Jeff Id of the Air Vent has offered me this study he just completed for the consideration of WUWT readers. Given the wide audience we have here, I’m sure it will get a rigorous review and inspection. Let’s see how well it stands up. – Anthony
Closest Station Antarctic Reconstruction
In my last alternate reconstruction of Antarctic temperature I used the covariance of satellite information to weight surface stations. While the reconstruction is reasonable I found that it distributed the trends too far from the stations. This prompted me to think of a way to weight stations by area as best as I can. The algorithm I employed uses only surface station data laid on the 5509 grid cell locations of the Steig satellite reconstruction.
This new reconstruction was designed to provide as good a correlation vs distance as possible and the best possible area weighting of trend, it can’t make a good looking picture though but for the first time we can see the spatial limitations of the data. The idea was to manipulate the data as little as possible to make where the trend comes from as clear, simple and properly weighted as possible.
The algorithm I came up with works like this.
Calculate the distance from each of 42 surface stations to 5509 satellite points store them in a matrix 42 x 5509.
For each of 5509 points find the closest station and copy the data to that location. If there are missing values infill those from the next closest station looking farther and farther until all NA’s are infilled.
This is what the spatial distribution of trends looks like.
Figure 1
You can see how the trends are copied to the points of each polygon from each surface station. There’s quite a bit of noise in the graph but it seems that like temperatures are grouped reasonably well together.
The code looks for the above plot takes about 20 minutes to run.
#calc distance from surface stations to sat grid points
dist=array(0,dim=c(5509,42))
for(i in 1:42)
{
dist[,i]=circledist(lat1=Info$surface$lat[i],lon1=Info$surface$lon[i],lat2=sat_coord[,2],lon2=sat_coord[,1])
}
Circledist is Steve McIntyres’s great circle function with slight modifications.
circledist =function(lat1,lon1,lat2,lon2,R=6372.795)
{
pi180=pi/180;
y= abs(lon2 -lon1)
y[y>180]=360-y[y>180]
y[y<= -180]= 360+y[y<= -180]
delta= y *pi180
fromlat=lat1*pi180;
tolat=lat2*pi180;
tolong=lon2*pi180
theta= 2* asin( sqrt( sin( (tolat- fromlat)/2 )^2 + cos(tolat)*cos(fromlat)* (sin(delta/2))^2 ))
circledist=R*theta
circledist
}
Then I wrote a function to get the closest distance greater than a value ‘mindist’ I pass. The first call for the grid number ‘ ind’, mindist is set to zero and the closest station is returned. If the closest station has missing data, I infill what it does have and pass the distance from the closest station to mindist and get the second closest station returned. The process is repeated until all values are filled.
getnextclosestdistance = function(ind=0,mindist=0)
{
tdist=dist[ind,]
while(min(tdist)<=mindist)
{
mind=min(tdist)
if (mind<=mindist)
{
tdist=tdist[- (which(tdist == min(tdist), arr.ind = TRUE)[1])]
}
}
g= which(dist[ind,] == min(tdist), arr.ind = TRUE)[1]
g
}
This is the loop function that fills the array.
recon=array(NA,dim=c(600,5509))
recon=ts(recon,start=1957,deltat=1/12)
for (i in 1:5509)
{
lastdist=0
while(sum(is.na(recon[,i]))>0)
{
dd=getnextclosestdistance(i,mindist=lastdist)
lastdist=dist[i,dd]
mask = is.na(recon[,i])
recon[mask,i]=anomalies$surface[mask,dd]
print (paste(i,lastdist))
}
}
After that all that’s left is the plotting algorithms by RomanM SteveM and Jeff C which I’ve shown before.
The next graph is the trend calculated from all 5509 grid points.
Figure 2
The trend is again positive by 0.052 C/Decade, this time it is on the outer edge of the stated 95% confidence interval of Steig09 of 12 +/- 0.07C/Decade.
Like before I also looked at the trend from 1967 – 2007.
Figure 3
Figure 4
So from this reconstruction temperatures have dropped since 1967 at an average rate of 0.31 C/Decade. These results are similar to my previous reconstruction which looks like this.
The Antarctic, an engineers reconstruction.
Figure 5
Figure 6
And from 1967 – 2007
Figure 7
Figure 8
While I was initially happy with the engineers reconstruction, I found that station trends were not well localized by linear correlation weighting. (The correlation vs distance was not good) While peninsula station information stayed localized, the rest of the continent spread widely.
The trends shown match my last reconstruction reasonably well but in my opinion these are of superior quality.
Certainly the Antarctic temperatures have been flat or insignificantly cooling/warming in general for the last 40 years while 50 years ago there were lower temps recorded causing a very slight upslope in the 50 year trend. This is confirmed by the fact that sea ice has grown during the last 30 years among other observations.
The Steig 09 paper seems to be an artifact of the mathematics more than an actual trend. Amundsen Scott is the south pole data. The surface measurement is visually clean and has a downtrend for the full length of the data. This cooling is represented by the blue polygon in the center of the antarctic in this reconstruction.
TCO keeps asking me if I’ll post a trend higher than Steig. Every reconstruction I’ve done has reduced the trend from Steig 09. Every change no matter how small has resulted in a trend reduction from Steig 09, even the attempt to match Steig 09 has resulted in a slight trend reduction. I’ll say it now for the first time. In my opinion the paper is flawed and has an exaggerated warming trend due to bad mathematics. Temperature distributions on the continent are a result of artifacts in RegEM and not supported by the natural weather patterns as they were presented.
As an example which is pretty clear. Steig’s paper shows warming across the entire Antarctic. Here’s a plot of the ground data at the south pole.
Figure 9
A reconstruction cannot ignore a trend this strong. So TCO, it isn’t up to me. As Gavin likes to say, the data is the data. This data just cannot support Steig’s conclusions.
Kind of like the sea level rise thing. Not a whole lot going on.
The South Pole is as Scott & Amundsen left it: a real bear.
Perhaps Jeff Id could publish this as a challenge to Steig et. al. and see how it stands scrutiny by the scientific community.
I hate straight lines…
They always will remind me of Homer Simpson buying Pumpkin futures… they were going up and up (just before halloween), and “if this trend continues, we’ll be rich in 2 years!”
Nature doesn’t make straight lines.
Sure “it” does, quite often actually. Oh, are humans not natural?
Has anyone ever drilled an ice core to bedrock in Greenland or Antarctica that could show us when the first layers of ice were deposited in those locations? Would that not tell us the last time those areas were ice free?
Continental drift tells us when they were ice free. Once they arrived at or near the poles, ice was just the natural consequence of living at that address.
You gotta love engineers. Where would we be without them? They are are underrated and probably in many cases, underpaid for their worth.
Another cut-to-the-chase presentation.
Anthony. Batting 1000.
For many years the NY Times has been publishing, “Dot Earth,” a daily blog
managed by its science editor, Andrew Revkin. Every conceivable argument
by deniers of anthropogenic global warming have been routinely published
in “Dot Earth” and responded to by others. After 57 years as a global
petroleum geologist, my observation is most oilpatch professionals are rigid in their denial positions. The question is, WHY ?
Why?
Maybe…because there is plenty of data, direct observations, and failed climate model extrapolations…I won’t mention any names…MANN…that support the “denial” that long-term, disastrous warming is occurring?
Jack Century as far as I know, the ONLY thing AGW proponents have going is 1998. Draw a line from any year during or after the late 70’s trough to 1998 and it scares the uninformed.
Justin Sane: The Greenland ice cores were drilled to the bottom of the ice. They brought up dirt with temperate zone vegetation remains. I don’t remember the date though.
Correction: “savethesharks” not “svaethesharks” as shown above…or just Chris
What is “TCO”?
REPLY: He’s an omnipresent troll in climate blogs. His MO is foul langauge, insulting ad homs, occasional (admitted) drunken rants, and refusal to answer any questions posed to him. He occasionally has some good moments, but he tends to tire everyone out. He’s been mostly banned here though on occasion when he has something relevant to say I let the comment through. Lucia put him in her troll box, so did Steve McIntyre. There are some other places where he’s banned also.
He has taken quite a dislike to me, and regularly posts things about how stupid he thinks I am. It’s quite amusing.
– Anthony
@ mr.artday (20:12:24) :
Is this what you are talking about?
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/08/040816090439.htm
I can’t seem to find any follow up on that plant matter though, anyone have any info?
Ben
Justin Sane (19:09:42): found this from 1993, “When scientists from the University of Alaska Fairbanks hit bedrock under Greenland’s ice cap for the first time in history this summer, the event macic newspaper headlines around the country. The drill cut through 10,015 feet of glacial ice to grab a sample of bedrock and to pull out a core of ice more than 250,000 years old.”
from http://www.gi.alaska.edu/services/machineshop/Picodrillarticle.html
Pamela Gray (19:37:36), supposedly without the obliquity of the ecliptic that we now have, ie. if the plane of the equator was close to the plane of the orbit, there would be no ice caps. The theory is that a long dark period is needed to grow enough ice to stick year round; not without regard to ocean currents and temps, as well as ambient local atmospheric temps and moisture, in my mind.
This may be a minor point. To get the temperature at the 5500 gird points from the 42 surface stations, you ought to interpolate between surface stations, not use the nearest neighbor. The temperature is more likely to vary smoothly from one station to another. If station 1 is 1 degree and station 2 is 2 degrees then the point in the middle is more likely to be 1.5 degrees than either 1 or 2 degrees.
I don’t know if this would be a signifigant difference in this reconstruction, but it could.
CodeTech (18:53:44) : “I hate straight lines…They always will remind me of Homer Simpson buying Pumpkin futures… they were going up and up (just before halloween), and ‘if this trend continues, we’ll be rich in 2 years!’ Nature doesn’t make straight lines.
If you ever took Freshman Chemistry, you’d know that is false. Or Geology 100. Or Botany 101.
i’m going to be quite specific in my attempted observations :
ANYTIME anyone post code, I would suggest the following :
At the top of all code segments, identify the source language, compiler and compiler version and hardware code is running on.
This is particularly important wrt what comes next :
with respect to ( wrt ) code that does math ( calculations on integers ? / reals ? )
identify how ALL variables are declared so observer can determine number ranges that can be stored without over/underflow.
next, with respect to division ( / ) , multiplication ( * ) and built in function usage ( min ) it is, I suspect in this case, quite important to insure that calculations are robust regarding minimizing the loss of data or migration of data OR errors into, when there is LOOPING going on.
last, what it any, provisions for error handling exist with regards to checking for math problems ( to simplify a rather complex issue ) while calulating in loops ?
let there be NO doubt, the code snippits shown are THE MEAT of this entire presentation – if the author can shed some light here, I can try to look further into their robustness.
Jeff nice work. but have a look at this
http://www.climahom.eu/software/docs/Prezentation_T_homogenization.pdf
Basically approaches to in-filling data. he has software you can download, but
the presentation is pretty good stand alone.
2nd to the last para, please make that ” what, IF any ” …. sorry .
very interesting article !
Thank you Jeff for this well done real “peer review.”
I have a few questions though.
1.Due to the uneven distribution of surface stations can interpolations by proximity bias the data upwards?
2. As an alternative system would it be more accurate to make interpolations by distance from the pole in a sort of “bulls eye” pattern?
3. Are terrain and weather patterns taken into account with the interpolations?
4. Have surface station changes in placement and instrumentation been accounted for?
5. If changing the start date and end date changes the direction of the trend, were the dates “cherry picked”?
I guess the bottom line is that it is hard to take as Gospel the original Steig paper when the result can be so easily manipulated.
Thank you again Jeff for your great work!
I wonder to myself ‘Self, why not measure deviations from high/low daily temps as well?” Weather is not irrelevant, so why only measure the deviation from some arbitrary average?
Jack Century (19:49:42) : “For many years the NY Times has been publishing, “Dot Earth,” a daily blog managed by its science editor, Andrew Revkin. Every conceivable argument by deniers of anthropogenic global warming have been routinely published in “Dot Earth” and responded to by others. After 57 years as a global petroleum geologist, my observation is most oilpatch professionals are rigid in their denial positions. The question is, WHY ?”
Possibly because they are much better educated than the average MSM propaganda victim. They are trained in Physics, Chemistry, Geology, and Mathematics. Consequently, it’s a lot harder to pull the wool over their eyes.
Jeff,
My first issue is with the term “reconstruction”, which I know you are not the one to have used first. Thus, this is a general comment and in no way meant to be a shot at what you have done. Steig and others have popularized this term. However, it seems to be this sort of activity takes a limited amount of data by location and fills in a great deal of missing information. Might it be better to call this “constructing” temperatures where there were none before? (I’m not fond of the term “proactive” either, even though it seems to be very popular.)
Without searching for the location data I’m not certain of the distribution of the 42 surface stations. I seem to remember a majority were along or near the coast with only a few at higher elevations in the interior. One source has the highest elevation there as 4,897 meters with an area of about 14.2 M sq. km. The contiguous 48 states of the USA has a high elevation of
about 4,420 m. (Mt. Whitney) and is about 8.08 M sq. km. It would be revealing to overlay an Antarctica map with station locations on a partial North American map to illustrate for the reader just how challenging this temperature “construction” is from a geographical perspective.
Also, on that map you might have actual temperature reports, perhaps average summer and winter both. If there is an actual temperature in your article I missed it; all seem to be reported as anomalies.
The above two things would help the less familiar with this topic gain perspective on the issue.
I like the tone of the article. The work can be understood with a little effort while some other similar attempts require a couple of advanced degrees.
Justin Sane,
Antarctica’s Eastern ice cap is provable stable going back to between 14-22 million years ago, when South America separated and the circumpolar currents were established that shut off Antarctica largely from the rest of the worlds climate. The West Antarctic Ice Sheet is less stable largely because much of it is welded to bedrock below sea level, there is significant vulcanism in the west, and the penninsula is a weak point in the circumpolar current system. WAIS makes up 10% of the ice in Antarctica vs the EAIS.
Naish’s ice core data said that changes in the tilt of Earth’s rotational axis has played a major role in ocean warming that has driven repeated cycles of growth and retreat of the WAIS for the period in Earth’s history between 3 million and 5 million years ago.
Since the end of the last ice age, the WAIS has retreated 1200 km from its peak. This is a rather significant amount of ice, and ice that was bound to subsea bedrock out to a very significant distance from shore and to a significant depth.
Additionally, currently the continental plate below WAIS is depressed between 0.5-1.0 km due to the weight of the ice on top of it. This is really where folks start keying their alarmism, because where the WAIS is thickest is where the bedrock is most depressed due to the more massive weight, so there is a reverse slope to the center of the WAIS. Alarmists argue that once sea water undercuts the WAIS at the bedrock due to warming enough to get over the ridges, water will quickly flow down in accelerating degrees to undermine and infill the depression. The problem of course is that this completely ignores the hydrostatic pressure of the ice on top of the bedrock and the depth within the bedrock that the iceline reaches….
Jack Century (19:49:42) : most oilpatch professionals are rigid in their denial positions. The question is, WHY ?
Perhaps because they have had to be right during their careers or millions of dollars would be wasted on dry holes; and that means they were careful and competent scientists. Secondarily, geology gives you the perspective to understand that the holocene stability is a fluke in the global history of climate and that there isn’t a darned thing people can do to influence the earth and its changes. They have a clue and their willing to use it…
Jeff: First of all, good work and thank you for the considerable effort you and the others you mention have put in on this topic. Have you been in touch with Steig et al about this? Have you had any response or is it all quiet? Will they be in denial mode and hope it all goes away?
Several reasons why deniers of anthropogenic global warming are so rigid and uninformed are : (1) they have little understanding of the differences between geologic and human time scales and processes, (2) Svante Arhennius proved over 100 years ago that CO2 changes in the atmosphere are the driving mechanisms of global temperature changes and (3) Norman Newell proved in 1987 there is a near perfect statistical correlation of 0.9985 between CO2 measured in the atmosphere on top of Mauna Loa and the growth of human population, rigorously calculated by others. There are no current, natural phenomena that come remotely close to Newell’s statistical proof. We are now living in the Anthopocene Epoch as defined by the Geological Society of America. Period. Full Stop.. End of discussion.
Readers, I agree with Jack Century’s last sentence “End of discussion”. Since his comment has nothing to do with the Steig discussion, I doubt he even read it.
Let’s honor his request: Don’t feed the trolls.
Anthony, no need to post this but Jack’s post and your response sent me looking for information. You probably already know this:
From:
http://www.rpsgroup.com/Canada/News/RPS-Canada-hosts-CSPG-Heavy-Oil.aspx
In 2008 (Jack) Century became an official Presenter of An Inconvenient Truth along with 30 Albertans selected for a weekend of training by TCP-Canada.
They’re a bit like that round here Jack. Never ones to let reality get in the way of a good pre-determined position. The fact that all the top climatologists in the world have findings that go against their viewpoint generally amounts to nought.
Oh, and a seismic shift in energy policy to renewables (which any sensible visitor from elsewhere in the galaxy would undoubtedly recommend as mandatory for prolonged planetary survival) necessarily means a collapse of life as we know it, according to them. This despite the fact that evolution’s long since worked that way and despite the findings of multiple economic reviews which point to the longterm savings achieved by going this route.
But good luck to ya!!
REPLY: “all” the top climatologists in the world?
Gosh, and all this time I thought Dr’s Pielke Sr., Pielke Jr., Spencer, Christy, Lindzen, and several others I know (but you probably wouldn’t) were skeptical climatologists.
But we would not want to “let that get in the way of a good pre-determined position”. Matt are you one of Gore’s presenters too? If not, perhaps you should sign up.
Cheers!
– Anthony
In a previous WUWT review of Steig wasn’t there considerable question of the validity of some of the temperature measurements because of buried [snow] sensors and other possibly faulty data sources?
If so, were these issues ever successfully resolved or at least taken into account?
If not, would this affect the current study?
wattsupwiththat anthony, to soon to post
typo/error here 0.31 C/Decade thats 3c per 100 years
the chart looks like .03
So from this reconstruction temperatures have dropped since 1967 at an average rate of 0.31 C/Decade. These results are similar to my previous reconstruction which looks like this.
any how Jeff how about weighting the peninsula less as well do to it’s being smaller than the rest of the Antarctic?
let the good times role
leave out the R code tooo lol
Thiessen Polygons anyone?
Jeff,
Good stuff. I must agree with CodeTfch, though:
CodeTech (18:53:44) : “I hate straight lines…They always will remind me of Homer Simpson buying Pumpkin futures… they were going up and up (just before halloween), and ‘if this trend continues, we’ll be rich in 2 years!’ Nature doesn’t make straight lines.
A straight trend line is invariably inappropriate on such graphs as we have for temperature records. They quite obviously display temporal variation on all scales and the lines are normally drawn to the ends of the data, giving far too much influence to the chosen end-points. Such trend lines are statistically illiterate.
“So from this reconstruction temperatures have dropped since 1967 at an average rate of 0.31 C/Decade”
“Certainly the Antarctic temperatures have been flat or insignificantly cooling/warming in general for the last 40 years.”
i wouldn’t call a downtrend of 3.1C/century flat or insignificant.
i think it is also quite unpleasant, that the poorest junkscience of mann, steig and altri received the highest publicity.
but i think it has been analyzed that this is a general defunction of mass media, not only related to fields as primitive as climate science.
So, you get a warming trend if you cherry pick a start date of 1957 and a cooling trend by starting in 1967 instead. As fine an example of cherry picking you’ll get. Of course the temperature change from 1957 to 1967 makes no contribution to any period outside that date range so a straight line plot is probably not appropriate here. It’s also impossible to reconcile the south pole temperature chart in Figure 9 with the red in Figure 6, but never mind.
I going to run an idea past people here, including Anthony, that looking for trends in daily data over a time period is flawed. The temperate on 1st January doesn’t contribute to the temperate on 1st July in the same year or in any year. Instead of averaging daily temperatures we should be averaging the CHANGE in temperatures from 1st Jan to 1st Jan, 2nd Jan to 2nd Jan and so on for all the days in the year. In other words we should be looking for a DISTRIBUTION of temperature change.
This might be important when Anthony publishes his analysis of temperature changes from the best of the US surface stations. If you find the same signature from a small number of widely scattered, top quality, stations then that signature is the real deal.
Jeff Id:
Another impressive piece of work, but it seems to me that you are wasting a fair bit of your valuable time trying to construct rational challenges to Steig et al when the only logical response to that tripe is a universal derisive horselaugh. From the numbers I’ve seen the land area of Antarctica is 75% greater than the area of the continental US. If Steig et al had selected the continental US for their subject, grabbed data from south Florida and the Keys, amalgamated it with data from a handful of least well sited stations from Anthony’s Surfacestations project from the other 47 states, reduced it to three PCs and published their projections for the long term temperature trend of the nation they’d have been laughed out the room. Admittedly, the temps down there are much less variable than here in the States, but neglecting the mammoth scale of the place gives much more respect to the possibility of the task they were attempting,even if they used the best available methods, than it deserves. I would suggest amending the graphics for your post to include a to scale outline of the lower 48 so folks are reminded exactly how large the cells you assembled really are.
Sorry, I missed John Hultquist’s comment that already addressed my point, but it’s nice to know I’m not the only one.
I feel daunted by all that has gone before but can I ask a simple question?
There is a well established statistical process for interpolation and smoothing of data used by geologists and other earth scientists called the semi-variogram, often followed by krigging to allow the plotting of contours. I used it myself to try to assess a multitude of data points on a cylindrical object.
IIRC the semi-variogram stage gives an idea of how far away from each other points need to be to still have a correlation. Is this not something like people are doing for the Antarctic data?
No doubt this is all old hat …
The rules for Mannian data reconstructions are;
1. Pick the proxies that give the required result.
2. Pick the methodologies that give the required result.
3. Utilise group think when referencing authors and when dealing with the peer review process.
4. Don’t archive data sets.
5. Prevent publication of the methodologies.
6. Deny all wrong doing.
John F. Hultquist (21:37:04) Well spotted sir …a majority [of surface stations] were along or near the coast with only a few at higher elevations in the interior. One source has the highest elevation there as 4,897 meters…
Of course any infilling or interpolation of temperatures should be altitude adjusted. Ice in Antarctica at 4,897 meters is never going to melt. Ever.
I have often wondered when looking at Antarctic stations, why they don’t build permanent camps by drilling into some of those mountains that are bare rock.
I agree with Fluffy Clouds (Tim L) (23:45:35) who wrote about the 0.31 number. In the graph, the slope is labeled 0.031 C/dec, but the text below increases that by a factor of 10. That 0.31 should be per century. — John M Reynolds
.
>>Oh, and a seismic shift in energy policy to renewables
Unfortunately, it is renewable energy that will destroy nations, not Global Warming (or cooling).
It is an undeniable fact that all renewable energy is intermittent. It is another undeniable fact that there is no viable storage medium that can bridge the energy outage gaps. And THIS is what happens when the electrical supply goes off:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_North_America_blackout
As I have often said before, the Green agenda is to take us all back to the Dark Ages (literally), an era that could only support a world population of a few tens of millions.
.
To Matt Bennett and Jack Century,
In two years time, global temperatures will be lower than they are now. The data do seem to indicate that humans are to be faced with suboptimal climate conditions for growing food.
Which also means that in spite of your beliefs, CO2 emissions will be shown NOT to be the unmitigated disaster for humans that you are convinced that they are. In fact, we need to give plants as much CO2 as we can, because we need to eat to live.
Thus Jack, in an incredibly short geologic time, the flawed works of both Svante Arhennius and Norman Newell, will be consigned to the “department of unusually stupid ideas”.
Now, I know that you two chaps will resist acknowledging, the reality that is just about 700 days away. The point is that whatever you both believe, will affect neither the weather, not the climate. They are independent of human requirements. They both changeable and rather like stock markets, the figures must rise and fall. Like the credit crunch that financial market computer modelling did not foresee, the decline in global temperatures was not predicted by computers models used by AGWarmists. What you believe will not make it so. It’s getting colder and if we are really unlucky, it’s going to be very much colder.
If only humans could make the planet warmer.
Nor, not “not” in line 14.
Thanks to everyone for the nice comments. I think it’s pretty telling when Anthony can present simplified reconstructions which demonstrate a 50 yr warming trend here without any adverse reaction from a crowd of skeptics.
There are several comments about fitting a line to the data, I agree this data is much better represented with higher order curves. The line only has the purpose of showing a general trend for comparison to the trend of Steig 09. As most people here know the trend is sensitive to the ends of the curves.
Dave Wendt said,
“Another impressive piece of work, but it seems to me that you are wasting a fair bit of your valuable time trying to construct rational challenges”
Actually, I didn’t know if the paper would be quickly verified and the Antarctic was warming, I don’t have the experience in this subject Anthony and some of the others here do so it’s an exploration of the data for me as much as anything. Now that I understand the paper, the big problem I have with it is the lack of verification by Steig’s coauthors that trends were appropriately distributed across the continent.
steptoe fan,
The language is R, it’s freeware statistical software. Actually all the variable initialization (minus the download) is in the code as used. It doesn’t have formal declaration lists like C or other software and the variables are actually vectors and matrices. I’ve got several readers of the Air Vent who regularly run their own code to see how things work. If you’re interested in running some software, drop a request on my blog.
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/04/12/closest-station-antarctic-reconstruction/
I’ll stop back in a few hours to answer more of the questions.
John F. Hultquist made mention of Mt. Whitney and suddenly dawn on me what it is that has been bothering me about all this (re)construction, infilling, and other manipulations (that tend to give flesh to them notion of “imaginary” numbers).
It is this (by illustration) that bothers me about all of the methods I have seen discussed.
Suppose you had good solid observations from a weather station at Mount Whitney, California. And suppose that you had equally good observations for Furnace Creek, California.
Now, suppose you needed to make predictions, using those records, for Panamint Springs, for which you have incomplete and perhaps poorly measured data.
Do you use one? The other? The averages of the two?
Being a non-scientist, non-engineer it looks to me like the correct answer is to place the problem in the “Too Hard” box.
And if you absolutely must do the problem, use the Panamint data, perhaps discarding data that exceeds the limits established from the other two sets.
I wish the typos would appear when I proof read–honest, I did.
John F. Hultquist made mention of Mt. Whitney and suddenly IT dawnED on me….
Sorry to feed the troll but:
“By 1904, Arrhenius became concerned with rapid increases in anthropogenic carbon emissions and recognized that “the slight percentage of carbonic acid in the atmosphere may, by the advances of industry, be changed to a noticeable degree in the course of a few centuries.” He eventually made the suggestion that an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide due to the burning of fossil fuels could be beneficial, making the Earth’s climates “more equable,” stimulating plant growth, and providing more food for a larger population. This view differs radically from current concerns over the harmful effects of a global warming caused by industrial emissions and deforestation. ”
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/Arrhenius/arrhenius_3.php
Jeff,
First – good work.
What I would like to know is which instrument has the greater accuracy and precision – the satellites or the stations? Given the number of data points a satellite can measure in a short time I would assume the satellite is better at covering a continent (5500+ data points) than a few stations (42). In addition, the satellite data doesn’t lose its accuracy with distance like the ground stations do. So while you CAN interpolate, the question is whether you should – doesn’t this just add noise to clean satellite data?
Here’s the point. Someone should check the satellite accuracy relative to the stations (I am assuming the satellite is more accurate over distance and time). If the satellite data for the station region maps well with the station data itself (I would assume either a bias at a station or bouncing due to less precision in the measurement) then you know the raw satellite data is the best you will ever get. This is a simple cross calibration test to make sure the satellite is performing well. Interpolating coarser station data and merging it with satellite data only reduces this very expensive accuracy.
And interpolation can lead to mathematical errors which always (and not surprisingly) lean towards global warming.
My view is don’t mix imprecise data with precise data unless you are filling holes in the precise data. Clearly this is not the case. This interpolation exercise is trying to fill holes in the imprecise data, which simply muddies the sat data.
More on my views here if interested:
http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/8677
Cheers, AJStrata
Great work (and website: I always learn a lot here). I agree with Holtquist and Wendt that an overlay of continental USA would help the general reader “get” the absurdity of trying to extract a meaningful picture of temperature, and trends in same, from such sparse datasets. Agree also that altitude adjustment could be huge. I used to live in Denver area. I could play golf in shirt sleeves, then drive an hour and ski. Should I have been extrapolating the temperature dataset of the golf course onto the ski slope? It was effectively another planet. Did Steig take that into account?
To Perry Debell. Re: “Thus Jack, in an incredibly short geologic time, the flawed works of both Svante Arhennius and Norman Newell will be consigned to the
‘ department of unusually stupid ideas,’ ” The Geological Society of America has published well balanced reasons why we’re now living in the Anthropocene Epoch. Since Arhennisu and Newell are both dead, are you claiming the world’s most prestigious geological society is also stupid ? ~snip~
Jack,
Maybe you could explain why C02 has been proven to not trap IR radiation in sufficient quantity to create a ‘green house’ effect – which is not a radiation driven process in the first place. Green House effects are trapped air which doesn’t allow convective removal of the heat.
Have your vaunted AWG scientists been able to show how CO2 stops air from transferring heat through convection? Maybe you should bone up on some science instead of PR. Try here
http://arxiv.org/pdf/0707.1161v4
and here
http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/8430
For starters
AJStrata
Antarctica did not acquire a permanent galcial environment until long after it had arrived in the Antarctic Circle. It’s climate upon arrival and long afterwards within the Antarctic Circle during the Mesozoic was typically cool temperate with prolific flora and fauna communities, including extensive rain forests. As recently as only 14 million years ago Antarctica was still warm enough to support the environment of a tundra. The present day glacial environment of the Antarctic began very recently in the paleogeographic timeline, and long long after continental drift had already positioned Antarctica in the Antarctic Circle at the South Pole.
Hooray for engineers. Unless you want your bridge to fall down, best to stick with just the facts … Why do all these alarmists dataset analysis have the same smell?
A story from the telegraph
“Arctic will be ice-free within a decade”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/5116352/Arctic-will-be-ice-free-within-a-decade.html
Walt Meier, research scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data; “Most people would agree it is not a matter of if we lose the summer sea ice but when,”
Can’t wait for their excuses
There’s also a short message from Pen Haddow on the video
I’d like to see a more precise vocabulary used. Measurements are “data”. Interpolations are not “in-filled data” or “reconstructed data” or any sort of “data”; they remain interpolations.
Malcom, you’re right!
Scant data (Antarctica) or very coarse proxy data (tree rings) produce curves that have huge margins of uncertainity, and thus allow data manipulators and fudgers to draw the curves they want.
What we do know is that temperatures and sea levels have been going up for 18,000 years, and so that even the modestly ncreasing rates of today are nothing new.
Curves drawn with scant or rough data can neither be proven nor disputed.
The temperatures of the antarctica peninsula are explainable, apart of its northward projection, because the temperatures in the SH latitudes do not correspond to the temperatures at the same latitudes of the NH, because there is a wider ocean in front of SA coasts, then because the heat of the southern seas cool down there and having cooled down there go northwards, named as the Humboldt´s current along the coasts of SA up to the equator. When an el Nino appears, this appears as a counter current reaching more southern latitudes as the stronger it is.
It would be interesting to know if the higher temperature data of the peninsula it is or it is not concentrated around the 1997-1998 el Nino.
Unless of coarse historical observations show to the contrary (i.e. frozen English channels, farmers in Greenland, wine in England etc.).
Since Arhennisu and Newell are both dead, are you claiming the world’s most prestigious geological society is also stupid ?
Are you saying that is is impossible that they might be?
Justin Sane:
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vostok,_Antarctica
Unedited data shows, not surprisingly, a macro cycle of warming/cooling. However, at the Industrial Age, the warming increases significantly. Again no surprisingly, religious naysayers conveniently lop off the far right section of the original Vostok data to make it appear as if history stopped about 200 years ago. That disingenuous chart is all over the internet.
Pamela Gray:
Continental drift does not answer everything. There is evidence to support violent shifting of the Earth’s orientation, whether by axis movement or crustal displacement. Per the latter, conventional geologists tend to dismiss Charles Hapgood out of hand, but I’m betting he’s closer to the truth than they are.
Matt Bennett (23:29:02) :
“which any sensible visitor from elsewhere in the galaxy would undoubtedly recommend”
When you next see them, would you please inquire about that fusion problem – we can’t seem to work it out quite yet and could use a little help.
“as mandatory for prolonged planetary survival”
Since our planet is apparently a living being, I’m curious if you could ask it just what it thinks of rap music. Oh, and see what you can do about those pesky volcanoes. Thanks!
Just a technical point that might make your task simpler:
You can choose a projection of the South Pole region that minimizes distance distortion and allows you to calculate distances with the simple Cartesian formula (i.e. Pythagoras). Thus, you could dispense with the great circle stuff.
This sort of analysis is routine within a lot of GIS (geographic information system) applications. You might find them an interesting addition to your toolbox.
Justin Sane (19:09:42)
and
Benjamin P. (20:39:20)
Check out this story:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6276576.stm
Is this surprising to some people? Why should Greenland or Antarctica have uniform weather over time?
Jeff Id
Complements on your graph. It very clearly shows the major variations and emphasizes how few stations there are actually providing data.
Shown this way, the warming trend in the northwest tip is clearly very different from the rest of West Antarctica.
I encourage you to write a letter to Nature highlighting the major differences that your found. That the central cooling over the north pole may be due to the ozone hole and/or changes in cosmic rays with the earth’s magnetic field impacting the clouds.
Did you notice how Mr. Century spoke of the correlation between human population and Co2 rise. Stopping at that point because the next logical extension would be a correlation between C02 rise and temperature rise. He stopped because he would then have to admit there is no correlation as temperature is not rising as per C02 theory. You have to admire his faith, though. It takes a lot of faith to deny all that science stuff.
Jeff
Have you investigated the literature on “Kriging”? This is a mining engineer’s/geologist’s infill method of estimating overall assay data from drill hole intersections of an ore body – particularly sheet-like veins (Krige was a South African mining engineer). The method uses a variogram approach rather than covariance. Here is a generalized development and application of it from a thesis.
http://www.nbb.cornell.edu/neurobio/land/OldStudentProjects/cs490-94to95/clang/kriging.html#intro
The “nugget effect” referred to is sporadic high grade intersections, which are probably not be an issue for your type of problem. The Kriging method has been well tested since you start with estimating the reserves, say, of gold and then you end up mining it and finding the real value. It might be interesting to try it first using only the ground stations – possibly overprinting a variation function grid based on latitude and topographic altitude which places Vostok as the coldest centre on those counts.
“Oh, and a seismic shift in energy policy to renewables (which any sensible visitor from elsewhere in the galaxy would undoubtedly recommend as mandatory for prolonged planetary survival)…”
The extragalacticals undoubtedly arrived on a cosmic ray powered sailing vessel. Hmmmm… I wonder how they do that whole escape velocity thing. Maybe they just stay in orbit and let a ladder down to the surface.
To David Harrington. RE: “Since Arhennius and Newell are both dead, are you
claiming the world’s most prestigious geological society is also stupid?”
And, to your question , David, “Are you saying that it is impossible that they (the GSA) might be?” My answer is definitely, no. For many good reasons, based on scientific observations and global wisdom, the Geological Society of America is absolutely right in publishing that we’re now living in the Anthropocene Epoch. But, by your asking that question suggests you are just geologically uninformed.
Check out the following source for climate history at the poles. The earliest ages are an unknown entity regarding the north pole area (no land there so no ice evidence). The south pole evidence of ice is missing but they may not be looking in the right place. By the time the land mass drifted from the southern hemisphere to the northern areas, it would have to cross the equator, leaving ice evidence in the dust, literally. And, the land that would have had ice evidence on it may now be molten core.
http://www.scotese.com/climate.htm
OT but I wonder if Hansen is involved in this as well?
More than 100 people have been arrested in Nottingham over a suspected plan to target a power station.
Police said 114 men and women were arrested in Sneinton Dale on suspicion of conspiracy to commit aggravated trespass and criminal damage.
Officers said they believed those arrested were planning to protest at nearby Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station.
A spokesman said “specialist equipment” had been found by officers who feared a threat to the safety of the site.
He said police thought there was a “serious threat” to the coal-fired power station, which is eight miles south-west of Nottingham.
OT but…..
Found this article by Dr. Roy Spencer:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2009/04/a-global-warming-cookbook-what-causes-temperature-to-change/
It’s very basic and it will be of interest to the Liberal Arts majors amongst us.
Regards,
Steamboat Jack
Since the Steig paper came out, I have wondered why no one (for example, the anonymous reviewers for the journal) has called for a test of this method on another continent, where the answer is known. Why not try the Steig method on, say, North America (see Dave Wendt (00:30:04)) or on Australia? Take a sparse collection of readings, mostly around the periphery, and see how easy it is to nail the temperature trend for the whole continent going back a few decades. I suppose someone might argue that the method can only work for Antarctica because it is relatively homogenous. I don’t buy it: the temperatures there vary tremendously both spatially and seasonally.
I think this is the best way to average the temperatures using basic interpolation. This method is very similar to the grid-ding pattern that Reservoir Simulators work breaking up the rock volume or in this case Atmosphere into cells is the right way to handle it. Some way of estimating the micro climates or micro weather due to elevation and or proximity to mountain ranges and or the ocean would need to be considered. All in all great work if you are just looking for a delta temperature over time assuming that these micro climates would average out and probably account for the variability shown in the range of data. Nice work.
On a slightly less technical note, can someone explain how the West Antactic Ice Shelf (WAIS) got its name? What is it ‘West” of?
From the South Pole, everything is North.
East of the WAIS is either sea or more Antarctic.
Good stuff Jeff Id as usual.
The most important point is that every variation of the analysis you did had a lower warming trend than Steig (et al et Mann).
That means just like in all the temperature reconstructions done by the pro-AGW crowd, every assumption, every adjustment, every little innocent wrong-station data error, is structured to Maximize the warming trend.
Just like in the previous thread where the quote from Lindzen questions why all the adjustment goes toward helping the AGW proposition.
I’m sure there are many different ways to reconstruct Antarctica’s temperature trends, but why did they end up with the maximum trend possible.
Every time I dig into the base data behind some study, some issue, I find that the base data used does not support the claims made or the what the abstract says. I think the researchers collect the data, find it is not quite what they expected, but they have to publish the data anyway. And, to keep getting invited to all the great global warming parties, they still have to publish “the data supports dangerous global warming” but they still know it doesn’t.
Bias is understandable I guess. And so is questioning the analysis given that bias.
OT:
Scientific American, April 8:
Is Global Warming a Myth? How to respond to people who doubt the human impact on the climate
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=is-global-warming-a-myth
New Scientist, April 8, 2009 11:08 AM
Has global warming really stopped?
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2009/04/has-global-warming-really-stop.html
I would also like to question the data fill in methodology. As was mentioned previously, I would think an interpolation method would be better than tying the grid to progressively further distant stations. A normal interpolation is essentially linear, but I wonder if a different sort of weighting for interpolation would be better; i.e. some sort of non-linear to account for something like the Colorado effect Jack mentioned. Just speculating off the top of my head, but I would like to see a comparsion between the method used, and a regular interpolated fill-in .
Indeed it will soon be time to write a comment on Steig et al. 2009 to Nature…
I don’t see how much of anything derives from the proposition “We are now entering the Anthropocene Epoch.” I haven’t read that many scientific papers but my impression was that they usually they involve data that lead to a conclusion.
Saying we are now entering the Anthropocene Epoch is a very broad generalization that doesn’t get you anywhere in the way of specific predictions.
Could someone reference me to a study on the effects of underwater volcanisms contribution to the wilkins iceshelfs demise,if at all it has contributed towards it.I remember reading a study a few yrs ago but am having trouble locating it.I’m a Globullwarming skeptic and would like to counter a few Alarmists accusations that there is no such thing as volcanism in the western antarctic ocean.
re: my comment on straight lines:
Yes, I’m aware that the straight lines represent a trend, but my point was that most (yes, most) people who don’t understand the concept of a trend are easily convinced that a given trend will continue forever.
The biggest problem with straight lines is they are, by nature, inflexible, and completely dependent upon start and end points. Thus, straight lines are often used for the purpose of showing an intended result rather than illuminating reality from a dataset.
What follows from this is that we simply do not have a long enough run of reliable data to determine ANY trend, or curve, since prior to the ice age scare of the 70s people were sensible enough to not divert a sizable portion of the scientific community’s resources toward weather.
Funny, any cooling is “weather” but any warming is “climate” to these people, and any warming trend is “AGW” while any cooling trend is “cherry picking”. Go figure.
Reality is a very difficult concept for Warmongers to accept. They prefer their comfy fantasies, theories and beliefs, their models and reconstructions, their holier than thou preachers and saints telling us how bad we are and how we must repent our climate sins.
They just can’t accept reality. They chose to believe the models rather than the data.
They believe. They Believe. It makes them feel better. I am not a religious person, but I understand how Believing is comforting to them. It is their warm comfy fur.
A note on Arrhenius from Wiki: “Svante Arrhenius was also actively engaged in the process leading to the creation in 1922 of The State Institute for Racial Biology in Uppsala, Sweden, which had originally been planned as a Nobel Institute. Arrhenius was a member of the institute’s board, as he had been in The Swedish Society for Racial Hygiene (Eugenics), founded in 1909. Swedish racial biology was world-leading at this time, and the results formed the scientific basis for the Compulsory sterilization program in Sweden, as well as inspiring the Nazi eugenics in Germany.”
Eugenics was all the “consensus” in those days.
Jack Century (04:14:26) :
To Perry Debell. Re: “Thus Jack, in an incredibly short geologic time, the flawed works of both Svante Arhennius and Norman Newell will be consigned to the
‘ department of unusually stupid ideas,’ ” The Geological Society of America has published well balanced reasons why we’re now living in the Anthropocene Epoch. Since Arhennisu and Newell are both dead, are you claiming the world’s most prestigious geological society is also stupid ?
Perry never claimed that Arhennius and Newell were stupid – only that certain ideas of theirs might be considered so. Ideas have a “life” independent of those who create them – whether they are stupid or not does not change once the man dies. What that has to do with the GSA and epochs, I’m not sure. Do you know what an epoch means or what the GSA specifically means with their suggestion of the likeliness of an “Anthropocene” epoch?
I’ll give you a hint: the epoch they describe has very little to do with our use of fossil fuels, other than the fact that they have allowed us to realize our current level of industrialization. If by some miracle we were able to convert to 100% renewable energy sources overnight, we would STILL continue to create the defining geologic (stratigraphic) signature they describe.
Furthermore, as it pertains to the GSA and climate change, the GSA acknowledges changes in current climate as do most. They do NOT claim that man is the primary cause of these changes.
Feeding the troll?
I can appreciate Jack Century’s sermon on AGW as the loyal alarmists’s condescension.
But his lack of any credentials relating to climate, lack of any peer reviewed published climate work and lack of current science to bolster his position leaves him standing in the AGW choir chanting demands.
His comments on this thread is the boiler plate kind of decreed certainty that avoids the thorough exploration, definition and progress of science.
With his approach, he is essentially recommending a limit to the scrutiny of science.
His brand of scientific curiosity appears to be that which only produces questions that are already “conveniently” answered.
Or something like that?
Clearly, for AGW research, we can spend billions of dollars sending up satellites, billions of dollars on data expeditions, and billions of dollars on computer modeling, all to justify shifting (risking) trillions of dollars of our economy on “going green”.
But spend 50 million dollars to place remote satellite monitored weather stations every 100 miles gridding Antarctica?
Can’t do it old man.
Jack Century: are you claiming the world’s most prestigious geological society is also stupid ?
This same society made a fool of itself at least once before when it tried to trash Alfred Wegonner’s continental drift theory. Dear me.
Jeff. I admire your analytic ability and insight. As Peat pointed out, compared to the 48 states, the relative scarcity of accurate long term data is challenging. Given the problems Anthony has detailed in Surfacestation, it seems likely the accuracy is even more questionable in Antarctic data. ISTM, by using flawed data, interpolations, etc., we are allowing the AGW crowd to set the terms of the debate. Rather than debate the ” trend”, i believe showing the lack of credibility of the data, as Anthony is doing with Surfacestation, is preferable. Then again, i lack your ability to do the type of analysis you presented. Thank you. fm
The overall trend, up or down, is very small. How much of this could be attributed to siting problems? Granted, you won’t find many barbeques down there, but what of stations buried in snow? With only 42 ‘observers’, it won’t take much to distort the results.
With the separation and elevations questions raised by others, I question whether we can derive much of anything from a limited dataset.
From the Telegraph article here:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/5116352/Arctic-will-be-ice-free-within-a-decade.html
“It could be several hundred thousand years ago the last time we were ice free, it was certainly seven to eight hundred years since we have had close to conditions like we have now,” added Dr Meier.
Is Dr. Meier acknowledging the MWP?
Jack Century,
GSA is prestigious so its pronouncements have the force of verity? Where were they on the subject of “Continental Drift” in the 1920s. Another prestigious organization AAPG (I’m sure you will agree it is prestigious) at the time stated (I paraphrase): ” If we are to believe that the continents drifted as suggested by Wegener, we would have to consign to the waste basket all that we have learned over the past 100 years.”
They resisted for another 30 years before they had to make the consignment and when the evidence overwelmed, it was accepted as a new theory with someone else’s name on it and with a new (ugly) name – plate tectonics- which I thought at the time was an orthodontists term.
Prestige doesn’t cut it for an old timer. By the way, I suppose we could say of the GSA and AAPG at the time that they “just (weren’t) geologically uninformed”
Oops: Error
“just (weren’t) geologically uninformed” Leave out the (weren’t)
I am still wondering if we don’t have this all Back Asswards. I am still wondering why, if there is strong agreement between ground stations and their local temps and satellite data for those locales, why would this not simply prove the accuracy of the satellite data and remove any need to interpolate at all?
Sorry for not being clearer on my question. I sadly do not have copious amounts of free time to give this question serious analysis given my numerous NASA projects (day job) and my blog (night job) – not to mention family commitments.
But it seems to me that all ground stations can do is confirm the satellite data, not override it with expanding error bars from extreme interpolation.
Maybe I just don’t see things right!
To Gary Pearse, as one old-timer to another. RE: The Geological Society of America (GSA) and the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG) about (1) Alfred Wegener’s theory of plate tectonics and (2)anthroprogenic global warming and climate change. The AAPG made it’s first monumental geoscience blunder by denying Wegener’s theory of continental drift, not based on science, but because it was a “foreign ideology. ” Sound familiar, folks ?
I was there as an undergraduate geology student at the University of Illinois
and saw and heard this nonsense first hand, from geology professors who were card-carrying, AAPG members. The AAPG made it’s second monumental blunder by continuing to deny plate tectonics and AGM for many decades. When will the AAPG, or the Canadian Society of Petroleum Geologists (CSPG ), the second largest petroleum geology society in the world ever learn ? I’m an Emeritus member of both the AAPG and the CSPG .The truth will eventually make you free, Gary.
Just the usual comment from Maynard.
In the same way that the IPCC and the Hockey team managed to ignore all of the historical evidence for a MWP, Steig simply ignored the GISS station at the South Pole. If the warming is global then why does it not appear it the observations from there. I have not checked the quality of the data from this site but would assume, bearing in mind it’a er pivotal nature that it might be one that passes muster. Anthony, has your Surface Stations project checked it out?
Off thread but I suggest all readers here look the the heartland Proceedings.
Cheers
Paul
I always thought that air temperatures, besides differing by location and altitude were also affected by, among other factors, the character of the air mass upwind.
Just doing some sort of positional interpolation by estimated position would seem to be logically inadequate.
And I’ll freely admit that I am not familiar with R code, but I don’t think these temperature interpolations even include elevation corrections, let alone any dynamic air mass adjustments.
To John H. RE: My science credentials. For starters, please read: (1) “Tar Sands:
Key Geologic Risks and Opportunities,” a peer-reviewed paper published in
the Sept 2008 issue of The Leading Edge. TLE is the monthly technical journal
published by the Society of Exploration Geophysicists. The SEG is headquartered in Tulsa, OK and has 30,000 worldwide members, (2) “Conventional Petroleum Assessments: Facts and Fallacies,” published in the 1980 Canadadian Society
of Petroleum Geologists Memoir No. 6, “Facts and Principles of World Petroleum
Occurrence,” pp 283-300, and (3) Chairman and Editor of, ” Oil Fields of Alberta Supplement – 1966,” published by the Alberta Society of Petroleum Geologists, 136 pages of detailed field maps with valuable geologic and reservoir information. Check out the internet for more.
Pamela, the topic of discussion was originally the challenge to Steig’s alleged warming of present day Antarctica. Justin Sane asked about the last time Greenland and Antarctica were ice free.
You responded to his questions by saying:
Your comment is simply not true. We know “ice was [NOT] just the natural consequence of living at that address,” because we know Greenland and Antarctica “ arrived at or near the poles” and “the natural consequence of living at that address” were warm temperate, cool temperate, and cold unglaciated climates. During most of geological time, the polar regions remained free from permanent ice sheets and glaciations. Major continental glaciations occurred in Greenland, Antarctica, and any other continent only in those time periods during which one of the five major ice ages occurred. In other words, the polar areas supported glaciation of continental landmasses and polar sea ice ONLY during the occurrence of a global ice age climate. We currently live in the Holarctic-Antarctic Ice Age, which is why we currently see Arctic and Antarctic ice caps.
Ice caps existed in the regions of the Antarctic Circle and the South Pole only during at least five ice ages. The five ice ages are:
Huronian Ice Age 2500—2100 Ma, duration ~400 million years
Stuartian-Varangian Ice Age 950—600 Ma, duration ~50 million years
Andean-Saharan Ice Age 450—420 Ma, duration ~30 million years
Karoo Ice Age 360—260 Ma, duration ~100 million years
Holarctic-Antarctic Ice Age 30 Ma -– to present so far
The seas at the North Pole have rarely ever experienced polar ice caps . Even during the major ice ages, the seas in the north polar Arctic Circle remained unfrozen and free of ice packs.
Although the current Holarctic-Antarctic Ice Age began in the continent of Antarctica while it was already located within the Antarctic Circle about 30 million years ago, large areas of Antarctica remained free of glacial ice sheets and experienced tundra and cool temperate conditions until only a few million years ago.
Likewise, present day glacial ice sheets did not make their appearances in Greenland, Upper Canada, Alaska, and Iceland until 10–3 million years ago. Even then, Southern Greenland remained free of ice sheets and had cool temperate forests. The current Greenland ice sheet is estimated to be older than 110,000 years and perhaps up to 250,000 years old in origin from mountain glaciers.
In other words, the only time an ice cap existed at the North Polar region and/or the South Polar region was during the comparatively unusual occurrence of a major global ice age. At any other time, a continental landmass remained free of glacial ice sheets and the seas remained free of maritime ice sheets.
Hey Fred from Canuckistan: I nominate your post above as Best Example of Unintentional Irony for today.
David Ball, I suggest you examine the UNEDITED Vostok ice core data.
Sliiiightly of topic:
I recommen all to follow the ice situation at Bering:
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_daily_extent_hires.png
Right now, we have NH ice extend around normal, but the NICE thing is, that the missing ice is in the east Siberia, while there is extra ice around Bering!
And thats good news if you want ice at the north pole this summer, because the normal melting often starts from the Bering area. I have followed this for weeks and the Bering anomaly just gets bigger and bigger!
CodeTech (18:53:44) : Nature doesn’t make straight lines.
Hmmm. How about crystal growth? Plenty of straight lines and even planes.
D. Patterson,
All the ice ages you mentioned occurred where there was major landmasses (including one when all the continents were locked together over the south pole).
How many times in geologic history has there been major landmasses at one or both poles and there has not been ice there.
What happens to the climate of these landmasses during the six months of darkness they experienced.
I note that glaciers do not build up on the ocean. Secondly, if the ocean and deep ocean currents have full access to the polar regions, they will carry away the cold water and replace it with warmer water at the surface.
D. Patterson (09:13:31) :
Thanks for your timelines. Hundreds of millions, tens of millions, and hundreds of thousands of years is a very hard concept for most to understand, especially with cro-magnon man being around only for 35 thousand years and recorded history being only 5 or 6 thousand years (half the Holocene).
I wish politicians were able to understand these things.
Pamela Gray (19:37:36) :
Try http://www.globalwarmingart.com and stick to all graphs which use one and the same proxy, the O-18 ratio. More recent graphs mix/match/delete proxies (thermometers, pine needle stomata, tree ring width all species dependent, etc.) as needed to prove their points. The clearest graphs are the 0-450,000 years, 0-5 million years, 0-65 million years, and 0-540 million years.
The spotlighting of a The-Antarctica-May-Not-Be-Cooling-After-All contrived article in a formerly respected nature publication merely illuminates the weakness of the AGW position.
When a litigator is faced with “bad” facts he tries to argue about extraneous issues. If the AGW theory were sound, supporters would simply repeat the scientific evidence. Faced with satellites recording a cooling atmosphere, 3,000 diving buoys recording cooling oceans, positive correlations between temperatures and natural factors such as solar variations, and negligible to negative correlation between CO2 and temperature, AGW enthusiasts must go to the ends of the earth to pick an issue to argue about.
Don B (11:12:51) :
Right on, Don.
“”” jorgekafkazar (21:11:38) :
CodeTech (18:53:44) : “I hate straight lines…They always will remind me of Homer Simpson buying Pumpkin futures… they were going up and up (just before halloween), and ‘if this trend continues, we’ll be rich in 2 years!’ Nature doesn’t make straight lines.
If you ever took Freshman Chemistry, you’d know that is false. Or Geology 100. Or Botany 101. “””
“”” woodNfish (10:24:33) :
CodeTech (18:53:44) : Nature doesn’t make straight lines.
Hmmm. How about crystal growth? Plenty of straight lines and even planes. “””
What have you guys been smoking ?
Actually nature doesn’t make ANY of the things we use in mathematics. It’s all agreat fiction; and we made it up in our heads; ALL OF IT.
There are NO points, NO straight lines, NO planes, NO circles, NO spheres.
Don’t even bother to think of ANY mathematical “thing” that exists in nature.
Take the equation x^2 + y^2 + Z^2 = r^2 which in Euclidean Geometry defines a SPHERE, a purely fictional construct that is the locus of all points equidistant from a given point. Well points don’t exist either; but even so, nothing in that sphere equation can explain the existance of 8000 metre high mountains on earth; which lcearly is thereofre NOT a sphere.
Our mathematical constructs are not even unique.
In ordinary Euclidean plane geometry, a circle is a special case of an ellipse; a conic section.
But in the plane geometry called “Projective Geometry”, a circle is still a conic section but it is a special case of a hyperbola; and like all hyperbolas it is infinite in extent; and in fact every possible circle intersects every other possible circle at the same two points. There are points in Projective Geometry, just as in Euclidean Geometry; in fact one of the Axioms of projective geometry says that there are at least four points. The very first theorem one can prove with projective geometry is that there are at least seven points. But you can’t prove there are any more than seven points; within the bounds of porjective geometry.
You can however prove all of the classical geometry theorems of Euclid in projective geometry.
So no nature doens’t make straight lines. And you only need to know of Heisenberg’s principle of uncertainty to know that points don’t exist either; because if there was a point in the mathematical sence the uncertainty in momentum would spread the associated energy over an infinitely wide spectrum,so that it was undetectable at any frequency.
Mathematics is all made up by man, and nature doesn’t pay any special attention to man; or mathematics.
George
woodNfish: Codetech is right, nature abhors straight lines. What you see straight it is an ilussion of your almost instantaneous and fleeting vision.
There is only one curve: The spiral, having many projections, one of which is the sinusoid. If we were to see the solar system in a blink of an eye of, say, 30.000 thousand years, what should we observe?
George E. Smith (11:27:14) : You are probably right
By the way..I found it!, I know where greenhouse works: within a “Klein bottle”
Randall Arnold, if your claim is that Co2 precedes temperature rise in the ice cores, you will need to back that up. I am afraid you have not been clear in your challenge to my post. Did you read my post correctly ? What is your meaning of UNEDITED Vostok ice core data? Cut and run is not a great debating technique, although I see it a lot here.
@Matt Bennett and Jack Century
Do either of you actually have something to add to the discussion of the article presented above? Would you like to point out a flaw, or perhaps an oversight on behalf of Mr. Id?
In the wider debate of AGW your points are welcome, but in a discussion of a specific bit of research your comments serve only to derail and clutter a legitimate discussion. I don’t take you for fools or imbeciles so I can only assume you’re aware that your comments are out of place and disruptive. If you are indeed aware of that then your intent here is a deliberate disruption of the discussion. And if that much is true it means you’re here purely in an intellectually dishonest capacity.
I’ve assumed you not to be a fool or imbecile but that assumption leads me to believe you’re being intellectually dishonest. So would you have us believe you a fool or an academic miscreant?
You’ll have to forgive my blunt comments if they are misplaced but frankly I think you’ve shown an extreme lack of respect for the work Mr Id has done. I dare say you would find it equally disrespectful if the positions were reversed.
George E. Smith. I aways thought my math was half decent, but yours is light years better than mine. Good post. I always enjoy your comments. fm
Jeff,
I seem to recall a post over on Climate Audit where you apologised to Dr Steig due to an error in one of your reconstructions which had been discovered by Steve McIntyre. What impact does this error, and apology, have on a) your previous post on WUWT which demolished the Steig paper, and B) this post which furthers the demolition.
Many thanks
S
HarryL
“…would like to counter a few Alarmists accusations that there is no such thing as volcanism in the western antarctic ocean.”
I don’t have any studies to offer but point them to Google Earth which shows the proximity of the peninsula to the tip of S. America. The mountains go underwater and you can follow them with your finger (kinda sorta).
To C. Shannon: Thanks for focusing on issues of reconciling differences between geoscience and engineering disciplines, important in solving
serious problems related to global warming and climate change. However,
your assumption that I am not, along with others, a fool. an imbecile or dishonest it totally gratutitous. This important and very detailed subject under discussion is being monitored by responsible professionals for relevance, substance and style. My comments have been in response to a number of inapproprate remarks made about me and my credibility. In my opinion, your comments have succeeded in raising doubts about judgment and objectivity, as well as insulting the monitors.
REPLY: It appears you are only interested in your own issues, not the subject of this thread. Since you haven’t discussed anything about this thread, only about your ideas, you clearly have nothing to add on this thread that is relevant to the subject matter. Others agree. So off to the troll bin with you for this discussion.
Bill Illis (11:07:49) :
It is simpler to say how many times major landmasses have NOT been in the Antarctic Circle in about the past 650 to 1100 million years with or without an ice cap, which is virtually none. Earth’s continents formed after the Late Heavy Bombardment during the Archean Eon about 3800—2500 Ma, and it is reported that about 70 percent of today’s continental landmasses are formed from these very ancient cratons we describe as today’s continental shields. Because severe metamorphosis of these early continental rocks has changed their original geomagnetic and other properties to such a great extent, paleogeographers find it difficult to determine with any confidence exactly where the continents were located before about 650 Ma, but they have made some informed speculations back to around 1100 Ma with respect to a supercontinent dubbed as Rodinia. From about 1100—650 Ma to the present day, there has almost always been a continental landmass at the South Pole. On the few occassions when there has not been a continental landmass at the South Pole, there has been one nearby and usually well within the Antarctic Circle. Except when there has been a major ice age underway, these continental landmasses at or near the South Pole remained free of an ice cap.
Continental landmasses do not appear to have drifted into the region of the Arctic Circle and the North Pole before an approach was made in the Pennsylvanian of the Late Carboniferous about 300Ma and began to arrive at the North Pole about 220 Ma. Since then to the present day, there has always been a continental land mass within the Arctic Circle, at the North Pole, or near the North Pole with sub-continental islands at or nearby the pole as they are today. An icecap has formed within the Arctic Circle only during the ice ages. During the present ice age, the ice sheet extended far south of the Arctic Circle to the mid-latitudes, which is the only time this has occurred in the past 600 million years.
It varied depending upon the seasonality of the global climate. During periods in which the oceans were higher, the oceanic water’s heat capacity and circulation strongly moderated seasonal water cycles and global temperature gradients. Temperatures in the polar circles were often warm enough for temperate and/or tropical flora and fauna. During periods of lower oceanic levels and limited oceanic circulation, seasonal water cycles and temperature gradients became relatively extreme. Seasonal snow and ice sometimes appeared in the polar circles without becoming permanent glaciations.
“What impact does this error, and apology, have on a) your previous post on WUWT which demolished the Steig paper, and B) this post which furthers the demolition.(?)”
From my perspective, the apology adds further weight to Jeff’s posts and comments since he is obviously ready to admit errors when they occur. If only the high counsels of AGW could do likewise, but if they did that, belief would be much tougher to instill in the masses.
I take it back, I believe that if they were more willing to admit mistakes they would increase their persuasiveness. That readiness to admit any shortcomings does not seem to be part of that mindset, however…
AJStrata (08:30:52) :
The problem was the satellite data (which I don’t think they’ve released) doesn’t cover the full period of time nor exactly the same area as all available data. So Steig et al thought they could compare the satellite data to the concurrent surface station data to get some magic formula. Then they’d take whatever station data was available prior to the satellite data, spread it out to cover the same area, then apply the magic sauce to that so they could pretend IT was as good as satellite data.
Yeah, me too.
Opinions regarding the superiority in sampling frequency and quality of satellite v surface station data have been aired, and I have no disagreement with the greater potential of satellite data. However, surface stations, in my opinion remain essential.
With the greatest respect to the huge achievements in satellite remote sensing and measurement in recent decades, and also the greatest expectation of satellite and deep space mission data providing a revolution in Earth and planetary scientific understanding in the future, some means of standardised calibration zeroing and Q/C to selected surface standard base stations should be mandatory, to provide a future accuracy-assurance reference base. Without such, re-analysis and re-assessment of such data, when it becomes archived with the passage of time, may in future be regarded as unacceptably uncertain. The millimetric accuracy and correlation of satellite sea level data to surface tidal guage data , for example, has been disputed on a recent thread and is another area of possible future uncertainty which should be minimised. Such a process may already be instigated, in which case, apologies for my ignorance. But If so I would like to see the standard calibration stated and referenced as a matter of routine.
Shane,
That was a guest post by Jeff C who apologized to Dr. Steig. I didn’t feel the post attacked Dr. Steig at all so I just apologized to the readers for my own faulty verification.
This post is another story entirely, we’ve created several different reconstructions now.
– Automatic Weather stations
– Re-Gridded Automatic Weather stations (several recons)
– 3 pc sat recon from Steig’s 3 pc data
– 3 pc sat recon from steig’s raw sat data
– 10 pc sat recon from steig’s raw sat data
– 3 pc sat recon no peninsula from steig 3 pc data (I forgot about this one)
– Correlation weighted recon from raw sat data
– Area weighted recon from surface data only (this post)
I’ve got a couple more to do without the peninsula. Then I’ll do a post compiling everything. Ryan 0 on CA is working on a unique calibrated version of the sat data as well.
Not many conclusions yet except I seem to be incredibly lucky in that all of my and Jeff’s efforts seem to result in a reduced trends.
To the Reply: My best attempts obviously failed to convince others of the need
to initiate a necessary dialogue between geoscience and engineering disciplines
in solving many global warming and climate change problems. However, I appreciate my contibutions were published for readers to consider. Thanks and good luck in your future activities in the Antarctic.
David Hagen provided an excellent link on the Air Vent which other scientists created a very similar plot to figure 8 using surface station and Ice core data.
Climate Models Overheat Computer analyses of global climate have consistently overstated
The tip of Antarctica that appears to have most of warming corresponds closely to Penguin and Deception Islands which are volcanos.
Other volcanoes are also present.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/21/world/21volcano.html?_r=2&refer=science
G
Hi guys,
I have only two undergraduate degrees, neither in math. I love science, but my ignorance of math precludes me from any real contribution here. But, I would like to make an observation. Al Gore probably knows less about global warming than most of the people that… didn’t… vote him into office. Before his Epoc making movie there was real dialogue between opponents and proponents of global warming. His movie so politicized the topic and so polarized the debaters and so visually mesermized the populace that now the liberal media has been able to almost totally exclude any real science from what little debate remains. I am saddened by this. Not just because we plan to allocate billions of tax dollars to chase the illusive GW butterfly, not just because if we catch it we wont have a clue what to do with it, but because it reveals something very sad about us!
If we let politics dictate science, where will it all end? Style over substance, sadly, is to be expected in the political arena. But, if research funds can be so easily diverted by a single politician’s audio-visual event, what other areas of our socio-economic-scientific lives will be next? I wonder what whimsy our leaders will decide to throw our tax-dollars at after this? In what new arena will debate be stiffled?
ralph ellis
Your general point that renewable energy, as presently envisaged, is destructive of prosperity is correct.
It is not true that all renewable energy is intermittent. Hydroelectric is one existing renewable that yields continuous power. Satellite solar power is a potential future source that also is continuous.
Wikipedia covers the space solar power ideas fairly well.
A good discussion of technology and economics can be found here:http://gltrs.grc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/GLTRS/browse.pl?2004/TM-2004-212743.html
Syl,
Thanks. That is the lamest cover story I have ever heard. Do people understand how many satellite passes we get over the poles from earth science and weather satellites?
Britannic no-see-um (15:13:46) :
“Opinions regarding the superiority in sampling frequency and quality of satellite v surface station data have been aired, and I have no disagreement with the greater potential of satellite data. However, surface stations, in my opinion remain essential.’
Essential for what? The only value they have is to calibrate and cross check the satellite data. That’s saying the horse and buggy are still essential to transportation or that rotary phones are essential to communication.
Yes, I have a satellite bias, but if I want a doctor to diagnose my symptoms I don’t want him reaching back to cruder, older technology. Forget the X-rays, get me an MRI scan!
You can have an ‘opinion’ when there is a gray area. But satellites measure the entire earth surface fairly quickly. Look at GPS verses older systems for measuring locations and performing navigation. Can someone have the ‘opinion’ the sextant is just as good and quick as a GPS receiver with map directions and restaurants?
Of course! It’s a silly one though.
My problem is we have lost the quality of science and replaced it with quickly developed volumes of data without any thought as to its validity or utility. Once satellites map Antarctic temperatures in cells sizes that could not be replicated without 5-10 thousand ground stations there is no purpose in interpolating ground station data beyond reasonable boundaries.
Stations are great at measuring local conditions, they are also overwhelmed by local factors, which can be driven out by large samplings from space. I never have understood the resistance of humanity to progress. And I never will.
George E. Smith (11:27:14) :Mathematics is all made up by man, and nature doesn’t pay any special attention to man; or mathematics.
George I loooove your posts, but this time I think you are wrong! Maths is not “made up”, it is discovered. It already exists but in the invisible part of Reality. One can think a perfect straight line; what Nature does is approximate to it, and what we do is name it like x=y^2. This attempt to touch the perfect maths is endemic in Nature; very often it appears as fractal-like forms. Look at the periwinkle flower (could be any wild simple flower) – it has FIVE petals, not four-and-a-half or five-and-a-half unless it’s a sport and sports are the exception. Nature mathematizes. And for your sheer pleasure, treat yourself and get “A Little Book Of Coincidences” because you are in for a great surprise, and at very low cost too.
Britannic no-see-um (15:13:46) :
I see I may have jumped too fast. I agree we need ground stations to keep the sats accurate. My apologies if I came off to strident.
Cheers, AJStrata
Now back to the post.
Jeff Id: Great! Thanks! The word has got to get out. One cannot ignore the maths that cannot reach Steig’s high no matter which way it tries.
I’ve got some more thoughts. Commonsense wisdom. (1) some of the ground data is surely too warm because of emanating from snowed-under stations before they die (2) with cloud, sat data doesn’t work (correct me if I’m wrong) but cloudy conditions are likely to be warmer altogether (3) so many of the stations are maritime AND at sea-level which on both counts are going to be warmer than inland highlands which constitute the great bulk of the continent.
So my guess is it’s even colder than you’ve been able to show. Best proof I can see is the substantial increase of sea ice.
>>Jack Century (22:06:08)
>>Norman Newell proved in 1987 there is a near perfect statistical
>>correlation of 0.9985 between CO2 measured in the atmosphere
>>on top of Mauna Loa and the growth of human population,
>>rigorously calculated by others.
Jack, I also note that there is a near perfect statistical correlation of 0.9985 between milk production and the growth of human population. Are you really saying that milk causes Global Warming?
http://www.fao.org/WAIRDOCS/LEAD/X6115E/x6115e01.jpg
http://unitedcats.files.wordpress.com/2007/03/gw_graph.JPG
.
.
>>Hydroelectric is one existing renewable that yields continuous power.
>>Satellite solar power is a potential future source that also is continuous.
I rather discounted hydroelectric, as all the best production spots have already been used. On a crowded island like the UK (getting more crowded by the minute, for no good reason), there are simply no more hydro possibilities.
Regards satellites, I think they will prove rather expensive, and nuclear fast-breeder or fusion will prove much cheaper. Besides, I would like to see the propulsion figures for keeping an array the size of Manhattan on station against the solar wind.
But it has to be repeated that Denmark, the leading proponent of wind power, has never used any of its wind power – because it is just too unreliable (it sells it to Sweden, at a loss, to compliment hydro). In other words, wind power is a complete waste of time. More than that, it is a dangerous diversion from the real solution, which lies in advanced nuclear technology.
.
Jeff and Jeff:
Thanks for the clarification and sorry for getting mixed up. I am really looking forward to the updated synopsis.
Shane
Jack Century
Because the data doesn’t fit the predictions perhaps? Maybe because the theory doesn’t explain the observations and ignores data that doesn’t fit?
I sometimes wonder how anyone can still take the dramatic predictions of CO2 causing rapid climate change seriously.
“Svante Arhennius proved over 100 years ago that CO2 changes in the atmosphere are the driving mechanisms of global temperature changes”
No he most certainly did not “prove” any such thing. He suggested it might have a small effect.
“Norman Newell proved in 1987 there is a near perfect statistical correlation of 0.9985 between CO2 measured in the atmosphere on top of Mauna Loa and the growth of human population, rigorously calculated by others”
1. so what?
2. Even if true, which it isn’t, it doesn’t prove anything of cause and effect of CO2 and population much less CO2 and temperature.
Why is geothermal power overlooked so often? It’s a real win-win source…
David Ball,
“Cut and run”? My humble apologies. Next time I’ll ask your permission before avoiding the internet for a weekend.
I also apologize for not providing you enough Google food. But hey, I’m an obliging guy so I did the searches.
This first site is a good introduction to the 2001 Vostok ice core data and the macro cycles it indicates: http://www.globalchange.umich.edu/gctext/Inquiries/Inquiries_by_Unit/Unit_8a.htm
Unfortunately, the charts omit the critical data I referred to on unedited versions of the temp and CO2 charts (edited charts are used by naysayers to “prove” there was no CO2 change due to the Industrial Age). But that’s easily remedied:
http://www.daviesand.com/Choices/Precautionary_Planning/New_Data/
As some have pointed out, CO2 increases tend to lag the temp increases, but they still corellate. This strongly suggest that there is a common cause, of course. So I agree that hyperfocusing on reduction of CO2 in and of itself is disingenuous… but for anyone to suggest that there’s no problem here is equally so IMO *because* the CO2 shoots up significantly in modern times after following a fairly regular pattern (from a previous high of about 290 ppmv to 360!). Thus the human contributions of the Industrial Age to the environment cannot be so cavalierly dismissed (note: I am not accusing YOU here, just speaking generally). This dramatic increase in CO2 will surely have *some* effect, and it may not be so good for us when all is said and done…
“Randall Arnold (14:51:05) :
Why is geothermal power overlooked so often? It’s a real win-win source…”
Isn’t it bad form to rob the warmth from Gaia’s nurturing belly?
Mike, is that a joke or a straw man? 😉
Randall, that was a joke. It wasn’t a straw man, or any of the other characters in The Wizard of Oz. Besides, didn’t they call him the scarecrow?
Lucy Skywalker,
Have you ever read a book that took you to a beautiful faraway land, to a place that you know you would recognize if you stumbled upon it in your travels?
That is how I think about math. Mathematics contains the adjectives of reality. And just as the written word is a poor substitute for that real glorious sunset, the language of math can only approximate the beauty and complexity of the universe.
Still I take your point,
Mike
Re: Svante Arhennius and Norman Newell’s Contributions:
(1) Mainstream science acknowledges that pioneering work by Svante Arhennius was the first to prove that CO2 change in the atmosphere is the driving mechanism of global temperature change. Proof of this has been well demonstrated in published correlations between detailed measurements of CO2 and temperature variations in Antarctic ice cores through Pleistocene glacial and interglacial episodes.
(2) Norman Newell published work proved there are no current natural phenomena such as (a) volcanic and tectonic activity (b) sun spots and solar variability, (c) changes in earth’s orbits and (d) tilts in the earth’s axis that come remotely close to the nearly perfect statistical correlation of 0.9985 between CO2 measured on top of Mauna Loa by Charles Keeling and the growth of human population, rigorously calculated by others.
(3) Therefore, the sum total of CO2 emitted by all human activity is directly correlated with and the dominant cause of increasing global temperature.
(4) Since the educated world gets it, the apparent reason why this is so hard for engineers to understand the above, is a lack of appreciation or background in geoscience. If there are other reasons, please explain.
REPLY: This has nothing to do with what we are discussing. Please focus your comments to the discussion on the Steig Antarctic issue, if not, future posts will be deleted. – Anthony
Uh Jack. Somebody needs a course in logic. I’ll let others ‘splain it to you.
Thanks, Anthony for the final warming. There will be no more contributions to this subject. Period. My comments simply addressed recent misleading thread entries that criticized the well established science contributions by Svante Arhennius and Norman Newell on the same subject. And to “jeez,” your statment lacks logic by not being able to ‘splain youreself coherently, “duh?”. End of Story.
REPLY: That’s total BS, please don’t insult my intelligence. You made your entry here with this. You brought up the subject that is not the topic of this thread, sending the discussion OT:
Since you’ve said: End of Discussion and now End of Story, can you keep your word?
There is no discussion of the issue you speak of on this page, if you would like a page for that discussion you should talk to Anthony about a guest posting. Attempting to talk over Mr Id with your own issue is rude and as a professional you should be able to give him the professional courtesy of the space for the discussion that he (not you) has earned here.
My comments were in danger of being gratuitous up to the point that you persisted in your off-topic discussion after Anthony asked you to remain on topic. My assessment of your complete disinterest in the legitimate topic and obsession with your own topic has been vindicated by your own actions. Even so I must admit my comments were very harsh, so I must apologize in so far as I have gone too far with the bite of my comments, but I stand by the sentiment wholeheartedly.
I hope you find a forum for the important issues you were hoping to discuss here. If/When you have been granted that forum you will be entitled to the same professional courtesy that should have been afforded to Mr Id and I would be glad to read it with complete objectivity. To be absolutely clear I mean that sincerely, not mockingly.
Cheers~
Adolfo Giurfa (11:42:38) : woodNfish: Codetech is right, nature abhors straight lines.
Not true as I stated. Crystals prove the statement to be wrong. Even a crystal lattice can be viewed as a straight line because of its regularity.
Even so, this has nothing to do with the fact that the trend line is straight. Trend lines are always straight because they are drawn through two endpoints. That doesn’t mean the data is a straight line, just the trend.
What makes this particular trend line unique is how flat the trend is. It isn’t even out of the signal noise. The Antarctic climate is in about as steady a state as climate can get. Steig and the Team are frauds.
Randall, keeping the discussion to the topic of C02 forcing, you have unsuccessfully shown Co2 to have significant forcing capability. You seem like an intelligent fellow ( I checked out your blog site), and we have much in common , as I also have a love for music composition and performance. I am hoping I can appeal to your logical side and not your emotional side. The MSM and the IPCC have lead you down the garden path regarding our climate. NASA is even starting to back-pedal on the idea of Co2 as a major climate driver. It just doesn’t make sense. Although we do not yet have an exact mechanism ( I personally doubt there is a singular cause ), it is becoming more and more apparent that Co2 is NOT the major driver as is claimed. Your knowledge of computers MUST tell you the limitations of modeling such a chaotic system as earth’s climate. I also urge you to look into what the other planets climates are doing. If they are tracking the earth’s, does this not indicate that what is happening here is NOT due to mankind. We MUST reduce pollution, we MUST conserve water, we MUST find an alternative energy source, but most of all, we MUST NOT PANIC. Looking forward to your response.
Jack Century, you are the only geoscientist I have EVER heard of or talked to that believes as you do. You must ignore a lot of evidence. I feel sorry for you. As much as I would like to launch into a series of ad homs, I will refrain. Perhaps one day we can look back on all this and laugh. It is more likely you will be silent once the C02 theory has been totally demolished, as I believe it already has.
“Nature doesn’t make straight lines”
HAHAHA. Physical laws are often linear. Not that the climate modelers would know anything about the laws of nature