of correctness of her thesis.)
Indur,
Could you tell me which of the IPCC models/reports projected a .2C rise per decade if CO2 remained at 2000 levels?
Thanks
It was absolutely necessary to remove the correct impression given by the tree rings that they did not correlate to temperature as shown by data between 1960 and 1999 (when the email was written), as the instrumental data clearly showed the rings were not actually proxies for temperature (either locally or for the far side of the planet).
There’s a mix of things there…
1) The “Team” advises that their data is publicly available, while not noting that it is unidentified as to which of tens of thousands of datasets were used and mixed in with numerous variations, and some of it apparently actually not available or incomplete.
2) The “Team” and HadCRU acknowledge that significant sections of the data have been modified – without being precise on how they were modified – and further advise that the original data is unrecoverable.
3) A large part of the question on results is why a particular dataset was used vs. another from the same locale, but with very different characteristics.
…and more.
And this is the main reason I love wattsupwitthhat.com. Awesome posts.