Perhaps Dr. Steig was too busy writing snark (in response to a peer reviewed paper that is a rebuttal his own) to figure it out, but this made me laugh. Comment # 6 in this thread over at Real Climate from “mapleleaf” gets this response from Dr. Eric Steig:
…
And why did WUWT show an image that appears to have less warming than the one shown here by Eric? Sorry but I have to fault you both there..the figures should show for what season they are valid, or if they are for annual temperatures.
[The figure here shows O’Donnell’s et al.s reconstruction for the same time period as our Nature cover image. These are annual mean estimates. I cannot speak to WTF WUWT has done.–eric]
Always happy to help perfesser…it’s really as easy as using the right click on your mouse (unless you use a Mac, in which case I can’t help you) or clicking a link. Observe.
1. Go to the thread on WUWT here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/12/01/skeptic-paper-accepted-on-antarctica-rebuts-steig-et-al/
2. Find the image of two Antarctic maps side by side
3. Right click on it, choose “view image info”, or if you have a Mac and can’t use right click, note the handily included phrase “Click to enlarge.” below the image. Click it, and note the URL in the browser for the enlarged image.
4. Note that the source for the image, sized and enlarged, is this URL, which is not connected to WUWT in any way. In fact it sources to The Air Vent, where Ryan ODonnell published the essay we reposted here by request:
http://noconsensus.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/image0.png
5. Note that I have no control of imagery on other peoples servers, nor of the content of those images.
6. See this helpful post on The Air Vent regarding these same questions.
So to answer the question, I’ve done nothing, and the only “WTF” needed might be in wondering why you and other RC commenters can’t figure out where the source of the image came from.
Thank you for playing “Find that image source“.
Mr. Steig gets “pwned” and has to take down the framed Nature cover in his office. I can hear the swearing from over 1000 miles away. The laughter from his colleagues down the hall is deafening! To be a fool is one thing, to act like one is another. To be recognized by the world as one… priceless.
This fencing match back and forth would be more highly entertaining if it weren’t for the political ramifications looming in the background and all of the tax dollars wasted. Ah, such is life, bittersweet.
“I cannot speak to WTF WUWT has done.—eric
It doesn’t seem he knows even what he has done.
I’ve wondered if he approved the Nature cover image? Look up “How to lie with maps” and that cover is the accompanying graphic. WTFsUWT?
Even with your simple step-by-step you’re NOT going to get through. It’s not that he/they have a mental handicap, it’s called pre-mental prejudice. Anything of/by WUWT, and/or one each Anthony Watts and his gaggle of readers, makes them see red, get a piercing ringing in their ears, and foam at the mouth. Nope! Nice try.
That’s the way Anthony.
Give it to ’em hot and strong.
Kindest Regards
I find it amusing that they get offended when their findings are challenged, rather than be happy that better methods are found and that we now have more accurate results than before. I think Dr. Steig has shown his hand.
Here is their snark from Real Climate:
“The peer review process is broken, which is why.. umm…our paper was published in the leading climate journal.”
I notice they didn’t mention the 88 pages of comments. I believe others who contributed to the paper were ready to give up, but one member continued on until finally, they said “take it or leave it”. All because of one reviewer. Any of that mentioned? Nope.
Speaks volumes about the vitriolic bile within this ‘scientist’. And here was I thinking that scientists were dispassionate observers and highly intelligent at theorizing and explaining the world around us and all its mysteries. Seems there are not many on the Gorebull Reaming side who have such an ethos.
That’s a lot of simple instructions for someone with a PhD in Climatology.
Maybe you should have broken it down into a couple of groups with subsets.
Sorry, couldn’t resist.
Macs have right click…
The Mac has had a right-click button for at least five years. On mice produced by Apple, there is a uni-button look in front, but underneath there are two sensors, depending on which side you press. That disguise was, I presume, to camouflage Steve Jobs’s climbdown from his idiotic one-button-mouse crusade.
Mike Jowsey says:
December 9, 2010 at 5:48 pm
“….. And here was I thinking that scientists were dispassionate observers and highly intelligent at theorizing and explaining the world around us and all its mysteries…..
============================================================
Well actually, scientists are as you describe…. However guys like Steig aren’t scientists. They are political apparatchiks payed to validate ideology by any means…..
LOL. For PC users, Mac users can use right-click (w/multibutton mice) or CONTROL-click to do that.
All observations show that the global climate is acting completely normally. The only effect that can be definitively connected with the increase in CO2 is rising agricultural production.
Although increased CO2 may cause an insignificant amount of warming, that is at the conjecture stage of the scientific method. It cannot be empirically measured like ag production.
Steig is just another government scientist who has rejected the scientific method in return for job security. He needs to take a refresher course in the scientific method.
The straws they are grasping at are pathetic.
So they aren’t only the best of the best, their fast moves are invisible to the denizens of the blogosphere. Right. In their dreams.
Smokey says:
December 9, 2010 at 6:20 pm
Brilliant link Smokey! Thanks for clearing that up.
LMAO!!!!
yea sure I bet it made you laugh. More likely, angry.
Smokey says:
December 9, 2010 at 6:20 pm
======================
Smokey, sometimes you just make my day!
“All observations show that the global climate is acting completely normally. The only effect that can be definitively connected with the increase in CO2 is rising agricultural production.”
This isn’t true. Observations do not show the global climate is acting completely normally. For that to be true you’d have to rule out that recent warming was caused in large part by rising greenhouse gases. Can’t do that? Then you can’t conclude what you do.
“Although increased CO2 may cause an insignificant amount of warming, that is at the conjecture stage of the scientific method. It cannot be empirically measured like ag production.”
What do you mean by insignificant? Even 1C warming is significant. That’s more warming than occured over the 20th century. And the science suggests that CO2 is going to result in more than 1C warming, potentially much more. Your confidence is totally misplaced.
“Speaks volumes about the vitriolic bile within this ‘scientist’. And here was I thinking that scientists were dispassionate observers and highly intelligent at theorizing and explaining the world around us and all its mysteries.”
Dispassionate observers? yeah sure. Go up to an astronomer and accuse them of scientific fraud. See what happens. They won’t remain “dispassionate” I can tell you.
“To be recognized by the world as one… priceless.”
Gents,
I think when it comes to climate hucksters & fraudsters, laughter is the best medicine.
Suggested response to the next highly questionable “pre-mental prejudice” based paper released:
Laughter and ridicule…followed by more laughter.
onion says:
“Observations do not show the global climate is acting completely normally. For that to be true you’d have to rule out that recent warming was caused in large part by rising greenhouse gases. Can’t do that? Then you can’t conclude what you do.”
onion, you are yet another person who does not understand the scientific method. FYI, sientific skeptics have nothing to prove. And skeptics have no duty to rule anything out; we rely on verifiable observations. It is the job of those promoting the conjecture that catastrophic AGW is right around the corner to make their case. Unfortunately, CAGW has been repeatedly falsified – not least by the planet itself.
Since you mistakenly believe that the current global climate is outside of its normal and natural parameters, here is a bigger picture:
click1
click2
click3
click4
click5
Nothing out of the ordinary is occurring. What we are observing has happened many times in the pre-SUV past. And yes, a 1° rise in temperature is insignificant – to everyone but a climate alarmist [note the natural, routine ±3° temperature changes throughout the Holocene].
Eric posted something equally ignorant, but far more revealing, when he tried to not only slam “Warnings”, but called the author a liar, while admitting he had not bothered to read the book.
I find this sort of behavior from cliamte scientists – Hansen and his death trains and tipping points, Mann and his protesteth-too-much whines, and now Steig and his uninformed snark and spew to be very illustrative of the kind of thinking behind the fear mongering they sell us.
@onion:
The null hypothesis of any theory of climate change is that the climate is behaving normally. No climate study has ever rejected this null hypothesis. In other words nobody has EVER proved scientifically that the climate is doing ANYTHING unusual. It isn’t those who claim that the climate is behaving normally who have to prove this claim. The scientific burden of proof is on those who claim that the climate is doing something different. It is a burden that they have never succeeded in meeting and would prefer to ignore.
A 1 degree warming IS insignificant. Indeed a 1 degree warming is barely measurable.
As to the models predicting greater warming – the assumptions needed to get this to happen are bizarre. The models that make those bizarre assumptions have failed the real world test many times over.
“5. Note that I have no control of imagery on other peoples servers, nor of the content of those images.”
Isn’t that exactly what Eric was pointing out to the commenter?
======================
Smokey, sometimes you just make my day!
What he said.
Mike Jowsey says: “Speaks volumes about the vitriolic bile within this ‘scientist’.”
Hmm. A bit OTT, Mike. Maybe he just had a bad shrimp at lunch before he wrote it.
It works the same on my Mac.
“Maple Leaf” is a writing candid camera… he does not even realize his mug is in the frame when he shoots!
“Wtf!”Oh deary me. I’ll tell you WUWT. The cooling and the falsifying of more and more of the climate orthodoxy offerings done during the free-wheeling political science period of climate science that slammed to a halt November 2009 is making all these cagw committed more and more testy. It’s going to get nastier than a merely juvenile wtf. These guys are under severe stress. Some will write themselves out of the consensus, others have already barred their own escape. What’s left is desperation and hope (and anger).
Smokey said,
“The only effect that can be definitively connected with the increase in CO2 is rising agricultural production.”
Best one liner I have yet read anywhere, simple and to the point it should be put to our leaders in that way.
Smokey wins this thread hands down.
Nothing beats a straight flush.
As one who spends his working time explaining DNS and SMTP to technical illiterates and why their stuff is broke and why I can’t reboot the internet I can only say “just smile and wave boys, smile and wave” 🙂
Onion claims,
“This isn’t true. Observations do not show the global climate is acting completely normally. For that to be true you’d have to rule out that recent warming was caused in large part by rising greenhouse gases. Can’t do that? Then you can’t conclude what you do.”
Recent warming which ended some years ago could be natural in origin, it could be mostly natural with some from human input via CO2. The vital questions are,
What part is natural and what part human induced?
Can the natural and the man made elements be measured separately and is the margin of error larger than the measured temperatures?
There is as yet no definitive proof of the anthropogenic effect and no direct evidence of CO2 induced warming beyond the natural cyclic warming we see through the geologic record. A predictive computer model is not proof, the models so far have been unable to produce anything that could reasonably be called an accurate prediction of either weather(met office) or climate or global temperatures.
If you were to exclude the computer models from the CAGW theory then what is left?
Show me any solid evidence that the current tiny amount of warming(not any predicted future increase) is anything other than normal and natural and I will take notice.
Come on Anthony, right click ? Seriously?
Forgot to add, my previous comment was right clicked and pasted…. Sheesh
onion says:
December 9, 2010 at 7:01 pm
And the science suggests that CO2 is going to result in more than 1C warming, potentially much more.
————————————-
suggests …. is going to …. potentially
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Climate experiments of the future – the cure for insomnia, maybe ??
Fred from Canuckistan says: at 5:50 pm
“That’s a lot of simple instructions for someone with a PhD in Climatology.
Eric Steig completed his PhD in Geological Sciences at UW in 1995.
Based on my interactions with students of a geological persuasion the rough language is thereby explained.
What is this with right clicking and the Mac? :-))
It has been standard in the OS since system 8 around 1997. You use the secondary click on every trackpad or mouse delivered with your Mac, or of course if you have a standard two-button USB mouse, just right click! 😉
Better to remain silent and be thought a fool…
Well they certainly removed all doubt!
If one were to try and ascertain the sweetness of apples in an orchard by analysing the lemons, it would be a very complex problem involving at least a hundred variables, possible to achieve but infinitely easier to analyse the apples.
To me it seems many thermophobic scientists working on the cause of warming,are analysing lemons and finding the apples not to their taste. Tasting the apples seems to be beyond their charter.
Pure class from Anthony!
Nice one, Anthony.
It is obvious that Dr Steig (and Onion) never had the benefit of the wonderfully useful and kindly-meant advice of the sort my father used to hand on to me when he was attempting to teach me something
“Boy, your’e supposed to put your brain into gear before you engage your mouth!” or
“Son, your head’s not just to keep your ears apart or to hang your hat on!”
And if I forgot one of the finer points of Manly behaviour “Cost’s nothing to say something nice, son.”
and when I got something wrong and a helping of humble pie was coming my way
“Smile like you mean it when you have to apologise. Being gracious is a valuable skill”
“onion says:
December 9, 2010 at 7:01 pm
And the science suggests that CO2 is going to result in more than 1C warming, potentially much more.”
But NASA says it’s not as bad as we thought……
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/12/08/new_model_doubled_co2_sub_2_degrees_warming/
What and engage with people that you know are smarter than you never.
This feels, reads, looks like a two-year old tantrum for not getting one’s way everywhichway. In an adult, like Steig, a two-year-old tantrum deserves jail time (go to your room) until you can become reasonable (human, thoughtful, respectful, scientific). I keep mentioning the loss of retirement savings or pensions or whatever these frauds believe is their due in “old age”. They deserve to lose much more, but at least our tax dollars ought to be denied them once they are removed from their politions.
I swear there’s like 1 or 2 people with the courage to post the warmista argument here at WUWT, and they just change their pseudonyms for each thread. They make the same tired arguments, and poorly, each time. They also seem to vanish as soon as they’re cornered.
Two points concerning your instructions on a Mac.
If you have a three button mouse on a Mac, right click works fine, and ‘View Image Info’ is there. ‘Copy Image Location’ is also available, and would let you paste the location into some other window.
On the older MacBooks, with a separate track pad & track pad button, pressing the control key while clicking the track pad button will bring up the context menu.
I’m sure there is a way on new Macs with their single track pad, but I don’t have one of those.
I hope this will help Dr. Steig see the information you are pointing out.
HEY ANTHONY, stop your ANTI Mac bias!!! LOL
You press “control” mouse button to right click on a Mac. If you have a new super duper mouse on the new iMacs, you can set it up to have from 1 to 8 buttons on it so it is quite superior. Just an FYI!
REPLY: Not a bias, I simply don’t own one and they are a mystery to me – Anthony
I use both platforms. Macs also have multitouch track pads, on which one can tap two fingers to get a secondary click. (They also support two-finger x-y scrolling, three-finger swipes for navigation, pinch to zoom, four-finger Exposé, etc. I cannot help with that on a PC.)
Maybe he doesn’t visit the site? Tough to know “wtf” is going on if you don’t visit, eh?
REPLY: Oh he visits, there’s a lot of people that visit that won’t admit to it. Some day I may do a Wikileaks style log release. Heh. – Anthony
Roger Knights says:
December 9, 2010 at 6:06 pm
Roger, while having noted the right click function of the Mac, I had never put much thought into it. Thank you for a humorous look at where it came from!
What’s a Mac?
A Mac is a multi-speed human operated mechanical rolling device powered by fossil fuel designed primarily to move other non-powered rolling devices which otherwise would be stationary from point to point.
A PC (person car) is much less powerful, much significantly more agile. 🙂
Dr. Steig’s response about his Antartica paper. Nice word smithing to hide the possibility of zero warming in Antartica, at least that’s how it looks to me.
“Of course, we made it very clear in the paper that the rate of warming was not necessarily distinct from zero at 95% confidence, so this isn’t a new result.”
————
Full quote from RC:
[Response: I doubt that quote is mine. The Guardian is not exactly a reliable outlet in my experience. But sure I’ll concede this point is probably technically correct. The CRU data give about 0.12 for S.H. as a whole so that’s roughly twice O’Donnell et al. Of course, we made it very clear in the paper that the rate of warming was not necessarily distinct from zero at 95% confidence, so this isn’t a new result.–eric]
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/12/a-brief-history-of-knowledge-about-antarctic-temperatures/
Digging deep at DC, treasures abund… such as “Maple Leaf” by himself:
• MapleLeaf // January 6, 2010 at 4:54 am
John M., thanks for sharing. Perhaps I’ll be as brave and open as you when I’m 63. Right now, as a relatively young scientists, it is easy to burn bridges especially if the feds (Canadian) perceive one to be too outspoken on contentious issues such as AGW. They won’t/can’t fire you, but they can choose not hire you and or make your life a dead end in the civil service, hence the moniker ” MapleLeaf”.
You stated that “I do not understand what is going on with Springer, although I have a guess or two.”
I’m intrigued. Please do share some of your thoughts on this matter; I have they feeling that your intuition and insight might be valuable to DC.”
Sucking up to the Team and DC connections just in case…
So essentially Dr Steig is very frustrated with people pointing out details that he, himself essentially, got completely and utterly wrong.
Maybe he should’ve become a real doctor then.
Problem is onion there is no evidence of any warming that needs to be explained.
While I have always thought that CO2 increase should cause some warming. The reality is, even using the GHCN numbers which we know to have been fudged and faked for at least half of the warming they show, the amount of warming in the last century or at any point in it is entirely within the normal variation observed throughout the Earth’s history.
That means the hypothesis that there is no warming at all due to CO2 is a better fit to the data by far than any of the “respected climate models”.
Your claim that ” … you’d have to rule out that recent warming was caused in large part by rising greenhouse gases. Can’t do that?” is just lousy scientific method.
We don’t have to prove a negative, the CAGW folks are supposed to prove their hypothesis. So far it is failing every experimental test despite extensive data fudging.
Right Click on Mac = Control + Click (Macs conserve input keys)
[Sh-h-h! Anthony thinks Macs are the devil’s spawn. In fact, if he even knew I was saying this he would (SNIP) ~dbs]
Anthony, looks like “Maple Leaf” is pushing it too far, even for Eric Steig!!!
This is so funny:
23
MapleLeaf says:
9 décembre 2010 at 10:06 PM
Cross posted from Rabett Run:
“It is my understanding that the reconstruction methodology/technique is designed to estimate temperatures using the satellite data, so the image should be high resolution, with the temperature data having the same resolution the satellite data/pixels. The AVHRR satellite data from the NOAA satellites are fairly high resolution, although I am not sure exactly what; 1-km comes to mind.
Anyhow, the RC graph makes more sense, as the detail is consistent with the satellite data used to generate it. Smoothing the data potentially removes valuable information.
I’m confused and do not trust McI or WUWT. Does anyone have access to the graphs as they appear in the paper? I went to the AMS site and the paper was not available yet, even here:
http://journals.ametsoc.org/toc/clim/0/0
Someone really needs to clear this all up and fast.”
[Response: Enough with the conspiracy theory already. I’m using their data — which the lead author sent me — presumably they are using their own data too. Evidently we are using different plotting routines. Nobody is doing anything nefarious here. Sheesh!–eric]
24
MapleLeaf says:
9 décembre 2010 at 10:41 PM
Eric,
Thanks again for your feedback. Not to harp on this, but you seem to have misunderstood my post. I was not suggesting that you were smoothing the data or not displaying it correctly. IMHO, your reproduction (“RC” above) is the appropriate way to display the data.
I was taking issue with the fact that others are smoothing (or overly smoothing) the data, and as a result, information may be being lost. That is all.
[Response: I don’t know why I’m defending the lunatics, but no, I don’t think anything important is being lost. Spatial autocorrelation is huge in Antarctica so if you average a few pixels together it cannot possibly matter.–eric]
Perhaps Dr. Steig was too busy writing snark (in response to a peer reviewed paper that is a rebuttal his own) to figure it out, but this made me laugh. Comment # 6 in this thread over at Real Climate from “mapleleaf” gets this response from Dr. Eric Steig:
Followed by this one:
“[Response: I suspect your history is quite accurate, but to be fair, these guys DID publish the paper, even though their results wound up not supporting their thesis very well. I commend them on that. Indeed, I think it speaks very well to the integrity of the authors, when it comes down to facts (as opposed to speculation).–eric]”
Is that what you call snark?
Mods I would like to know why my post on this subject has been deleted, Thanks
REPLY: I found it, and I restored it. Not sure why it ended up in the rubbish bin, may have been unintentional, I’ve been away for a couple of hours.
As to the “snark” comment, the whole RC post by Steig is snark, that’s what I’m referring to, not specific comment paragraphs – Anthony
Steig’s characterization of my position when I began looking at Steig et al is untrue and without foundation.
The gauntlet has been thrown down at your feet, Steig. Answer Steve McIntyre’s charge, or be forever debunked and discredited.
The internet never forgets, Mr Steig.
It is difficult to have your work publicly corrected but it can hardly be a surprise for methods and findings to be refined (which is my interpretation of the two papers). The over-reaction by camp followers is of course also to be expected. I am impressed that Eric can attempt to reign in his. After the dust settles a little, let’s see if he accepts that his work can be corrected. It seems he does not claim McIntyre has made scientific errors in his rebuttal.
Steve McIntyre says:
December 10, 2010 at 8:06 pm
Steig’s characterization of my position when I began looking at Steig et al is untrue and without foundation.
Yes you were your usual disingenuous self with the veiled implications of misconduct and egging on your claque at CA as usual. Several posters at your site found your comments to Steig unnecessarily abrasive at the time so you should hardly be surprised that Steig wasn’t happy. For example:
“Mark
Posted Jun 1, 2009 at 11:29 PM | Permalink | Reply
Steve, I am a longtime reader of your blog – though I have never commented before. I have a degree in English from Cambridge (though my career in finance involved a lot of time series modeling using a canonical variate analysis based method) where we spent much time analyzing tone. I must honestly say that I have long thought that your communications with other professionals were unnecessarily snarky. For instance in the email you quote above you say:
“all the material” – It would also be an excellent idea to put your source code up. Using statistical techniques that are not well understood to derive newsy applied results is a bit risky and you should err on the side of caution in making your code available to independent analysis.”
I am frankly not surprised Dr Steig was irritated. Talking about “newsy applied results” implies that he has derived these results with the intention of making news – rather than of making scientific progress. This may well be true but it is definitely not “gracious” to say so as you cannot possibly have hard evidence as to his motives.”
Phil.,
As stated above, the gauntlet has been thrown down at Steig’s feet. Will Steig and his apologists [ie: you] pick it up and specifically rebut the charges of Steig’s dishonesty? Or will they continue to resort to ad-hom responses instead? Cherry-picking one disgruntled comment is no answer.
So far, ad hominem attacks against McIntyre have been the only response. That’s really lame.
I don’t recall ‘MapleLeaf” posting at Climateaudit or Wattsupwiththat. This perhaps explains why…
• MapleLeaf // January 9, 2010 at 5:20 pm | Reply
Lady in red, my brief forray to try and engage people at WUWT and present an alternative view (some real science) was a fiasco, I had several posts that were either edited or removed. The mentality of followers there is cult like. I was also subjected to much vitriol and invective for having “dissenting” views.
As for CA, did you follow what they did to the Lorax at CA? Why did Lorax ultimately stop posting at CA Lady in Red? How McI manipulated the the mob mentality of his followers to deal with Lorax was dispicable.
Like others here, I too have tried to post at CA and have also found it a futile exercise; followers there tend to be rude, believe themselves to be omniscient and have a cult -like devotion to McI.
[DC: The same thing happened to Tom P on Yamal, IIRC.]
Steve will appreciate…
[REPLY – It takes considerable talent to get your post removed here. We never remove a post simply for reasons of point of view. This distinguishes WUWT. We favor free expression and exchange of conflicting ideas. There are limits, but you have to be truly outrageously OT o genuinely over the top to get sliced. CA is more strict about OT, but disagreement is allowed there, too. ~ Evan]
Evan, I feel anyway his rant on DC was disingenuous at best… 😉
Better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than speak and remove all doubt, Dr. Steig.