Wegman whiners: this post's for you

Amusingly, some of the sources that Wegman supposedly neglected to cite use undocumented quotations from earlier generic texts, etc. (aka “plagiarism”?!?). So we’re dealing with uncited quotes of uncited quotes!
“… all the way down.”

Excellent post Anthony. Alarmist trolls like them are too cowardly.

So, to paraphrase, the Wegman Report was, well, a Report, not an original work.
Reports often quote other material. Original works are supposed to be, you know, original.
But hey, whatever helps people live in their little worlds of denial…
(psst, how’s that whole warming/sea level rise/arctic ice melting/ocean acidification thing working out? Have we reached a tipping point yet? Who do we tip? al-Gore or our waiter?)

So for those too stupid or lazy to use the search feature of WUWT, here is our collection of Wegman coverage in chronological order, they are indeed enlightening and far more in-depth than the USA today article:
As a representative of the Lazy, I would like to formally thank you for amassing these articles together for me. Now, when I get around to it, I will perhaps read them. But more likely, I will make a comment about them without doing more than a skim.

UPI plagiarizes USA Today about Seminal Report Debunking Global Warming Statistics:
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2010/11/upi-plagiarizes-usa-today-about-seminal.html

Bradley filed a claim and George Mason University convened an inquiry. The inquiry was supposed to have reported by September. Either they have not reported or they reported the claim was bogus. If they had reported that they found the claim to be true, we would have heard something about it by now.
I think the reason we first heard about this in October is because GMU had reached a decision and it did not support Bradley’s claim. Bradley would have been in breach of his confidentiality agreement if he had spoken out before the inquiry was completed (most Universities follow such a procedure in these cases). Since he spoke with USA Today for the October 8, 2010 atricle and was not sued by GMU, I can only assume the report was in and it did not support his claim, otherwise he would have surely trumpeted his success for all to hear.
The fact that the story died as quickly as it did likely means that the press also knows the inquiry ruled against Bradley’s claim. If this is the case then the media is contributing to an injustice and should be liable for any damage Dr. Wegamn may have suffered to his good name.

in 2006 Dan Vergano received an award for his 13 June 2005 article, entitled “The Debate’s Over: The Globe is Warming”. in his response at the following link, he talks of attempts to silence scientists:
2006: American Geophysical Union: Dan Vergano Receives David Perlman Award
http://www.agu.org/about/honors/union/perlman/vergano_dan.shtml
SteveMcIntyre today:
22 Nov: Climate Audit: Escape from Jonestown
I planned to write a one-year anniversary piece on Climategate, but have found it difficult to capture the right tone. I had thought about events and had spent a fair bit of time answering questions for David Adam of Nature, none of which were reflected in Adam’s recent panegyric to Phil Jones. (Adam said today that he had used some of my answers in his article but they had been deleted by Nature editors.)…
http://climateaudit.org/2010/11/22/escape-from-jonestown/
meanwhile, Dan’s been gushing over linking “rock stars” with scientists, and getting plenty of followup:
18 Nov: Discover Mag: Chris Mooney: Link Dump for the Rock Stars of Science campaign
It kicked off with a piece by Dan Vergano in USA Today, in which Vergano quoted the campaign’s leading rocker Debby Harry of “Blondie”: “All these people are doing great things. We have to get the word out.”
Well, it has gotten out: …
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/intersection/2010/11/18/link-dump-for-the-rock-stars-of-science-campaign/
17 Nov: Science Blog: Jamers Hrynyshyn: Where are the rock stars of climatology?
There’s an advertising feature in the latest GQ that champions 17 “Rock Stars of Science.” Each ad includes a genuine rock music star alongside three or four genuine scientists, some Nobel laureates among them. The idea is to make science sexy..
So far, though, the researchers are mostly taken from the life sciences (plus one astronaut). What would happen if, say, we tried to do the same with climatologists? I’m thinking James Hansen (already kind of a rock star, with his penchant for getting arrested in front of coal-fired power plants), Michael Mann, Gavin Schmidt, Phil Jones?
Would this kind of slick public outreach only further alienate those who, thanks to slanderous propaganda campaigns, are already skeptical of the entire field’s integrity, or would it engender more respect? Is it too late to salvage climatology’s reputation among the far right, or should we even worry about that? …
The Rock Stars of Science are to be congratulated for daring to be different. Here’s a list of them…
http://scienceblogs.com/classm/2010/11/where_are_the_rock_stars_of_cl.php?utm_source=networkbanner&utm_medium=link
guess the debate is not over!

There is more to the objections to Wegman’s report than copying stuff from other publications without attribution, i.e. plagarism. It is worse than that, because Wegman’s report claimed, altered the text that they copied from Bradley, to indicate that tree rings cannot be used as an independent proxy. This is the opposite of what Bradley says in his book. Wegman’s report doesn’t mention this difference at all.
http://deepclimate.org/2009/12/22/wegman-and-rapp-on-tree-rings-a-divergence-problem-part-1/
What I understand is that the report claimed to validate McKintyre’s criticism of the methodology of the statistical analysis underlying the hockey stick, when in fact, it merely copied exactly what McKittrick did instead of doing an independent evaluation.
http://deepclimate.org/2010/11/16/replication-and-due-diligence-wegman-style/#more-2745
That is a more serious charge than the objection that the authors simply copied background material without attribution.
Hopefully, George Mason U’s investigation will determine the ethics and correctness underlying the Wegman Report.

When do the comedy reruns go into syndictation?
By now there ought to be stock answers for every troll.

The fact that the story died as quickly as it did likely means that the press also knows the inquiry ruled against Bradley’s claim.

So, why haven’t they made a statement, given the obvious public interest?

Robinson says:
November 22, 2010 at 1:28 pm
The fact that the story died as quickly as it did likely means that the press also knows the inquiry ruled against Bradley’s claim.
So, why haven’t they made a statement, given the obvious public interest?

They report to the parties – Wegman and Bradley – not the media.

Pointman, Your link no longer has the original article.

Reading Lazy Teenager’s comment gave me a good laugh! May, could have, should be, might possibly. Very solid terminology there. Reminds me of climatologists. Similar to astrologists and reflexologists. (No insult to astrologists and reflexologists!)
What the trolls cant stand is that no-one buys their bs any more. We have seen the man behind the curtain, and he wasn’t just naked.

CRU Orders Removal of Climate Realist Article From the Express Newspaper.
http://ourmaninsichuan.wordpress.com/2010/11/23/cru-orders-removal-of-climate-realist-article-from-the-express/
Pointman
Why???thought the piece was good. delinpole hit the nail on the head……
Put CRU in a bad light!is it possible to put them in a worse light than they already are
Just shows the state of british hacks/editors.too much vested interest’s with papers bankers and backers.
What happened to this “green and pleasant” land,and the british sense of right and justice??

Doug in Seattle said:

They report to the parties – Wegman and Bradley – not the media.

Of course, but that is only useful if the complaint and its resolution aren’t public. Given that it’s in the media and being promoted by some as a smear against Wegman, I’m surprised a clarification hasn’t been forthcoming, either from Wegman himself or from the institution. One can only assume there’s something else going on here on top of the complaint.
Note that according to the institution’s own policy on these matters, they do all they can to help repair the reputation of the accused if it’s subsequently found he has no case to answer.

sometimes re-runs are good too !!!

“Is there going to be equal time for Wegman-gate as for the faux-scandal Climategate?”
Climategate, however, was and is a REAL scandal – much like the climate ruling class elites ripping off the U.S. tax payers for crappy research programs to the tune of billions in Climate Ca$h.
But enough of that …now…time to PARTY in Cancun!

tim maguire says:
November 22, 2010 at 12:43 pm
“So far, wherever I’ve come across this, people seem to miss that is an academic scandal, not a scientific one. Whether it’s plagiarised is immaterial to the question of whether it’s accurate. Many people don’t seem to understand this.”
I am continually surprised at just how many do understand that! People are learning the truth regardless of the increasingly brazen and corrupt attempts to misinform by the legacy media/government. Let them try and make something out of Wegman. For the alarmists, all roads now lead to ruin.

Anthony! Figured you might like this news from Russia….
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101122/ap_on_re_eu/eu_climate_siberian_meltdown

“Wegman “downloaded all his e-mails to his laptop and they were deleted from the GMU server”.”
At work, I run MS Outlook. Server side I have very limited space, so I regularly download my email to my laptop HD. This by default deletes the emails from the server side (a good thing too, because I would quickly run out of space). It really doesn’t matter anyways, every organization has backups which you could retrieve this type of information from if it came down to a subpoena.
If you’re trying to draw a parallel to what Jones did, you’re pretty much failing.
One is a case of doing something criminal per FOIA, saved only by the statute of limitations. The other is sloppy attribution and an academic foul.

Stealing from one source is plagiarism. Stealing from many is research!

LazyTeenager says:
November 22, 2010 at 1:16 pm
“The plagiarism is a strong indication that he had not internalized knowledge of climate science and therefore his conclusions are likely to be superficial and therefore possibly in error.”
Maybe you should read about the Turing test. The validity of a conclusion does not depend on the internal state of the entity that produced it.
Or try a primer on logic first.

eadler says:
November 22, 2010 at 1:14 pm
I read that DC link – and all I can say is I wont be going there again in a hurry! LOL The ‘analysis’ of the wegman vs bradley wording is rather pathetic IMHO and seems to forget the purpose of the Wegman report.
I was going to deconstruct it, but on reading the comments, the last (curiously?) comment by – Lonny Eachus | February 18, 2010 at 1:33 am | – pretty much says it all!
As a geo-engineer who has to write both factual and interpretative reports, the difference is quite immense, but can also be quite subtle. The former is obviously a factual matter. Reporting that A+B=C for example. The latter is when a professional opinion is ‘added’ which could say, be along the lines of ‘It was found that A added to B gives a result C but that this may be influenced by factor D’. Factor D is considered significant and thus the result C is less reliable.
I put it to anyone trying to debase the Wegman report, that they have not understood the context in which it was prepared. The clue is also within the title ‘Ad hoc Committee Report…’ is it not?

John from CA says:
November 22, 2010 at 3:22 pm
Well said – thats exactly how I read it too!

speaking of obvious, it’s becoming glaringly obvious that WUWT (and most other contrarian sites) are avaoiding the Wegman scandal. I wonder why that is?
Whoever said this didn’t take the time to think things through.

further to steve mcintyre’s mention of being edited out of the Nature article, i commented on CA that i was still waiting for the New Statesman interview with big mac, given he was one of their 50 people who matter this year:
New Statesman: 50 People Who Matter 2010 | 32. Stephen McIntyre
932 comments from readers
http://www.newstatesman.com/global-issues/2010/09/climate-mcintyre-keeper
steve has responded below my comment:
“Steve: one of their writers was intrigued by the response and interviewed me at some length. I believe that he submitted an article, but I guess that it was rejected.”
http://climateaudit.org/2010/11/22/escape-from-jonestown/
shame on the the MSM.

Plagiarism is common climatology.
I’ve compiled a small collection of climatology plagiarism examples: http://climatologyplagiarism.blogspot.com.

Yes he foiled a robbery but he was double parked when he did it!
Somebody should do a thorough search of Bradley’s work. Betcha you’ll find he’s got dirty hands.

John F. H.;
good post, but for better readability, here’s how to make the ° symbol:
Hold down the Alt key and enter 248 on the numerical keypad. Or 0176 if you like.
And the ¢ sign is 155, and ½ is 171, and ¼ is 172, etc., etc.
🙂

BillD says:
November 22, 2010 at 6:09 pm
The latest from Deep Climate shows that Wegman and co-authors never did the statitistical analysis that they claimed–rather they simply re-ran the analysis of MacIntyre without confirming it. It”s no wonder that Wegman earlier stated that he would not share the details of his research because he planed to publish it and now, after four years he simply does not want the work examined.
======================================================
Really? This should be very easy to discern. Are there any differences of M&M(any version) with Wegman’s statistical analysis? Why don’t you go and compare CA’s postings with Wegman’s report? Or check the analysis Steve Mc. gave of the Wegman report. I’d provide the links, but as Anthony said, “So for those too stupid or lazy….”

Yeah. I agree, ‘poor’ is soooooo ‘yesterday’. They shouldda used a ‘today’ word ~ like, say…: BANKRUPT.
C.L. Thorpe

Wow. Glad I came back to read more comments. Sam. CHILL OUT! (while weather-wise, in the USA…it looks as if, soon, you’ll have pretty much, No Choice…)
They GET IT. WE ‘GET IT’!
Sam! It sounds as if these socialist greenies have really
gotten under your skin! (Yuck. Just ‘saw’ that word picture.)
Regardless, Man ~ while I’ve been known to take issues as ‘sternly’ as you just did, at times……. I’m going to heartily recommend you take a long, hot bath (put in a new rainwater tank, just so I wouldn’t feel like I was wasting water, either! smiles)
and TRY NOT TO LECTURE FOLKS WHO’VE BEEN STANDING IN THE FOREFRONT OF THE PUBLIC DEBATE. Yeah ~ I know, I know… we’re not ALL
Scientists…but, I am a ‘scientist’ as I study and reflect upon Creation by OBSERVING ~ and in Watts Up’s case, I OBSERVE SMART GUYS AND GALS UNCOVERING TRUTH in their own uniquely qualified manners, P.S.!
If you want to ‘blog and run’ ~ so be it. But, I suggest you re-read your last comment critically. You sound like you’re ready to pull a distinctly elitist krakatowa, Friend.
Mebbe 90 miles of pristine beach under the Coorong would do you some good…
C.L. Thorpe (singin’ in 35+C warmth for the first time in MONTHS)

Gentlemen
Having read the USA Today article, I’m having a hard time taking the plagiarism charge seriously. Oddly the USA Today article shifts the charge of “plagiarism” to one of “paraphrasing”. Let’s look at the example text provided — with the alleged “paraphrasing” bolded.
Text from the Bradely Report:
“These are seasonal growth increments produced by meristematic tissues in the tree’s cambium. When view in detail (Fig. 10.1), it is clear that they are made up of sequences of large, thin-walled cells (earlywood) and more densely packed, thick-walled cells (latewood). Collectively, each couplet of earlywood and latewood comprises an annual growth increment, more commonly called a tree ring.“
Text from Wegman Report:
“These bands are the so-called tree rings and are due to seasonal effects.”
My conclusion — Wegman’s the better writer.
Regards, Kforestcat
P.S. Anthony I do admire your patience.

James S;
Good post! The good thing about this nonsensical tempest in a teapot is that many more people are aware of Wegman’s conclusions than would otherwise have been the case.
But I gotta say — only people can be incredulous, not statements. The statements that incredulous people object to are the ones they find incredible (= not credible). YCLIU
🙂

“Remember, this was a response to a congressional request. This was not a study, nor an academic endeavor. It was simply a report to Congress.”
I’m glad to know there are so few restrictions on what a congressional report may contain.
Some definite overtime work here.

Sam,
So you are OK with asking the UEA to force the climategate folks to cough up all of their e-mails then? No more, ‘they thought they were private’ and such?
As to your assertion of plagiarism, a lot of people I trust a lot more than you have looked at it and found the charges to be bogus and cynical and without merit.
But thanks for playing.

I suppose I should let people in on a secret,
i to the negative square is = -1, I don’t say this because I agree with it, I say this because most statisticians hold this to be true. Math isn’t like climate science, to where truths can be true and false at the same time, but rather, proper mathematics, regardless of the avenue, takes you to the same place.
Some people are concerned that Wegman and McIntyre are showing similar results? THEY’RE SUPPOSE TO!!!!!! That’s the proof of math! If they were significantly different, then I’d be concerned.

JK says:
November 22, 2010 at 9:11 pm
=======================================================
“Remember, this was a response to a congressional request. This was not a study, nor an academic endeavor. It was simply a report to Congress.”
========================================================
I’m glad to know there are so few restrictions on what a congressional report may contain.
Some definite overtime work here.
=======================================================
Is it your assertion that congress should be withheld information because certain people weren’t attributed to their liking?
Why don’t you girls attack Wegman on his substance? If he was wrong, show where he was wrong. (Please show where he didn’t attribute Bradley.)
That’s the long & short of it. I have told the University that I am prepared to drop this matter if Wegman makes a request to have his report withdrawn from the Congressional Record.
Thanks
Ray [Bradley]
Well, I can see the motivation from Alaska. It certainly isn’t his claim to unique thought………. See here for more laughs……. http://climateaudit.org/2010/10/20/bradley-copies-fritts-2/
D’oh!!!!

James Sexton says:
November 22, 2010 at 10:02 pm
“jose says:
November 22, 2010 at 9:12 pm
Deep Climate and John Mashey have demonstrated that: (1) large sections of the Wegman report were plagiarized,…
No, copied, yes, plagiarized, no. Look up the difference and get back. It was a report to Congress!! It wasn’t an academic endeavor, nor was it a book to buy. It was simply a gathering of statements and an interpretive response. Please look up the legal definition of “plagiarism” and then show me or anyone else how this applies.
Lastly, you said, “2) Wegman’s “independent verification” consisted of re-running McIntrye and McKitricks R code from their 2005 GRL paper – code which cherry-picked the randomly generated principal components for those that showed the greatest hockey-stick shape. If you look at nothing else, look at these figures:
http://deepclimate.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/wegman-fig-4-4.jpg
http://deepclimate.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/wegman-4-4-reproduction.jpg
The PC1 curves generated from the MM05 code and those found in WR are IDENTICAL.”
Uhmm, sis, you’re beyond credible. No, they are not identical. Look at the far right of each graph, which is the point of contention. Now, it is true that I don’t see as well as I used to, but even for a blind man, the graphs are not IDENTICAL! But thanks for showing the world how alarmist view things.
This is an example of why climatologists and their followings shouldn’t venture into the world of realism, nor mathematics. Same is = equal. The graphs are obviously not.
My interpretation is there were similar critiques by statisticians. Both offered similar results, yet not the same. Two different approaches, similar results.
Please show me where I’ve erred in in that interpretation. Better, please show Steve Mc. I’m sure he’d love to hear how Wegman copied off of him.”
It seems that neither of you has looked at DeepClimates blogpost carefully.
http://deepclimate.org/2010/10/25/the-wegman-report-sees-red-noise/
The two links shown by Jose would, from their labels, both be copies of Wegman’s fig 4.4. They each contain 12 graphs and the figures are identical to one another. DeepClimate does not claim that fig 4.4 is an exact copy of what McKintyre did. His argument about fig 4.4 is that the wrong conclusions were drawn because the wrong noise model was used by Wegman et. al. to generate the data, and in fact downward and upward pointing hockey sticks are a result of using the MBH calibration procedures on this data, not the exclusively upward pointing hockey sticks that M&M would have us believe happens. Twelve upward pointing hockey stick graphs were shown out of the 1000 that were generated, and none of the downward pointing ones were shown.
What Deepclimate says is that Wegman’s fig 1 is an exact replica of McKintyre’s fig 4.1 in his 2005 paper. This can be seem very clearly by looking at the two graphs.

[Now, now. No trolling comments. We all know that in the Diskworld universe, trolls have silicon brains and exhibit exceptional intelligence – but only once their brains have cooled down. 8<) Robt]
Sorry Robt – but please don't lump Detrus in with WUWT Forum trolls, ones a thick, knuckle dragging moron who follows his Captains orders and the other is a fictional character, along with Vimes and Carrot.
I think you deserve a pat on the back though for deal with the trolls Robt as they can be as about as intelligent as a lump of coal.

John F. Hultquist says:
November 22, 2010 at 5:45 pm
“Every once in awhile I jump in and ask folks to try just a bit harder to communicate. Having read each of the “Wegman” posts and comments on WUWT and several elsewhere — as they were introduced — I too was astonished by the phrasing of Tamsie’s statement as shown in the box. Then, the comment at 3:33 pm is about like throwing a scoop of chocolate ice cream in the throat of a volcano. What’s the point?
Please, all regular commenters, lurkers, trolls, and children of all ages – add a bit of information to the discussion, point out something interesting, or say something funny.
Sometimes even the weather is interesting. The northern tier of USA States is about to get overrun with one very cold and massive flow in the next few hours. I’m told to expect -21Co (aka -6 Fo) by Tuesday night. Thanksgiving week is one of the most heavy traffic periods in the US. Look for all but the most bizarre stories – even Wegman — to get pushed off the airwaves in the next days by all the weather related issues. Even the folks in Cancun will be hard pressed to counter the cold”.
Right, and recent snowfall records are broken already.
People like Tamsie should look out of the window a bit more often to get a grasp on real world weather conditions.
I once attended a meteorological briefing during a flying contest when the meteorologist told the audience he didn’t expect any rain for that day.
Had he looked out of the window he would have known better because the weather was horrible with pouring rain.
http://www.iceagenow.com/Billings_snowfall_shatters_record_set_in_2007.htm

Ohh dear I am worried now ! if the warmists are right about this then my entire schooling was spent plagiarizing others work Ulp I still have the note books ! where me matches !.

BillD says:
November 23, 2010 at 4:00 am
“….Now, if he would only make his code available.”
=======================================================
Oh, the irony!……And it burns.

The important part of the Wegman report shows that these guys (42 “climate scientists”) were in cahoots and controlling the peer-review process. This an attempt to distract from that very serious issue. Coupled with Climategate, who in their right mind would defend this corruption?

A couple more comments:

What Deepclimate says is that Wegman’s fig 1 is an exact replica of McKintyre’s fig 4.1 in his 2005 paper. This can be seem very clearly by looking at the two graphs.

And since WR says clearly that Fig. 4.1 is a “Reproduced version of Figure 1 in McIntyre and McKitrick (2005b)”, this matters how? We would only be concerned if it wasn’t an exact replica, or nearly so.

DeepClimate does not claim that fig 4.4 is an exact copy of what McKintyre did. His argument about fig 4.4 is that the wrong conclusions were drawn because the wrong noise model was used by Wegman et. al. to generate the data, and in fact downward and upward pointing hockey sticks are a result of using the MBH calibration procedures on this data, not the exclusively upward pointing hockey sticks that M&M would have us believe happens.

If you look at the commentary for WR Fig. 4.2, the point that both upward and downward pointing hockey sticks are produced is made explicitly – “The negative values between –2 and –1 indicate the 1902-1980 mean is lower hence the blade of the hockey stick is turned down, while the positive values between 1 and 2 in the bottom panel indicate the hockey stick blade is turned up.”

cohenite says:
November 23, 2010 at 4:37 am
“It is interesting from eadler’s link to DC that DC supports his dusting of Wegman by relating that to M&W’s dusting of Mann; DC says that M&W are incorrect because in their comparison with the proxy data the first and last blocks are well correlated with actual temperature; but this is something M&W anticipated:
“On the other hand, limiting the
validation exercise to these two blocks is problematic because both blocks
have very dramatic and obvious features: the temperatures in the initial
block are fairly constant and are the coldest in the instrumental record
whereas the temperatures in the final block are rapidly increasing and are
the warmest in the instrumental record. Thus, validation conducted on
these two blocks will prima facie favor procedures which project the local
level and gradient of the temperature near the boundary of the in-sample
period. However, while such procedures perform well on the front and
back blocks, they are not as competitive on interior blocks. Furthermore,
they cannot be used for plausible historical reconstructions!”
DC has attempted to repudiate Wegman by repudiating M&W on the basis of an extrapolation from the 1st and last blocks of temperature; but M&W have offered cogent reasons why such an extrapolation is statistically unsound. So DC’s attempt to say Wegman is wrong because M&W are wrong fails because M&W are right!”
DC’s condemnation of the Wegman report has nothing whatever to do with M&W, which is in publication at present. A summary of the charge against Wegman’s Report is as follows:
It’s hard to imagine a more egregious and fatal analytical flaw than Wegman et al’s utter misunderstanding of the very procedure said to demonstrate the extreme bias of Mann et al’s PCA methodology. Wegman’s mischaracterisation of McIntyre’s pseudo-proxies as conventional “red noise”, along with the accompanying failure to actually analyze McIntyre’s methodology, surely ranks as one of the epic gaffes in statistical analysis. Indeed, no one can reasonably continue to claim that Wegman’s central analysis and findings hold up.
It turns out that DC has an extensive article critical the the McShane Wyner paper.
http://deepclimate.org/2010/08/19/mcshane-and-wyner-2010/
There are two parts to DC’s criticism:
M&W simply echo secondary sources including newspaper articles and non peer reviewed papers as the basis of much of their criticism of the Mann’s 2008 paper. They distort quotes, leaving out parts which actually negate the arguments they present, and they present an inaccurate picture regarding the PCA work that was done by Mann et. al., falsely claiming the only one PC, PC1 was used in the paper. This indicates that they have not bothered to consult the original sources, which is not an acceptable process for writing a scientific paper.
The second half of the discussion relates to the statistical method used by M&W to create their own version of the hockey stick. Some of the things they do are questionable, like using a shorter validation period then MBH, after complaining that the validation period MBH used was too short. They actually do come up with a graph that is shaped like a hockey stick. That should come as no surprise. There are a large number of papers that reconstructed global temperature from proxies and ended up with a similar hockey stick, but with different levels of uncertainty in the reconstruction.
The M&W paper surfaced in August, when it was in proof, having been submitted but not yet published. As far as I can tell, from a Google search, it has not yet been published. I wonder if DC’s criticisms of the paper are causing the journal editor to have some second thoughts.

eadler says:
November 22, 2010 at 11:15 pm
His argument about fig 4.4 is that the wrong conclusions were drawn because the wrong noise model was used by Wegman et. al. to generate the data, and in fact downward and upward pointing hockey sticks are a result of using the MBH calibration procedures on this data, not the exclusively upward pointing hockey sticks that M&M would have us believe happens.
I am not a statistician and my statistics knowledge is mostly from 40 years ago…
But I suppose that Deep Climate is wrong here. The MBH calibration method compares any (pseudo) proxy data with a period in the temperature record which is upgoing. Any statistical method will pick out these (pesudo) proxies which have an upgoing profile in the same period, even if they need to be switched upside down (as happened with the upside down use of the Tiljander sediment proxy in Mann 2008 and others). The result always will be a hockeystick with an upgoing end, no matter that many (halve) the (pseudo) proxies are going downward at the end. Mann’s method simply increased that effect by the decentralised mean, which in addition suppresses the historical variability. That was nicely demonstrated by the inclusion of the 1990 IPCC graph in Wegman figure 4.6. It simply shows that any HS shape proxy (even not related to local temperatures) will force the total reconstruction into a HS shape, whatever method is used, but especially with Mann’s decentralised method.

James Sexton,
You are aware, I am sure, that citing a source in no way prevents the allegation of plagiarism. Please read GMU’s statement on plagiarism. It is in no way an issue of citation. Wegman took Bradley’s ideas and words and presented them has his own. That is, Wegman wrote (plagiarized) the indicated text in order to make himself appear to know something about climate science. This is actually a double FAIL. Stolen ideas/text and no real knowledge of the field (as stated in Said’s own words).

I guess there can be no doubt Phil. that you have been drinking deeply of the AGW coolaid.

Phil. says:
November 23, 2010 at 8:37 pm

No you do.

Yeah, right. Just a quick comparison of cv’s sheds that notion, let alone a comparison contributions to the field. Really, I’d say I’m shocked, but I’m quite certain I have a handle on your qualifications to make such an assessment as well. Tsk. Your arrogance regarding subjects you don’t understand is monumental.

It’s not a legal issue it’s an academic misconduct investigation, and yes I do have insight into those as I have participated in several!

Wow. You’ve participated in several and thus you are able to glean that Wegman is guilty and any student would also be found guilty, all from reading blogs and… what else, ESP? Oh, that’s right, you’ve played with some dichroic mirrors and you’re now also an expert on feedback control systems. Silly me, the connection was obvious.
It is immaterial whether a legal issue or otherwise is being discussed, no ruling has been made so speculation on your part regarding likely outcomes is… speculation. First prove guilt, then speculate on punishment. I asked once before, are you aware of some ruling we are unaware of that has come to a conclusion of guilt?

The initial committee of inquiry into the Wegman Report found sufficient cause to institute an investigation which is now underway,

Did they find him guilty, or is the investigation still underway? Really, you do spin.

also Prof Wegman has had his privilege to advise graduate students revoked and certain of his and Said’s documents have been removed from the GMU website.

So. Jones stepped down from his post while he was being investigated. Not a surprise.
You’re a scientist, act like one.

That is not an ad hominem and I can’t imagine why you think it is

There’s an implication, whether you inteded it or not, that if he’s found to not have committed any wrong doing GM is not reputable, i.e., you have already determined guilt (by GOD you have sat in on a few cases – shall we bow?) and thus anybody that does not agree with you is disreputable. That’s an ad-hominem. I realize such complicated logic tasks are beyond your grasp, but please try…
Do you have any idea how silly you sound every time you declare yourself to be an authority on something that is either opinion, or clearly not within your realm of expertise? Really, do you pound your chest in front of your students as well? Seriously, “I know what I’m talking about therefore you are wrong” has got to be your most often used argument… sad. You should go over and debate the law with Nick Stokes at CA, he needs exactly the sort of “expertise” you regularly bring to the table.
Mark

cohenite says:
November 23, 2010 at 10:23 pm

“debate the law with Nick Stokes”; no, that’s no good, Nick will just throw a differential equation at you!

I actually meant “alongside Nick Stokes” given he’s taking a beating from Jim Edwards in the thread discussing this very same topic. He can throw differential equations at me all he wants, I’ll just come back with a vector space.
Mark

Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
November 23, 2010 at 1:17 pm
eadler says:
November 22, 2010 at 11:15 pm
“”His argument about fig 4.4 is that the wrong conclusions were drawn because the wrong noise model was used by Wegman et. al. to generate the data, and in fact downward and upward pointing hockey sticks are a result of using the MBH calibration procedures on this data, not the exclusively upward pointing hockey sticks that M&M would have us believe happens.”
I am not a statistician and my statistics knowledge is mostly from 40 years ago…
But I suppose that Deep Climate is wrong here. The MBH calibration method compares any (pseudo) proxy data with a period in the temperature record which is upgoing. Any statistical method will pick out these (pesudo) proxies which have an upgoing profile in the same period, even if they need to be switched upside down (as happened with the upside down use of the Tiljander sediment proxy in Mann 2008 and others). The result always will be a hockeystick with an upgoing end, no matter that many (halve) the (pseudo) proxies are going downward at the end. Mann’s method simply increased that effect by the decentralised mean, which in addition suppresses the historical variability. That was nicely demonstrated by the inclusion of the 1990 IPCC graph in Wegman figure 4.6. It simply shows that any HS shape proxy (even not related to local temperatures) will force the total reconstruction into a HS shape, whatever method is used, but especially with Mann’s decentralised method.””
I think you are confused. The argument made by M&M, and echoed by the Wegman report, rather than “independently verified”, was that if a large number of proxies were due to random noise, the temperature data extracted by the MBH procedure would be misleading because the result would be an hockey stick that pointed upward purely as a result of the calibration process.
This argument is contradicted by their own data. When this idea was tested only 1% of the time, was an upward pointing hockey stick extracted for PC1.
In addition, M&M knew that 2 PC’s were used by MBH98 to represent the data based on the non-centered procedure. M&M proceeded to use a centered procedure, used 2 PC’s and didn’t get a hockey stick. They claimed this was proof that MBH98 procedure was in error. What they didn’t know was that a hockey stick is actually recovered by the use of the first 4 PC’s, and the proper procedure for optimization of the number of PC’s to avoid overfitting.
This shows that M&M’s argument was based on a lack of understanding of what MBH 98 did, and a lack of understanding of the method of principal components, and they provided a false and misleading conclusion about what would happen if random noise were tested, since 99% of the time no hockey stick emerged from the MBH procedure used on random noise data.
http://deepclimate.org/2010/11/16/replication-and-due-diligence-wegman-style/#more-2745
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/07/the-montford-delusion/

Although the plagiarism charges are serious (even in an informal report – you put a number and say “I got this from so-and-so” – I personally don’t think a report to Congress is “informal”) – the core of Wegman’s argument (from M &M) is that you get a hockey stick from the PROCESS – not the data. But he apparently didn’t understand that the first step in the M & M process is to DISCARD 99% of the results (the one’s that don’t give you a hockey stick).
So he is correct the process gives you a hockey stick – but it is M &M’s process, not Mann’s.
And of course we now have 11 years of better papers (better than Mann’s 1999 paper) and better data that continue to show AGW is, in fact, occurring while we watch – and do nothing.

Actually Thoughtful says:
November 24, 2010 at 10:24 pm
the core of Wegman’s argument (from M &M) is that you get a hockey stick from the PROCESS – not the data. But he apparently didn’t understand that the first step in the M & M process is to DISCARD 99% of the results (the one’s that don’t give you a hockey stick).
Wegman indicated that one need the process AND the data in his response to rep. Stupak:
If the variance is artificially increased by decentering, then the principal component methods will “data mine” for those shapes. In other words, the hockey stick shape must be in the data to start with or the CFR methodology would not pick it up… Most proxies do not contain the hockeystick signal. The MBH98 methodology puts undue emphasis on those proxies that do exhibit the hockey-stick shape and this is the fundamental flaw. Indeed, it is not clear that the hockey-stick shape is even a temperature signal because all the confounding variables have not been removed.
————-
And of course we now have 11 years of better papers (better than Mann’s 1999 paper) and better data that continue to show AGW is, in fact, occurring while we watch – and do nothing.
How many of these “better” papers don’t contain the same suspect growth spurt HS shape proxies like strip bark bristlecone pines, the notorious Yamal 12, upside down Tiljander sediments or similar non-temperature related proxies?
Further, most of the papers show far more variability in the past millennium than MBH’98/’99 (bathtube like, no HS if you don’t graft the thermometers on the reconstruction), which is important for estimating the climate sensitivity for CO2: more natural variability in the past means less effect of CO2…

Actually Thoughtful says:
November 25, 2010 at 7:44 am
How do you figure? If, in the past, with no human intervention, temperature has responded to small changes in natural conditions – more sunlight, for example, with “more natural variability” – it means that climate is more sensitive to forcings than the current literature indicates – which means we will see even more dramatic response to the human caused CO2 forcing. Your conclusion does not follow from your premise.
That is the reasoning which modelers follow too. The problem is that they lump all forcings together: 1 W/m2 more solar strength has the same effect as 1 W/m2 more GHG absorption. But that is debatable. See the discussion at RC of some years ago:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/12/natural-variability-and-climate-sensitivity/
with my comment at #24 and further.
Solar has its main effect in the tropics, in the stratosphere (UV, ozone, shifts in jet stream position) and much of its energy is absorbed quite deep in the oceans. There is an inverse relationship with cloud cover, whatever the underlying mechanism.
GHGs have their main effect in the lower troposphere, more towards the poles and IR doesn’t pass the upper fraction of a mm of the sea surface, probably leading to direct reflection and/or evaporation, less to warming of the oceans. There is no clear relationship with cloud cover.
Even theoretically, it seems that climate models underestimate solar changes, at least with a factor 2, see:
http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/StottEtAl.pdf
within the restrictions of the HadCM3 model (like a fixed minimum cooling by human aerosols)
And I am not alone with my opinion: most European scientists involved in reconstructions share that opinion, see:
http://www.wsl.ch/staff/jan.esper/publications/QSR_Esper_2005.pdf
So, what would it mean, if the reconstructions indicate a larger (Esper et al., 2002; Pollack and Smerdon, 2004; Moberg et al., 2005) or smaller (Jones et al., 1998; Mann et al., 1999) temperature amplitude?
We suggest that the former situation, i.e. enhanced variability during pre-industrial times, would result in a redistribution of weight towards the role of natural factors in forcing temperature changes, thereby relatively devaluing the impact of anthropogenic emissions and affecting future predicted scenarios.
————
In 11 years the debate has moved well past the “hockey stick” and onto much finer points of contention – where is the measured heat imbalance going? The hockey stick is one, relatively minor, bit of data in a mosaic that points towards a much warmer earth, with more droughts and more floods (droughts where we go food -floods where people live). Sucks to be our children.
Well, the measured imbalance is completely gone in a few years time. There is no extra heat (of the oceans) in the pipeline anymore. There are no more droughts (the Sahel is greening), there are some more floods, because of lower solar activity, which moves the jet stream position more equatorwards (but much of the damage is because people tend to live in natural flood plains!) and the temperature didnt’t rise in the past decade, already outside the 2 sigma envelope of what the climate models “projected” a decade ago.
And as (my and most) children are or will be more wealthy than us, they will have enough money and moderner techniques to take the necessary measures to build or heighten the dikes, build dams and reserve flood plains, build floating houses, provide drinking water and water for irrigation from seawater, etc… if that would be necessary at all.

Actually Thoughtful says:
November 25, 2010 at 11:20 am
“Wow! Must be nice to live in your world. ”
Absolutely thoughtful, it is very nice to live in this world. Once you can stop being angry about “other” people who don’t share your beliefs, you’ll have a much happier time, yourself. If you’ve come here looking for a place where you can convert people to your gloomy angry perspective, where facts are inconvenient and arrogance is king, you are looking in the wrong place. Here we like facts, observations, untainted by beliefs, and are very keen on debate about them. Facts are facts, they are true, by definition. “True facts” is a tautology.
The last decade may have been the warmest in someone’s records but how long and how accurate are those records? And is it still warming? Not in most places, not for the last 10 years anyway.
No missing heat in the deep oceans, that’s not a finer point by the way, its a panic stricken hope to save the AGW theory. If there’s no “missing” heat, the theory is sunk. That’s a theory, not a fact.
Anyway, if your beliefs make you happy, or comfortable, enjoy them. Just don’t expect us to indulge you too much.

Actually Thoughtful says:
November 25, 2010 at 11:20 am
Wow! Must be nice to live in your world. I was going to do a point by point refutation (refudiation as some on your side might say) – until I got to the bit about it hasn’t warmed in the past decade. Given that the 2,000s are the warmest decade on record: we are at an impasse – I insist on true facts, and you (apparently) would like to use facts that don’t have the burden of truth. Unless you can back up your claim that (against all published data) the last decade somehow cooled or didn’t warm. I shan’t be spending any more time “debating.”
About true facts:
Greening of the Sahel:
http://lada.virtualcentre.org/eims/download.asp?pub_id=96080&app=0
Heat content of the oceans:
http://climateresearchnews.com/2009/02/pielke-sr-compares-upper-ocean-heat-content-changes-with-the-giss-model-predictions/
Temperature in last decade:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/
You can plot the 1990-2010 trend for the four main temperature series (HadCRU3, GISS, UAH and RSS). All are essentially flat after the 1998-2000 ENSO events. The same is happening now with a deep plunge into a La Niña condition after the 2008 La Niña and the 2009-2010 El Niño. See:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/11/04/rss-global-temperature-anomaly-takes-a-dive/
Thus there is no temperature increase, only natural variability around a flat trend. That this is the “decade with the highest temperature on record” may be true (but CO2 levels increased 10 ppmv), but we only have 150 years of more or less reliable records, of which the start was in a known cold period.
No model did “project” the current flat period, which resembles the 1945-1975 flat period.

Actually Thoughtful says:
November 25, 2010 at 10:33 pm
Can you spot the problem with your logic? Heck, it is Thanksgiving – I will give it to you: if temperature records are “more or less reliable records” – then we can’t start with a known cold period (unless they were reliable before they weren’t reliable? Or perhaps you think trees make good thermometers??)
Well, that depends of how (un)reliable the temperature records are. But besides the thermometers, there are lots of indications that a few centuries ago worldwide was a colder period, commonly called the “little ice age”. That can be seen in sediments, glacier advancement, historical readings of failed crops (witches burned, because it was their fault,…), the end of grape growing in my country (slowly coming back now)… Even in tree rings (not a very reliable source, I agree).
Thus in general, we can say that the temperature record is more or less reliable, not more than that, and indicates a warming since about the start of the previous century. Near all of the warming in the first halve was natural: CO2 levels hardly rised above the pre-industrial level. Only with the boom of industrialisation after 1945, we see a still increasing accelleration of emissions and levels. What happened then: despite the increase of CO2, we see a 30 years period of slight cooling (1945-1975) and a sharp rise after that until 1998, then again a flat period. The cooling period is attributed by the models to the increased emissions of human aerosols, the warming period is fully attributed to more CO2 and the current flat period is attributed to… natural variability.
The attribution to aerosols in the 1945-1975 period in my opinion was a scapegoat to fit the models to reality: even the sign of the effect of aerosols (brown/black soot vs. sulfate) is not known for sure. See my comment as #6 at RC:
http://www.realclimate.org/?comments_popup=245
The full attribution of the warming period 1975-2000 is questionable too: no model reproduces any type of natural cycle (including ENSO events, PDO, NAO, AO,…). The respective cooler/flat and warming periods coincide with the phases of the PDO, thus the warming may be as good (at least in part) a result of these natural cycles as from CO2. See Fig. S1 in:
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/suppl/2005/07/07/1112418.DC1/Barnett.SOM.pdf
Now just at the greening doesn’t make THE case against AGW, these events don’t make THE case for it. But they do make A case for it – and they are consistent with AGW predictions, and not consistent with global cooling (they are possibly consistent with global “natural variation.” – the extreme edge of natural variation).
Well, the Sahel is a typical example of natural variation: wet and dry periods come in multi-decadal cycles. So floods and droughts also follow natural cycles in other parts of the globe: more floods in southern parts (around the Mediterranean) of Europe and North Africa when solar activity is low (as now) and the jet stream position is more equatorward. More rain in England and mid-Europe (and the Mississippi delta) if solar activity is higher. See e.g.:
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2005/2005GL023787.shtml and
http://ks.water.usgs.gov/pubs/reports/paclim99.html
Thus attributing all these events to GHGs, without detailed, multidecadal (at least 60 years for one full PDO cycle) knowledge of natural variability, is a bridge too far.
The same for hurricanes: Trenberth predicted an increase in number and strength of hurricanes (which caused a clash with Chris Landsea), but the last three years show the opposite: we are back on a thirty year low of numbers and strength is not increased. Again, hurricane numbers/strength seems to come and go in 30 years waves, mostly, if not all, natural.
check out Hansen 1988 with an unjaundiced eye – his predictions are amazing, and his (small) error is easily understood as having overestimated climate sensitivity
As I said, the last decade is flat, except for natural variability. As far as I know, there is no indication that ENSO events or any other natural cycles are influenced by more CO2. It seems even the opposite (like the PDO influencing temperature). The last decade “increase” in temperature is more a matter of begin and endpoint bias: 2000 still had the influence of the 1999 La Niña, 2010 still has the influence of the 2009-2010 El Niño. Clearly natural variability. Just wait a few months (October saw the first drop in temperatures) and we may see what the current La Niña does.
The temperature trends are already outside the “projection” of most models (2010 may be at the edge, but temperatures are going down now by a strong La Niña):
http://climateaudit.org/2009/07/07/rahm-centering-enhancing-successful-prediction/
The climate scientists have told us from day one that AGW trends will show up on a 30 year scale (they may show up on a smaller scale, but they may not -and temps might even drop on shorter time frames).
Several climate scientists (have no link now) said that we are now in a natural caused flat period which may last 30 years, but that the warming will haunt us after that with a fast increase. We are now in the first decade of the 30 years period. If that holds true, the remainder of the 30 years will halve the 1975-2000 trend, which is the base for all climate models. Thus the real sensitivity for 2xCO2 is some 1.5°C not 3°C, the average of current models. Quite important for any future “projection”.
What you are proposing needs to explain away CO2 – which appears to be doing exactly what we expect it to do. It needs to find a new source for the warming, after ruling out CO2 (recall the sun has been quiescent for the 30 warming years in question).
Even if solar activity didn’t increase over the past 50 years (and currently drops fast), it was at a 8,000 years high. See:
http://cc.oulu.fi/~usoskin/personal/Sola2-PRL_published.pdf
As the effect on oceans heat content needs some 30+ years, solar activity still may have caused a part of the increase in temperature. Further, a few % change in cloud cover has the same effect as the 100 ppmv extra CO2. It is known that cloud cover changes with solar activity and with ocean events (ENSO, PDO,…) it is not even sure what is cause and effect in these cases. See e.g.:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/DelicateBalance/ and following pages. From that source, about unexpected changes in cloud cover:
“What we found was a 4-watt-per-square-meter change within the climate system that the climate models did not predict,”
The total increase by GHGs since the start of the industrial revolution absorbs some 1.7 W/m2 extra energy…

Sorry, AT, you don’t get to ask that question. The point of the true Null Hypothesis is the following: until proven otherwise, all trends and variations are assumed to be part of natural variability. Since the climate changes since the beginning of the Halocene, and more recently since the end of the LIA, are entirely consistent with the current state of affairs, your claim that the recent increases in temperature etc. are due to AGW and CO2 still lack a disproof of the Null Hypothesis.
Better get on it! The world awaits.

Actually Thoughtful says:
November 26, 2010 at 11:52 am
Hmm. You seem pretty set in your ways. I note you don’t respond to the fact that the earth has warmed by .07C during the decade you claimed no warming! And no, the “endpoint bias” bit has been thoroughly debunked.
Come on AT, I have responded that your 10 years was actually beginning in a natural caused low and ends at a natural caused high. If that isn’t begin-and-endpoint bias, so give me your definition.
And the temperatures are already outside the “envelope” of model projections. Only by using some tricks like non-conventional filtering, that is hidden.
I have some experience with models (be it for chemical processes, not climate). Your (and that of several climate modelers) reasoning is that if we don’t have another explanation, then it must be CO2. That may be true if you know all influences which cause climate changes. But as I could prove, that is by far not the case: no model is capable of reproducing (let be “project”) any natural oscillation. Not ENSO, not the PDO, NAO, AO,… If you see that one ENSO event causes a difference of 0.7°C in less than 2 years… There are hints of climatic ENSO cycles, ~70 years cycles, ~1000 years cycles, etc. into the far past. As long as there is no knowledge of what the natural cycles drives, the computer models which mainly counts on CO2 for their warming are simply worthless. As good as a process model that I made failed, because some raw material vendor swindled – without our knowledge – with the specs.
Further, as I have already said: a few% change in clouds can have the same (or more) effect than a doubling of CO2. No model can reproduce cloud cover as it is observed. See e.g.:
http://www.nerc-essc.ac.uk/~rpa/PAPERS/olr_grl.pdf
And nature isn’t interested in CO2 for cloud cover: it comes and goes as nature likes:
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/308/5723/847.abstract
Thus, if already two important influences on temperature/climate are not calculated by the models as should be, how in heaven can these models be trusted in their “projections”, mainly based on an overestimate of sensitivity for GHGs?
We need at least 20 years more to have more or less reliable data to know the effect of 2 full PDO cycles. Thanks to more and better data in the next decades about cloud cover and ocean heat content, solar changes and eventually volcanic events, the (real) influence of aerosols, etc., the models can be refined with increasing knowledge of natural variability. Until then, I don’t think any model can and should be trusted.
I will probably not see that happpen, but my children were raised with the same sense of healthy skepticism…

Richard Sharpe – when you are confident in your position – you don’t have to resort to name calling. Do some research – post when you have something interesting to say.

Actually Thoughtful says November 27, 2010 at 7:44 pm

Richard Sharpe – when you are confident in your position – you don’t have to resort to name calling. Do some research – post when you have something interesting to say.

Ahhh, yes, the misplaced confidence of the clueless who don’t have the courage to use their real names. Come back troll when you have found some courage.

Actually Thoughtful says:
November 27, 2010 at 8:46 pm
Look – only the clueless deniers pick two points, then draw a line and call it analysis. You don’t appear to be BOTH of those things – so you do know better.
I am not sure who is clueless in this case: just make a (Wood for Trees) plot of the linear trend from 2001 to 2010 instead of 2000 to 2010: the trend is going from +0.06°C/decade to -0.06°C/decade. That is caused by the strong influence of the 1999-2000 La Niña. Thus still a beginpoint bias, even on a trend. That is no reason for me to say that the temperatures are falling, only that these are flat + natural variability over the past decade.
So you were for natural variability before you were against it? Take a look at Hansen 1988. Critically evaluate it. That was 22 years ago – we have learned a lot since then.
But still they have no clue about the extent of natural variability. To repeat the obvious: the Hansen estimate was based on the strong upgoing trend of 1975-1988. Before that the temperatures were flat, even slightly cooling. All the warming was attributed to GHGs, nothing to natural variability, while the PDO shifted in the same year 1975. Temperature follows the C scenario since 2000 (low CO2), while CO2 levels follow the B scenario (bussiness as usual). See:
http://climateaudit.org/2008/07/28/hansen-update/
Even including the 2008-2010 temperature trend, that still is around the C scenario.
Flooding in Pakistan, acidifying oceans, melting polar ice, Greenland’s ice sheet melt accelerating, warmer nights, shorter winters
The melting of Greenland’s ice sheet was as high and accellerated faster in the period 1930-1950, including higher (summer) temperatures than today:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/greenland_temp.html
Flooding in Pakistan? All natural. Warmer nights, shorter winters? 95% natural (just my guess, which is as good as that of the faulty models). Acidifying oceans? So small that it is unmeasurable in the normal natural variability of the ocean’s pH, thus only based on calculations. Further, coccoliths and coral reefs flourished in warmer oceans at CO2 levels 10-12 times the current ones. Fish can live in pH changes of several units…
I thought you didn’t believe in aerosols?
http://www.skepticalscience.com/aerosols-global-warming.htm
It appears that aerosols can explain the 1975-1990 slow warming. But they don’t explain the current, multi-decade warming.
I have written a lot of comments (without much response) about the (non-)influence of aerosols at RC, but as (former) modeler, I know that one can fit any past trend if one has more than a few variables to “tune” the result. See the non-influence of the huge change in aerosols 1990-2000 in Europe:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/aerosols.html
Here the result of different forcing attributions to aerosols: one can halve the effect of 2xCO2 (thus halve the temperature increase in the year 2100) simply by reducing the effect of aerosols, while the emulation of the past temperature still is the same (even slightly better):
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/oxford.html
I need to make an update of “my” model up to 2010, as the low-CO2-influence scenario probably fits the latest period even better.
Further, the Skeptical Science article is about global dimming. That is attributed to aerosols by some, but that can’t be true: while the industrial nations (North America, Europe) reduced their SO2 emissions, SE Asia increased their emissions with about the same amount, but global dimming reversed.
90% of all human aerosols are emitted in the NH and most stay there before being washed out by rain, but global dimming was measured as good in the SH. Thus has more to do with cloud cover than with aerosols . Moreover, as most aerosols are emitted in the NH, the warming of the oceans (the best measure for heat balance changes) should be (far) less than in the SH. But we see the opposite:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/oceans_heat.html
But you have to factor in that increasing clouds keep heat in 24 hours a day, but reflect heat for only 6-12 hours a day.
Sorry, you have no idea what clouds do: low lying clouds have an average cooling effect, high altitude (cirrus) clouds have a warming effect. That is known by all scientists. The models include a reduction of low clouds with increasing GHGs, thus a warming feedback effect, which is not seen in reality. But (low) cloud cover responds to solar activity and ocean cycles (or reverse, that is a matter of debate).
So we are 67% through your two full PDOs – and the warming trend is very obvious. The next 20 years are going to have to be COLD to back us out of this.
You forget to mention that we had two warm halve periods and one cooler, need some additional 20 years for 2 full cycles. Even so, other long-term cycles also play a role: The Alps and Norwegian glaciers now reveal artefacts of people passing 6,000 years ago where lots of ice were during thousands of years. Some ice free passes in the Alps during Roman times still are covered with ice. And the MWP probably has been warmer than current at a lot of places, if not globally. All natural…
Thus without detailed knowledge of what did drive these natural cycles, forget all these dire “projections” (NOT predictions) of models which don’t reflect several major influences on climate like cloud cover.
Are you really willing to bet your children’s and grandchildren’s future on this?
I am old enough to have seen a lot of this kind of predictions come and go. As the wealth of children in general increases compared to their parents, they will be rich enough to take the necessary measures, if necessary at all, including relative affordable alternatives for fossil fuels.
Mann, Schmidt, Hansen, countless others are leading the way.
Sorry, what I have read written by Mann (exchanging inconvenient data of proxies by “better” infilled data to “hide the decline”) and the continuous censoring at RC (I did give up to post there when half my posts were censored, although always on topic) by Gavin Schmidt and the alarmist nonsense of Hansen, is not really my way of thinking of what a scientist should say or do.

Re: Ferdinand Engelbeen
Regarding begin/end point bias – I suggest we do what climate scientists do and ignore any time period less than 30 years for serious discussion. While this still subjects you to begin/end point “bias” (I think about this very differently, but I see what you are worried about) -that bias is very, very minor over 30 years or more. So be gone with 10 year analysis, where obvious trends can be overwhelmed by short term phenomena.
This does eviscerate much of your argument – but it gets us closer to your precious 60 year TWO PDO.
So here is the graph at 60 years:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1950/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1950/trend
I see .12C/decade, and this includes the 1950-1975 years when not much was happening (CO2 was climbing, but had not yet become the primary forcing on earth’s temperature). If we start in 1973 (choosing the warmest year in the 70s to not only avoid start point bias, but to actually give your argument the most charitable view) and go until now (again – La Nina so most favorable to your argument) – we get .16C/decade!
So even taking your argument at face value (60 years required to rule out natural variability) – we see warming. And we see that it correlates to CO2 (greenhouse) emissions. The data is in black and white – no effort to obfuscate or play games of any sort. Just wanting to KNOW what is happening so we can plan accordingly
Yes – I too have seen many scares – Y2K being the silliest of them all. I agree it is worth casting a skeptic gaze on any alarmist claims. The problem is that I, and many people better educated than I in this area, HAVE cast a skeptic gaze. And rather than finding the alarmist (ie IPCC) being alarmist, I find them being too conservative (it is, after all a political document (here I mean the report for policy makers – the supporting material of the IPCC has held up incredibly well under intense attack from those threatened by the reality of AGW).
As for Hansen 1988 – The fact that temps are slightly closer to C than B is not the point. The scenarios are for what regime of CO2 pollution we have. And B is the scenario, so B is what you must look at. (If we had cut emissions then we would have to look at C).
So B slightly over states the pollution and uses an climate sensitivity of 4.2C/doubling of CO2.
For Hansen to be correct, he would have needed to use 3.4C/doubling. And what do you know – IPCC 2007 says the range is 1.5C-4.5C with 3C being the most likely (and the 4.5C being a weaker boundary than the 1.5C).
It seems that climate scientists have a clue about natural variability (from observed results in the real world during the instrumentation era) yet you proclaim :”But still they have no clue about the extent of natural variability.” Not sure what your basis for that claim is.
How many years will you require before you stop pretending global climate disruption is natural variability? You said 60 years – above I demonstrate that even using 60 years natural variability does not explain the temperature record.
But over here we have this theory -AGW – that explains night-time warming, Greenland ice sheet melting, and on and on.
If cloud cover could randomly change in the direction towards warming in the past – where is that in the record? Were we simply lucky from 1850 to 1980? When will it stop?
Of course it will stop when/if we stop injecting CO2 into the air.
I would slow down on accusing me of not having a clue about anything, but especially cloud cover. You are the one who has to keep moving the goal posts and keeps losing every specific point you bring up. Here is what clouds do, and why.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2008JD011470.shtml
http://news.discovery.com/earth/clouds-climate.html
And so it goes.