The latest propaganda stunt from the Skeptical Science Kidz is underway and it is about as exciting as it is predictable. Every hour, a new opinion is revealed along with a cartoon climate scientist caricature drawn by former cartoonist turned “climate expert” John Cook. Our resident cartoonist, Josh, has different ideas on that. The first cartoon character of the “97 hours of consensus” was Mike Mann, who seems to think that “recent warming does appear to be unprecedented as far back as we can go”.
Right.
Apparently Dr. Mann on has limited time travel research skills, like this from his Penn State colleague, Dr. Richard Alley:
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Update: Some people (the usual suspect) objected to the graph above, for them there’s Loehl 2007 figure 2 below. Still no hockey stick, still no unprecedented temperatures. Even Mann had previously said that “I always thought it was somewhat misplaced to make it a central icon of the climate change debate,” which you can read about here. So, why does he continue to push it?
![loehle_fig2[1]](https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/loehle_fig21.jpg?quality=83)
(note: Dr. Craig Loehle writes via email that in a 2008 paper, he has updated the graph above to include new and more accurate data. His figure 2 for his 2008 paper: http://www.econ.ohio-state.edu/jhm/AGW/Loehle/
Color Version of Figure 2 with reconstruction, CI’s
Data for this graph is online at http://www.econ.ohio-state.edu/jhm/AGW/ )
Don’t like that? How about some graphs from NOAA/NCDC?
![petit150[1]](https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/petit1501.jpg?quality=83)
Source: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/paleobefore.html So we are still not seeing “unprecedented” temperature.
Or this one, before global warming became politicized:
Also, commenter mikeishere replotted the Greenland GISP2 ice core data to eliminate the objections over “x axis” compressions and provides this:
![greenlandicecore[1]](https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/greenlandicecore1.gif)
The answer is still the same, no unprecedented temperatures in the present as Mann claims.
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Then there’s the one from Dr. Kenneth Trenberth:
“all weather is now connected to climate change” – Yikes, every cloud is hiding a climate change boogie man now? Even the IPCC doesn’t believe this sort of fear mongering.
I had to chuckle though, because the SkS kids went to all this trouble to make this page where when you mouse over one of the cartoon character climate scientists, their arm goes up in the air to say “hey, I’m part of the consensus!”. That sort of high salute reminds me of the Nazi dress up photos we found last year on the Skeptical Science website. I suppose the SkS kidz didn’t see the connection to that incident, otherwise we wouldn’t have the cartoon climate scientists doing “consensus salutes” at the command of their cartoon creator. I’m pretty sure my Internet stalker Miriam O’Brien aka “Sou Bundanga” at Hotwhopper is having another hilarious conniption fit right now over that inconvenient linkage, even though it is funny to see all these cartoon climate scientists doing the “consensus salute” when you poke them with the mouse pointer.
Unfortunately, that’s about as entertaining as this propaganda stunt gets, though some of the opinions yet to be revealed from the cartoon climate scientists might be pretty funny. We’ll see.
So, we get 97 hours of these cartoon climate scientists and their opinions.
Josh seems to think we’ve heard it all before.
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Don’t you mean as boring as it is predictable?
I’d go for uninspired
Nonsense. I predict with 97% certainty that this campaign will turn millions into “climate change” believers.
Furthermore, I predict with 97% certainty that this campaign is, in no way whatsoever, a desperate effort for the Skeptical Science Kidz to overcome their utter lack of relevance for just one more day.
Anthony, so do school kids remind you of Nazis? They put their hands up too!
Perhaps one of the dumbest replies in history.
I doubt it.
Only you do.
Tom – exactly right. I searched the archives, and this was, in fact, the dumbest reply in the history of this website.
Eclipsed in general only by this quote by General Custer on the eve of the battle at Little Big Horn:
“Indians, smindians! I’m not ascared of them!”
The shopped portrait-photo is not merely a “Nazi,” but Heinrich Himmler’s uniform. The photo labels the “scientist” as “Reichsfuhrer -SS.” The centers of the uniform lapels have been modified with an SKS leaf symbol, and so has the brim of the cap. Above the leaf the cap bears a dual-penguin emblem, also a SKS brand — see their homepage for confirmation. More, there is another photo of an outdoor Nuremberg rally inked with the name of the “scientist” combined with a directional arrow to the speaker’s podium, consistent with a Himmler identification. It is hard to conclude otherwise that there is a very disturbed person or persons connected with that site.
Indubitably.
Is a flock of group-affirming scientists raising their hands to be called on by an unidentified headmaster to give disingenuous, politically-motivated commentary a good image?
Cook should give them all brown noses.
Only if they don the uniform and then offer the salute as the SSK (Skeptical Science Kids) do.
Stand by if the common core folks get their way the school kids will be made to don a uniform and offer the salute to Mother Earth or be blown up.
Interesting, I haven’t seen anyone who write for SkS performing a Nazi salute. Care to provide some evidence? And then evidence of the other 96 academics doing likewise? Otherwise I don’t see how anyone raising their hand (like a kid, or student, or any grown up) can be likened to a Nazi!
[it’s satire Kit, note the Nazi uniforms they photoshopped themselves into, if they hadn’t done that, you’d be right -mod]
Are you saying that, for you, the actions of a climate scientist are like those of a child?
No.
I applaud your dismissal of your previous comment. Moreover, it remains reasonable to ask why people that photoshop themselves as Nazis are raising their arms (or anyone else’s).
It’s entirely unreasonable. Regardless of what people choose to dress up in, it does not follow that they hold the core beliefs of that group or person. Can you imagine if it did, how would actors cope? Or kids dressed up for Halloween?
Trenberth ‘missing heat ‘ is a result of poor science not of good theory.
For if temperatures had increased in the way they said they would, STELLED SCIENCE, with increases in CO2 , then there would be no need for any ‘missing heat ‘ in the first place . The fact he cannot justify or even remotely prove his ‘missing heat’ idea is the reason why he tried to reverse the null hypothesise in the first place. And approach which results in a total fail for any undergraduate handing in an essay, would seem to be an acceptable standard with climate ‘science’ professionals . And they wonder why they consider a joke.
Skeptical Science website – 97% waste of time 100% of the time.
That is why I do not visit it.
Help me understand the RH scale on the graph…
The air temperature of Greenland averages near -30 C. — John M Reynolds
@Oatley
The RH scale is for the ancient temperatures measured using oxygen isotopes in the GISP2 Greenland ice core. It shows the temperatures at the time that the snow crystals formed, which were later transformed into glacial ice. The scale is in minus degrees Celsius below the zero degrees freezing point.
So, the temperature about 95 years ago in Central Greenland was just under -31.5 degrees Celsius (indicated by the black horizontal line) … and the temperature during the Medieval Warming Period was about 1 degree Celsius warmer. The Roman and Minoan periods were even warmer than that, at about 2 degrees and about 2.75 degrees warmer than 95 years ago, respectively.
More information is here :
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/01/24/easterbrook-on-the-magnitude-of-greenland-gisp2-ice-core-data/
I do not disagree with your summary of the charts, but is the reconstruction of the past temperatures accurate?
How could the Vikings with their primitive technology (and no mechanical aids such as mini diggers and tractors) have farmed Greenland for a couple of hundred years if the temperatures were only about 1 or so degrees warmer than today? That is the question that should be asked when tuning the proxies.
Where they were located (and I accept that their settlements were not spread right accross Greenland), it must have been about 4 degrees (and possibly more) warmer than it is today, if not just 1 or 2 harsh winter would have wiped them out.
Richard,
The Vikings were mostly along the warmer coast, while the ice cores came from the deep ice in the interior. I would suspect the marine influenced air would have been much much warmer than the interior ice mound of a glacier. (Though this is just a guess based on geography and the, as you pointed out, primitiveness of their tools.)
Indeed, the Vinland Saga states about the northern tip of Newfoundland in Winter: “There was never any frost all winter and the grass hardly withered at all”. So how many degrees of warming would it take to achieve that? More than one or two, you’d think.
2 thoughts.
#1 – Trenberth’s statement is not surprising. He has been trying to change the Null Hypothesis for years now. And that is essentially what he is trying to do with his statement there. He cloaks it in sciency lingo, but the essence is that he is losing the debate and is trying to change the rules in the middle.
#2 – Cook’s fascination with Nazism reminds me of the Star Trek Episode where some ‘well meaning’ idiot had changed a society to resemble early to mid 20th century Germany (because it was efficient and it worked). Of course the result was the same (it was Roddenberry after all). Cook seems to think that Nazism is the salvation of the planet as well. It is not a new idea. Nor will it be the last time it is trotted out.
Probably that bunch were inspired by the natural acronym for their site (SS) to goof on it with a dress-up session. That’s the charitable interpretation–that or some self-destructive imp got their ear for a week.
Heil, mein Klimate. Mein Klimate all heil.
Nice!
love it .
This is too feeble to even bother trying to counter it.
Don’t flatter thier sorry efforts by reading and commenting on them.
@ur momisugly Oatley: September 8, 2014 at 4:05 am
“Help me understand the RH scale on the graph…”
—————-
Me thinks said “scale” is the Oxygen 18/16 variability.
See this “link” for a more detailed graph of said.
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2010/04/cooling-of-greenland-over-past-8000.html
Reblogged this on gottadobetterthanthis and commented:
I love the ice core graphic. It is the best science available on all the available evidence. Evidence, not models, not conjecture.
Until you realise that the very warm spike around 1350-1150 BC labelled Minoan Warm Period, was actually one of the coldest periods through the Holocene for the mid latitudes, and caused the collapse or demise of most civilisations at the time. including the Minoans. But if we look at the warm period when the Minoans, and many other cultures expanded from around 2700 BC, it is one of the coldest periods on GISP.
2200-2000 BC is also another known cold period for the mid latitudes that effected civilisations adversely, that also shows as a warm period on GISP.
And what of the Dark Ages cold period (~380-540 AD)? yet another warm period on GISP.
The past temperature reconstructions are not accurate.
Agreed – The period 3500-2500 years before present (BP) was very cold in the Bering Sea region, referred by some as the Neoglacial (I’ve got peer-reviewd papers on that). Ancient Aleuts living at Dutch Harbor were hunting ice-dependent seals (ringed seals, bearded seals and walrus) in late spring – indicating that sea ice extended much further south than it did during the Little Ice Age.
The other point to keep in mind is that the cold and warm parts of the cycles did not necessarily hit all regions at precisely the same time, especially across the Arctic.
Thinking about what we know now about the differently timed effects of the PDO and AMO, it makes sense that the Western Arctic (Bering/Chukchi/Beaufort Sea) might not have been cold/warm at the same time as Greenland and Iceland.
Susan, PolarBearScience
Yes, but that wouldn’t really matter in terms of melting Greenland. Absent he specter of rising sea levels, AGW is a pretty big net benefit to humanity.
The Autumn offensive from Obersturmbannführer Cook and the SS. Deploy the humour weapon!
Pointman
This baffles me. It might increase the number of hits on their website and entertain the true believers but I can’t see that it would achieve anything else.
This is too sad and says more than enough.
From Michael Mann’s narcissistic Facebook page:
“Here’s the Skeptical Science caricature of me, kicking off the “97 Hours of Consensus” project!”
(Emphasis added.)
Mann’s Facebook page is now a skeptic’s best ally in defeating claims that the hockey stick controversy amounts to ancient history nitpicking, thanks to Willis’ reality check plots that prove to anybody you show to that there is simply no blade thrusting up from the noise in any of the input data. Instead of black box statistics the upstarts that the old hockey stick team still promote didn’t obscure their cheating hand at all, producing a blade as a pure artifact of bizarre proxy re-dating that created sudden data drop-off at the end:
http://oi60.tinypic.com/2lwtawk.jpg
I’m utterly delighted that Mann is again promoting it, linked to activist guru Cook, since it recharges the kryptonite power of the plot when presented to quite effectively ridicule bitter ended activism on news sites. It turns them into cursing paranoid fanatics in public, quite reliably, in a way that does not upset normal reasonable people, I note. I hope more skeptics will get help get the above plot into the hands of media connected skeptics and politicians. It’s not even on the reference pages of any high traffic blog. Letting it be burried in news cycles is a defeatist policy. It’s so clear and undeniable that there’s no intellectual or legal defense possible of it, gleefully so for skeptics.
Is there a way to combine Cook’s work as a screen saver? I can think of all kinds of ways to enjoy that stunt aka Barney Carnage. Mods, snip if I’ve gone over the top, past playing nice, gone to the dark side, been invaded by evil, and have totally gone mad. But oh I wish for my little Mac SE and a bit of the Barney on my screen.
http://mariedoucette.blogspot.com/2011/11/tech-angst.html
“Help me understand the RH scale on the graph…”
Oatley should be more concerned about the time axis. It is NOT years before 2000, the original paper uses BP in the standard paleo- definition, which is years before 1950. hence the graph ends in 1855, long before AGW could be measurable. Temperatures have climbed approx 1.4C at the ice core site since the plot ended.
You might want also to google what Alley said about using the GISP2 data for this purpose – its on the Dot Earth site.
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/08/richard-alley-on-old-ice-climate-and-co2/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0
A website interested in the facts would check that I am right, apologise for misleading readers and issue a correction.
Yes, Watts should apologize for misleading his readership with that mislabeled GISP graph, and for the deliberate misinterpretation he asks them to draw with respect to Mann’s comment. This is rather egregious.
Wouldn’t want to set precedence, though, I suppose.
Clarke is right, Oatley. Kudos to you for actually wanting to understand what the graph is saying. Now examine what the x-axis (time) should be scaled, and ponder how you are being misled.
Unfortunately, we don’t have “current” ice core temperatures, just as we don’t have a paleo surface air temperature record. The supposition that the current air temperature at the site of this ice core is 1.4 C higher than the oxygen isotope derived temperature in 1950 is not supported by evidence.
not to mention that if these 97 hours are intended to be representative of total hours of the climates existence I’d say their closer to .0000000000000000097 consensus.
There’s a curious leather clad case in lost luggage labelled Temporal Fuckwit PhD. The contents include a tin of gravy granules, a model railway set and a pile of grant application forms. There’s also a broken ruler and a mug emblazoned with the words Keep Calm and Embrace Chaos.
Bayesian priors have suggested the owner lives on Mars as befits their religious belief. But the model railway consists of rolling stock in green and a simple loop without buffers while the mug has no smell of coffee.
Win!
Brother Michael called from the priory to point out there’s now a 97% consensus among brethren that the owner *resides* on Venus but *eats* a Mars day which aids work, rest and play. All a matter of interpretation, one man’s sustenance is another’s domesticity. Glad we cleared that up.
How slogans change with the passage of time …
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_%28chocolate_bar%29#mediaviewer/File:Mars_Believe_Bar.jpg
I’ve noticed that activist organization Polar Bears International is encouraging their supporters to follow the “97-hours consensus” campaign
From the PBI “news” department:
“Did you know 97% of climate scientists have concluded that humans are causing global warming? When was the last time 97% of scientists agreed on anything?
What’s scary is that less than 10% of Americans are aware of the 97% agreement among climate scientists.
This disparity has real consequences, with a number of scientific studies finding that when the public isn’t aware of the scientific consensus on global warming, they’re less likely to support action to mitigate climate change.
A social media campaign starts today with the aim of closing the “consensus gap.”
The 97 Hours of Consensus campaign will feature statements and hand-drawn caricatures from 97 scientific experts researching climate change or the impacts of climate change. The campaign begins on 9/7 (the date itself reinforcing the 97% consensus). Each hour, a statement and hand-drawn caricature of a scientist whose area of expertise involves climate change or the impacts of climate change will be published and shared on social media.
The quotes and caricatures will be published here.
Follow the twitter feed @skepticscience.”
http://www.polarbearsinternational.org/news-room/news/97-hours-consensus-campaign-starts-today
Here’s a thought. Let’s say there was a 90% (or thereabouts) consensus in the official international polar bears experts group that polar bear numbers were declining and the threat to them was severe. (I think I’ve read material to that effect.) Since that position has been shown be be a considerable exaggeration and the result of an environmentalist bedwetting mentality, isn’t it reasonable to extrapolate that the same mentality underlies the IPCC’s alarmism?
Looking back at history, think of everything that was widely believed to be true in the past. How much of it has actually turned out to be true? Isn’t consensus pretty much a guarantee that the belief is wrong?
We of course laugh at silly beliefs people had in the past, and like to believe that we could never be so stupid. Yet we forget that we are the descendants on those same silly people, and we have inherited their weaknesses along with their strengths.
The bigger question to be asked is this. Of all the consensus beliefs held by humanity over the ages, how many actually turned out to be true? You can’t escape death and taxes is the only one that comes to mind.
Actually, that one certain belief was slightly extended a few years ago, in the haiku error messages for Windows:
Three things are certain:
Death, taxes, and lost data.
Guess which has occurred.
OT nit pick (mostly…) – Can someone tell me why people who generate charts seem have a proclivity for using weird scaling factors for presentation? Take the above GISP2 chart (I truly don’t know who made it?) http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/gisp2-ice-core-temperatures.jpg for example –
Why the weird values on the X axis scale? On top of that the intervals between the dates are not consistent. The first is obviously 95 years , (the ice pack time I suppose?) and the last is 436 years so time is being generally being compressed the further you go back.
Not sticking with some semblance of cardinal numbering hides the time compression and, IMO, hiding anything can only raise suspicion as to the reason for doing it.
Here’s the original data as best I can find – ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/icecore/greenland/summit/gisp2/isotopes/gisp2_temp_accum_alley2000.txt
I generated a chart from that data in Excel with what I think is a start to an acceptable format for the X axis and no time compression/variation. http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y48/mikeishere/greenlandicecore.gif
I’m with you on this. I get tired of looking at charts that seem to say one thing, then realizing the scale is all weird and then I have to try reinterpreting it in my mind. And as you say, weird scales, at least to the layman, tend to suggest hidden agendas.
I like yours better, too.
I agree the figure is a bit on the forceful side with the red and all.
Trying to push a message instead of inform.
Too sks-ish.
Greg Laden reckons it’s marvellous…
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/06/26/global-hurricane-activity-at-historical-record-lows-new-paper/
It appears Trenberth may be a AGW propagandist first and a scientist second. It is interesting that the IPCC would select Trenberth as their lead author for the section on “Extreme Weather” in their climate assessment report. It sounds as if the author selection for the IPCC climate assessment reports is rigged to produce a report to support a political agenda rather than to provide an unbiased, accurate, assessment of the ‘science’ of climate ‘change’ and any observed changes or no changes in planetary temperature.
http://www.climatechangefacts.info/ClimateChangeDocuments/LandseaResignationLetterFromIPCC.htm
After some prolonged deliberation, I have decided to withdraw from participating in the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). I am withdrawing because I have come to view the part of the IPCC to which my expertise is relevant as having become politicized. In addition, when I have raised my concerns to the IPCC leadership, their response was simply to dismiss my concerns….
Shortly after Dr. Trenberth requested that I draft the Atlantic hurricane section for the AR4’s Observations chapter, Dr. Trenberth participated in a press conference organized by scientists at Harvard on the topic “Experts to warn global warming likely to continue spurring more outbreaks of intense hurricane activity” along with other media interviews on the topic. The result of this media interaction was widespread coverage that directly connected the very busy 2004 Atlantic hurricane season as being caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gas warming occurring today. Listening to and reading transcripts of this press conference and media interviews, it is apparent that Dr. Trenberth was being accurately quoted and summarized in such statements and was not being misrepresented in the media. These media sessions have potential to result in a widespread perception that global warming has made recent hurricane activity much more severe.
Moreover, the evidence is quite strong and supported by the most recent credible studies that any impact in the future from global warming upon hurricane will likely be quite small. The latest results from the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (Knutson and Tuleya, Journal of Climate, 2004) suggest that by around 2080, hurricanes may have winds and rainfall about 5% more intense than today. It has been proposed that even this tiny change may be an exaggeration as to what may happen by the end of the 21st Century (Michaels, Knappenberger, and Landsea, Journal of Climate, 2005, submitted).
3 week early freeze coming this week to the northern central US. It is just WX of course. But still, with colder than normal, the public just won’t buy into the global warming scare. Nature will undo in one winter what a thousands alarmist scare claimaints are attempting.
Unfortunately for Mr. Mann, every time he re-does his shtick, he’s forced to acknowledge some criticisms, and has to shorten his “as far back as we can go”. He still tries to get away with bogus proxies, but his “stick” has become less and less unprecedented each time.