Regular WUWT readers know of the issues related to Arctic Sea Ice that we have routinely followed here. The Arctic sea ice trend is regularly used as tool to hammer public opinion, often recklessly and without any merit to the claims. The most egregious of these claims was the April of 2008 pronouncement by National Snow and Ice Data Center scientist Dr. Mark Serreze of an ice free north pole in 2008. It got very wide press. It also never came true.
To my knowledge, no retractions were printed by news outlets that carried his sensationally erroneous claim.
A few months later in August, when it was clear his first prediction would not come true, and apparently having learned nothing from his first incident (except maybe that the mainstream press is amazingly gullible when it comes to science) Serreze made another outlandish statement of “Arctic ice is in its death spiral” and” The Arctic could be free of summer ice by 2030″. In my opinion, Serreze uttered perhaps the most irresponsible news statements about climate second only to Jim Hansen’s “death trains” fiasco. I hope somebody at NSIDC will have the good sense to reel in their loose cannon for the coming year.
Not to be outdone, in December Al Gore also got on the ice free bandwagon with his own zinger saying on video that the “entire north polar ice cap will be gone within 5 years“. There’s a countdown watch on that one.
So it was with a bit of surprise that we witnessed the wailing and gnashing of teeth from a number of bloggers and news outlets when in his February 15th column, George Will, citing a Daily Tech column by Mike Asher, repeated a comparison of 1979 sea ice levels to present day. He wrote:
As global levels of sea ice declined last year, many experts said this was evidence of man-made global warming. Since September, however, the increase in sea ice has been the fastest change, either up or down, since 1979, when satellite record-keeping began. According to the University of Illinois’ Arctic Climate Research Center, global sea ice levels now equal those of 1979.
The outrage was immediate and widespread. Media Matters: George Will spreads falsehoods Discover Magazine: George Will: Liberated From the Burden of Fact-Checking Climate Progress: Is George Will the most ignorant national columnist? One Blue Marble Blog: Double Dumb Ass Award: George Will George Monbiot in the Guardian: George Will’s climate howlers and Huffington Post: Will-fully wrong
They rushed to stamp out the threat with an “anything goes” publishing mentality. There was lots of piling on by secondary bloggers and pundits.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I got interested in what was going on with odd downward jumps in the NSIDC Arctic sea ice graph, posting on Monday February 16th NSIDC makes a big sea ice extent jump – but why? Then when I was told in comments by NSIDC’s Walt Meier that the issue was “not worth blogging about” I countered with Errors in publicly presented data – Worth blogging about?
It soon became clear what had happened. There was a sensor failure, a big one, and both NSIDC and Cryosphere today missed it. The failure caused Arctic sea ice to be underestimated by 500,000 square kilometers by the time Will’s column was published. Ooops, that’s a Murphy Moment.
So it is with some pleasure that today I offer you George Will’s excellent rebuttal to the unapologetic trashing of his column . The question now is, will those same people take on Dr. Mark Serreze and Al Gore for their irresponsible proclamations this past year? Probably not. Will Serreze shoot his mouth off again this year when being asked by the press what the summer ice season will bring? Probably, but one can always hope he and others have learned something, anything, from this debacle.
Let us hope that cooler heads prevail.
By George F. Will, Washington Post
Friday, February 27, 2009; A17
Few phenomena generate as much heat as disputes about current orthodoxies concerning global warming. This column recently reported and commented on some developments pertinent to the debate about whether global warming is occurring and what can and should be done. That column, which expressed skepticism about some emphatic proclamations by the alarmed, took a stroll down memory lane, through the debris of 1970s predictions about the near certainty of calamitous global cooling.
Concerning those predictions, the New York Times was — as it is today in a contrary crusade — a megaphone for the alarmed, as when (May 21, 1975) it reported that “a major cooling of the climate” was “widely considered inevitable” because it was “well established” that the Northern Hemisphere’s climate “has been getting cooler since about 1950.” Now the Times, a trumpet that never sounds retreat in today’s war against warming, has afforded this column an opportunity to revisit another facet of this subject — meretricious journalism in the service of dubious certitudes.
On Wednesday, the Times carried a “news analysis” — a story in the paper’s news section, but one that was not just reporting news — accusing Al Gore and this columnist of inaccuracies. Gore can speak for himself. So can this columnist.
Reporter Andrew Revkin’s story was headlined: “In Debate on Climate Change, Exaggeration Is a Common Pitfall.” Regarding exaggeration, the Times knows whereof it speaks, especially when it revisits, if it ever does, its reporting on the global cooling scare of the 1970s, and its reporting and editorializing — sometimes a distinction without a difference — concerning today’s climate controversies.
Which returns us to Revkin. In a story ostensibly about journalism, he simply asserts — how does he know this? — that the last decade, which passed without warming, was just “a pause in warming.” His attempt to contact this writer was an e-mail sent at 5:47 p.m., a few hours before the Times began printing his story, which was not so time-sensitive — it concerned controversies already many days running — that it had to appear the next day. But Revkin reported that “experts said” this columnist’s intervention in the climate debate was “riddled with” inaccuracies. Revkin’s supposed experts might exist and might have expertise but they do not have names that Revkin wished to divulge.
As for the anonymous scientists’ unspecified claims about the column’s supposedly myriad inaccuracies: The column contained many factual assertions but only one has been challenged. The challenge is mistaken.
Citing data from the University of Illinois’ Arctic Climate Research Center, as interpreted on Jan. 1 by Daily Tech, a technology and science news blog, the column said that since September “the increase in sea ice has been the fastest change, either up or down, since 1979, when satellite record-keeping began.” According to the center, global sea ice levels at the end of 2008 were “near or slightly lower than” those of 1979. The center generally does not make its statistics available, but in a Jan. 12 statement the center confirmed that global sea ice levels were within a difference of less than 3 percent of the 1980 level.
So the column accurately reported what the center had reported. But on Feb. 15, the Sunday the column appeared, the center, then receiving many e-mail inquiries, issued a statement saying “we do not know where George Will is getting his information.” The answer was: From the center, via Daily Tech. Consult the center’s Web site where, on Jan. 12, the center posted the confirmation of the data that this column subsequently reported accurately.
The scientists at the Illinois center offer their statistics with responsible caveats germane to margins of error in measurements and precise seasonal comparisons of year-on-year estimates of global sea ice. Nowadays, however, scientists often find themselves enveloped in furies triggered by any expression of skepticism about the global warming consensus (which will prevail until a diametrically different consensus comes along; see the 1970s) in the media-environmental complex. Concerning which:
On Feb. 18 the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center reported that from early January until the middle of this month, a defective performance by satellite monitors that measure sea ice caused an underestimation of the extent of Arctic sea ice by 193,000 square miles, which is approximately the size of California. The Times (“All the news that’s fit to print”), which as of this writing had not printed that story, should unleash Revkin and his unnamed experts.
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Lemme c, the view from the parallel universe that runs alongside most of yours is this:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2009/02/27/unchecked-ice-a-saga-in-five-chapters/
Of course, since this is the view from reality-land, I wouldn’t expect many of you to be able to comprehend it.
REPLY: What you miss is that there is a distinct difference between comprehension and agreement.
hotrod,
A large section of the populace today believe the media, and are not interested in checking the data on the net, so nothing has altered. GORES film is in every school in the UK and teachers dare not debate the subject outside the party line for fear of loosing their jobs, children believe the rubbish, just as the US believed Orson Wells.
If the Press stated AGW was false, it would end. People don`t read peer review, I knew nothing about AGW until I watched The Swindle. I watched that because of the title and I like documentary’s.
hotrod: Well, whatever you may think about the abilities of the public to access information in the 70s or not, how I see the argument about global cooling used is to discredit the current consensus on global warming by saying that such a consensus existed before on global cooling and if those scientists got it wrong then, why should we believe them now?
So, from that point-of-view, and given that we do now have unprecedented access both to the peer-reviewed literature and to reports by the IPCC, the NAS, and so forth, I think the most relevant question is in regards to whether we can view these as reliable sources. I personally don’t have much interest in arguing that the popular media is a reliable source of scientific information because I strongly question how defensible that position is. (I do think that the extent to which the media are, and have been, unreliable has been somewhat exaggerated by some but overall I would still say that they are not that reliable.)
I have to admit that your description here has me confused. You talk of him as “covered his bets and addressed all causes in his book” and of “basically covering his butt in all regards and throwing out observations that would support all possible conclusions”. You seem offended by this rather than thinking of it as the responsible thing to do given what he knew at the time. In fact, I think you are displaying some of the very traits that I imagine the reporters also displayed and that may have led to some of the poor reporting: Perhaps you wanted simple answers to complex questions and you wanted more definitiveness and certainty than he was willing to provide.
The fact is that, while a lot of the pieces of the puzzle were somewhat understood at the time (ice age – interglacial cycles, greenhouse gases, aerosols), it was not yet understood how they all fit together and especially which one would dominate. Schneider was one who recognized that these were important questions with very important and real implications but at the same time he also recognized that there was sufficient uncertainty that he was not even sure yet whether we had to worry more about warming or cooling. I applaud him for generally not going beyond what he knew and understood.
Brendan H (02:51:57) :
Excellent, helpful reference; thank you, Brendan.
I was a meteorology student at Univ Wisconsin-Madison 1973-1976, where Reid Bryson was on the faculty, already acknowledged as a foremost climatologist. His tendency at the time was to believe cooling was taking place, due to “the human volcano” – i.e., atmospheric dust.
I also remember the alarmist articles in Newsweek and TIME of that era, predicting a coming “ice age.” Bryson was much too intelligent to believe that; he believed climate changes, naturally, and that humans can influence such changes.
He gave an interview to the Wisconsin Energy Cooperative News in May 2007. I’ve saved it on-line at http://www.colo-earthfriends.org/bryson.htm. He was very sceptical of the AGW “crisis”; partly for that reason, I am too. Roy Spencer was a student there too.
Prof Bryson, regretably, passed away in June 2008.
Data is easily skewed on both sides. What the heck enjoy yourself today don’t worry about tomorrow ..you’ll be dead in a few years anyway….leave it to your grandkids to deal with………
@ur momisugly Tenney Naumer
You come onto this website and attack Mr Watts and having had a look at your website, you refer to Watts Up With That as “that Gang of Science Boobs”
-Can you pls tell us why you are so angry?
-Don’t you think your angry attacks negate your message?
-For a person filled with so much anger and hatred, is it worth the effects this would have on your health, just because some people don’t share the same viewpoint as yourself?
Yes I was offended by that, because there is a difference between stating the limits of your information, and intentionally making statements so broad that they can cover any possible interpretation. The specific reason I went to talk to him was to narrow the focus a bit. I took time off of work to go talk to him, I at least expected him to be open in discussing the issue, or pointing me at other useful information.
Sometimes you have to make judgments based on intangible feelings of credibility when the objective data provides no concrete direction, but points in both directions. The impression I got, was instead of talking to a scientist who was trying to help me understand the conclusions of his book, I was talking to someone that was dodging and weaving so that no meaningful clarification could be reached. He was actively avoiding saying anything meaningful.
I would have had no problem with him simply saying “we don’t have a clue, the data points in both directions”. I also would not have had a problem with him saying the data is ambiguous and points to several possible conclusions but at this moment in time, I am inclined to think x is the most likely outcome.
Instead he said data is ambiguous and points to several possible conclusions but at this moment in time, I am inclined to think x is possible, but then again it could be y or z. It was more a case of presentation — my feeling was he was not being honest or helpful and just throwing stuff on the wall so at some later time you could pick out the spatters that matched the then accepted reality.
One of the reasons he is quoted so much, is that you can find a quote of his that supports just about any conclusion possible. I have no problem with a scientist saying the uncertainties are very high on both sides and we need to study x y and z before we can decide between the two. He should at least help focus on what the unknown issues are, and what the implications of that unknown is. Does it make a big difference (ie falsify the theory) does it just change the error range? does it indicate the theory should be modified in a specific way?
If his uncertainty was so high that he could not even quantify the implications and the steps necessary to clear those uncertainties, than he should not have speculated on the issue in the public domain in the first place.
Larry
“Joel Shore (08:56:25) : Joel Shore (14:20:51) : Joel Shore (18:03:05) : Joel Shore (19:50:13) : Joel Shore (20:34:04) : Joel Shore (21:06:45) : Joel Shore (06:49:14) : Joel Shore (07:13:47) : Joel Shore (07:46:05) : Joel Shore (08:04:10) : Joel Shore (08:30:22) : Joel Shore (08:56:25) : Joel Shore (11:47:48) : Joel Shore (14:11:46) :
I can’t help but notice you have several run-on comments. Other commenters have a few long entries. You have many every day. I was just wondering could you economize your writing?
I have noticed many on your side like to have either very long comments, or use caps lock and bold overmuch. Is this an attempt to get people’s attention off the fact the earth is cooling? Or is this the way your side whistles past the cemetery? Both?
TonyB: “It is certainly untrue to rewrite history and claim global cooling was a myth.”
I didn’t say that “global cooling was a myth”. The report I referred to is headed: “The Myth of the 1970s Global Cooling Scientific Consensus”. Quite a different claim.
As for the opinions and activities of the report authors, I don’t see where they are relevant to my claim that their report “presents a persuasive and well-supported argument”.
As for the 1970s, I was there, but my memory of global cooling claims is faint. I’m sure there were such claims, but memory can be deceptive, and the constant repetition of claims of a cooling scare may well have brought about a rewriting of people’s memories.
“Smokey (18:48:21) :
Connolly is the prime reason that Wikipedia articles on AGW and global warming are worthless;”
Global warming entries in Wikipedia are not data, or findings from scientific studies. These entries have been so heavily edited by William Connolley that they are now the mind of William Connolley.
“That’s why I’ve been waiting for Walt…but it appears he’s AWOL on the guest post. – Anthony”
Thanks Anthony. Keep up the excellent work…
Claims of unprecdented warmth and abnormal melting of meltic arctic ice are unfounded if we look at history;
1 The following link describes the ancient cultures of the warmer arctic 5000 to 1000 years ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Lithoderm/Inuit_culture
2 This relates to an Arctic culture thriving in warmer times 2000 years ago
From the Eskimo Times Monday, Mar. 17, 1941
The corner of Alaska nearest Siberia was probably man’s first threshold to the Western Hemisphere. So for years archeologists have dug there for a clue to America’s prehistoric past. Until last year, all the finds were obviously Eskimo. Then Anthropologists Froelich G. Rainey of the University of Alaska and two collaborators struck the remains of a town, of inciedible size and mysterious culture. Last week in Natural History Professor Rainey, still somewhat amazed, described this lost Arctic city.
It lies at Ipiutak on Point Hope, a bleak sandspit in the Arctic Ocean, where no trees and little grass survive endless gales at 30° below zero. But where houses lay more than 2,000 years ago, underlying refuse makes grass and moss grow greener. The scientists could easily discern traces of long avenues and hundreds of dwelling sites. A mile long, a quarter-mile wide, this ruined city was perhaps as big as any in Alaska today (biggest: Juneau, pop. 5,700).
On the Arctic coast today an Eskimo village of even 250 folk can catch scarcely enough seals, whales, caribou to live on. What these ancient Alaskans ate is all the more puzzling because they seem to have lacked such Arctic weapons as the Eskimo harpoon.
Yet they had enough leisure to make many purely artistic objects, some of no recognizable use. Their carvings are vaguely akin to Eskimo work but so sophisticated and elaborate as to indicate a relation with some centre of advanced culture — perhaps Japan or southern Siberia —certainly older than the Aztec or Mayan.
3 This link leads to the Academy of science report of the same year regarding the Ipiutak culture described above
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1078291
4 This refers to the Vikings living in a warmer arctic culture 1000 years ago
People might be interested in reading a very interesting book about the Vikings called ‘The Viking world’. It is a very scholarly and highly referenced book running to some 700 pages and deals with all aspects of the Vikings. It is good because it does not have an axe to grind, but deals matter of factly with all aspects of Viking culture and exploration.
There is a large section on their initial exploration of Greenland, the subsequent establishment of their farms there, everyday life, how they gradually lost access to the outside world as the sea lanes closed through ice, a record of the last wedding held In Greenland and how trade dried up. It also deals with Vinland/Newfoundland and it seems that it was wild grapes that helped give the area its name, it being somewhat warmer than today.
This is one of a number of similar books that record our warmer and cooler past throughout the Northern Hermisphere. Al Gore wrote a good book in 1992 called ‘Earth in the Balance’ in which he explored the changing climate that devastated the civilisations in the Southern Hemishpere.
The book ‘The Viking World’ is Edited by Stefan Brink with Neil Price Published by Routledge ISBN 978 0 415 33315-3
I suggest you borrow it from the local library as it costs $250!
5 This refers to a warmer arctic 75 years ago recorded on Pathe newsreel by Bob Morrisey during his journeys there in the 1920’s and 1930’s and reported in all the media
Wednesday, 10th August 1932
The ship rolled heavily all night and continues to do so….
The glacier continues its disturbances. No real bergs break off but great sheets of ice slide down into the water and cause heavy seas. About noon, the entire face of the glacier, almost a mile in length and six or eight feet deep slid off with a roar and a rumble that must have been heard at some distance. We were on deck at the time for a preliminary report like a pistol shot had warned us what was coming. The Morrissey rolled until her boats at the davits almost scooped up the water and everything on board that was not firmly anchored in place crashed loose. But this was nothing to the pandemonium on shore. I watched it all through the glasses. The water receded leaving yards of beach bare and then returned with a terrific rush, bringing great chunks of ice with it. Up the beach it raced further and further, with the Eskimos fleeing before it. It covered all the carefully cherished piles of walrus meat, flowed across two of the tents with their contents, put out the fire over which the noonday meal for the sled drivers was being prepared, and stopped a matter of inches before it reached the pile of cement waiting to be taken up the mountain. Fortunately, in spite of heavy sea, which was running, the Captain had managed to be set shore this morning so he was there with them to help straighten out things and calm them down.”
The arctic has periodically warmed to greater amounts than today. A tiny reduction in ice extent since 1979 is of no consequence if you look at the historical record of this region
Tonyb
Brendan H (15:59:48) : said in reply tp me;
…As for the opinions and activities of the report authors, I don’t see where they are relevant to my claim that their report “presents a persuasive and well-supported argument”.
As for the 1970s, I was there, but my memory of global cooling claims is faint. I’m sure there were such claims, but memory can be deceptive, and the constant repetition of claims of a cooling scare may well have brought about a rewriting of people’s memories”.
Brendan, I try to ptretend I was too young to be there, but unfortunately I was, and writing about it! The article you cited is only persuasive if you were not there or do not remember. There was as much a consensus about cooling as there is claimed to be today about warming.
TonyB
B Kerr (02:57:29) :
I believe that in his more lucid moments and in regard to AGW the Big Yin would have said, “More to be pitied than scolded!”
On the other hand when, in the mid-70s, the Minister of Sport was given the additional portfolio of Minister of Drought, I decided that I liked warm/hot weather and made the decision to emigrate to Australia. The best decision I ever made!
Okay, this proves that George Will is right (for sea ice extent anyway).
Dec, 79 SH sea ice extent – 10.4 M km^2
Dec, 79 NH sea ice extent – 13.5 M km^2
Total Dec, 79 extent – 23.7 M km^2
Dec, 08 SH sea ice extent – 12.2 M km^2
Dec, 08 NH sea ice extent – 12.5 M km^2
Total Dec, 08 extent – 24.7 M km^2
An increase of 1.0 M km^2 from December 1979 to December 2008.
Now watch these charts get pulled by someone (too late I have saved them)
ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/DATASETS/NOAA/G02135/Dec/S_197912_extn.png
ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/DATASETS/NOAA/G02135/Dec/N_197912_extn.png
ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/DATASETS/NOAA/G02135/Dec/S_200812_extn.png
ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/DATASETS/NOAA/G02135/Dec/N_200812_extn.png
Sorry, should be a 0.8 M km^2 increase.
Dec, 79 extent should read 23.9 km^2
I am sorry but Tenny Naumer is a Dot Earth “groupie” who cannot even use Microsoft EXCEL to plot the GMST herself to see the trend for the last 7-10yrs is negative. Please take whatever she posts in that light please.
Joel shore is fully aware that the most of the MSM is in the business of selling productions to generate income. Most of the editors that conduct their (so called) journalistic “peer reviews” are looking for sensationalism that will enhance corporate bottom lines. These things are written primarily for consumption by people who the editors know have no interest in whether they were peer reviewed or not. People with political agendas like Kerry, Gore et all jump on and further contribute to whatever sensational hair raising band wagon that will elicit attention, money and power for themselves. And Joel, they don’t care whether papers are peer reviewed or not either. The facts are not the issue, the issues are their facts, when and if they support their political aims.
Anthony,
Did you read Friday’s Sacbee? Editorial on the left side below the fold. It is about extended dry periods in California. It mentions 100 year dry spells, and tree stumps well below the surface of Lake Tahoe indicating a forest grew at that level. Yet their stories on the “Sierra in Peril” and the latest one that Tom Knudsen did on rising snow levels never mentioned this reality at all. Also in the late 90s a fisherman on Fallen Leaf Lake hook debris about 50 feet below the surface. When he brought it up it looked like the top of a tree. Investigation showed it to be the top of a 300 feet tall Ponderosa Pine tree, still rooted in the ground. This was also a story in the Bee.
These folks are not only un-inquesitive, they are just plain liars. The real goal is total control at any cost.
Well it appears Gavin at RC has finally jumped into the fray. He wrote a “hypothetical” column of what HE thought Will should have written as a retraction. Kinda sad.
And wow, he really can’t take criticism well either. I commented on the article and made a point of saying it’s funny that he would write that considering his own games on the recent Steig paper. And then asked him how Will’s column is less ethical than that. Needless to say…he chose to “edit” that out so it wouldn’t appear on the website.
Re: This Nancy/Tendency-towards-Boom/baum person –
It would appear that the her/his site “Climate Change: The Next Generation” is a closed (i.e., not open to the unwashed public) site; is this true? (Unlike WUWT or CA for instance?)
BTW, I take exception to her/his cavalier attitude towards those who I see posting here who endeavor in among other areas the applied sciences (as I am) and take what we are tasked with in our our normal duties/obligations seriously, but somehow, seeking to investigate climate science and tangtential areas including the driving, undercurrents of politics we are considered un-thinking, club-wielding neanderthals and I, for one, object to such characterization!
Just want truth… says
I’ll try…But, just to point out (and I think that this may explain what you say about people on “our side” better than your own hypothesis) that our views are in the minority here. So, while you may have a hundred people here generally pretty much agreeing with each other, there are only a few of us to provide some much needed balance!
Also, if you folks would post fewer wrong things that get me all riled up then I promise that I will post less! Is it a deal?
REPLY: Hello Joel and “Just want truth”
Take a time out for a few hours, please?
Unfortunately, Joel, I don’t care one whit if you feel that you are in the minority and that somehow justifies your actions or to suggest actions to others on this forum. Essays and opinions expressed on this blog are clearly in the minority of coverage in media and press, other blogs, and in the scientific establishment. So, with that perspective your minority position here merits no particular or special treatment.
Both you guys, just take a time out and enjoy your evening and start fresh tomorrow. – Anthony
anna v:
No, the plot is deceptive. If it had actually been plotted correctly, you would rightly not have the confidence from the noise in the temperature data to conclude that the temperatures were not following the general expected trend. (It sounds to me that your argument is basically that the ends justify the means…You believe the conclusion that the temperature trends are in contradiction with the rise in CO2 so if someone chooses to vastly distort things to make that point more apparent, what is the harm?)
And, I am rather skeptical of Lucia’s results for a few reasons. First of all, it is difficult to calculate statistical error limits for correlated data and while I know that Lucia has tried to use methods that do account in some way for correlation, one can still question if she has done it correctly. And, in fact, other people who have done it (like tamino) have gotten different results. Neither of these have been peer-reviewed. And, if you want to look at peer-reviewed results, thhe fact is that over a longer period (since 1990) and as of a couple of years ago, the temperature trend was not only in line with the IPCC predictions but was actually running high of the central value: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/sci;316/5825/709 The last couple of years have certainly brought the trend down somewhat but I doubt all that much…and in fact I think it is not wise to base much on a few years of data, lest you get whiplash since past history has shown a few years can make a lot of difference when you are focussing on trends over fairly short time intervals.
Second, the fact is that such statistical arguments have to be used with caution because, for example, about every 20 years you will in fact expect a trend over a certain length of time to fall outside a 95% confidence interval. If you consider trends over many lengths of time, then you will find it happening for at least some of the trends much more often than every 20 years. I would thus like to see results about this that are more resilient to what the exact start date and end date you choose is.
Joel Shore (20:33:22) :
No, I do not say the end justifies the means. It is the IPCC that does that. I am saying that the lens one uses to scrutinize something should be adapted to the purpose on hand. The purpose on hand for the specific plot is to show that CO2 is rising while temperature is stalled.
Now on the errors, you are right. The climate community is very cavalier with the errors. The variations of GCMs initial conditions that are done to simulate ( unsuccessfully in my opinion, but that is another story) the chaotic behavior expected of climate, are not statistical errors. Statistical errors is when one varies the parameters of the simulation while keeping the initial conditions constant. If one does that just the change of 1 sigma in albedo throws the trajectory off by 1C, and makes a mockery of any plots and claimed fits.
So I would agree that far from the science is settled, there is no predictive power in any of the climate plots, using wat are normal statistical expectations.
When the particle community announces the existence of a new particle, there is a four sigma requirement for the fits. 3 sigma are considered very interesting, two sigma maybe to be pursued. One sigma is garbage, but that is what is claimed in this Steig paper to give a warming trend to the antarctica !
I would not mind what the climate community calls reliable statistics, playiing in their sandbox. I object strongly when multibillion stakes are pushed through sot that the western society is stampeded into self immolation.
Second, the fact is that such statistical arguments have to be used with caution because, for example, about every 20 years you will in fact expect a trend over a certain length of time to fall outside a 95% confidence interval. If you consider trends over many lengths of time, then you will find it happening for at least some of the trends much more often than every 20 years. I would thus like to see results about this that are more resilient to what the exact start date and end date you choose is.
I would second this if you would accept that the same holds true for the periods 1940 to 1970 or so, a coolling interval, leaving only thirty years or so for a warming trend, and then now ten years stalling. That the world is coming out of the little ice age is an accepted effect, so naturally it is warming in long term trends. The attempt to inculpate CO2 and western society for just 30 years of rise is what is in question. Thus plots that show that trends in CO2 do not affect trends in temperature in the claimed way are useful for opening the eyes.
TonyB: “There was as much a consensus about cooling as there is claimed to be today about warming.”
In the report “The Myth of the 1970s Global Cooling Scientific Consensus” the authors surveyed the scientific literature of the period to identify papers dealing with climate change.
The authors identified seven papers claiming global cooling, 44 papers claiming global warming, plus a number of neutral papers. In other words, if there were any scientific consensus, it was in favour of warming. This finding is supported by an opinion survey carried out in 1977 of top climate scientists, who narrowly favoured warming over cooling.
So despite many people’s memories, the scientific record does not appear to support the cooling consensus argument.