NOTE: This has been running two weeks at the top of WUWT, discussion has slowed, so I’m placing it back in regular que. – Anthony
UPDATES:
Statistician William Briggs weighs in here
Eduardo Zorita weighs in here
Anonymous blogger “Deep Climate” weighs in with what he/she calls a “deeply flawed study” here
After a week of being “preoccupied” Real Climate finally breaks radio silence here. It appears to be a prelude to a dismissal with a “wave of the hand”
Supplementary Info now available: All data and code used in this paper are available at the Annals of Applied Statistics supplementary materials website:
http://www.imstat.org/aoas/supplements/default.htm
=========================================
Sticky Wicket – phrase, meaning: “A difficult situation”.
Oh, my. There is a new and important study on temperature proxy reconstructions (McShane and Wyner 2010) submitted into the Annals of Applied Statistics and is listed to be published in the next issue. According to Steve McIntyre, this is one of the “top statistical journals”. This paper is a direct and serious rebuttal to the proxy reconstructions of Mann. It seems watertight on the surface, because instead of trying to attack the proxy data quality issues, they assumed the proxy data was accurate for their purpose, then created a bayesian backcast method. Then, using the proxy data, they demonstrate it fails to reproduce the sharp 20th century uptick.
Now, there’s a new look to the familiar “hockey stick”.
Before:
After:
Not only are the results stunning, but the paper is highly readable, written in a sensible style that most laymen can absorb, even if they don’t understand some of the finer points of bayesian and loess filters, or principal components. Not only that, this paper is a confirmation of McIntyre and McKitrick’s work, with a strong nod to Wegman. I highly recommend reading this and distributing this story widely.
Here’s the submitted paper:
(PDF, 2.5 MB. Backup download available here: McShane and Wyner 2010 )
It states in its abstract:
We find that the proxies do not predict temperature significantly better than random series generated independently of temperature. Furthermore, various model specifications that perform similarly at predicting temperature produce extremely different historical backcasts. Finally, the proxies seem unable to forecast the high levels of and sharp run-up in temperature in the 1990s either in-sample or from contiguous holdout blocks, thus casting doubt on their ability to predict such phenomena if in fact they occurred several hundred years ago.
Here are some excerpts from the paper (emphasis in paragraphs mine):
This one shows that M&M hit the mark, because it is independent validation:
In other words, our model performs better when using highly autocorrelated
noise rather than proxies to ”predict” temperature. The real proxies are less predictive than our ”fake” data. While the Lasso generated reconstructions using the proxies are highly statistically significant compared to simple null models, they do not achieve statistical significance against sophisticated null models.
We are not the first to observe this effect. It was shown, in McIntyre
and McKitrick (2005a,c), that random sequences with complex local dependence
structures can predict temperatures. Their approach has been
roundly dismissed in the climate science literature:
To generate ”random” noise series, MM05c apply the full autoregressive structure of the real world proxy series. In this way, they in fact train their stochastic engine with significant (if not dominant) low frequency climate signal rather than purely non-climatic noise and its persistence. [Emphasis in original]
Ammann and Wahl (2007)
…
On the power of the proxy data to actually detect climate change:
This is disturbing: if a model cannot predict the occurrence of a sharp run-up in an out-of-sample block which is contiguous with the insample training set, then it seems highly unlikely that it has power to detect such levels or run-ups in the more distant past. It is even more discouraging when one recalls Figure 15: the model cannot capture the sharp run-up even in-sample. In sum, these results suggest that the ninety-three sequences that comprise the 1,000 year old proxy record simply lack power to detect a sharp increase in temperature. See Footnote 12
Footnote 12:
On the other hand, perhaps our model is unable to detect the high level of and sharp run-up in recent temperatures because anthropogenic factors have, for example, caused a regime change in the relation between temperatures and proxies. While this is certainly a consistent line of reasoning, it is also fraught with peril for, once one admits the possibility of regime changes in the instrumental period, it raises the question of whether such changes exist elsewhere over the past 1,000 years. Furthermore, it implies that up to half of the already short instrumental record is corrupted by anthropogenic factors, thus undermining paleoclimatology as a statistical enterprise.
…
We plot the in-sample portion of this backcast (1850-1998 AD) in Figure 15. Not surprisingly, the model tracks CRU reasonably well because it is in-sample. However, despite the fact that the backcast is both in-sample and initialized with the high true temperatures from 1999 AD and 2000 AD, it still cannot capture either the high level of or the sharp run-up in temperatures of the 1990s. It is substantially biased low. That the model cannot capture run-up even in-sample does not portend well for its ability
to capture similar levels and run-ups if they exist out-of-sample.
…
Conclusion.
Research on multi-proxy temperature reconstructions of the earth’s temperature is now entering its second decade. While the literature is large, there has been very little collaboration with universitylevel, professional statisticians (Wegman et al., 2006; Wegman, 2006). Our paper is an effort to apply some modern statistical methods to these problems. While our results agree with the climate scientists findings in some
respects, our methods of estimating model uncertainty and accuracy are in sharp disagreement.
On the one hand, we conclude unequivocally that the evidence for a ”long-handled” hockey stick (where the shaft of the hockey stick extends to the year 1000 AD) is lacking in the data. The fundamental problem is that there is a limited amount of proxy data which dates back to 1000 AD; what is available is weakly predictive of global annual temperature. Our backcasting methods, which track quite closely the methods applied most recently in Mann (2008) to the same data, are unable to catch the sharp run up in temperatures recorded in the 1990s, even in-sample.
As can be seen in Figure 15, our estimate of the run up in temperature in the 1990s has
a much smaller slope than the actual temperature series. Furthermore, the lower frame of Figure 18 clearly reveals that the proxy model is not at all able to track the high gradient segment. Consequently, the long flat handle of the hockey stick is best understood to be a feature of regression and less a reflection of our knowledge of the truth. Nevertheless, the temperatures of the last few decades have been relatively warm compared to many of the thousand year temperature curves sampled from the posterior distribution of our model.
Our main contribution is our efforts to seriously grapple with the uncertainty involved in paleoclimatological reconstructions. Regression of high dimensional time series is always a complex problem with many traps. In our case, the particular challenges include (i) a short sequence of training data, (ii) more predictors than observations, (iii) a very weak signal, and (iv) response and predictor variables which are both strongly autocorrelated.
The final point is particularly troublesome: since the data is not easily modeled by a simple autoregressive process it follows that the number of truly independent observations (i.e., the effective sample size) may be just too small for accurate reconstruction.
Climate scientists have greatly underestimated the uncertainty of proxy based reconstructions and hence have been overconfident in their models. We have shown that time dependence in the temperature series is sufficiently strong to permit complex sequences of random numbers to forecast out-of-sample reasonably well fairly frequently (see, for example, Figure 9). Furthermore, even proxy based models with approximately the same amount of reconstructive skill (Figures 11,12, and 13), produce strikingly dissimilar historical backcasts: some of these look like hockey sticks but most do not (Figure 14).
Natural climate variability is not well understood and is probably quite large. It is not clear that the proxies currently used to predict temperature are even predictive of it at the scale of several decades let alone over many centuries. Nonetheless, paleoclimatoligical reconstructions constitute only one source of evidence in the AGW debate. Our work stands entirely on the shoulders of those environmental scientists who labored untold years to assemble the vast network of natural proxies. Although we assume the reliability of their data for our purposes here, there still remains a considerable number of outstanding questions that can only be answered with a free and open inquiry and a great deal of replication.
===============================================================
Commenters on WUWT report that Tamino and Romm are deleting comments even mentioning this paper on their blog comment forum. Their refusal to even acknowledge it tells you it has squarely hit the target, and the fat lady has sung – loudly.
(h/t to WUWT reader “thechuckr”)
What’s a truck?
REPLY: A Lorry. But don’t make me figure out what you are referring to. Just say it. – Anthony
Mannipulated statistics?
Natural climate variability is not well understood and is probably quite large.
We have been saying this here for the past few years. It’s good having the planet’s large natural variability statistically confirmed in a peer reviewed paper. The larger the natural variability, the less wiggle room for the putative effects of a rise in a tiny trace gas.
Downloaded the paper; saved local.
Definitely a devastating ”curtain call” for Mann, et. al.
Three cheers for the Fat Lady. . . .
I bet you can’t read the DEL on a couple of computer keyboard keys about now.
“As can be seen in Figure 15, our estimate of the run up in temperature in the 1990s has a much smaller slope than the actual temperature series.”
This does not sound like a recommendation.
“The fundamental problem is that there is a limited amount of proxy data which dates back to 1000 AD; what is available is weakly predictive of global annual temperature. “
But they give a backcast anyway?
REPLY: Oh puhlezze, but Mann writes a paper anyway? Amman and Wahl go through all their gyrations to avoid McIntyre to write a supporting paper? yeah sure. Nick you are deluding yourself. Proxies are not temperature data, and trees are not accurate thermometers.
You failed to make any headway over at CA with your line of reasoning, I don’t think you’ll get any traction here either. – Anthony
Anthony as always thanks for the update, one hopes that truth will finally be heard. With our current MSM and government I worry that it will be kept here and in the obscurity of statistical academia.
So…. Th’ science isn’t settled…… Who woulda thunk it!
The hard bit though, is getting the mainstream media to tell people about it….. They’re more interested in headlines like, “CO2 stole my Baby”, and other fanciful notions of greenhouse gases, than in reporting factual accounts of good science and statistics.
…. But maybe there’s a change in the wind.
The title of this post should refer to Mann ’08 because that is where they drew their data from. The reference to Mann ’99 is just a passing reference used to place their work in historical context.
REPLY: yes but really it refers to all of them, as it has been an ongoing paper chase. – Anthony
“Our backcasting methods, which track quite closely the methods applied most recently in Mann (2008) to the same data, are unable to catch the sharp run up in temperatures recorded in the 1990s, even in-sample.”
Hide the decline? The recorded data has been *massaged*, most climate scientists are riding the gravy train(engaged in fraud).
Nick said:
“But they give a backcast anyway?”
They give a backcast which shows that the temperature a thousand years ago could have been much warmer or much cooler than the present day. This is perfectly consistent with their deep reservations about the predictive ability of the proxy data.
Its worth noting that their Bayesian reconstruction calculates an 80% probability that the most recent decade is the warmest in the past 1000 years. That is not exactly a complete repudiation of the hockey stick. Then again, they didn’t even try to address the data quality issues in Mann ’08. Thir reconstruction includes the tree rings and Tiljander.
I would be interested to see what happens when that data is removed.
“Furthermore, it implies that up to half of the already short instrumental record is corrupted by anthropogenic factors, thus undermining paleoclimatology as a statistical enterprise.”
OUCH!
Best line of the excerpts, it bears repeating.
Climate scientists have greatly underestimated the uncertainty of proxy based reconstructions and hence have been overconfident in their models.
i.e. they’ve done it wrong, and then oversold it.
Bravo.
Tell Ken Cuccinelli.
Guest post to WUWT on April 26, 2010 by Girma Orozngo, B.Tech, MASc, PhD, provides an equation bearing on the latter-day period from 1880 – 2010 projected to AD 2100, showing “excellent agreement” with GMTAs’ [Global Mean Temperature Anomalies] observed vs. modeled turning points, to wit:
GMTA = .0059 x (Year – 1880) – .52 + 2pi x Cos((Year – 1880)/60)
Prof. Orozngo’s chart (termed Figure 3) realistically depicts late-19th Century temperatures rebounding from Earth’s Little Ice Age (LIA) through AD 2100, exhibiting cyclical highs/lows above and below a long-term linear regression-line. As real-world evidence refuting Mann et al. continues to accumulate, it would be useful to track Prof. Orozngo’s extrapolation in light of a looming Dalton if not Maunder Minimum presaging an overdue reversion to Pleistocene Ice Time.
Here’s the definitive article on questions about the Mann Hockey Stick:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/09/hey-ya-mal/
The authors of the 20- odd studies that confirmed Mann’s data are not really interested in what professional statisticians and mathematicians are saying about it. The people who understand and develop the data are the reliable sources, including actual climate scientists who produce their own outlier charts of the upward march of temperatures (are there any?)
Besides… Species are migrating north. Glaciers and Arctic ice are melting at unheard of rates. The ocean is becoming more acidic, and has experienced a 40% decline in fish biomass since 1950 due to CO2’s effect on phytoplankton.
Similarly, climate scientists are getting bored with arguments from untrained individuals that the “trace gas” CO2 does not play the major role in the recent and rapid temperature increases. This role was proven in a laboratory in the 19th century by Arrhenius, and has not been seriously disputed since.
Best wishes.
Nice try at misdirection Mike Roddy- FAIL
Yo, Nick Stokes,
That whole issue can be settled in very short order by Mann and his clique opening the books on their data and methodologies.
Only pseudo-scientific charlatans would refuse to disclose tree ring data and methods…
…right?
We hold these truths to be self evident that all data shall be weighted equally and endowed by their compiler with verifiable links, among them, raw data, algorithms, and methodologies . . .
Mike Roddy,
At first I honestly thought you were doing a silly parody of the RealClimate charlatans.
Then I realized you were serious.
Condolences. You’ve been immersed in the realclimate echo chamber way too long.
The people who understand and develop the data are the reliable sources, including actual climate scientists who produce their own outlier charts of the upward march of temperatures (are there any?)
Oh, the usual collection of liars, damnliars, and outliers.
This role was proven in a laboratory in the 19th century by Arrhenius, and has not been seriously disputed since.
Well, not until Arrhenius, 1906, anyway . . .
But, seriously, Mike. Stick around. Impart knowledge. Learn. In the genuine liberal tradition.
At any rate, most of us here believe the planet has somewhat warmed, CO2 is a GHC and has increased temperatures. The crux of the argument is all about rates and feedbacks — and, heh-heh, “adjustments”.
And so long as you keep it civil, your posts will not be deleted, which is more than you can say for realclimate. It’s a contentious issue, but you’ll find WUWT’s little (that is to say “huge”) readership to be more openminded than most.
OT
This WUWT blog should create it’s own Hurricane prediction poll on the side line. I bet we could predict hurricane activity much closer than NOAA’s current prediction accuracy.
This blog’s Hurricane prediction forecast poll may be the one in the future that financial institutions rely on to make actuarial plans, set premiums, and is used to make preparedness plans.
I predicted zero hurricanes last year, this year and was 100% accurate.
I’m not saying I am 100% accurate, but with the contribution of the WUWT community, I bet we will increase prediction accuracy by 1000%
This also goes for predicting the severity of the coming winters so that the states can more accurately prepare for the amount of money they will need to spend on salt and snow removal.
It’s obvious our experts are failing us.
Journalists will not attempt to understand, let alone explain, these findings. There should be someone (perhaps Mr Watts himself) who can issue concise, accurate summaries of this and other papers cited on this site in a form that will be understood by the general populace and perhaps even by journalists. It has to be in a form that will allow an eye-catching headline and a television news story. Accuracy would be of the utmost importance, so that news outlets can trust the summaries. There is, of course, no guarantee that the news media will take advantage of such a service, but we can hope and pray.
The authors of the 20- odd studies that confirmed Mann’s data are not really interested in what professional statisticians and mathematicians are saying about it.
Yet they rely in stats and math to deduce the state of climate….. do you realize just what you’re saying?
I read this paper earlier this evening. It’s spectacularly devastating to the Mann hockey stick series of papers, not least because it’s very much up-to-the-minute, and it coincidentally amounts to being a resounding affirmation of M&M’s work. And more besides, in fact. It’s also wonderfully easy to read (which makes a nice change) and I therefore commend it to the house.
Everyone should read it, because it is effectively the last chapter in the field of paleo reconstruction and the final nail in the coffin of Mann’s hockey stick.
Mike Roddy says:
. . . . . . . BWHAHAHAHAHA!!!
Now that took time to read. I found footnote 12 on page 39 particularly telling:
Also, it’s nice to see other statisticians are stepping up to take a look.
OK S.
You know, this is really no surprise. Despite the fact that I felt McIntyre & McKittrick had already de-bunked the hockey stick to my satisfaction, it is still good to see this in print.
After reading the paper, key points that stick in my mind:
• Climatology is inherently a statistical endeavour
• Although climatologist may understand atmospheric physics, they don’t necessarily understand statistics & have grossly under-collaborated with statisticians in their work, which is a fundamental flaw
• Although not directly stated, it is implied that the models that climatologists hang their AGW models on are inherently flawed because they lack the proper statistical framework. It certainly explains the continued divergence between “the models” & reality.
• “response and predictor variables which are both strongly autocorrelated.” For those not versed in signal analysis, the stronger the autocorrelation function (peak at t=0), the more random the signal is. The predictor variables are the proxies – this is saying that the proxies are not much different than random noise. The response is the time signal – this is saying that temperature is close to a random response relative to the proxies. … which of course is entirely consistent with McIntyre & McKittrick , where they used a random number generator to replicate the Mann curve.
• “Commenters on WUWT report that Tamino and Romm are deleting comments even mentioning this paper on their blog comment forum. ” Tamino & Romm, as they say, “Sucks to to be you”
• Unfortunately, as damning as this is, just as
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/13/is-jim-hansens-global-temperature-skillful/#more-23402
was damning, this is a clearly a matter of faith for the believers. Don’t expect AGW to go quietly into the night. All that can be done is continue to circulate studies like McShane and Wyner 2010 & try to educate as many people as possible to buy time. With time (I am guessing by 2020, given a cold PDO & AMO going into it’s cool phase by then) it will be come clear to all that catastrophic AGW was a bogus theory & it will die. …. of course, I am sure the leftist scaremongers will have a new boogieman by then to try to scare the populus into submitting to the government.
“The authors of the 20- odd studies that confirmed Mann’s data are not really interested in what professional statisticians and mathematicians are saying about it.”
Then they are pretty much doomed to continue repeating the same mistakes.
M. Roddy, I’m afraid you brought a knife to a Howitzer duel.
Sigh, only half-way through it. Admittedly, some of the stat techniques are a bit tricky for me, (I’ll work through them.) but the paper in itself is very clear.
This paper doesn’t simply break a hockey stick, it breaks an entire sub-specialty of climatology, specifically paleoclimatology. They will either have to reprint all text books or throw the psuedo-science out the window to the trash heap to lay alongside phrenology, numerology, and astrology. Oh, the humanity!!!!
Mike, explain the Antarctic.
WOW! Silver bullet to the beast!
Looking at the paper above…
No medieval warming period, I see. And no temperature decline post-1998?? I thought you were arguing that the world was getting cooler, and arctic ice was recovering? [Cough, cough].
I guess we can put those ones to rest then, can’t we? After the way you’ve embraced this paper!
The way it looks from here is that you guys will pretty much accept ANYTHING that throws doubt on CAGW, without worrying whether it is logically consistent with all the other things you have accepted/argued before. This does not translate into a coherent science-based system of knowledge building.
You need a theory to explain what is happening now. It needs to be falsifiable. And you have to either accept that new scientific papers fit your theory, or explain why they don’t. You would also need to follow up on Mann et al.’s commentary on this paper. Otherwise it’s just another fishing expedition.
Looks like the tree ring circus clowns have had their final act.
John Blake says: August 14, 2010 at 7:13 pm
GMTA = .0059 x (Year – 1880) – .52 + 2pi x Cos((Year – 1880)/60)
John, you missed the climatology bit.
valadj=[0.,0.,0.,0.,0.,-0.1,-0.25,-0.3,0.,-0.1,0.3,0.8,1.2,1.7,2.5,2.6,2.6,2.6,2.6,2.6]*0.75 ; fudge factor
yearlyadj=interpol(valadj, yrloc, x)
GMTA = GMTA +yearlyadj
Now plot GMTA, it has become a hockey stick through the science of climatology.
See also: FOI2009/FOIA/documents/harris-tree/briffa_sep98_e.pro
Mike Roddy says:
August 14, 2010 at 7:13 pm
Here’s the definitive article on questions about the Mann Hockey Stick:
http://www.thespoof.com/news/spoof.cfm?headline=s5i64103
“…our model offers support
to the conclusion that the 1990s were the warmest decade of the last millennium,…”
It is an interesting paper and may influence how proxy reconstructions are done in the future. Mann’s papers already had large error bars – maybe the should be larger; it will be interesting to see how he responds. It does not change the fact that CO2 warms the earth and we need to be thinking about what to do about our CO2 emissions.
The authors of the 20- odd studies that confirmed Mann’s data are not really interested in what professional statisticians and mathematicians are saying about it. Not exactly how to win friends and influence people – what I think your going to find that politicians to whom AGW must be sold are absolutely feral statisticians regardless of their professional or academic backgrounds. If the confidence in the science cannot match the pain of solution, then it falls off of the public agenda.
duckster says:
August 14, 2010 at 7:48 pm
(…)
The way it looks from here is that you guys will pretty much accept ANYTHING that throws doubt on CAGW, without worrying whether it is logically consistent with all the other things you have accepted/argued before. This does not translate into a coherent science-based system of knowledge building.
———Reply:
I clicked on a link provided in one of the comments of a recent story here on WUWT and it directed me to an interview w/ Phil Jones, who acknowledged that in that past 150 or so years there had been 4 warming periods, all of about equal magnitude. It was only the last one, which we are currently enjoying, that he attributed to increases in CO2. But the big question is: Why not the other three? Did he have irrefutable proof that those were not caused by CO2? Did he have any idea what else might have caused those warming periods without benefit of anthropogenic CO2? Good questions all, but the main point is that Phil Jones has, without any verifiable reason, pinned this current warming trend on CO2.
Now, that isn’t just ANYTHING–it is Phil Jones making a mockery of science; Phil Jones is the incoherent one. HE is the one doing a great job of NOT doubting CAGW against all logic. But applying logic to Phil Jones’ statements leaves me laughing at Phil Jones. I say, man, can Phil Jones be that absolutley daft?
We should not get ahead of ourselves. I think this is a very interesting and well constructed paper. The authors certainly believe that current multi-proxy studies are seriously flawed. The assumption about the quality of the proxy data and their inclusion of Tiljander oriented presumably as Mann left it oriented are areas for further exploration. However, I do not understand enough of the statistics to start jumping up and down
That said footnote 12 is a doozie and will take some explaining.
More generally, I will be interested in how Ammann responds since he has co-authored papers with Li (2007, 2010) where more sophisticated approaches than those of Mann were used.
Mike Roddy does not know what he is talking about and I doubt that he has actually comprehended anything more than the abstract and conclusion. I will wait until Ammann, Tamino and statistically knowledgeable folks respond.
Note:
Prof Wyner dropped by CA and said a few nice things.
While breaking from the reading, mainly because Adobe isn’t responding at the moment,
“MBH…a cardinal rule of statistical inference is that the method of
analysis must be decided before looking at the data. The rules and strategy of
analysis cannot be changed in order to obtain the desired result. Such a strategy
carries no statistical integrity and cannot be used as a basis for drawing sound
inferential conclusions.”—heh, I always suspected as much.
“The degree of controversy associated with this endeavor can perhaps
be better understood by recalling Wegman’s assertion that there are very
few mainstream statisticians working on climate reconstructions (Wegman
et al., 2006). This is particularly surprising not only because the task is
highly statistical but also because it is extremely difficult.”——Didn’t we hear those thoughts echoed by one of the climate gate white wash committees? How many times do they have to be told this is statistical work!?! Junior, leave it to the professionals!
duckster says:
“Looking at the paper above… No medieval warming period, I see. ”
Duckster, are you friggin’ blind??
The paper has some witty one liners too, such as:
“We assume that the data selection, collection, and processing performed by climate scientists meets the standards of their discipline.”
It amazes me that “climate scientists” have invented their own little band/kind/brew of math/statistics to handle their own data. I understand there are several tested and true statistics programs that would save them the pain of having to invent their own, but no, they stick their noses in the air and defy disciplines that are magnitudes older than their brief science. And to what end? To look like fools, apparently. The science isn’t settled, but really, the mathematics and the statistics doesn’t need to be re-invented–it just needs to be applied properly.
@Smokey
Duckster, are you friggin’ blind??
So where exactly would you place a medieval warming period here? Asking me to accept a medieval warming period (which is what I have been asked to do here) means showing how and where it got warmer, and then how and when it got cooler. A steady downward temperature trend is not a warming period.
Mike Roddy,
Have you thought about what a 40% reduction in the ocean fish biomass would mean to, say, Japan? Do you really think this could be happening without it being big news?
Sometimes a little checking is worthwhile.
duckster says:
August 14, 2010 at 7:48 pm
“Looking at the paper above…
No medieval warming period, I see. And no temperature decline post-1998?? I thought you were arguing that the world was getting cooler, and arctic ice was recovering? [Cough, cough].
I guess we can put those ones to rest then, can’t we? After the way you’ve embraced this paper!”
Sis, have you actually read the paper? Are you not understanding what they are asserting? Read the little notation underneath figure 16. I’d cut and paste from the paper, but my Adobe is going belly up for some reason. Still, the paper clearly states that they are not addressing the validity of the data. (That’s probably in the next paper if it is necessary.)
What they are stating is, even if the data are correct, Mann et al. did it wrong(along with a long list of other statistician wannbees), and further, proxies have no predictive properties. Now, work backwards from that. If you require further explanations, just ask, I’d be happy to provide them to you.
This is quite important, because it comes not from “deniers”, but from objective scientists with no particular axe to grind, but who also have apparently not been influenced by climate science groupthink. It is interesting that even in the various recent “exoneration” reports and older reports as well, a recurring criticism of climate science has been the minimal collaboration with statisticians and resulting less than ideal statistical analyses. If this paper is correct, “less than ideal” may actually be “essentially useless”.
Well, all I can say is it’s about time. I mean SM and others have been poking and prodding around the statistics for many years now. It’s shocking in a way that a paper like this has been published in a statistics journal after so much time has passed and so much water has flowed under the bridge. I would have thought attempted replication would have been performed sooner.
Still, better late than never. I don’t expect this will get much traction in the mainstream, but with blogs like this, who cares?
Duckster: “No medieval warming period, I see.”
Are you looking at a different graph than the one above? Looks pretty warm at the beginning of the graph.
duckster says:
August 14, 2010 at 7:48 pm
Looking at the paper above…
The main point of this paper is to debunk the maths Mann used. You can get similar hockey sticks by using random numbers. Speak to that subject please.
By shifting focus to whether or not the graph shows a MWP is a strawman and is completely irrelevant to the point of the paper. Besides, the graph (fig.16) uses the same proxy data Mann used, with correct maths. Mann’s proxy data (and maths) explicitly set out to remove the MWP so it is no surprise that his biased proxy selections camouflage the MWP. Nevertheless, fig.16 does show temperatures 1000 years ago were on a par with today’s (according to Mann’s proxies).
@duckster
CAGW has been falsified to my satisfaction.
Rocky Road,
Here is the Phil Jones chart. It shows recurring natural cycles. Only a scientific charlatan would point to the last ramp and say, “Look! AGW!”
Duckster says:
“Asking me to accept a medieval warming period (which is what I have been asked to do here) means showing how and where it got warmer, and then how and when it got cooler. A steady downward temperature trend is not a warming period.”
No one knows exactly how the planet gets warmer and colder. There are hypotheses, and conjectures like the CO2=AGW assumption. But it is not necessary to know the mechanics in detail to observe the MWP. Science doesn’t work like that.
Here are eighteen proxies showing the MWP. The warming peak around 1000 A.D. is the same as the McShane and Wyner paper shows, and the same as the GISP2 ice cores show. The ice cores are empirical observations that trump all MWP speculation.
You really need to get up to speed. I recommend doing a search of the WUWT archives for “MWP.” There is plenty there for you to learn.
@duckster
Open your eyes. Half the graph is hotter than today. Not that it means anything because they took mann’s garbage at face value, for the sake of the exercise. But, garbage they found it to be.
I interpret the paper as saying given the data we have, what’s the best we can make of it?, rather than the proxies are all strong indicators of the temperature record, let’s process them correctly. I’m not sure but I think you may be missing this subtle but important distinction as you scan their graph for a MWP.
Mike Jowsey says:
August 14, 2010 at 8:32 pm
duckster says:
August 14, 2010 at 7:48 pm
Looking at the paper above…
The main point of this paper is to debunk the maths Mann used. You can get similar hockey sticks by using random numbers. Speak to that subject please.
By shifting focus to whether or not the graph shows a MWP is a strawman and is completely irrelevant to the point of the paper. Besides, the graph (fig.16) uses the same proxy data Mann used, with correct maths. Mann’s proxy data (and maths) explicitly set out to remove the MWP so it is no surprise that his biased proxy selections camouflage the MWP. Nevertheless, fig.16 does show temperatures 1000 years ago were on a par with today’s (according to Mann’s proxies).
————
Is it possible to get what mann got, instead of this, if you’re trying to do it right? I don’t think so.
“Similarly, climate scientists are getting bored with arguments from…individuals that the “trace gas” CO2 does not play the major role in the recent and rapid temperature increases. “
Is that right? Is that so.
They no longer amuse us, either.
ZT @August 14, 2010 at 8:16 pm says:
The paper has some witty one liners too, such as:
“We assume that the data selection, collection, and processing performed by climate scientists meets the standards of their discipline.”
I caught that, too, but I took it as an attempt to stay away from that issue, with the problems that have been raised here and other places, but at the same time note that there may be issues there that are not addressed in the paper.
—Nick Stokes said: “The fundamental problem is that there is a limited amount of proxy data which dates back to 1000 AD; what is available is weakly predictive of global annual temperature. “
But they give a backcast anyway?—
You clearly missed one of the major points of the paper. I’m guessing you probably missed all of its points.
In any case, Mann “gave a backcast anyway,” too…as did the other temperature reconstructions going back to 1000 AD. Why don’t/didn’t you have a problem with those?
Duckster, the LIA was between 1560 and 1850 (note in the graph that the temperature line is lowest for this interval) while the MWP was before that. We’re only now back up to what is considered the MWP (AD 800 to 1300); note that the graph only goes back to about AD 950, so you don’t see the beginning up-tick in temperatures leading to the MWP.
But the critical aspect here is the vast difference between the shape of the temperature curve from this mathematical analysis and the shape of Mann’s Hokey Stick (my personal vernacular). James Sexton above makes the point clearly—Mann SCREWED UP! So when correct mathematics is applied to Mann’s data, the LIA and MWP are clearly seen and there is no horrific, unprecedented upswing in the temperature graph at the end. Mann’s pseudo-statistics is blatently obvious.
I’m tempted to head for the basement, take out my trumpet (unplayed for many years), turn it upside down, and play Taps on it –except that Taps is meant to be a sign of respect (back in the day, I played it at many veterans funerals), and so it would not be appropriate here.
Robinson,
While the paper does include a discusson of “MBH98” and the original “hockey stick” controversy, it does also cover Mann et all 2008 – which is quite recent and relevant – along with any number of other proxy reconstructions.
I wonder how many emails went back-and-forth between team members today?
Mike:
It does not change the fact that CO2 warms the earth and we need to be thinking about what to do about our CO2 emissions.
I think we need to fine down the forcing and make a determination as to feedbacks. then we will know what actions we have to or do not have to take.
I don’t see how it adds up. Even if the adjusted temperatures are correct (which I doubt), and all the warming is from CO2 increase (also unlikely), the 0.7 degree 20th Century warming form a 40% increase of CO2 does not compute.
Doubling of CO2 is supposed to hike temps by 1.2C and positive feedbacks are supposed to almost triple that. So temperature increase should be around +2.0C, not +0.7C
If it demonstrably does not add up over the past century, why would it add up over the next century?
Mike Roddy-
You mean untrained individuals like Andy Revkin- “So climate super-extremes are inevitable, the number of people is doubling, and greenhouse-driven change, given the uncertainties, is — at best — a tertiary wild card.”
Meanwhile, Prof. Richard Alley sounds like an undergraduate polysci major when he makes asinine comments like this to congress- “What is going on in the Arctic now is the biggest and fastest thing that nature has ever done.”
Everyone now recognizes your CAGW fingerprint list for what it is- Gaian phrenology masquerading as science.
@Jowser By shifting focus to whether or not the graph shows a MWP is a strawman and is completely irrelevant to the point of the paper.
No. I am saying that by accepting this paper you need to either show why it doesn’t show a MWP or you need to discard one of your major arguments. You can’t just choose any paper that casts doubt on CAGW because it casts doubt on global warming. You need to show that it is consistent with the other arguments you have made that cast doubt on CAGW.
Now a quick look back through the archives here shows a graph of when the MWP occurred. This doesn’t look anything like the graph above:
MWP compared to Mann
If you are going to accept the article above, then the graph I have linked to is wrong. Isn’t it? Be consistent!!
McShane and Wynes’s published rebutal of Mann’s Hockey Stick in the Annals of Applied Statistics is welcome support for Steve McIntyre’s findings. They have taken what is called in military map making, a ‘cross bearing’ of the terrain.
Andrew30,
True, alas too true… but Prof. Orozngo’s 1880 – 2100 chart (termed Figure 3) as depicted by WUWT last April has a curiously aesthetic look of finality about it. Speaking of the estimable Mike Roddy, as Charlie Brown said: “How can we lose when we’re so sincere?” (To have suffered a thunderbolt from AW himself is a great coup.)
“Furthermore, it is hard to argue that a procedure is truly skillful if it cannot consistently outperform noise–no matter how artfully structured.”—another heh.
For duckster, We plot these backcasts in Figure 14 in grey and show the CRU average in black. As can be seen, while these models all perform similarly in terms of cross-validation, they have wildly different implications about climate history. and
According to some of them (e.g., the ten proxy principal component model given in green or the two stage model featuring one local temperature principal component and ten proxy principal components featured in blue), the recent run-up in temperatures is not that abnormal, and similarly high temperatures would have been seen over the last millennium. Interestingly, the blue backcast seems to feature both a Medieval Warm Period and a Little Ice Age whereas the green one shows only increasing temperatures
going back in time.——-back to reading.
In Conclusions p 41 – “Consequently, the long flat handle
of the hockey stick is best understood to be a feature of regression and less a reflection of our knowledge of the truth”
Michael Jankowski says: August 14, 2010 at 8:42 pm
Actually there’s quite a lot in this paper I agree with, including the suggestion that uncertainty levels may be higher than often thought. I suspect, though, that people here will get more excited over the shape of the reconstruction than over the observation of its uncertainty.
I particularly liked this observation:
This effort to reconstruct our planet’s climate history has become linked to the topic of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW). On the one hand, this is peculiar since paleoclimatological reconstructions can provide evidence only for the detection of AGW and even then they constitute only one such source of evidence. The principal sources of evidence for the detection of global warming and in particular the attribution of it to anthropogenic factors come from basic science as well as General Circulation Models (GCMs) that have been fit to data accumulated during the instrumental period (IPCC, 2007). These models show that carbon dioxide, when released into the atmosphere in sufficient concentration, can force temperature increases.
Duckster, you don’t seem to get the fact that this new paper is not using all available evidence. It is using ONLY what Michael Mann cherry-picked [read The Hockey Stick Illusion by A.W. Montford to clearly see Mann’s cherry-picking shenanigans].
Do you see? It’s statistics, using only Mann’s selected data. Is this starting to sink in?
Nice article.
“instead of trying to attack the proxy data quality issues, they assumed the proxy data was accurate for their purpose, then created a bayesian backcast method”
What I especially like about this particular article is that it now moves the battlefield to where we want it. Rather than squabble over how thick the ice is this year or how hot last April was in South Tuvalu we need to get to the heart of the matter and ask – How accurate are the models?
It is quite clear that any half believable model will have to include thresholds, tipping points, runaway processes etc. ie they will be highly non-linear and most likely chaotic.
I want to see more work in this area – exposing the models for the hamfisted guesses that they are.
…and hence have been overconfident in their models…
Are not these models the basis of much of the work done in attributing climate change? Boy, if they go down, the flag is soon to follow…
@Smokey
Duckster, you don’t seem to get the fact that this new paper is not using all available evidence
So is this how you get around the fact that McShane and Wyner is showing almost 2 degrees of warming since 1850? This is way beyond what Mann et al show – and would be truly unprecedented, wouldn’t it?
Do you see? It’s statistics, using only Mann’s selected data.
OK. So your job now would be to show consistency by fitting it into the available evidence so that it doesn’t contradict the other points you have made against CAGW. There is no point at all in destroying Mann if you have to throw out half of the all the other things that have been said on this blog in order to do so.
REPLY: Sorry “duckster” but you are wrong, there is not “almost 2 degrees since 1850” – about 0.7C maybe 1C if I were to be generous. Have a look at the intersecting blue lines to the red mean line for 1850 and the most recent data point:
Also, Figure 15 from the paper shows essentially the same:
You really can’t argue on the basis of noise, or annual values. The mean line is the message. – Anthony
Mike Roddy says:
August 14, 2010 at 7:13 pm
But no actual discussion is allowed….
Head In Sand much?
“The people who understand and develop the data are the reliable sources” but very poor statisticians, as has been demonstrated widely now. They somehow refuse to see this, however.
Species move all the time. There is no proof whatsoever that any migration is due to any warming (real or not) as opposed to natural variation and other changes we make to the environment that have nothing to do with CO2.
And we are getting bored with untrained statisticians wilfully ignoring fatal statistical flaws in their work so that they can continue a political agenda.
Arrhenius proved that CO2 is a greenhouse gas. He also disputed his own findings in the 20th century and found its influence to me much lower that he first thought (in the 19th century), but most alarmists fail to mention that minor point. That proof, however, does not demonstrate any catastrophic effect on climate. He thought it would be good in fact! The required forcing and positive feedbacks that warmists need to create scary scenarios are nowhere near observed or proven, so Arrhenius was probably right – it is a GOOD THING!
Nick Stokes @ 9:04pm
Oh dear Nick, a quotation from page 2 of the introduction putting the background in context and quoting from the IPCC. Is that the best you can do? There are another 43 pages after that or did you stop there?
Mind you, Blakeley McShane is from the Kellogg School of Management and is obviously funded by big corn.
It’s nice to see a publication in one of the “top statistical journals” even after all these years which agrees with what the vast majority of us here have known for so long: that the hockey team’s work is pure mince.
(“Mince”: A Scottish term which roughly translates as “garbage”.)
I can just picture Gavin Schmidt’s grandfather writing on his blog in the early 20th century: “Arrhenius disappoints”.
Oh Nick, let it go; CO2, in sufficient quantities “can force temperature increases”. We know that:
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/co2_temperature_curve_saturation.png
The late S. Schneider knew that:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/173/3992/138
It’s just that those forcings diminish to statistical errors, as does the temperature response.
The point about this [final] nail in the HS is that it shows whatever is happening today is not exceptional; that was the point about Mann’s HS and the basis of AGW; it was wrong. Find another cause; how about asteroid collisions? That’s a real issue.
To misquote Julius Henry (Groucho) Marx, amateurs should stick to brain surgery. Lightweight Math Mann was clearly out of his depth.
Looking at Fig. 16 above, it reinforces my belief that the descent into the next ice age started about 3500 years ago at the end of the Minoan warming. The GISP2 ice core shows a long term downslope during the last ice age of about 0.14C per 1000 years. The initial descent from the peak of the last interglacial was about 0.4C per 1000 years. Fig. 16 is steeper than that.
Michael says:
August 14, 2010 at 7:26 pm
Easily done – instead of one forecast, we’d have 100. that greatly increases the chance one is more accurate. Or do you propose getting everyone to agree on a single forecast. (Consensus forecasting?)
Somehow I have have trouble visualizing a Board of Directors meeting discussing the relative merits of of people who have spent 1000s of hours looking in to many details over a group of mostly nameless, and uncontactable people.
There were three. None hit the US mainland, but your statement is 1000% wrong.
All right, infinitely wrong. 3 / 0 does not compute.
Poetic justice. The alarmists fiddle the temperature record to introduce a spurious temperature rise, which these statisticians trust as real, and so it becomes evidence that the other alarmist fiddle, the hockey stick, is ‘not robust’. That means, of course, that on the one hand those of us who seek truth rather than ideology must therefore have reservations about some of this paper’s results until the consequences of the temperature fiddle have been incorporated properly. On the other hand the shysters cannot consistently agree with our reservations! The irony of it!
Why should the community of climatologists object to this peer-reviewed publication? After all, they stood up & cheered on RC etc. when the Oxburgh inquiry exonerated the Hockey Team of professional malfeasance.
However, they could have used a few undergraduate classes in linear regression!
—
The panel found that the statistical tools that CRU scientists employed were not always the most cutting-edge, or most appropriate.
“We cannot help remarking that it is very surprising that research in an area that depends so heavily on statistical methods has not been carried out in close collaboration with professional statisticians,” reads the inquiry’s conclusions.
However, “it is not clear that better methods would have produced significantly different results,” the panel adds.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18776-climategate-scientists-chastised-over-statistics.html
——
This latest publication seems to indicate that, yes, better statistical methods DO produce significantly different results!
This paper is huge, thanks for posting, Anthony!
duckster says:
August 14, 2010 at 9:20 pm
(…)
OK. So your job now would be to show consistency by fitting it into the available evidence so that it doesn’t contradict the other points you have made against CAGW. There is no point at all in destroying Mann if you have to throw out half of the all the other things that have been said on this blog in order to do so.
—–Reply:
No, nothing else needs to be said–this is a refutation of Mann’s statistical methods; as such there is NO requirement to include anything else. Your request is simply an obvious attempt of deflecting a very damning rebuttal of Mann’s mathematical acumen. His authority is over; he IS destroyed and with him goes CAGW. Gone; done; kaput.
Why? He lied. Or he was stupid. Your choice.
I wonder when the Real Climate team will slam out a response without an answer so their lemmings have a url to point to and declare this paper debunked.
Fortunately many of us realize that reality isn’t a function of assertion.
While some may not see the humor in this, to me, it is side splitting, a final (b)slap……….
Our work stands entirely on the shoulders of those environmental scientists
who labored untold years to assemble the vast network of natural
proxies. Although we assume the reliability of their data for our purposes
here, there still remains a considerable number of outstanding questions
that can only be answered with a free and open inquiry and a great deal of
replication. <———— lol, Phil's greatest fears realized.
In other words, they seem to be saying, “YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG!!!” And, “you had your chance, now the grown-ups have to do it.” “Now, run along and bring me back the thermometer readings and we’ll show you how to interpret them.”
Well, in light of all this, I am open to comments on why deriving climate sensitivity from the LGM is ok.
I also would like to reiterate that we can predict temperature just fine using the tools given us by meteorology and would like to know why it is necessary to throw out any of the data used in weather prediction when it comes to climate models. Anyone?
Anthony- I think Figure 17 from the paper is actually very telling, since it overlays the newly estimated error bands on top of the archival hockey stick spaghetti graphs.
Really stunning. Going back more than a few centuries, the error bands fill up the entire vertical extent!
Annals of Applied Statistics is the sixth rated stastics journal (impact factor, of course, = 2.57) Of course, it could be tops in its specialty. It looks like it has a heavy representation of Japanese sponsors and some major statistics departments. The editor-in-chief is a Bush-era National Science medal award winner. The editor for physical & environmental statistics actually looks like an environmentalist from his listed interests. So, fine journal with mixed viewpoints.
This is an interesting development because it leaves the alarmist professors an out that will allow them to suspend their claims and still receive further funding. You may have won this battle if they take the offer. I don’t think you’ve won the war. That will resume when the cold snap is over and people have forgotten about scandals and such.
I always like to know who wrote what I’m asked to read. I don’t like to feel like I am part of the mushroom syndrome. A new name gets a couple of chances – if I think the comments are untracked I first try to find out whether the writer has any respectability because my lack of understanding could be the problem. Then I could do some research and reading and better assimilate the new information. After reading Mike Roddy’s statements I felt the need to check on him. The second of the listings below seems the most likely to be knowledgeable about his trade. Henceforth, I will only read Jaguar related posts by a Mike Roddy. Climate related comments by Mike Roddy – I don’t think so.
Okay, will the real Mike Roddy please stand up.
Mike Roddy is a long-time CP commenter. A UC Berkeley graduate, he has pursued many careers, including solar manufacturing, writing and research, and managing social housing projects on four continents.
OR
Mike Roddy Motors’ The Independent Jaguar Specialists’
The Leader in all aspects of Servicing, Repairs, Restorations and Improvements for all makes of Jaguar cars.
That poor graph – it’s suffered a death by a thousand cuts and yet it still has stalwart defenders. I hope Mann has other successes on which to ride to comfortable retirement because this horse is finished. I can’t help but think his circle of peers is becoming a close knit bunch whose objectivity is certainly now open to wonderment.
I’m probably going to wish there was a preview function here…
GrantB says:
August 14, 2010 at 9:32 pm
Nick Stokes @ 9:04pm
Oh dear Nick, a quotation from page 2 of the introduction putting the background in context and quoting from the IPCC. Is that the best you can do? There are another 43 pages after that or did you stop there?
Mind you, Blakeley McShane is from the Kellogg School of Management and is obviously funded by big corn.
————-
REPLY:
Sorry, mate, I’m at University of Illinois and I’M funded by big corn!! And big cheese, big meat packer, big pandemic etc.
Here’s McShane’s website:
http://www.blakemcshane.com
I’ve never met him, but I’ve lectured a bit over at Kellogg & they are usually considered one of the top graduate schools of business in the USA. His resume is very impressive.
This publication is a serious shot across the bow of the Hockey Team crowd, let’s see how they react to it.
Annals of Applied Statistics Editors better prepare for the incoming wave of team science comments on the paper. The good news is the team now has to argue their statistical “methods” with professional statisticians.
Game over man, game over.
(Mods, would you please change “school’s” to “schools” for me in the preceding post? I hate stupid grammatical errors! Thanks much, Chuck the DrPH)
[REPLY – I looked and looked. Can’t find the durn thing. Please accept a te absolve in lieu of correction. ~ Evan]
[Reply: Fixe’d! By the undercover grammar sleuth ~…]
Mike Roddy says:
August 14, 2010 at 7:13 pm
The authors of the 20- odd studies that confirmed Mann’s….
The NAS (National Academy of Science) did not affirm Mann’s conclusions:
“Even less confidence can be placed in the original conclusions by Mann et al. (1999) that “the 1990s are likely the warmest decade, and 1998 the warmest year, in at least a millennium” ”
National Academy of Science
“Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the Last 2,000 Years”
-page 4
http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=11676
G. Burger 2010
By avoiding the (calibrating) instrumental period, and by using a fairly robust spectral measure for low-frequency performance, the above coherence analysis has uncovered several inconsistencies among the group of millennial reconstructions that figured prominently in the latest IPCC report and elsewhere. An immediate lesson from this is that simple visual inspection of smoothed time series, grouped and overlaid into a single graph, can be very misleading. For example, the two reconstructions Ma99 and Ma08L, which have previously been described to be in “striking agreement” (cf. Mann et al., 2008), turned out to be the most incoherent of all in our analysis.
incoherent [ˌɪnkəʊˈhɪərənt]
adj
1. lacking in clarity or organization; disordered
2. unable to express oneself clearly; inarticulate
3. (Physics / General Physics) Physics (of two or more waves) having the same frequency but not the same phase
Tamino and Romm are deleting comments even mentioning this paper
How bloody scientific of them. 😉
duckster says:
August 14, 2010 at 8:55 pm
duckster says:
August 14, 2010 at 9:20 pm
“So is this how you get around the fact that McShane and Wyner is showing almost 2 degrees of warming since 1850? This is way beyond what Mann et al show – and would be truly unprecedented, wouldn’t it?
……
OK. So your job now would be to show consistency by fitting it into the available evidence so that it doesn’t contradict the other points you have made against CAGW. There is no point at all in destroying Mann if you have to throw out half of the all the other things that have been said on this blog in order to do so.”
Sorry, I’ve been away, duckster. I’ll try and help explain things.
The graph that your looking at is a reconstruction of data using one of several statistical techniques employed by the paper in an “attempt” to determine whether the proxy data has any predictive value. The conclusion was that it doesn’t. From the paper:
“This is disturbing: if a model cannot predict the occurrence of a
sharp run-up in an out-of-sample block which is contiguous with the insample
training set, then it seems highly unlikely that it has power to detect
such levels or run-ups in the more distant past. It is even more discouraging
when one recalls Figure 15: the model cannot capture the sharp run-up
even in-sample. In sum, these results suggest that the ninety-three sequences
that comprise the 1,000 year old proxy record simply lack power to detect a sharp increase in temperature.”
I’ll interpret. It is saying, because it couldn’t detect the sharp increase in temperatures, as seen in the 1990s, there is no reason to believe it would detect sharp increases or decreases of the past.
duckster, I know this is hard, it’s probably like the time my first wife……..well, never mind that. But, I know where you’re coming from. Remember, these are reconstructions from proxies which the paper concluded where not of the quality necessary to have predictive(or retro) value. They use the graphs to show you why they are not of good value. They are not using them to illustrate some perceived view of reality.
You could try actually reading the darn thing. If you gloss over the statistical formulas, it is a fairly nice read.
It’s late Saturday night, this post has been here 4 1/2 hours, and there are 93 comments. Busy night for Anthony and the Moderators.
[REPLY – We, er, live for, um, danger. ~ Evan]
OK, the Real Climate guys are reacting to it!
From their Comments section:
There’s apparently a paper forthcoming from McShane and Wyner in Annals of Applied Statistics to the effect (in my inexpert paraphrase) that proxies can’t say anything useful about climate. Regardless of whether CO2 produces heat, I’ll bet that this paper will.
[Response: The M&W paper will likely take some time to look through (especially since it isn’t fully published and the SI does not seem to be available yet), but I’m sure people will indeed be looking. I note that one of their conclusions “If we consider rolling decades, 1997-2006 is the warmest on record; our model gives an 80% chance that it was the warmest in the past thousand years” is completely in line with the analogous IPCC AR4 statement. But this isn’t the thread for this, so let’s leave discussion for when there is a fuller appreciation for what’s been done. – gavin]
Mann’s ‘Hockey stick’ hoist by it’s own data set no less. What does the new study do with ‘unadjusted’ data?
[REPLY – We, er, live for, um, danger. ~ Evan]
LOL!
As if Michael Mann’s life hasn’t been interesting enough since November 19th….
Nick Stokes says:
August 14, 2010 at 9:04 pm
“Actually there’s quite a lot in this paper I agree with, including the suggestion that uncertainty levels may be higher than often thought. I suspect, though, that people here will get more excited over the shape of the reconstruction than over the observation of its uncertainty.”
Not at all, the observation of uncertainty agrees with what most of us have been saying for quite some time. Given the level of uncertainty, it would be difficult to believe the GCMs and any other predictions regarding our future climate to any level of validity with the data and tools used.
Mike Roddy: August 14, 2010 at 7:13 pm
The authors of the 20- odd studies that confirmed Mann’s data are not really interested in what professional statisticians and mathematicians are saying about it.
They should be. As Jeff L. noted, “climatology is a statistical endeavour.” My emphasis.
“You need a theory to explain what is happening now. It needs to be falsifiable. And you have to either accept that new scientific papers fit your theory, or explain why they don’t.”
No, we don’t, because we’re not the ones making extraordinary claims. Instead we’re faced by a theory of EVIL BABY-KILLING CARBON DIOXIDE which doesn’t appear to be considered falsifiable in any way no matter how far its predictions diverge from reality. Hot, cold, wet, dry, windy or not, any change in the weather always turns out to be due to EVIL BABY-KILLING CARBON DIOXIDE.
This is why those of us with a science background have gone from amazed to appalled as the ‘Global Warming’… sorry… ‘Climate Change’… charade has continued to gain momentum when it’s clearly pseudoscientific bunk.
duckster says:
August 14, 2010 at 7:48 pm
Looking at the paper above…
No medieval warming period, I see. And no temperature decline post-1998?? I thought you were arguing that the world was getting cooler, and arctic ice was recovering? [Cough, cough].
I guess we can put those ones to rest then, can’t we? After the way you’ve embraced this paper!
The way it looks from here is that you guys will pretty much accept ANYTHING that throws doubt on CAGW, without worrying whether it is logically consistent with all the other things you have accepted/argued before. This does not translate into a coherent science-based system of knowledge building.
You need a theory to explain what is happening now. It needs to be falsifiable. And you have to either accept that new scientific papers fit your theory, or explain why they don’t. You would also need to follow up on Mann et al.’s commentary on this paper. Otherwise it’s just another fishing expedition.
DUDE!!
That’s a massive load of buckshot you just discharged all over your foot! I hope you didn’t do damage to your leg as well!!!
Think about what you wrote and conversely what it means for the Alarmist argument(s) (hint, I bracketed the s)……
Amino Acids in Meteorites says:
August 14, 2010 at 10:25 pm
It’s late Saturday night, this post has been here 4 1/2 hours, and there are 93 comments. Busy night for Anthony and the Moderators.
[REPLY – We, er, live for, um, danger. ~ Evan]
lol, you guys are wild men!!!! Sigh, I remember when my night life held a different meaning.
Another favorable result for “its the Sun stupid”
Mann has tried to hide the solar influence on Earth’s climate like some others in here, who strangely remain silent? The MWP was one of the few periods during the Holocene that skipped the usual 172 year (avg) solar slowdown. It will not be denied, nor will the cooling LIA period that was a golden age for solar slowdowns.
What an ugly disaster for the IPCC/Mann/CRU crowd. This really casts a lot of doubt on their statistical reasoning. The paper is sound because it doesn’t question recent warming (which most definitely exists), but questions their claim that prior warmings have been nothing like this and their ridiculous reconstruction that lacks a medieval warm period.
duckster says:
August 14, 2010 at 8:55 pm
No. I am saying that by accepting this paper you need to either show why it doesn’t show a MWP or you need to discard one of your major arguments. You can’t just choose any paper that casts doubt on CAGW because it casts doubt on global warming. You need to show that it is consistent with the other arguments you have made that cast doubt on CAGW.
As I understand the paper, it does not say anything at all whether there was a MWP or not or whether the MWP was warmer than today, it simply says that the proxies don’t predict sharp changes in climate. So if there were such changes in the past, the proxies wont show them. The paper doesn’t show that the temperature hasn’t followed a hockey stick shape, just that we don’t know that [given the proxies that Mann used].
It seems hard for people to get that in order to show that somebody is wrong, you don’t need to offer an alternative answer, you can simply show that the logic is flawed leaving the original question unanswered. Mann could still be right about the hockey stick, but would then be right for the wrong reasons.
CRS, Dr.P.H. says:
August 14, 2010 at 10:25 pm
OK, the Real Climate guys are reacting to it!
Looks like they’re already saying “Noting to see here.”
[REPLY – We, er, live for, um, danger. ~ Evan]
Can’t we just have a wee bit of peril?
[REPLY – No, it’s too perilous. ~ Evan]
“I note that one of their conclusions “If we consider rolling decades, 1997-2006 is the warmest on record; our model gives an 80% chance that it was the warmest in the past thousand years” is completely in line with the analogous IPCC AR4 statement. But this isn’t the thread for this, so let’s leave discussion for when there is a fuller appreciation for what’s been done. – gavin]”
That isn’t a “conclusion”, and continues:
“Finally, if we look at rolling thirty-year blocks, the posterior probability that the last thirty years (again, the warmest on record) were the warmest over the past thousand is 38%.”
But if the first is a “conclusion”, the second “look” is as well, just not so encouraging – at 38% probability. Perhaps Gavin just didn’t read for comprehension…
New paper makes a hockey sticky wicket of Mann et al 98/99/08
More like a hockey puck — one that’s been slap-sticked.
CRS, Dr.P.H. says:
August 14, 2010 at 10:25 pm
OK, the Real Climate guys are reacting to it!……. gavin
That would be the Gavin in this video. He looks down as he makes certain points. He looks continuously below the level of the camera when talking about the infamous ClimateGate “Trick”. John Christy makes ‘robust’ eye contact.
Mike says:
August 14, 2010 at 8:04 pm
“…our model offers support
to the conclusion that the 1990s were the warmest decade of the last millennium,…”
An out of context quote, deliberate or not.
“While our model offers support to the conclusion that the 1990s were the warmest decade of the last millennium, it does not predict temperature as well as expected even in sample. The model does much worse on contiguous thirty year time intervals.
Thus, we remark in conclusion that natural proxies are severely limited in their ability to predict average temperatures and temperature gradients.”
The paper doesn’t support their model, Mike.
I’m waiting for that rather sad individual John Mashey to start trawling through their garbage bins to find proof that their daughters once ate at the same McDonalds as a retired Oil Executive’s (i.e. he managed a petrol station) neighbour. Thus proving the link between “Big Oil” and the conclusions of this paper.
In hockey terms, Mann et al just got slammed into the boards with a stiff check to the body of their work — in their own tilted rink!
It may also be worth noting that the National Hockey League stopped using wooden hockey sticks years ago.
Don’t underestimate RealClimate. They will find some way to fight back. They just have to delete all mention of this study while they try to calm down and get their rhetorical weaponry aimed in the right direction.
[piling on]So, was Mann innocently incompetent or deviously dishonest?[/piling on]
Seriously, it will be interesting to see the Team’s response. They dissed M&M as amateurs; they cannot use that tactic this time.
duckster [should have said]:
August 14, 2010 at 7:48 pm
But I am sure it is obvious when you think about it that the article was supposed to falsify the accuracy of the data used, therefore the results are invalid. Only a complete idiot would then turn around and think anyone is trying to prove anything else…..
previous post should read “accuracy of the methods used”
“………so let’s leave discussion for when there is a fuller appreciation for what’s been done. – gavin]”
(forgetting to turn off microphone….)
“so where’s the bloody ‘Situations Vacant’ list???????”
I really thought Mike Roddy intended a parody, or, actually, sarcasm directed against RC, since merely repeating what RC says is not “parody.”
Duckster, you’re not the first person I’ve heard claiming that an AGW skeptic is obliged to have an alternate theory, and you’re not the first that I’ve heard claiming that anyone who presents AGW skeptics’ arguments is obliged to present a consistent set of arguments. (It’s been done to me.) That’s dead wrong. To say that the skeptic is obliged to have a theory implies that, without a theory, nothing could be seen to be wrong with the theory of which he is skeptical. That’s obviously wrong. To say that the presenter is obliged to present a consistent set of arguments amounts to the same thing.
Both claims are so stupid that I find it hard to believe that the people who make them believe them; I keep thinking they must be trying to do a snow job on stupid people who hear them.
Its so nice to see a study saying what everyone can see, but still take it to a higher level.
Some of the problems comparing modern temperatures with medieval temperatures we discussed here at WUWT bac in april:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/04/04/ipcc-how-not-to-compare-temperatures/
Can anyone here show me a calibration certificate of a thermometer that is 150 years old?
And you expect a global warmer to understand this? It is flying well above their heads!
Global warming is true because a friend of a friend who is a very eminent “scientist” said that he knew someone who did some statistics at University in their first year, and they said that they thought the stats were sound … so it’s got to be true!
Finally, the proxies seem unable to forecast the high levels of and sharp run-up in temperature in the 1990s either in-sample or from contiguous holdout blocks, thus casting doubt on their ability to predict such phenomena if in fact they occurred several hundred years ago.
Given there are big problems with the quality of the surface data temperature data in the last century after all the adjustments and land use changes, it’s no wonder they struggle forecasting such sharp warming. 😉
This new curve looks more like a scimitar — perfect for slicing sticks in two.
McShane and Wyner, 2010, figure 16, illustrates an absolutely (in terms of the sign of slope) unprecedented (over the last millennium) rate of increase in global temperature timed with the onset of the industrial revolution, and its associated CO2 release. It displays no evidence of a medieval warm period during the range 1000-1200 CE, but seems, rather, to predict a dip in temperature during that range of years. Backcast of modern data over last 1000 years predicts no previous years were warmer than the last few observed. Some interested observers are also curious to know the Bayesian forecast of future temperatures based on the “thin black line” of modern observations. Figure 16 illustrates the remarkable feature that, at the onset of the industrial revolution, the increase in the Earth’s temp was so great it created a reversal in its slope. Fascinating.
It’s late Saturday night, this post has been here 4 1/2 hours, and there are 93 comments. Busy night for Anthony and the Moderators.
Sunday evening here – want to know what the weather’s like tomorrow?
I’m no mathematician, but the CO2 trend at Mauna Loa over the 1960 – 2010 period does not look linear to me.
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/from:1960/to:1970/trend/plot/esrl-co2/from:1960/to:1980/trend/offset:1.5/plot/esrl-co2/from:1960/to:1990/trend/offset:%203/plot/esrl-co2/from:1960/to:2000/trend/offset:%204/plot/esrl-co2/from:1960/to:2010/trend/offset:%206
Linear or exponential, it does seem like a debating exercise not unlike how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?
duckster says:
August 14, 2010 at 8:18 pm
@Smokey:
“Duckster, are you friggin’ blind??”
So where exactly would you place a medieval warming period here? Asking me to accept a medieval warming period (which is what I have been asked to do here) means showing how and where it got warmer, and then how and when it got cooler. A steady downward temperature trend is not a warming period.
Duckster if you are from the USA/Canada medieval isn’t the 18th century.
Definition is
The Middle Ages (adjectival form: medieval or mediaeval) is a period of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. Looking at the graph in question it starts slap bang in the middle of that time frame.
Sandy
The Hockey Stick; named, debunked, resurrected, debunked, resurrected, debunked and now re-incarnation; sounds like fiction about something that never quite died. Is this an argument about what a hockey stick looks like or how much it can deviate from the basic shape. Who determines how much it can deviate in order to qualify or not for the hockey stick shape? Fig 16 still looks somewhat like a hockey stick to me, albeit a little more curvacious, there’s no denying the upward temperature trend.
Apologies for writing before I have read the entire post or paper. Wanted to get these thoughts out there, for what they are worth…
…All in all, this was an inevitability, that someone would get around to the second round of multiproxy reconstructions.
I have from the beginning given Michael Mann credit for doing the first one. Consider how monumental a task it is, after all.
That said, anyone thinking that the first one done will be the final word had to be an idiot. Mann, especially. The man’s lack of humility is in itself monumental. There is not one whit of common sense in him believing he had done it perfectly – especially when he had played such games with the data in his homogenizations. EVEN IF THEEY WERE EVENTUALLY FOUND TO BE CORRECT, he should have known that they would be challenged, sooner or later. Once challenged, the cat fight would begin. WHAT ABOUT THIS DID HE NOT UNDERSTAND?
From this vantage point, Mann appears to have thought that if he bullied enough people it would all stand forever. To put it bluntly, what a d***wad. [my censoring – f2f]
But WHAT a relief! To finally have another peer-reviewed AND TRULY INDEPENDENT multiproxy reconstruction.
And now, on to reading the entire article…
.
I cannot get the pdf page 21 to show up without disrupting Adobe. Unfortunately it’s the nice graphs page. Had to whisk past it. Anyone else had probs??
I notice they didnt discuss wavelet analysis or Moburg 2005 which primarily uses low frequency proxies to do the heavy lifting. From what ive seen analysis wise, this is the best of the reconstructions either way. Plus what does it matter anyways… we know the MWP was caused by increased TSI, low volcanic activity and persistent AMO conditions unlike current warming (1975-current) which is anthropogenically forced.
I wanna see these statisticians tell me that Buntgen et al. 2008s tree rings had a weak signal too…
Either way, it doesnt disprove that we are warmer than the MWP, just that the methods of Mann et al were inaccurate.
Oh. One more point, now that I’ve read the article and part of the paper:
A few questions that arise:
Was this an outcome of Climategate?
Of M & M’s efforts that woke some other qualified people up to DOING such a reconstruction?
Did any of the FOI’s contribute to this paper, in freeing up the data?
This may be OT, but papers have just been submitted to the High Court in New Zealand by the NZ Climate Science Coalition to obtain a hearing in the matter of the ‘upwardly adjusted’ instrumental climate record for the past century by NIWA, the National Institute of Weather and Atmosphere. This was reported seriously by the MSM there, with an actual headline over a leading article, so times may be a’changing!
Mike Roddy wrote, “Similarly, climate scientists are getting bored with arguments from untrained individuals that the “trace gas” CO2 does not play the major role in the recent and rapid temperature increases. This role was proven in a laboratory in the 19th century by Arrhenius, and has not been seriously disputed since.”
The laboratory experiment did not include oceans. Long wave radiation only impacts the top few millimeters of the oceans and, therefore, cannot explain the rise in sea surface temperature and ocean heat content.
I just luuuuuuuuuuuuurve their graph fig. 8 page 15.
If I’ve understood this graph aright, we have here another diamond, hidden in broad daylight… a ready-made decade-by-decade calibration for UHI, using treering data properly, for once, to flag up the surface stations problem anomaly. Certainly the anomaly here is about 0.5 degC, the same as suggested by McKitrick et al in their very recent (and again, stunning) paper.
Now if this is the next line of investigation, correcting the basic temperature record, then not only does the recent warming disappear still further, but we now have the way clear to re-connect with the solar correlations (yes, Leif, thanks, causations are still eluding us as yet…..)
duckster says:
August 14, 2010 at 8:18 pm:
It isn’t just a question of a medieval warm period – there are a whole series of periods in the past 500,000 years that appear to have been warmer than the present. 4 of the previous interglacials have been considerably warmer than the current one, as shown by Ice Core data and by by significantly higher sea levels (~ 6 metres higher in the last interglacial, for example).
If you don’t believe me, Wikipedia has a good discussion and links to much of the data here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_core
The question for the climate modellers is whether their models can account for this behaviour of the Earth’s climate WITHOUT resorting to CO2, since the ice cores don’t show CO2 above pre-industrial levels.
Sticky wicket:
Some people call the cricket pitch “wicket”, and a sticky wicket would e.g. be a wet pitch which makes it a difficult situation for the batsman.
Another interpretation: The real wicket ist the construction of three stumps with two bails that the bowler is trying to hit. If the bails are sticking to the stumps (in climatology “because of some chewing gum” would come to my mind) it will be difficult for the bowler to make them fall.
PS. Bails can be used a long time, England and Australia play for bails that are almost 130 years old (and burned, too).
Honesty in science:
M&W2010 (from the abstract):
“We propose our own reconstruction of Northern Hemisphere aver-
age annual land temperature over the last millenium [sic], assess its relia-
bility, and compare it to those from the climate science literature. Our
model provides a similar reconstruction but has much wider standard
errors, reflecting the weak signal and large uncertainty encountered
in this setting.”
See? Tell people that you recognize the weaknesses on your study, and even statistically assess your own statistics.
Having read a good bit on Richard Feynman recently, this from his 1973 CalTech graduation speech (you will all love this):
“…there is one feature I notice is missing in Cargo Cult Science [the topic of his speech]. That is the idea that we all hope you have learned in studying science in school – we never explicitly say what this is, but just hope that you catch on by all the examples of scientific investigation. It is interesting, therefore, to bring it out now and speak of it explicitly. It’s a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty – a kind of leaning over backwards. For example, if you’re doing an experiment, you should report everything you think might make it invalid – not only what you think is right about it: other causes that could possibly explain your results; and things you thought of that you’ve eliminated by some other experiment, and how they worked – to make sure the other fellow can tell they’ve been eliminated.
Details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must be given, if you know them. You must do the best you can – if you know anything at all wrong, or possibly wrong – to explain it. If you make a theory, for example, and advertise it, or put it out, then you must also put down all the facts that disagree with it, as well as those that agree with it. There is also a more subtle problem. When you haveout a lot of ideas together into an elaborate theory, you want to make sure, when explaining what it fits, that those things are not just the things that gave you the idea for the theory; but that the finished theory makes something else come out right, in addition.
In summary, the idea is to try to give all the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgement in one particular direction or another….”
Nobel Winner Feynman would have been proud of McShane and Wyner.
Smokey
Smokey said;
August 14, 2010 at 8:33 pm
Rocky Road,
“Here is the Phil Jones chart…”
To your other natural cycles of rapid temperature rise can be added this one which Phil Jones is very well aware of it. It happened from around 1700 and is captured in CET and alluded to in reords from the time in other countries such as those from the Botanic gardens in Uppsalla Sweden-the home town of Arrhenius.
http://i45.tinypic.com/125rs3m.jpg
As can be seen from the next chart there sems to have been a rise in temperatures commencing from 1690 rather than 1880-James Hansen merely pluged into the latter stages of a centuries old trend which itself appears to have peaked around 1250 with the LIA intervening.
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/jdrake/Questioning_Climate/_sgg/m2_1.htm
Perhaps greater credence will be placed in the future on the actual records that people such as myself post, which get dismissed as ‘anecdotal’ and therfore unreliable.
Funny really isn’t it, an actual observation made at the time is ‘anecdota’l but silly and tortured proxies have become so ‘reliable’ they have become the basis for an attempt to break the worlds economy.
Tonyb
James Sexton says:
August 14, 2010 at 8:24 pm
duckster says:
August 14, 2010 at 7:48 pm
What they are stating is, even if the data are correct, Mann et al. did it wrong(along with a long list of other statistician wannbees), and further, proxies have no predictive properties. Now, work backwards from that. If you require further explanations, just ask, I’d be happy to provide them to you.
……………………….
If proxies have no predictive value, why do the authors persist in
doing their own reconstruction? If paleo reconstructions are universally
dead (I am OK with that) they are dead for everyone. You have to forget
your MWP argument to.
Right on, James
Not right on, James. Just as we’ve been saying all along at WUWT, CA and the rest, you need to examine BOTH sides of the argument, not just rely on the “official” “debunks”. I did a fair bit of research into CSICOP’s supposed debunk of astrology and it was not a pretty story, in fact the tactics I saw there were remarkably similar to RealClimate et al. And you need to read up about Kepler and Newton too, as seen from the “other side” – fascinating, and good science.
If you’re interested to follow this one up, email me – click my name, etc.
It is quite a joy reading this paper, if not for any other reason then, for its educational value and for the strive of the authors to illuminate the complexity of this problem. It has the clear signature of a paper that wants to explain something to the reader instead of trying to overrun the cautious readers by attacking him with numbers and terminology, such as e.g. MBH98. It has the potential of becoming a classical paper that is handed out to students early on in their carriers, perhaps even in the study of paleoclimate. At least when fame, fortune and politics leaves this discipline of science.
UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 369-ii
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY COMMITTEE
Setting the scene
Tuesday 27 July 2010
LORD REES OF LUDLOW
Q78 Graham Stringer: None of them looked really looked at the science, and where they stepped over the science, as Oxburgh did, he said that he was rather surprised that methods that depended on advanced statistics had not used advanced statisticians; he said that they had also used subjective methods. So I think David Willetts was wrong to say that somehow these had validated the science, because the science was not looked at. One, do you think the science should be looked at? If it was to be looked at, how would it be done?
Lord Rees of Ludlow : I would, to some extent, contest what you have just said. These papers were refereed, but the key thing which the Oxburgh Committee did was to actually go and sit with the scientists and see what they actually did and how they analysed the data. As regards the statistics, Professor Hand from Imperial College, who is one of the UK’s leading statisticians, was put on the Oxburgh Panel precisely because he had that expertise. What the report said was that indeed they had not used the optimum sophisticated techniques but he thought it would not have made any difference to the results. So, again, I do not think the science from that group is severely under question from the techniques they used.
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201011/cmselect/cmsctech/uc369-ii/uc36901.htm
@Mike Roddy; “Besides… Species are migrating north. Glaciers and Arctic ice are melting at unheard of rates. The ocean is becoming more acidic, and has experienced a 40% decline in fish biomass since 1950 due to CO2′s effect on phytoplankton. ”
Welcome Mike, your thoughts are appreciated, but if you make statements such as the above it is traditional to cite your sources. Where did you get this information from? I should add that reports by the WWF and Greenpeace aren’t seen as citable evidence.
@Duckster: Welcome to you too Duckster, again your input is appreciated, although you seem to have totally misunderstood the papers objectives. Still it’s good to have someone testing the (naturally) self-congratulationary tone of the many posts on here. A word to the wise though, you’re probably better waiting until realclimate prepares an answer that can be parrotted continuously than diving in the deep end with the posters on WUWT, they are a pretty knowledgeable bunch by any standards.
As for the paper, in my view it will be buried by the MSM, we are dealing with religious fervour here and no amount of evidence will prove to the faithful that we aren’t experiencing AGW and even if we are it won’t be catastrophic. However, like the hole in the Titanic the water is slowly filling the hold and it will sink. I have little doubt that in a couple of decades from now people will look back on this time and wonder how anyone could have taken this mumbo jumbo seriously.
The real fun will be watching the next IPCC panel doing back flips to keep this out of their next report.
Another blow to the EPA. More ammunition for the State of Virginia investigation.
[REPLY – We, er, live for, um, danger. ~ Evan]
Thanks I needed a Sunday morning chuckle.
This poor world fears in vain
That fresh ill o’er it lowers;
Let thunder growl again;
Go, crown yourselves with flowers!
Pierre-Jean de Béranger
Hmm. The conclusions seem to twist and bend a lot on the road
from article to these posts.
McShane and Wyner say:
“We see that our model gives a backcast which is very similar to those
in the literature, particularly from 1300 AD to the present.
In fact, our backcast very closely traces the Mann et al. (2008) EIV land
backcast,considered by climate scientists to be among the most skilled.
Though our model provides slightly warmer backcasts for the years
1000-1300 AD,we note it falls within or just outside the uncertainty bands of
the Mann et al. (2008) EIV land backcast even in that period. Hence, our
backcast matches their backcasts reasonably well.”
———————
So Mann et al (2008) is actually the most skilled until now, not e.g.
McIntyre and McKitrick?
BTW Smokey, if you want to link a figure from the article, why not
use fig. 17, which brings it alltogether: the warming of the last decades
is bigger than any backcast, H&W 2010 included.
Having said that, as far as I can judge, H&W 2010 is an important
contribution.
[Response: The M&W paper will likely take some time to look through (especially since it isn’t fully published and the SI does not seem to be available yet), but I’m sure people will indeed be looking. I note that one of their conclusions “If we consider rolling decades, 1997-2006 is the warmest on record; our model gives an 80% chance that it was the warmest in the past thousand years” is completely in line with the analogous IPCC AR4 statement. But this isn’t the thread for this, so let’s leave discussion for when there is a fuller appreciation for what’s been done. – gavin]
Oh yes, Gavin “..our model gives an 80% chance that it was the warmest in the past thousand years”
But..
“our model does not pass ‘statistical significance’ thresholds against savvy null models. Ultimately, what these tests essentially show is that the 1,000 year old proxy record has little power given the limited temperature record” (p. 41)
And then we have the proxy selection and orientation issues..
For attention of Anthony / Moderators
Suggetstion: Will you consider creating a “Hockey Stick” page under your Categories pull down menu on the right side of the page?
It would make it easier to find rebuttals to the hockey stick before this page and follow up pages become buried in the site.
Mikael Pihlström says:
August 15, 2010 at 2:22 am
“…why not use fig. 17, which brings it alltogether: the warming of the last decades is bigger than any backcast, H&W 2010 included.”
Look at the uncertainty bands.
“In fact, our uncertainty bands are so wide that they envelop all of the other backcasts in the literature. Given their ample width, it is difficult to say that recent warming is an extraordinary event compared to the last 1,000 years. For example, according to our uncertainty bands, it is possible that it was as warm in the year 1200 AD as it is today.” (McShane and Wyner, AOAS 2010, p. 37)
1. Natural temperature variability may be large.
2. It’s not the sun (thanks Leif!).
3. Increased CO2 increase temperature.
Is it possible to tell magnitude of 3 given 1?
Smokey says:
August 14, 2010 at 8:12 pm
duckster says:
“Looking at the paper above… No medieval warming period, I see. ”
Duckster, are you friggin’ blind?? ))
Wilfully, I’d suggest.
I wonder if OBummer is going to bailout the CCE after the paper is more widely read & debated?? After all he was a leading light in its formation.
regards
What a relief! Ever since the first time I tried to understand mannian statistics, I thought it was so wrong that I must have missed something. As a mathematician with some statistics experience (it’s not my main branch of math), I’m so relieved that the statisticians are finally entering the scene and give SteveM et al the credit they deserve.
About the sharp 1990s uptick: we know that the temperature record gets highly unreliable just at that point…
An important issue here is the accuracy of the recent temperature record. If it isn’t accurate then it wouldn’t be a surprise that the proxy record didn’t predict it . . . Numerous instances of upward bias have been identified on here . . . . Maybe it’s time to go right back to basics and look at only the raw reliable data from non-contaminated sites with equipment known to be accurate – so far as that’s possible. Time will sort this whole mess out and I don’t think the judgement will reflect too well on many of the players.
Lucy Skywalker says:
August 15, 2010 at 1:17 am
James Sexton says: August 14, 2010 at 8:10 pm
While breaking from the reading, mainly because Adobe isn’t responding at the moment…
“I cannot get the pdf page 21 to show up without disrupting Adobe. Unfortunately it’s the nice graphs page. Had to whisk past it. Anyone else had probs??”
That’s exactly where mine had problems…… btw, not prepared to argue astrology either way, hope I didn’t offend.
Mikael Pihlström says:
August 15, 2010 at 1:49 am
James Sexton says:
August 14, 2010 at 8:24 pm
Whooa Neddy. There are plenty of written descriptions of the living conditions at that time to give a reasonable indication of how warm/cool it was. Plant types etc.
regards
Mike Roddy is right. Mann et al do not care about mathematics and statistics, likewise the 20 odd other climatologists who confirm the hockey stick.
That is why they failed to spot the confirmation bias which ruins their science.
They are a bunch of incestuous peers who are seeking to confirm their faith. So their weak statistical analysis renders their science into a wishlist.
If you stretch the above graph to include the Roman Warm Period 2 thoudand years ago then what do you see?
10 March 2010
“New technique shows Roman Warm Period Warmer than Present Day
A promising new technique to reconstruct past temperatures has been developed by scientists at the University of Saskatchewan, Canada and Durham University, England, using the shells of bivalve mollusks. Writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science the scientists say that oxygen isotopes in their shells are a good proxy measurement of temperature and may provide the most detailed record yet of global climate change.”
http://www.thegwpf.org/the-observatory/653-new-technique-shows-roman-warm-period-warmer-than-present-day.html
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/03/02/0902522107.full.pdf
Typo:
…2 thou[s] and years…
I cannot get the pdf page 21 to show up without disrupting Adobe. Unfortunately it’s the nice graphs page. Had to whisk past it. Anyone else had probs??
My Adobe kept freezing up on page 21 also — but I found that if I used the sidebar to scroll past page 21 and then inched back I could actually get there in the end (about 3 restarts later!).
Ah yes graphs. Its all about presentation
and
For thoughs that do not know him David attenborough is a much loved natuarlist and TV personality in the UK.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Attenborough
Mikael Pihlström: August 15, 2010 at 2:22 am
So Mann et al (2008) is actually the most skilled until now, not e.g. McIntyre and McKitrick?
Hardly.
“Our backcasting methods, which track quite closely the methods applied most recently in Mann (2008) to the same data, are unable to catch the sharp run up in temperatures recorded in the 1990s, even in-sample. As can be seen in Figure 15, our estimate of the run up in temperature in the 1990s has a much smaller slope than the actual temperature series. Furthermore, the lower frame of Figure 18 clearly reveals that the proxy model is not at all able to track the high gradient segment. Consequently, the long flat handle of the hockey stick is best understood to be a feature of regression and less a reflection of our knowledge of the truth.”
My emphasis.
Their statement doesn’t jibe with yours, that “Models are always abstractions
of the truth. The question is whether they give the general picture,
well e.g. Hansens scenarios seem to perform in this respect.”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/12/target-monckton/#comment-456258
BTW, you still owe me the answer to this: “…since the AGW theory predicts an upper atmospheric tropical hot spot, and since the models predict the existence of that upper atmospheric hot spot, kindly tell us where it is to be found. In the real world, please, not in the truthy abstraction.”
Mikael Pihlström: August 15, 2010 at 1:49 am
If paleo reconstructions are universally dead (I am OK with that) they are dead for everyone. You have to forget your MWP argument to.
Hardly. You’re ignoring the fact that the existence of the MWP isn’t based on proxies, it’s based on the evidence of archaeological and geological findings, as well as written records.
Mikael Pihlström says:
August 15, 2010 at 1:49 am
“[…] If proxies have no predictive value, why do the authors persist in
doing their own reconstruction? If paleo reconstructions are universally
dead (I am OK with that) they are dead for everyone. You have to forget
your MWP argument to. […]”
Not so. We still have historical accounts, for instance of wine grown in England and Greenland being settled by Vikings.
eudoxus says:
August 15, 2010 at 12:54 am
Mikael Pihlström says:
August 15, 2010 at 1:49 am
OMG!!! How is it you obviously bright guys can read something and totally, completely miss the point of the exercise? I’m a bit tired, but I’ll try to explain for you guys, too.
Mikael, “If proxies have no predictive value, why do the authors persist in
doing their own reconstruction? If paleo reconstructions are universally
dead (I am OK with that) they are dead for everyone. You have to forget
your MWP argument to.”
First, they did “their own” reconstruction to check the validity of the proxy data to see if it could predict reality. The conclusion is, it can’t. Similarly, (if you’d note figure 15 up in the posted article) you’ll see how the poxies totally missed the significant uptick in temps as we saw in the 1990’s. The authors concluded, (and I believe correctly so) that if the proxies can’t detect this significant warming, there is no reason to believe they could detect significant warming going back in time either. They used these graphs to illustrate the errors in the graphs. They did not use the graphs to attempt to illustrate their perception of reality. Here is what our friends had to say about figure 16…….“We decompose the uncertainty of our model’s backcast by plotting the
curves drawn using each of the methods outlined in the previous three
paragraphs in Figure 16. As can be seen, in the modern instrumental period
the residual variance (in cyan) dominates the uncertainty in the backcast.
However, the variance due to β uncertainty (in green) propagates through
time and becomes the dominant portion of the overall error for earlier periods.
The primary conclusion is that failure to account for parameter uncertainty
results in overly confident model predictions.”………ok, guys, did you read that? Specifically the last sentence. Our friends McShane and Wyner are not particularly happy with figure 16. They have problems with the results. They don’t perceive it as valid.
The whole paper was really about 2 questions. One would be to see if the statistical methods used by paleo-climatologists were sufficient. It appears they were not. Two, with proper statistical methods could one reconstruct historical temps using the available proxy data. Apparently not.
I know you guys don’t like the answers the paper gives, and I’m sure the team will respond with a rebuttal. But you shouldn’t try to read into the paper something that the paper clearly doesn’t say or imply. To me, the paper looks like it is very well done, but I’m not a statistician. Personally, I had no idea what a Brownian Motion pseudo-proxy was prior to this paper.
Mikael, I don’t think they are killing all paleo (or proxy) reconstructions. I believe what they are saying is one can get a general idea about certain things with stuff like tree rings ect. But, when one gets into specifics and details, such as 1 or 2 notches on a thermometer, proxies lack the ability to retrieve that kind of detailed information. They used the proxy data from Mann 2008 because it was the most comprehensive. When using measure temps, they used CRU data, only up to 2000, because proxy data is virtually non-existent after 2000. The question of the MWP really only arose since the hockey-stick reconstructions left them out. Prior to that the MWP was generally accepted. While some have tried to discern the MWP from proxy data, most of the evidence for the MWP is anecdotal from historians and things like unearthed farms in Greenland that was previously under a few feet of ice for a few hundred years or so.
Excellent input from people clearly prepared to seperate the work from the motivations. Congratulations to the authors and a reader’s thanks for it’s production and distribution to all involved.
Mike Roddy writes, among other drivel, that “The ocean is becoming more acidic, and has experienced a 40% decline in fish biomass since 1950 due to CO2′s effect on phytoplankton.”
There is no proof to your claim that ‘ocean acidification’ has led to a 40% decline in fish biomass due to CO2. There’s some evidence, but this evidence is skethy and piecemeal and nothing concluside.
On the other hand, the proponderance of evidence on fish stock decline points to overfishing, primarily the introduction of ‘mobile gear’ (purse seine and trawling) technologies and their use in large scale fishing operations. It’s been both practical and scientific lore for a long time that these methods of harvest far outstrip recruitment in the effected species as well as trawling’s (the larger the worse) ability to annihilate bottom habitats.
Absolutely nothing in the research refutes the role of overfishing in biomass depletion and this is further indicated by the selective nature of collapse of target and by-catch species.
Shame on your attempt to mitigate the damaging effects that ‘big steel’ bottom trawling and mobile gear has had on global fish stocks. This is the antithesis of fact and reality and the sort of fluff that has been used as an excuse to systematically destroy so much of the inshore (small boat) cod, hake, herring, redfish and countless other fisheries that made up the lifeblood of so many communities here (in Canada)and abroad.
Your opinions on fisheries management and marine ecosystems demonstrates a blindness to reality. This perception is further reinforced by your attack on ‘untrained’ comment (which you gave example of in your above-mentioned paragraph). Just because Mann et all says 2+2=5 it does not require (logically or academically) another Climate Modeller to explain that the answer is four.
Receding ice? Another matter of debate, with ample evidence for ANY opinion taken as fact. When the science you love matures and discovers its fallibility and its roots out its own charaltans and rogues, then it will be a proper science. Until then, you had best keep playing in the echo-chamber over at RC, where two plus two still equals five.
These two authors have rock solid reputations. Essentially they say you can achieve similar results with auto-correlated noise. In light of this conclusion it’s pretty irrelevant which is the most skilled reconstruction, as simple as that.
I love when the Fat Lady sings.
Philemon says:
August 15, 2010 at 2:44 am
Mikael Pihlström says:
August 15, 2010 at 2:22 am
“…why not use fig. 17, which brings it alltogether: the warming of the last decades is bigger than any backcast, H&W 2010 included.”
Look at the uncertainty bands.
“In fact, our uncertainty bands are so wide that they envelop all of the other backcasts in the literature. Given their ample width, it is difficult to say that recent warming is an extraordinary event compared to the last 1,000 years. For example, according to our uncertainty bands, it is possible that it was as warm in the year 1200 AD as it is today.” (McShane and Wyner, AOAS 2010, p. 37)
—————
You are right, but uncertainty works both ways: It could have been as
warm in 1200 AD, or considerably cooler.
Mike Roddy wrote,
“Similarly, climate scientists are getting bored with arguments from untrained individuals that the “trace gas” CO2 does not play the major role in the recent and rapid temperature increases. This role was proven in a laboratory in the 19th century by Arrhenius, and has not been seriously disputed since.”
I can see climate scientists getting bored with history pretty soon. You already have Gavin Schmidt claiming that the warmth of the WMP is an ‘uninteresting’ question scientifically. And Tamino seems to be uninterested in anything prior to the year 1975…
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2010/08/13/changes/
So… these guys may be bored with history (I don’t blame them, I thought history was quite dull), but that kind of begs the question of why all the fuss in the first place?
Mainstream science. Spending your money on figuring out the answers to questions that bore scientists.
Terrific! 😉
Jimbo says:
August 15, 2010 at 2:42 am
There’s an entry for paleoclimatology, see
http://home.comcast.net/~ewerme/wuwt/categories.html
http://home.comcast.net/~ewerme/wuwt/cat_paleoclimatology.html
Does this paper kill paeloclimatology? No. There are many more direct proxy methods of estimating past temperatures.
Does this paper kill dendroclimatology – very possibly.
Stanislav Lem-
Precisely.
Since they are all bad, there must be one that is “least worst”. That hardly means it is skillful.
Re: eudoxus
“McShane and Wyner, 2010, figure 16, illustrates an absolutely (in terms of the sign of slope) unprecedented (over the last millennium) rate of increase in global temperature”
From the actual paper:
In other words, since the reconstruction can not pick up sharp up ticks in temperature you can not call it unprecedented.
You say: “It displays no evidence of a medieval warm period during the range 1000-1200 CE, but seems, rather, to predict a dip in temperature during that range of years.”
The error bars are so big in the graph that it encompasses everything from the MWP being colder than the LIA to the LIA being warmer than today and pretty much everything in between. From the paper itself:
You say: “Figure 16 illustrates the remarkable feature that, at the onset of the industrial revolution, the increase in the Earth’s temp was so great it created a reversal in its slope. Fascinating.”
The thick red line in the Figure 16 that you seem to think proves AGW also has 1000AD being warmer than today. Fascinating.
James Sexton says:
August 15, 2010 at 3:53 am
—–
I don’t really disagree with what you say here. Should perhaps have
read the article more comprehensively. But, actually the results are
rather to my liking, if they will stand. It seems wise to reduce the
confidence given to proxy studies at least for the time being.
Their article is interesting since it is based (for the purpose of argument) upon an “acceptance” of the veracity of the data. Of course, if that data is wrong, then their methodology would suggest even less dramatic rise in recent temperatures and higher backcast temperatures.
Of course, the key issue is the quality of the proxy data and the risk of drawing too many inference from scant quantities of data. GIGO.
The proxy data can be no more than a very rough and ready guide and for the purposes of serious prediction should be thrown out. This follows from the known fact that the tree proxy data as from 1960 does not match the instrument record. This fact alone means one of three things. Namely, either:
a) The proxy data is wrong -thereby confirming the unreliability of all pre 1960 tree proxy data such that it would be unsafe to assume that global temperatures pre 1850 are as ascertained from tree proxy data: or
b) The instrument record post 1960 is wrong – more specifically the ‘corrected’ ‘adjusted’ instrument record is wrong and that if the ‘corrections’ ‘adjustments’ were done properly the modern instrument record would be consistent with the lower temperatures suggested by the post 1960 tree proxy record: or
c) Both the proxy record and the modern instrument record (by which I refer to the ‘corrected’ ‘adjusted’ data) are wrong and unreliable such that we have no qualative data upon which conclusions about past temperatures (ie., those pre 1960 back to say 1000) or modern temperatures (ie those post 1960) can safely be drawn.
My own take on the situation is that set out in c) above and that means that we need to go back to the drawing board. It may be that there is simply insufficient reliable data (both proxy and instrument) covering the southern hemisphere. If that is the case, we should simply ignore the southern hemisphere altogether and just look at the northern hemisphere data. We need a re-evaluation of the proxy data for the northern hemisphere (including taking into account written and archaeological records). We also need to carefully review the instrument record for the northern hemisphere and just look at data from sites where we can be reasonably certain that no adjustments/corrections are necessary. These sites will inevitably be rural sites and ones which have the longest uninterrupted temperature record. It may be that these sites will be far and few between but if global warming is a global issue (and I am of the view that it is probably not a ‘global’ phenomenon and certainly the consequences are local rather than global) for the purposes of considering probable effect one can assume that any noted trend would similarly occur over the entire land area of the northern hemisphere (although I do hate making assumptions).
Mind you given that the land temperature record is corrupted by changes in land use and UHI and given that 4/5ths of the globe is water and given the sheer volume of the seas (which act as huge storage reservoirs) one wonders why it is worthwhile looking at land temperatures if one is investigating global warming. It is the seas that are the key driver of climate and it will be only through a proper understanding of sea temperatures, currents and cloud formation that we will gain insight into what extent there is global warming and what effect this will have.
I say back to square one and not to do anything until we have a better understanding of climate drivers and can put together a data set of temperatures upon which we can be confident. Would it not be silly to spend $trillions on curbing CO2 only to find out that there is no problem with rising temperatures, or no problem with CO2 (ie., CO2 is not responsible for the rising temperature). The latter is particularly stupid since we may face a scenario whereby there are rising temperatures (due to natural variation or some manmade villain other than CO2) and these rising temperatures cause serious problems such that we then need to spend $trillions on dealing with the effect. We have then spent two sets of $trillions one wasted on dealing with an assumed cause which was not in fact the cause and therefore did not remedy the situation, and the other dealing with the effect.
I also consider that we need to re-evaluate whether rising temperatures would in fact be the disaster that so many people predict. Given that bio-diversity favours warm conditions and given that civilisations and mankind flourished in warm conditions (it is no accident that none of the old civilisations flourished in high latitudes – and to the extent that the Viking civilisation flourished this was during a warm spell in the northern hemisphere), it is probable that a rise in temperature would overall be a good and beneficial thing.
Of course, this does not mean that we should not strive to find viable alternative energy sources (for some solar is an option and others tidal – although wind seems too unreliable to have any future – but in the main this will have to be nuclear preferably fusion) and to lessen our dependence upon fossil fuels (oil reserves would be much better utilised for plastics and the like rather than ‘wasted’ in providing energy) not only because of the environmental effects of the latter but also because of the political uncertainties of supply.
It’s good news if the earth is warming up a bit regardless of why.
Green plants and animals = good.
Rocks and ice = bad.
Any questions?
Re: joshua corning says:
It will be easy for them. They will simply arrange for one of their pet journals to publish a paper, refuting this one, just before the cutoff date for IPCC submissions. The paper won’t have to be accurate or have sound statistics, it simply has to be published too late for any responses to it to make it into the next IPCC report.
“While the literature is large, there has been very little collaboration with universitylevel, professional statisticians”
Why would they want to spend some of their grant money on professional numbers men? Apart from the unnecessary expense, people whose only specialty is numbers could not be expected to understand the special needs of climatology.
Note well that your drugs and food additives are approved with even greater prudent savings on unnecessary expenditure on professional statisticians.
singularian says:
August 15, 2010 at 1:03 am
It’s late Saturday night, this post has been here 4 1/2 hours, and there are 93 comments. Busy night for Anthony and the Moderators.
Sunday evening here – want to know what the weather’s like tomorrow?
Best one yet looooool
“The authors of the 20- odd studies that confirmed Mann’s data are not really interested in what professional statisticians and mathematicians are saying about it.”
Yeah, that’s been the problem all along.
How long before Gavin et al say that this study is “fatally flawed”, “gravely flawed”, “seriously flawed”, etc.? That is the usual rhetorical trick.
Mikael Pihlström says:
August 15, 2010 at 1:49 am
If proxies have no predictive value, why do the authors persist in
doing their own reconstruction? If paleo reconstructions are universally
dead (I am OK with that) they are dead for everyone. You have to forget
your MWP argument to.
Not at all, Mikael. If proxies have no predictive value then all it means is that they cannot be used to invalidate a MWP that has been long-inferred from other evidence. As for why people “persist in doing their own reconstructions”, surely doing that (and getting vastly differing results from the same data) is the logical way to investigate the reliability of those proxies? Which is a valid scientific endeavour.
Mikael Pihlström says:
August 15, 2010 at 2:22 am
BTW Smokey, if you want to link a figure from the article, why not
use fig. 17, which brings it alltogether: the warming of the last decades
is bigger than any backcast, H&W 2010 included.
So, your call: Either:
(a) the proxies are unreliable predictors because they fail to track the current temp rise. In which case they are also worthless for back-casting. In which case there is absolutely no evidence to claim current warming is “unprecedented”, or,
(b) the proxies are reasonable predictors. In which case they may be ok to support a claim of unprecedented warming. But in that case, the insturmental record is showing warming that isn’t really there because the (reliable) proxies would show it if it was. In which case, the instrumental record is (as has been widely discussed) contaminated beyond usefulness.
Your call, (a), (b) or both of the above?
[Response: The M&W paper will likely take some time to look through (especially since it isn’t fully published and the SI does not seem to be available yet), but I’m sure people will indeed be looking. I note that one of their conclusions “If we consider rolling decades, 1997-2006 is the warmest on record; our model gives an 80% chance that it was the warmest in the past thousand years” is completely in line with the analogous IPCC AR4 statement. But this isn’t the thread for this, so let’s leave discussion for when there is a fuller appreciation for what’s been done. – gavin]
I knew the RC folks would latch on to that paragraph.
That “conclusion” (which isn’t in the conclusions section, BTW) is based purely on the acceptance of the data, the relationship of proxies to temperature over the calibration period, and the applicability of their model. They immediately start rolling through a number of caveats and criticisms which essentially say the sensitivity just isn’t there to draw substantial conclusions outside of the temperature record.
eudoxus says at 12:54 am:
The graph “…displays no evidence of a medieval warm period during the range 1000-1200 CE, but seems, rather, to predict a dip in temperature during that range of years.”
eudoxus, don’t you understand? The McShane & Wyner paper did not use the mountains of data confirming the high MWP temperatures.
They did a straight statistical study using only the carefully selected proxies used by Mann et al. And they still came out with high MWP temperatures — which Mann had claimed were completely non-existent in his hokey stick. Compare Mann’s chart in the article with the chart constructed with the correct statistical methodology.
Try to understand: this paper debunks Mann’s faked conclusions by using his own cherry-picked data. It does not purport to be a representation of the long-established MWP.
I don’t understand the discussion of the MWP.
The fact that Mann said his data did not show one, and they used Mann’s data.
The fact that it raises the 1000 year temperatures, when it should not at all, is all you need to know.
So what happens when you use the real data? I guess the whole thing was made up?
Amazing…simply amazing lie told by “men of science.” How do we get these guys to tell the truth? What is worng with the current funding/publication mechanisms that allowed this lie of AGW to be foisted on the world?
@Mike Roddy
‘The authors of the 20- odd studies that confirmed Mann’s data are not really interested in what professional statisticians and mathematicians are saying about it’
What an astonishing remark!
For a community that is ever quick to criticise others for lacking the ‘right’ qualifications in climatology, (whatever those may be) to be indifferent to professional statisticians verdict on their work is quite amazing.
As far as I can tell, having established the basic data to be used, there is no climatological knowledge required to manipulate the numbers and produce the graphs that Mann and his chums have relied on for over a decade. The knowledge and skills required are purely statistical.
And here we have two professional statisticians demonstrating that this part of the work has not been done to a professional standard and that many of the supposed conclusions cannot be derived from the data. And that the basic premise – that tree ring data can somehow tell us about past temperatures – is unsound.
Wow! no doubt there will be a considerable brouhaha once the paper is properly published…now it is in the public domain it cannot be suppressed anyway…but it is difficult to imagine what robust defence the Team can come up with.
That the authors are unqualified in their field…nope..better qualified than Mann et al
That the authors have cherry picked the data…nope…they used the same data as Mann
That the authors are funded by Big Oil..even if true, unlikely to be taken seriously as an argument apart from by True Believers
That its all terribly unfair and the poor polar bears are going to fry just about ten minutes before they would have drowned……about the best that they can do.
Its been a great summer so far. The total debunking of CRU already, and now this earth-shattering paper.
That they choose
@TerryS
“They will simply arrange for one of their pet journals to publish a paper, refuting this one, just before the cutoff date for IPCC submissions. The paper won’t have to be accurate or have sound statistics, it simply has to be published too late for any responses to it to make it into the next IPCC report.”
Worse, if there is a repeat of the kind of behind the scenes shenanigans identified by Christopher Booker, Richard North et al then we can expect “useful” research to find its way in even after, the cutoff date.
We’ve already seen attempts at ad homs, strawmen, out of context claims and just plain denial from the AGW supporters. It’s almost laughable. What we haven’t seen is any attempt at scientific understanding of what this paper represents. Very telling.
Add this statistical paper to the problems presented by unit roots and the statistics used in climate science is now pretty much trashed.
On another angle, as Lew Skannen indicated, the models are now in question. I’d further that by saying they are completely trashed also. They need to figure out how to predict natural warming events like the MWP as well CO2 warming events if the AGW hypothesis is to be supported. Looks like they have a lot of work to do.
wwf says:
August 15, 2010 at 2:54 am
I still see an unprecedented warming and at an unprecedented rate over the last century and a half.
Then be so kind to explain why this warming appear to have taken place in three distinct periods since 1850, and wich only the last warming-period (1970-2000) has been attributed to that trace gas called CO2.
To everyone else, figure 15, do i spot the trick there? Nice to see that this report also would have the need of a neat trick to show a unprecedented warming if they had to. But they don’t have to 🙂
joshua,
Good comment, yes, we should start thinking down the road a bilt.
Not just fun to watch the IPCC regarding papers like this, we must follow it closely. We must be the auditing body to follow the progress of the preparation of the next IPCC report to ensure any irregularities in the IPCC process are exposed promptly. Vigilance, watch the IPCC now closely.
John
The entire MWP argument is just a distraction from the facts of the paper. It may or may not have existed, this thread should not be about the MWP at all, it should be about this research paper and the implications it entails. Sure, it will have some effect on the MWP, but that is besides the point.
Brad says:
August 15, 2010 at 6:27 am
So what happens when you use the real data? I guess the whole thing was made up?
=========================================================
Brad, there’s no real data, they used Mann’s data.
This is not a reconstruction of temperature data, this is a reconstruction of Mann’s data.
It’s not meant to prove or disprove or anything to do with the MWP.
It’s only looking at Mann’s reconstruction of his own data.
Mann ran his data and came up with a flat line with a up-tic on the end, the hockey stick.
They ran his own data, and came up with warmer temperatures at the beginning than the end, no hockey stick.
If this paper proves to be true, then it can only mean one of two things:
1 Mann lied and cheated
2 Mann doesn’t know what he’s doing and is inept
TerryS: August 15, 2010 at 5:02 am
You say: “Figure 16 illustrates the remarkable feature that, at the onset of the industrial revolution, the increase in the Earth’s temp was so great it created a reversal in its slope. Fascinating.”
Gee, the same thing happened in 1350 and 1690, so there must have been something other than industrialization to cause it — say, some natural variation. Fascinating, huh?
If I understand this paper corerctly it demonstrates “Mike’s Nature trick” really was a trick in the usual meaning of the word. LOL.
I congratulate McShane and Wyner not only for the substance and readability of their paper.
More importantly, given that they had to know that publishing it would invite frenzied vehemence from the “team” of entrenched climate scientists, I congratulate them on having the courage to stand up and speak critically of the so called “consensus”.
I think it only takes a man with integrity and independence speaking out without fear to stop any falsity in climate science.
John
Great idea!
“NOTE: this will be the top post at WUWT for a couple of days, see below for new stories – Anthony”
Joe Horner says:
August 15, 2010 at 5:56 am
So, your call: Either:
(a) the proxies are unreliable predictors because they fail to track the current temp rise. In which case they are also worthless for back-casting. In which case there is absolutely no evidence to claim current warming is “unprecedented”, or,
(b) the proxies are reasonable predictors. In which case they may be ok to support a claim of unprecedented warming. But in that case, the insturmental record is showing warming that isn’t really there because the (reliable) proxies would show it if it was. In which case, the instrumental record is (as has been widely discussed) contaminated beyond usefulness.
Your call, (a), (b) or both of the above?
———
It is (a), for the moment.
Oh, this is an old trick. Timing your publication is every bit the main concern, especially for those who have an “in” with the journal editor. Trust me on this regarding the magic 3 things: 1. who gets published, 2. in what journal, and 3. when, are the three main considerations of many research efforts. The research itself can go to hell in a hand basket and still get published, as long as the unwritten 3 main considerations are given top priority. The next round of IPCC authors and their studies are already being planned around the magic 3 things. Who cares if the conclusions are nothing but piles of poo and statistically infantile.
OTOH, they might decide it cannot be fought any longer. They might say
“ah, now at last we have a real peer-reviewed statisticians’ paper. Why didn’t McIntyre get published and peer-reviewed, then we could have taken him seriously. In fact, he’s not really helped anyone by refusing to publish all this time. If we’d known our stats were shaky, of course we’d have got expert help…” etc etc
Now of course, we should remember Wegman, Gerry North, and all the rest. But people have short memories, and anyway, the press at the time of the Congress inquiries made it sound like Mann’s hokey stick had been vindicated by North.
A reader questioned my comment that the oceans have 40% less fish biomass. This is actually only a logical assumption, since it’s impossible to measure fish biomass, due to their dispersion. The study in question measures phytoplankton, which form the basis of the oceanic food chain. I should have noted that in my comment. Here is the study:
http://www.cleveland.com/world/index.ssf/2010/07/oceans_phytoplankton_drops_40.html
Climate scientists have plenty of training in statistical methodology. Those who claim superior abilities, such as McIntyre and Wegman, have not been successful in producing charts in peer reviewed publications that show anything other than the many versions of the hockey stick that have appeared in scientific publications. Their attempted corrections tend to be heavy on jargon, and in some cases question dispute the randomness of tree ring selection when they have little knowledge of the raw sampling.
“The hockey stick is broken” is a great rallying cry, but has zero substance in the world of qualified scientists who actually produce the charts in question. Some climate scientists have actually investigated the broken hockey stick claim in detail. Here’s what they found: nothing. If, on the other hand, one chooses to believe that IPCC and NASA scientists are part of a grant-seeking world-government-installing cabal, than it is difficult to dispute your argument. It’s considerably more difficult to believe it.
Thank you, thank you. I realized two years ago that climate science was a statistical exercise and that garbage in, garbage out. However, trying to explain this in the comments section of my local MSM newspapers, I was immediately shot down with the usual comments of “You are not a scientist” and “scientists say…” and “X scientists have issued reports proving that AGW is real”. This would be followed up by multi page arguments between an anti AGW scientist vs. a pro AGW scientist bringing out ice measurements, currents, air temperatures etc. They are all in awe of scientists whereas the poor old statisticians and mathematicians are ignored.
I don’t understand! where’s the hockey stick? (sarc)
Michael Jankowski says:
I wonder how many emails went back-and-forth between team members today?
I wonder if they were smart enough to encrypt them this time around.
To me, it still looks very much like a hockey stick. The only real difference is that the handle now has a downward slope.
Moderators,
If this post goes ballistic, as it has started . . . . . you guys better cancel some dates and stock up on Red Bull and popcorn.
Good moderating to ya . . .
John
But… but… but… weren’t the proxies properly homogenized, parametrized, adjusted, back filled, and quality enhanced in Mann’s version? Surely these statisticians were able to use Mann’s original proprietary data code file, yes? Makes me wonder if they even bothered to ask him. I’m sure he would have said yes, right?
To a layman such as I, the arguments presented so far by the Mann believers who have rushed to defend their idol are quite droll in their utter lack of understanding of the paper and of any attempt to point out that that it was solely the Mann-made data that was used.
Bill Tuttle says:
August 15, 2010 at 7:11 am
TerryS: August 15, 2010 at 5:02 am
You say: “Figure 16 illustrates the remarkable feature that, at the onset of the industrial revolution, the increase in the Earth’s temp was so great it created a reversal in its slope. Fascinating.”
Please get your quotes right. I did not say that, I was quoting eudoxus
OK. After having looked at this a good deal, I come away with these observations:
1. They use Mann’s data, which means CRU-adjusted data
2. The data uses temps from 80%+ poorly sited stations, distorting the post-1990 record
3. Their frustrations about forecasting and backcasting have to do with the post-1990 record, which is distorted by poorly sited stations and unknown adjustments, plus the loss of nearly 90% of met stations in the post-1990 period.
4. Though they came up with a hockey stick that shows 1000AD as high as now, yet no one is farming Greenland now, so no matter how much this undercuts Mann/CRU, it is still inadequate (which they seem to be saying, in fact)
5. The new hockey stick is missing the LIA (as I read it); it shows temps in 1900 as low as the LIA. The bottom of the curve (annual and rolling both) is after 1800, which we all know is not true.
6. Amazingly, the 2000 un-rolling curve is pretty much exactly equal to 1000AD
7. One of their main points is the width of the uncertainty bands, which I have yelled and screamed about for a long time. A better graphing would show the 95% certainty bands, IMHO.
8. They do conclude that the predictive capabilities from the Mann dataset is just too low to be usable. For the IPCC, this is definitely not a good result.
9. I posit that corrected and more inclusive data for post-1990 would remedy much of their difficulties, which are tied to the post-1990 steep rise; i.e., I still suggest the steep rise does not exist in the real world, only in the post-adjusted CRU numbers.
Latest news:
Not only the surface temperature record has been shown inaccurate by Ross McKitrick latest papers and others, the statistical fabric of the proxies collage with this temperature record has now been shown a dubious use of statistical tools that doesn’t resist to proper analysis.
CO2 might be increasing but the temperature curve that is supposed to reflect this CO2 increase is now exposed as baseless. We are finally back to the basics of meteorology and it is time for many here to read Leroux “dynamic analysis of weather and climate” Springer 2010, 2ed. as all the weather events we are witnessing were predicted and explained.
In my opinion, Tamino and Romm are enforcers, not thought leaders. I’d be interested in Revkin’s take on this. It strikes me that this is the kind of paper that he will read and then call his buddies Mann and Jones for a chat about what they think it means.
While he’s at it, perhaps he will call his other buddy Hansen for a chat about his program to manage the NASA GISS data set so well. Your recent post http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/11/more-gunsmoke-this-time-in-nepal/
would provide a quick reference point for him.
Fat chance.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/11/more-gunsmoke-this-time-in-nepal/
McShane and Wyner will never again share faculty lounge crudites with Briffa, Hansen, Jones, Mann, Trenberth et al. Meantime, we note that in respecting climate hysterics’ self-evidently selective and skewed dendrochronological time-series, this seminal paper grants the collusive Green Gang unwonted legitimacy even in non-statistical contexts. Factoring in such cultists’ absurdly manipulated base data eked out from c. AD 1000 reduces any and all Warmist hypotheses to smoking ruin.
I’d like to second this:
Brad says:
August 15, 2010 at 6:27 am
So what happens when you use the real data?
Just found a comment about the paper on Tamino’s site but no response yet.
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2010/08/13/changes/#comment-43742
I have posted one at Romm’s site about the paper.
It seems that Tamino has let a few comments be posted about the paper. Already, one of his sychophants has called McShane and Wyner “well-known denialists.” (shaking my head sadly)
McIntyre and Mckitrick were publised and peer reviewed, this is additonal confirmation. At some point the ref will throw in the towel, but the team will continue until then.
For those who don’t frequent RC, Here’s the quote:
“[Response: The M&W paper will likely take some time to look through (especially since it isn’t fully published and the SI does not seem to be available yet), but I’m sure people will indeed be looking. I note that one of their conclusions “If we consider rolling decades, 1997-2006 is the warmest on record; our model gives an 80% chance that it was the warmest in the past thousand years” is completely in line with the analogous IPCC AR4 statement. But this isn’t the thread for this, so let’s leave discussion for when there is a fuller appreciation for what’s been done. – gavin]”
The message to me, and I have read the whole thing now, is that using the data the AGW set have used, Mann’s graph cannot be derived with the correct statistical tools.
They make no comment as to the robustness of the data but simply point out , indirectly, that Mann and the AGW set had to improperly torture their own data to produce the FUD hockey stick.
They are saying that Mann et al have cooked the books. Like those boys over at ENRON or Bernie Maddof they have carried out an act of fraud and 20 other good ol’ boys have validated their deceit. This was proved incontrovertibly without having to delve into the suspected alterations to the data before they were used in the fraud.
I now await a similar expose on the data by people who have the same kudos . This CO2 thing is just another boondoggle, and a small whiff of causation as seen by Arhennius is not an argument for blaming carbon for any climatic changes we may be going through. It rather reminds me of a trick we would play on the credible at school , getting people to blow into a beaker of quick lime solution and point out that there was something wrong with them as the solution turned cloudy. We always had the “cure” and the beaker of fresh water handy.
Mountebanks is what they are.
Anthony: just a thought: it would be very interesting to get Wegman’s take on this. He may not have the stomach for it, but it might be worth asking.
There seems to be quite a lot of debate at CP between Curry and the RC team. Gavin does not like all the questions posed as to the usefulness of tree ring proxy data. His response is quite telling.
“Paleo-reconstructions are not anything special in science – they are simply the result of lots of people trying to see what they can discern of the past through a rather murky lens. Your ‘auditors’ have decided that any judgement call in doing that must be challenged and insinuate continuously that every issue is being fixed for some ulterior motive. This is not a useful challenge to the science, because it undermines the making of any judgement in the analysis whatsoever. The ‘auditors’ do not produce alternatives because they too would have to make decisions about how to proceed which would open them up to their own criticisms. That is what needs to change if they are going to make a contribution. For an example of how that ‘citizen science’ can really work, look at what Ron Broberg and Zeke Hausfeather are doing with the weather station data – they aren’t sitting around declaring that ‘it can’t be done’ or that the GISTEMP/CRU/NCDC methods are fixed, they are going into the data, making choices, seeing what impact they have and determining what is robust. Indeed, that is science without the need for the quotes. Would that there would be more of that.”
What he is really saying is quite astonishing. I his opinion you can not simply say that the data and the analysis are crap since this would be unscientific. You have to try and find a better way of massaging the crap data in order to produce science. This as anyone can figure out is not a logic that applies to other areas of science. Recognizing crap for what it truly is can in some ways be the most productive way forward. But if you have a predetermined way forward that may be jeopardized by this recognition it makes sense to shift around the logic.
Lucy above – if I recall rightly Gerry North showed himself as a rather partisan commentator with his responses to Climategate. However Edward Wegman IMO still retains his integrity. As you said at CA it will be interesting to see how/if GN weighs in on this one.
The paper is referred to as McShane and Wyner 2010, but the data on their graphs end at the year 2000. Has the “hottest decade on record” been omitted?
@Evan Jones says:
August 14, 2010 at 8:48 pm
I am not sure where you are getting your figures from so I cann’t really respond. Much of the heat energy from AGW is in the oceans. Exactly how energy moves from oceans to the surface air is still hard to model. But that the heat is coming is clear.
@Re: Mike Roddy’s comment. Disciplinary arrogance is not helpful. Climatologists need to be open to learning from statisticians, and statisticians need to remember that when going outside their area of training they may overlook things. My guess is this paper will help refine how proxy studies are done, but the dust is far from settled. Academic debates like this can be very healthy. Unfortunately charlatans with political agendas will try to use such debates to undermine science. [snip]
The alarmists will still say that there is an increase in temp at the start of the industrial revolution, according to the revised graph in the paper…
GeoFlynx,
You don’t understand. Nothing was ‘omitted.’ The data used was the exact same data that Mann used.
This paper corrects the bogus, self-serving ‘statistics’ that Mann has been spoon feeding the credulous believers in CAGW.
It should be noted that the Michael Beenstock and Yaniv Reingewertz paper also demonstrated the poor statistical techniques of the climate team.
http://economics.huji.ac.il/facultye/beenstock/Nature_Paper091209.pdf
This paper does not stand alone.
I am not sure what the fuss is about. If you look here
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/09/hockey-stick-observed-in-noaa-ice-core-data/
the 2nd graph here shows exactly the same: in 1200 AD it was as warm as it is today.
I am sure this must have been due to all the methane that the animals put up in the air. When the humans killed off the animals the methane went down and it became ice cold. Lucky enough we now have humans who now put CO2 up in the air.
Excellent news and confirms my suspicion and I’m sure many others as well. AGW is built on a faith based system not a scientific based system. How they (warmists) “know” what they know has always been the central question in my mind. The brilliance of this study is accepting the manipulated data that Mann, Hansen, Jones, Schmidt et al have manufactured and showing that the conclusions they have drawn are incorrect. Unbelievable hubris on the part of these climate change “scientists”. As a US taxpayer, I do not want to pay the salaries of people who masquerade as scientists while doing advocacy work. Throw the bums out!
Michael Mann disagrees with you. He says:
http://www.meteo.psu.edu/~mann/shared/articles/Schmidtetal-QSR04.pdf
Read it with wonder when first saw it. Two points: one of the authors is at the University of Pennsylvania. Direct smack at Mann. Second, Fig. 15 shows an upward future “natural” trend, based on all the data. The IPCC forecast a “natural” neutral to cooling trend. So the difference between “natural” and IPCC CO2/forced is less. Not in the range where the CO2 models would work.
A game changer for the skeptic side, but not enough to alarm the alarmists.
Please clear up some confusion on my part:
The graphs above only cover the Northern Hemisphere proxy data. The authors decided NOT to include Southern Hemisphere proxy data in their analysis. Why? How can they reach this conclusion on global annual temperatures (in their Conclusions section) without looking at global proxy data? :
“On the one hand, we conclude unequivocally that the evidence for a “long-handled” hockey stick (where the shaft of the hockey stick extends to the year 1000 AD) is lacking in the data. The fundamental problem is that there is a limited amount of proxy data which dates back to 1000 AD; what is available is weakly predictive of global annual temperature.“
[Kindly do not resort to religious arguments and/or references.]
duckster…you say:
You need a theory to explain what is happening now.
Actually not. For the purposes of rejecting a hypothesis all “we” need is one counter example. All that has to be shown, is that current theories are not predictive and that they have systemic flaws. CAGW can go down in flames without another theory to take its place.
I think a letter to my congressmen with a request to suspend all funding for paleoclimatology as it relates to AGW is in order – at least until a complete review of the science can be undertaken. I hope others here in the states do the same.
It seems that McShane and Wyner omitted one vital step in their reconstruction. As any fully qualified, peer reviewed climate scientist will tell you, it’s necessary to rotate this graph by 10 degrees counter-clockwise. The reasons are so obvious that I see no need to explain them here.
Once this step has been done, it can be seen that McShane and Wyner 2010 is in pretty close agreement with Mann et al. (1999).
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4586660/mcshane-wyner-adjusted.png
Mike:
I am not sure where you are getting your figures from so I can’t really respond.
Well, for 20th century global temperature trend, I am stipulating HadCRU (though I have serious doubts concerning adjustments, since they can’t or won’t release their raw data).
The CO2 forcing numbers and the positive feedback numbers are from the IPCC. I think the raw forcing number (+1.2C per doubling of CO2) may be accurate or near accurate.
Feedback is another bag of beans, however. And when I count those beans, they do not appear to be consistent with the IPCC inventory:
The boosting of the 1.2C effect to a midstream +3.2C effect via positive feedback loops I doubt very much because it depends on factors, such as a receding of the tundra and glaciers, which have been ongoing since the LIA turned its coldest corner around 1650. And if those factors are ongoing, then so must the feedback, if any.
Therefore a 40% increase in CO2 since 1900 (the Keeling numbers plus earlier proxies) should have produced a lot more warming than +0.7C — if the IPCC positive feedback theory is correct.
If there is no positive feedback (or even net negative feedback), then a.) Global Warming is still real, and b.) It presents no emergency, whatever.
Folks who follow this line of reasoning (I daresay many, if not most of us) are pleased to refer to ourselves as “Lukewarmers”. That is to say, if we take one of those CO2 global warming multiple choice tests, we look like genuine AGW fanatics. (YES, CO2 is a greenhouse gas. YES, there has been warming. YES, man has added CO2. YES, there has been sea level rise. etc., etc., etc.) Yet our conclusions are entirely opposite of the alarmists when it comes to the bottom line — and to policy.
There are usually (not always, but usually) two sides two sides to a controversy. I encourage you to do a doubletake and reassess. Perhaps this will not change your mind. But in any event it can only put you in more deliberate possession of your position.
Has anybody else thought, the errors in what the hockey stick told about temperature is simply not realistic? A few sources of errors, the thermometers used, the accuracy of the tree ring proxies, and all the other allegedly ACCURATE past measurement techniques. I suspect if it were within +-3 degrees Celsius that would have been great.
And what would you call a 20 foot change in sea level, other than measurement error? I mean the accuracy there would be fine for a rise of 400 feet since the last ice age. Think about it, were are talking 5% from the last ice age. Does anybody really know what the sea level was when the Bering Land Bridge was above water, and to what accuracy?
But one thing we do now know, there were ancient settlements in Greenland, that place with a funny name for being such a modern snowball, under the glaciers right now. And that is not refutable.
Mann has been five-holed! (Nutmeg for soccer fans)
In my opinion Wegman, et al sufficiently sliced and diced Mann’s methodology five years ago. This paper simply adds more evidence that the statistics employed by Mann (and his pals who used the same techniques to produce similar results) are flawed and their results invalid. I can’t get too excited, however. We’re talking about the dubious science of paleoclimatology; tree rings, sediment cores, etc. In essence they’re applying statistical analysis to “guesses” rather than “real” instrumental data.
Far more interesting, I think, is what is being done to the surface temperature record by NOAA and NASA/GISS. These taxpayer funded government agencies have credibility in the eyes of many of the public…and this is truly dangerous. Personally, I think using taxpayer dollars to study tree rings is akin to funding astrology.
Mike Roddy says:
August 15, 2010 at 7:44 am
“…….
“Climate scientists have plenty of training in statistical methodology. Those who claim superior abilities, such as McIntyre and Wegman, have not been successful in producing charts in peer reviewed publications that show anything other than the many versions of the hockey stick that have appeared in scientific publications. Their attempted corrections tend to be heavy on jargon, and in some cases question dispute the randomness of tree ring selection when they have little knowledge of the raw sampling.”
Mike, stop. Apparently your argument seems to be: Scientists are better than statisticians in the science of statistics. Throughout the history of the climate debate, we’ve been told over and over again that we laymen aren’t capable of understanding the intricacies of climate science and it is best if we leave it to the experts. (Paradoxically, it has been obvious for some time the climate scientists themselves didn’t understand the intricacies of statistics.) Be it global temp anomaly, concentration of CO2, earth’s total ice content, ect., it is all mathematical work. Still, they can’t use the argument that we should “leave it to the experts” when they don’t engage in the same practice(especially in a hard science such as math/statistics). It’s not like they haven’t been told. They were told over and over again that they were employing the wrong statistical methodologies for over a decade now. It is simply a damn shame that they had to waste the ENTIRE WORLD’S TIME, ENERGY AND MONEY before this would be shown when a true scientist would have listened to the objections and tested the objections before out-of-hand dismissing the claims as the climate-scientists have, ON EVERY LEVEL OF THE DEBATE. Truly, the world has better things to do than to disprove every simplistic blathering coming from a totalitarian, Malthusian, socialist posing as a scientist.
Mike, can you imagine what this world could have accomplished in the last 30 years if all of the mental, financial, and social energies hadn’t been diverted to this issue, from both sides of the debate?
Mike, you are wrong about the idea that “much of the heat energy from AGW is in the oceans”. In order to say what part of your thesis is most wrong, please post your mechanism for how the longwave radiation greenhouse gases emit are absorbed by the oceans. More specifically, what is your heat transfer mathematical equation for your mechanism re: LW radiation net heat forcing in layers below the surface tension (because there, the weak energy turned into heat is evaporated as soon as it hits this layer).
“If we consider rolling decades, 1997-2006 is the warmest on record; our model gives an 80% chance that it was the warmest in the past thousand years” is completely in line with the analogous IPCC AR4 statement. But this isn’t the thread for this, so let’s leave discussion for when there is a fuller appreciation for what’s been done. – gavin]“
===============================================
This paper is not saying what Gavin wants it to say.
This paper has absolutely nothing to do with proving or disproving temps and has absolutely nothing to do with being in line with anything the IPCC says about temps.
The IPCC statement is based on assuming that certain temp prox are accurate and that modeling of that data are also correct.
This paper is assuming that Mann’s temp prox are accurate.
This paper is just showing what Mann did with his data.
It is showing that of all the models runs that Mann did, he had to pick the one that showed what he wanted it to show.
This paper is showing that even using Mann’s own numbers, they could not reproduce his results.
As I understood the M&W paper (and I’m willing to be corrected, as IANAS), it describes a sophisticated method for analyzing this kind of data. They use what is presumably one of the most comprehensive data sets out there, and proceed to demonstrate what their method can do. The predictions are made simply to demonstrate that their method is capable of making them. The backcasts, similarly, are done because that is an appropriate and important step.
They verify that their results are in several ways consistent with other methods – this is also a necessary step when describing a new method. The big difference compared to previous work is that M&W’s analysis dramatically increases the error bars, showing that the data set in question has no predictive value to speak of.
If it holds up, it is a great contribution. Future work on proxy reconstructions could apply this method and produce analyses with much better predictive force. The thing that is bound to happen is that you double back and re-assess your data and underlying assumptions, when your sophisticated statistical analysis tells you that your results do not match reality.
Generally speaking, this sort of advance does not necessarily cast previous work in disrepute, even though it may overturn their conclusions. Authors of previous work can, OTOH, cast themselves in disrepute by refusing to accept that their results were wrong, even if confronted with convincing evidence.
Dang. Wish I’d seen this earlier. I hate to be at the end of a few hundred comments. Oh well. I do have a couple thoughts.
First, the new graph showing what Mann’s data turns out when the math is done correctly is still a hockey stick. The blade looks like it lost its size enhancer. The shaft is now tilted up from being flat. But it still looks like a hockey stick to me. The end of the shaft at year 1000 appears to be higher than the short blade.
If we keep in mind that this graph shows bad statistics and not reality, we can still have a bit of fun with it. At the bottom of the LIA, if we take the warmist view that the industrial revolution accounts for the upturn, then we might be able to posit that CO2 saved us from a developing ice age. Alternatively, the uptick that is the blade is simply temperatures returning to normal, not the effect of trace amounts of CO2. Another point to make about the graph is that it only shows 1000 years which, in geologic time frames is an extremely tiny period. I’m hoping these guys take on the data selection next as I’d really like to see what they have to say about that.
At this point I would avoid triumphalism. Just as I’d like to see evidence from the warmists that is replicable, I’d like to see what other statisticians have to say about this work. While I’m a skeptic of CAWG because of all the bad science and politics pretending to be science, it still could be true. If so, the so called scientists have really hurt the cause they claim to be supporting by losing the trust of the public with their dishonest techniques for both getting the results they got as well as trying to pass it off as credible. There will be attacks on this new paper, and it will be interesting to see what they are and whether or not they have any credibility. Watching the fat lady sing would be fun, but I’m not sure the CAGW crowd doesn’t have an encore or two first.
And last, I think its fun to contemplate that if this new paper holds up, it will be fun to point out that all the papers that advocate for warming were peer reviewed extensively and nobody caught the problems. It won’t help the credibility of peer review any. The next little while should be lots of fun.
@Latimer Alder says August 15, 2010 at 6:32 am:
This paper shows 2 things:
1. The amount of manipulation done to the numbers has created a(n artificial) dataset that is unusable. This is really remarkable in science. Millions of datapoints, and the data cannot be used to extrapolate anything. The buggery part essentially, according to the paper, is post-1990 period. They point to it again and again as something they simply cannot get to work. This should be running up red flags about the instrument data from after 1990.
2. Mann did not know what he was doing. YES, the “science” at the CRU/Mann level IS 100% statistics, yet – as pointed out in the paper – there are not enough scientific statisticians working in the field of global warming. Climatologists should not be doing their own statistics. (Pay attention to HARRY_READ_ME.txt) Statisticians should not be out collecting tree rings or ice cores.
Much of the heat energy from AGW is in the oceans.
Yet SST has increased less than land surface. Sea level rise is perhaps 8 inches over the last century. (Uplifting/subsiding, eroding/silting areas make this difficult to calculate. And coral atolls tend to go with the flow, literally rising with the tide, as it were.)
The “big six” and other oceanic/atmospheric cycles (PDO, NAO, etc., etc.) appear to be much involved.
I tend to be more of a sea witch than a sun worshiper, myself. So be careful when you look at the trend since the late 1970s. All six (and more) of those cycles were simultaneously in cool phase. From 1979 – 2001, they all went from cool to warm, one at a time. On (natural) schedule. And now one or two are beginning to stagger and revert to cool, the PDO being pack leader.
So the next couple of decades are going to tell us a lot. (But I will also keep an eye on solar cycle 24, just in case!)
Don’t forget the implications this has for co2 records. They are much less certain.
henry@Evan Jones
on what measurements do you base your believe that CO2 is a greehouse gas i.e that its warming properties are greater than its cooling properties?
Mike Roddy says at 7:44 am:
Thanks, Mike, for your uninformed opinion. The fact is, however, that Dr Wegman is an internationally recognized statistician. His C.V. [click on his name] lists his personal interests at the end — none of which is related to climate issues. Dr Wegman is neutral on the subject. But he is not neutral on the improper use of statistics.
One of the central criticisms of Michael Mann’s CAGW clique is their amateurish, incompetent and self-serving use of statistics. They do not understand statistics. Mann refuses to use R because it does not validate his hokey stick chart. He programs in Fortran, which is akin to an English major writing in ancient Sumerian cuneiform.
The fact that Mike Roddy tries to excuse Mann’s shenanigans by referring to the climate pal review system that Mann controls only shows how thoroughly corrupt the climate peer review system and the Michael Mann clique are.
Without proper statistical verification, tree ring proxy studies are not worth the pixels on a computer screen — and that is why Mann and this tax-sucking clique run and hide out from real statisticians, and why the UN/IPCC refuses to allow any unbiased statisticians to review its CAGW sales brochures.
GeoFlynx says:
August 15, 2010 at 9:40 am
“The paper is referred to as McShane and Wyner 2010, but the data on their graphs end at the year 2000. Has the “hottest decade on record” been omitted?”
Geo, remember that this paper’s purpose was to detect if the proxies had and predictive capabilities. They used the instrumental data(CRU N.H.) to determine if the proxy data held true to the temps. The reason for omitting the data beyond 2000 is because there is almost no proxy data after 2000, so one can’t compare instrumental data to proxy data that doesn’t exist. Geo, you and others should note, the paper isn’t stating what was or wasn’t the temps of the past, they were only checking if the proxy data could predict or, conversely, detect temperatures if the proper statistical methods were applied. Apparently the answer is no. This is a pretty innocuous statement. The implications, however, are not innocuous. Specifically, if your name is Mann. But he’s not the only one caught in the “lasso”,(heh, I made a punny!) Any modeling made from the conclusions of the paleo-science specific to recent climatology are in question. So, as our friend Mike Roddy has pointed out, there are about 20 other scientists whose work that is called into question. Mostly because they believed in the validity of statistical methods they employed. At least I hope they believed in them. They probably should have taken some of their work to a statistician. But then, it may have invalidated their studies, so they didn’t. Recollect, one of the hallmarks of a psuedo-science is “Lack of openness to testing by other experts.” There are several other hallmarks, and current CAGW climatology seems to fit perfectly.
Andrew has summarized many of the salient points of this paper. Nevertheless, there is one point that I feel deserves a little more emphasis (from page 38)
“…the fact that the proxies seem unable to capture the
sharp run-up in temperature of the 1990s.”
The overall goal of a proxy is to estimate the temperature series in years before direct records of temperature exist. Once on reconstructs such a series, one can look at it to answer a number of questions. One such question:
Is there evidence in the (reconstructed) temperature series of examples in the past of sharp run-ups in temperature, similar to what has been observed in the last half century.”
Looking that the series for such evidence implicitly accepts that if those run-ups occurred, they would be evident in the reconstruction.
Is that assumption valid?
We have only one period where it is known that such a temperature run-up occurred, and the authors tell us that the proxy measures don’t identify it.
If the only known example of a temperature run-up isn’t manifested in the proxy data, why on earth would you assume that past temperature run-ups would be captured in the proxy data?
Anyone using the proxy data to reject the assumption that there were temperature spikes in the past is guilty of making an assumption expressly rejected by the data.
Now, now, smokes, be nice.
But he’s right about the statistics, Mike.
Wegman is tops in his field. And at the Wegman hearings, Mann (IIRC; might have been one of the others) proudly declaimed he was not a statistician.
That does not bode well for what amounts to an involved statistical study (‘way out of my league).
The simple and acknowledged failure of the proxies to match observed temperature changes from the 60’s onward should have been quite sufficient on it’s own to demonstrate that the proxies were unsuitable for the purpose of comparing the present with the past. It is sad that it has taken so much time and effort to unravel the deceit.
This gives a whole new meaning to ‘hide the decline’ and the ‘nature trick’.
Those strategies were clearly intended to avoid the clear implication that the proxies were an unsuitable starting point from which to assess the significance of current ongoing temperature variations.
If they had then accepted the obvious then their careers and the whole concept of AGW would have ended at that point because without using the available proxy evidence no recent temperature measurements could ever have been said to be in any way unusual.
The truth always gets out and here it is.
sorry but OT.
Niwa sued over data accuracy
NZPA Last updated 16:09 15/08/2010
The country’s state-owned weather and atmospheric research body is being taken to court in a challenge over the accuracy of its data used to calculate global warming.
The New Zealand Climate Science Coalition said it had lodged papers with the High Court asking the court to invalidate the official temperatures record of the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (Niwa).
The lobby of climate sceptics and ACT Party have long criticised Niwa over its temperature data, which Niwa says is mainstream science and not controversial, and the raw data publicly available.
The coalition said the New Zealand Temperature Records (NZTR) were the historical base of NIWA’s advice to the Government on issues relating to climate change.
Coalition spokesman Bryan Leyland said many scientists believed although the earth had been warming for 150 years, it had not heated as much as Government archives claimed.
He said the New Zealand Meteorological Service had shown no warming during the past century but Niwa had adjusted its records to show a warming trend of 1degC. The warming figure was high and almost 50 percent above the global average, said Mr Leyland.
The coalition said the 1degC warming during the 20th century was based on adjustments taken by Niwa from a 1981 student thesis by then student Jim Salinger, a Niwa employee who was later sacked after talking to the media without permission.
The Salinger thesis was subjective and untested and meteorologists more senior to Dr Salinger did not consider the temperature data should be adjusted, it said.
The coalition would ask the court to find Niwa’s New Zealand Temperature Record invalid.
It would also seek a court declaration preventing Niwa from using the NZTR when it advised the Government or any other body on global climate issues. It would also ask the court to order Niwa to produce a full and accurate NZTR.
Mr Leyland said Niwa was refusing to repudiate the NZTR to avoid political embarrassment and loss of public confidence.
A substantive hearing was expected later this year.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/4026330/Niwa-sued-over-data-accuracy
Gavin now has a live link to the .pdf download of this paper on Real Climate. I think we’ve caught his attention! I’ve been watching awareness of this paper evolve over there for the past day or so, from “We’ve heard about the paper” to “here’s the link”:
[Response: The M&W paper will likely take some time to look through (especially since it isn’t fully published and the SI does not seem to be available yet), but I’m sure people will indeed be looking. I note that one of their conclusions “If we consider rolling decades, 1997-2006 is the warmest on record; our model gives an 80% chance that it was the warmest in the past thousand years” is completely in line with the analogous IPCC AR4 statement. But this isn’t the thread for this, so let’s leave discussion for when there is a fuller appreciation for what’s been done. – gavin]
See this posting at “Expert Credibility in Climate Change – Responses to Comments”
Filed under: Climate Science skeptics — group @ 3 August 2010
Statisticians now emphasize the importance of involving them more
in e.g. proxy reconstructions. Quite rightly.
But, the accusation that Mann and others neglected to do so, just to be
able to manipulate and distort results;I don’t believe it.
It is more a question of tradition in routine science: you would
perhaps consult a statistics expert for general advice, but mostly not really
integrate him/her in the team. For a variety of reasons: (1) you don’t see
all risks of faulty application, not being an expert, (2) you may not have
the funds reserved in the project budget, (3) you can see that the expert
is bugged by some many other teams (personal experience) etc.
I think you have to look at it historically, the science projects have
grown in the past decades, both in complexity, scope and also concerning
the stakes from a societal viewpoint.
So to sum up:
The almighty Hockey Stick was derived from:
1. Manipulated, mangled, cherry picked data, and
2. The statistical methodology it uses is somewhere between highly suspect and very wrong.
As a scientist, I strenuously object to use of the term “climate scientist”, as it suggests these people actually practice real science.
On CA 1, Patrick Hadley had this very interesting comment:
“Posted Aug 15, 2010 at 10:16 AM | Permalink | Reply
Professor Wyner http://climateaudit.org/2010/08/14/mcshane-and-wyner-2010/#comment-239212 tells us that The paper has been accepted, but publication is still a bit into the future as it is likely to be accompanied by invited discussants and comment.
It seems likely that Michael Mann would be one of the invited discussants, and hence that the Hockey Team have been well aware of this paper for some time. If that is the case then one can understand why Gavin et al have been so uninterested in discussions about the proxies recently, and have been playing down the importance of the hockey stick.”
Smokey says:
“You don’t understand. Nothing was ‘omitted.’ The data used was the exact same data that Mann used.This paper corrects the bogus, self-serving ‘statistics’ that Mann has been spoon feeding the credulous believers in CAGW.”
GeoFlynx – Actually I understand quite well. The title of the paper is “A Statistical Analysis of Multiple Temperature Proxies: Are Reconstructions of Surface Temperatures Over the Last 1000 Years Reliable?” and the work addresses “hockey stick” graphs from a variety of NORTH AMERICAN (not global) reconstructions, many with more modern dates than the Mann graph you refer to.
When this paper concludes, “Nevertheless, the temperatures of the last few decades have been relatively warm compared to many of the thousand year temperature curves sampled from the posterior distribution of our model. “, one can only question why the most recent decade was omitted. Given that graphs, where the 2000 data limit occurs, are not direct comparison with the Mann 1998 data and that the change would be slight, I again raise the question.
I was thinking along similar lines that sandyinderby was thinking. That is that Duckster does not know when the medieval warm period (MWP) was. Duckster’s comments on the MWP seemed as if he were directing us to look at the Little Ice Age as the MWP. Maybe history is not interesting to Duckster.
Stephen Wilde says:
August 15, 2010 at 11:10 am
The simple and acknowledged failure of the proxies to match observed temperature changes from the 60′s onward should have been quite sufficient on it’s own to demonstrate that the proxies were unsuitable for the purpose of comparing the present with the past. It is sad that it has taken so much time and effort to unravel the deceit.
================================
Stephen, I agree.
Weren’t tree rings used up until 1960. Then because tree rings showed cooling after 1960, the tree ring data was replaced with thermometers at airports.
And 1960 is where temps show a rapid jump up.
The only questions I have are:
1) Will anyone besides us pay any attention?
2) How long until RC says “it doesn’t matter.”
Is it Christmas again? This week has been just like when Climategate broke last November. Now we have MMH2010 followed by MW2010.
Mark.r says:
August 15, 2010 at 11:18 am
I wish you guys well in that endeavor. We haven’t had much luck in the courts in the U.S. thus far, but that may change shortly.
Anthony!!!!!! Can you put an explanation about the graphs posted? People are coming here looking at the graphs and concluding the authors are validating the hockey stick!!!(While obviously not bothering to read the paper.) Specifically figure 16. Apparently, figure 15 is only visible to people that actually read the paper. We should do a study on that phenomenon. Never mind, its already been done over and over again. People see what they wish to see.
It should not be forgotten that this paper is not only an indictment of Mann’s original papers, it’s also an indictment of the “peer-review” process that allowed such rubbish to be printed. Any publication that relies heavily on complex statistics where the authors are not themselves trained statisticians should be reviewed by one both before submission and as part of the review process. Clearly, this did not happen and the journals responsible, their editorial boards and reviewer panels should hang their heads in shame and consider their positions. The reviewers were clearly making judgements way outside their areas of expertise which any competent editor should have spotted.
Oh, oh, solar science look out, your wasteland is going to peer over the horizon sometime soon.
@GeoFlynx,
You still don’t get it, do you? The purpose of this paper was not to infer anything from Mann’s data, it was to demonstrate that Mann, et al employed faulty statistical methods. They used the same (probably corrupted and cherry picked) data that Mann used only they applied the correct statistical analysis and got startlingly different results. Their results are irrelevant, but they have proven that Mann’s results are, at best, invalid.
——————————-
@Jimbo,
I followed your link over to RC. I don’t go there often because I always feel like I need to shower after I leave. They’re not quite yet foaming at the mouth but they’re getting a little frothy around the lips.
——————————-
@ Smokey and James Sexton,
It’s worth it to read the comments just to read your eloquent smackdown of climate trolls. Thank you and well done, gentlemen.
Paul K2 says:
August 15, 2010 at 10:24 am
“Please clear up some confusion on my part:
The graphs above only cover the Northern Hemisphere proxy data. The authors decided NOT to include Southern Hemisphere proxy data in their analysis. Why? How can they reach this conclusion on global annual temperatures (in their Conclusions section) without looking at global proxy data? :”
Paul, they weren’t seeking to reach a conclusion of the global annual temperatures, they were seeking to know if one could with the proxy data. It is a fine distinction, but an important one. What they were stating was the proxy data isn’t useful in that regard.
TerryS: August 15, 2010 at 8:15 am
Please get your quotes right. I did not say that, I was quoting eudoxus
Mea maxima culpa. I did a cut-paste and snipped the wrong tag.
Ummmm — when I was distracted by a camel spider running across my keyboard.
Yup. Camel spider. That’s the ticket…
Mikael Pihlström>> Sounds like you reject the hypothesis of neglection (from Mann et al) and want to substitute it with nonchalance, is that correct?
This post worries me. Aren’t we laying our flanks exposed to the danger of double-dipped and robust recession?
If it wasn’t bad enough to discover that the arithmetical skills of fiscal logicians, although considerably greater than their strategic judgement, still registered an F, we are now facing another crisis of confidence!
OK, I could handle the issue of upside down temperature proxies. We’re only Human after all.
I even managed to swallow those informative, albeit time consuming, interludes with Gav and Secular Amimist and DoughBoyo and all the rest of the RC stalwarts. PS, guys, sorry if I didn’t mention you by name, you’re all still lovingly ‘membered.
Nope, what really stuck in my craw was that, despite the overwhelmingly over-stocked war-chests, the grateful acceptance of your findings by tax-hungry western politicians and the crusading zeal of belief-blinded journalists, was that you got shafted by part-time, curious, indefatigable and gifted amateurs.
And their arsenal comprised of what exactly?
Truth, scepticism, science, for sure, but when spiced and flavoured by an inherent distrust of hubristic certainty and garnished with an appreciation that a talented scientist who came up with the physical principles of the GHE, later modified his findings.
Indeed. ‘Tis chastening that his most ardent supporters conveniently ignore his more recent caveats, the inconvenience of poor data collection, the statistical prestidigitations of the most senior in the field of climate science that created the belief driven Procrustean fit that resulted in the unprecedented, HS.
Guys, you came in as big, hungry sharks and you got shredded by minnows. Your backers must be losing patience. Take care.
Dr. Dave says:
August 15, 2010 at 12:12 pm
Thanks, I appreciate the compliment! And you’re not bad yourself. And, I agree, Smokey does a great job!
Really, its usually, it’s a pretty easy and fun endeavor. The trolls don’t attack the paper in a valid scientific manner. (Most probably can’t and probably haven’t read the paper.)
Prediction: Mann will claim this paper has already been debunked, and is part of a fossil-fuel funded conspiracy to weaken the public’s confidence in the overwhelming consensus of credible scientists.
In short, without even needing to read it, it’s already wrong.
By the way, McShane and Wyner are about to have their past checked for any faint evidence of oil, tobacco or right-wing opinions on any subject (“right-wing” in this case being anything to the right of Trotsky). Because as everyone knows, its not the math that makes the paper correct, its the purity of heart of the person doing the math that counts
[REPLY – It’s the vast wight-ring conspiracy. ~ Sauron]
The conclusion shows that hockey stick sucks, and the data is horrendous historically. Watch out, solar science is the next to go down based on historical crap data.
“6. Conclusion. Research on multi-proxy temperature reconstructions
of the earth’s temperature is now entering its second decade. While the
literature is large, there has been very little collaboration with universitylevel,
professional statisticians (Wegman et al., 2006; Wegman, 2006). Our
paper is an effort to apply some modern statistical methods to these problems.
While our results agree with the climate scientists findings in some
respects, our methods of estimating model uncertainty and accuracy are in
sharp disagreement.
On the one hand, we conclude unequivocally that the evidence for a
”long-handled” hockey stick (where the shaft of the hockey stick extends
to the year 1000 AD) is lacking in the data. The fundamental problem is
that there is a limited amount of proxy data which dates back to 1000 AD;
what is available is weakly predictive of global annual temperature. Our
backcasting methods, which track quite closely the methods applied most
recently in Mann (2008) to the same data, are unable to catch the sharp run
up in temperatures recorded in the 1990s, even in-sample.”
Am really glad to see this effort – but hope that it is a beginning – not an end of the discussion.
I particularly look forward to the next steps (in light of Gavins comments) and Professors McShane and Wyner reply to the comments (‘stay tuned….’). Get ready gents – they’re going to ‘bring it’.
I would also LOVE to see a McPaper from McIntyre, McShane and McKittrick with an analysis WITHOUT bristlecones, upside down lake sediments or Gaspe series. And thereby nail the entire enterprise.
[Reply – Try Loehle, McCulloch (2008) ~ Evan]
The first sentence of the paper states: “Predicting historic temperatures based on tree rings, ice cores, and other natural proxies is a difficult endeavor.”
If predicting the historic temperatures is difficult, I guess it is really difficult to predict the future.
Brad said:
“Watch out, solar science is the next to go down based on historical crap data.”
Oo,er. What about Leif’s ‘reconstructions’ then ?
Mikael Pihlström: August 15, 2010 at 1:49 am
If paleo reconstructions are universally dead (I am OK with that) they are dead for everyone. You have to forget your MWP argument to.
—————–
There are farms and tree trunks in the permafrost of Greenland.
Chris H says:
August 15, 2010 at 11:58 am
It should not be forgotten that this paper is not only an indictment of Mann’s original papers, it’s also an indictment of the “peer-review” process that allowed such rubbish to be printed.
=========================================
Chris, I don’t look at the peer review process that way at all.
In my field, it’s little more than spealchex and does the paper have merit. Does it bring up anything new, a different angle, etc.
We don’t look at peer review as a grade.
Peer review puts the paper out there, where it either gets trashed, or stands on it’s own merit.
I think a lot of people are confused about that.
After the paper is published, then everyone has access to it.
That’s when it’s debated, tested, run through the wringer.
If it stands, it stands until someone else comes up with something better.
If it’s proven wrong, that way everyone benefits from it and someone else will publish something until they are proven wrong.
But justing being reviewed and published really means nothing.
I’ve seen some people at Steve’s arguing this study basically leaves “the blade” intact and suggests the 1990s are still likely the hottest decade of the last millinium.
However, what that argument misses is that the power of the hockey stick was always in the handle, not in the blade. If the handle disappears into lumpiness, then the AGWers lose a major piece of their arsenal for arguing near 100% causation for C02 in modern warming. Now they will have to admit that natural variability could play a larger role than they have been willing to admit up to now.
The 0% vs 100% argument for C02 has always been a barren exercize for all about the hardest of the hard core on either side. Everyone else has intuitively understood reality was almost certain to be more nuanced than that. Now that the “hockey stick handle” is dead, perhaps we can get on with a more realistic argument about the real % causation for C02 in modern warming.
The Hockey Stick handle is dead, so now the supposed non-contribution of UHI moves front and center as the biggest dragon remaining to be slain to enter a new phase of realistic debates about C02’s contributions to warming in the past, and the future.
Having read the error analysis and seen how wide the confidence limits are, I wonder what such an analysis of the instrumental temperature record would show. After all, many large-scale adjustments seem to have been required over the years and no plot I’ve ever seen includes any confidence limits at all.
Another hole below the waterline. Shame I burned my lifeboat to keep warm in the unseasonal 16 degree UK summer……
From clazy8 at CA, http://climateaudit.org/2010/08/14/mcshane-and-wyner-2010/
They sure have one extreme skill back att Realclimate!
Deleting!! They have special extra delete button replacement kits. They are investing in a special delete robot to cut costs.
Over at Tamino’s I just had this exchange about an ad hominem there against McShane and Wyner :
————–
I didn’t know what “idiotic comment about Bayesian statistics” Commenter B was talking about, but I am assuming it is the use of Bayesian modeling by McShane and Wyner in their new paper. Note Commenter A implies use of Bayesian statistics is a moral/political issue.
So, I take from these two commenterss that they think just very use of Bayesian statistic on Mann’s work implies denier status for McShane and Wyner.
But, I am sincerely interested on further responses to my questions about ad hominem on McShane and Wyner at Tamino’s place. So will try to inquire more.
John
John Whitman
Thanks but you probably won’t be able to penetrate the wall of irrational hatred at T-town
Everyone who doesn’t worship there is a “denier”
Good luck
“August 15, 2010 at 10:31 am
duckster…
You need a theory to explain what is happening now.”
Erm, no we don’t. This paper could be our ‘black swan’.
cheers David
on what measurements do you base your believe that CO2 is a greehouse gas i.e that its warming properties are greater than its cooling properties?
So far, not on a lot. Too many unknowns. There is behavior under lab conditions. And there has been some measurable warming. But I am guessing the trend is exaggerated by a factor of two between spurious adjustments and various site biases (UHI, microsite, TOBS, what have you).
Then there is natural recovery from the LIA and non-CO2 anthropogenic issues such as land use and particulates (i.e., “dirty snow”).
Not to mention the mysteries of how the atmosphere behaves in practice and all the oceanic and interactive variables (clouds, pressure variables, what have you).
To say nothing of radiation, which is what CO2 GH theory is all about.
Then there are all the unknown factors. Since we don’t know them, we can’t list them.
Between all that, there is still room for CO2, though not a heck of a lot. Possibly the raw effect is significant , but damped down by negative feedback.
Thank goodness we have microwave proxies for lower troposphere or we’d not only be shooting in the dark, but aiming at a raindrop while standing on a revolving platform.
*takes another handfull of pocorn*
“Mike Roddy says:
August 15, 2010 at 7:44 am
A reader questioned my comment that the oceans have 40% less fish biomass. This is actually only a logical assumption, since it’s impossible to measure fish biomass, due to their dispersion. The study in question measures phytoplankton, which form the basis of the oceanic food chain. I should have noted that in my comment. Here is the study:
http://www.cleveland.com/world/index.ssf/2010/07/oceans_phytoplankton_drops_40.html
”
You’re talking tosh mate. So you can’t measure fish mass but you can measure phytoplankton that accurately? You better tell all the fisheries authorities who seem to know exactly how many fish there are. The other fallacy is that it’s a ‘logical assumption’ that fish reduce at the same rate as the food. What if there was excess food to begin with? i.e. 40% more plankton than they needed? Also the article is about phytoplankton. Fish eat zooplankton as well and there is probably as much of that as ever. Think critically please.
cheers David.
John Whitman says:
August 15, 2010 at 1:28 pm
My reading of it was that Commenter A was having a bit of fun at Tamino’s – and his folowers’ – expense, and that Commenter B had got it.
Surely Commenter A was not being serious???
Jobnls says:
August 15, 2010 at 9:32 am
“What he is really saying is quite astonishing. I his opinion you can not simply say that the data and the analysis are crap since this would be unscientific. You have to try and find a better way of massaging the crap data in order to produce science.”
Actually it might make some sense if he were talking only about trying to progress in theoretical research. Even a bad (but non-frivolous) theory can be better than having no theory if one’s purpose is theoretical progress – one needs to start from somewhere, even if only to move to somewhere else. It’s not unusual in science to work on a theory that one knows not be in full accordance with reality, if one has no alternative theories nearly as good. The least bad scientific theory often gets to get worked on. People work both inside the box and outside the box of the theory, in hopes of ending up with a better theory.
But it’s crazily wrong to cram common practice into the box of a bad scientific theory, even if the other scientific theories are worse.
The yawning fallacy is to hold that the least bad theory is automatically, by magic default, ipso facto, willy-nilly, pell-mell sufficient basis for practical action and harsh choices and, say, revolutionizing the world under grand central government controlling all means of production and making us all poor and the poor among us even poorer. This is the fallacy that the least bad scientific theory automatically gets to steer common practice into places no matter how strange or destructive.
To the contrary, one does not need to present an alternative theory in order to show that a given theory is too weak or too contrary to observations to be a basis for forcing massive changes in practice.
I suspect that we’ll hear plenty of it (which is why I’m going on at this length), of how we must act (and massively) on the basis of the lousy scientific theory because of lack of a better one, as if that were the same thing as working theoretically on a bad scientific theory for lack of a better one (work that often involves trying to improve the theory by, umm, changing it).
Mikael:
I think you have to look at it historically, the science projects have
grown in the past decades, both in complexity, scope and also concerning
the stakes from a societal viewpoint.
Well, there’s a durn good reason why they encourage history PhDs to take statistics courses as well as languages.
“Although we assume the reliability of their data for our purposes here”
This is the data put together by the Man(n) who is willing to cheat on the published record of how many papers he has had published and repeatedly uses inverted graphs to substantiate his conclusions.
Two historic posts in 24 hours – Lord Monkton blasts the estimates for C02 projections and now the Hockey stick is shown to be the hocus pocus we all guessed it to be. With this evidence even non scientists like me can go into enemy territory and slay the illusory scare stories put up in the Guardian and other tin pot newspapers.
Anthony,
I have never tried to participate at Tamino’s place before. Occasionally at RC, but not often.
Anyway, really want to know more about the ad hominen against McShane and Wyner right from the initial source there.
John
Ric Werme says: August 15, 2010 at 4:57 am
There’s an entry for paleoclimatology, see
http://home.comcast.net/~ewerme/wuwt/categories.html
http://home.comcast.net/~ewerme/wuwt/cat_paleoclimatology.html
Rick, that’s a really useful search resource for WUWT, far more useful than the current search bar. Anthony is there any chance we can have a prominent link to this at the top of your page or in the sidebar?
“The hockey stick is broken” is a great rallying cry, but has zero substance in the world of qualified scientists who actually produce the charts in question. Some climate scientists have actually investigated the broken hockey stick claim in detail. Here’s what they found: nothing. If, on the other hand, one chooses to believe that IPCC and NASA scientists are part of a grant-seeking world-government-installing cabal, than it is difficult to dispute your argument. It’s considerably more difficult to believe it.
I am not concerned with the politics. But the Medieval Warm period is in the literature, architecture, geology, and archaeology. Even the statistics, such as they were (e.g., “the emperor’s cherry trees”). Climate scientists have got to face up to the fact that they are, as on wit put it, like Truman Capote trying to marry Dolly Parton. The job is just too big for them. They sound like the History channel trying to convince us that Philadelphia won WWII (and never mind Vasilevsky’s army groups).
Climatology takes a village. A Full and Complete village.
As it is, they are even trying to cut the oceanographers out of the picture. It simply won’t do.
Latitude
My branch of science is medicine, specifically anaesthesia, and I spent 9 years as an Associate Editor to one of our journals. Peer review to me means asking “was the methodology, including sample size and selection, and the statistical analysis appropriate to test the hypothesis put forward?” and “are the conclusions justified by the results?”.
Just checking the spelling and grammar and asking whether the topic is interesting does not constitute peer review. If we are moving to a system of publishing followed by on-line review, that gives us a major problem of how the various criticisms are integrated and a revised, hopely now improved, paper published. Where is the pressure on the authors to accept criticisms and change the paper? It means also that initial publications must contain a health warning that policy makers and users should not rely on the results.
For my money, peer review occurs prior to publication not afterwards.
evanmjones-
Agree, but if the climatoligists let in real scientists and statisticians their lie will be exposed!
[REPLY – There is a distinct possibility they have gone too far out on the limb to get back. Nonetheless, we must endeavor to persevere. ~ Evan]
Not sure why everyone is jumping up and down. The “hockey stick” is still within the uncertainties cited by these authors.
Two comments:
1. Any researcher worth his/her salt takes a graduate level stats class. We get to do things like ANOVA’s and COANOVA’s with just a simple calculator and without the use of a computer program. That experience SHOULD help us understand that unless there is a University level independent statistician available and required to be used by the lab, the lab is nothing but a playpen for too big for their breeches, self-important, puffed up scientists putting out embarrassingly poor and possibly dangerous products. Have you noticed that there is an entire legal industry built around just such a lab?
2. Getting peer reviewed and published is one of the most political processes there is, resulting in, when the process is done, the need for a detox scrubbing of all body parts till those parts are raw and bleeding. Trust me, in the dog eat dog world of journals, good studies go unpublished while poor ones get top billing, and on a fairly regular basis.
Might it be that only those who have never been through the process believe that checking for spelling and performing a simple “merit check” is the bulk of the review/publish process? Might it be that only those who are not sure about the statistics of their endeavor but since the results reject their null hypothesis would turn aside from a thorough independent University stat review?
Its curious that periods prior the the MWP are not so researched as the period 1000-present. Modern proxies tend to forget the holocence optimum some 9000-5000 before present – which excelled the MWP and certainly today in temperature, both temperature period and elevation by rapport to the two warm periods (The long MWP and the short late 20th C) that concern climate reconstructions. The Roman warm period is also excluded.
When a long period legend are included, what emerges is that 1850-1875 were by far the coldest years of the entire holocence. An ice age compared to the median of the last 12,000 years. 1875, atypically cold, is also the year chosen by AGW proponents as the starting point of the climate.
I did a first read of the McShane & Wyner paper. I am not a climatologist or a statistician.
I think everyone agrees there are large uncertainties when “backcasting” global temps a thousand years. M&W take issue with how proxies are calibrated with the instrumental record. If you delete a block of data you can try to “predict” it by using the remaining temp data (and its derivative) or using your proxies. You’d like for the proxies to do better than interpolation. What M&W call pseudo-proxies or “fake” data is really a form of interpolation. They aren’t really using pure noise. Climatologists, according to M&W, block out a 50 year window in the middle of the instrumental record. M&W block out various 30 year windows. With the shorter window interpolation does as well as the proxies they claim and therefore the proxies are of little use. It makes sense to me that interpolation would do better with shorter window length. So, I don’t see the paper as punching that big a hole in the “hockey stick” constructions. I look forward to seeing what people who know more about this than I do have to say.
The other issue brought up by this paper is the fact that the model program said to be very similar to Mann’s, could not reconstruct the proxy slope but could the observation slope from Mann’s graph. That means two things to me:
1. The study confirms that the two data sets are apples and oranges and should have never been spliced together, as has been stated by many skeptics.
2. The fact that the model reconstructed the current steep slope does not solidify Mann’s version of temperature rise as the correct one. It simply confirms his code used to give that temperature rise works on the data in similar fashion to the authors’ code. Importantly, the authors caution the rise might be contaminated by anthropogenic data. To me that means human sourced data and includes ALL the various ways the temperature data used by Mann has been compromised and contaminated.
To me it is not of primary importance that the hockey stick is step-by-step being trivialized, it is that Mann is being marginalized. It says to other climate scientists that he, as a role model, doesn’t look promising.
John
Mikael Pihlström says:
August 15, 2010 at 11:33 am
But, the accusation that Mann and others neglected to do so, just to be
able to manipulate and distort results;I don’t believe it.”
M&M (with no AGW axes to grind) have shown clear evidence that Mann et al hadn’t used correct statistical analysis yet Mann et al have refuse to acknowledge any of this evidence. In light of this new paper does their continuing [refusal to provide] this evidence have any influence on your disbelief stated above?
I guess I don’t get it! The Mann temperature data (red) ends at the date of publication (1998) as does the data. The McShane and Wyner temperature data (black) ends in 2000 and does not extend beyond the proxy data. Yes, the extent that the inclusion of this data would raise the “blade” of the stick is slight. Mann puts that in his graph to strenghthen his point just as McShane and Wyner omit this data to enhance theirs.
Mikael Pihlström says:
August 15, 2010 at 4:31 am
Philemon says: August 15, 2010 at 2:44 am
Mikael Pihlström says: August 15, 2010 at 2:22 am
“…why not use fig. 17, which brings it alltogether: the warming of the last decades is bigger than any backcast, H&W 2010 included.”
Look at the uncertainty bands.
“In fact, our uncertainty bands are so wide that they envelop all of the other backcasts in the literature. Given their ample width, it is difficult to say that recent warming is an extraordinary event compared to the last 1,000 years. For example, according to our uncertainty bands, it is possible that it was as warm in the year 1200 AD as it is today.” (McShane and Wyner, AOAS 2010, p. 37)
—————
“You are right, but uncertainty works both ways: It could have been as warm in 1200 AD, or considerably cooler.”
_________
Brrr! However, as TerryS says:
August 15, 2010 at 5:02 am
“The error bars are so big in the graph that it encompasses everything from the MWP being colder than the LIA to the LIA being warmer than today and pretty much everything in between.”
_________
Since the Mannian proxy reconstructions were used to claim that modern warming was unprecedented, the demonstration that statistically they can show no such result is the more interesting conclusion.
Moreover, whatever the limitations of peer review in checking statistical acumen, the fact that grants were obtained, without the benefit of a statistician on board, for the analysis of data containing “…complex spatial and temporal dependence structures which are not easily captured with simple models…” (McShane and Wyner, AOAS 2010, p. 1) is even more interesting.
Doug McGee:
You’re joking, right?
“According to Steve McIntyre, this is one of the “top statistical journals”. ”
A very minor point here, the journal is new, only in its forth year. So, it is not likely to be a top journal yet. It takes many years to establish a reputation. The journal claims to have the 6th highest impact factor among stat journals, but it is not clear what that really means. The authors of the paper work in business schools (good ones) and have little background in science. But of course the paper should be judged on its merits and that will take some time.
hehehe
James Sexton: no offence taken mate. Nice to see you and Smokey at work, good team of Beaters at Quidditch.
From New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/15/science/earth/15climate.html?ref=global-home
“If you ask me as a person, do I think the Russian heat wave has to do with climate change, the answer is yes,” said Gavin Schmidt, a climate researcher with NASA in New York. “If you ask me as a scientist whether I have proved it, the answer is no — at least not yet.”
Is this the first time Gavin has expressed anything but total certainty?
And elsewhere in the article nytimes says:
‘Seemingly disconnected, these far-flung disasters [floods, fires] are reviving the question of whether global warming is causing more weather extremes’
Note “reviving”; but when asked to help in the revival Gavin seems to have declined. What’s going on?
The development here in New Zealand this morning has been mentioned a
couple of times, and although it is off-topic, it is certainly worth looking at.
NIWA, the “official body”, has been a proponent of GW, and proclaimed, along
with many other sources, that the most recent decade has been the ‘warmest’.
When pressed for figures, they repaired to their Seven Key Stations (SKS),
which are widely dispersed over the country, and which have been collecting
temperature data for over 100 years. On the basis of data from the SKS,
they announced the following:
that the mean temperature in the decade to end December 2009 was
ONE-TENTH OF A DEGREE ‘warmer’ than the mean temperaure in the
thirty year period from 1970 to 1999.
Please note: that from a mean established for the most recent decade,
NIWA had to go back a further THIRTY YEARS before they could get to
a ‘cooler’ difference of one-tenth of a degree !
It is an abuse of the English language to describe this as ‘warming’.
In the NIWA website, however, and referring again to the SKS, the
statement is made that there has been a 0.9 degree C increase in mean
temperature in the hundred years up to the end of 2009.
?
So we have 0.2 degree differences in the last 40 years, and 0.7 degree
differences in the previous 60 ? This does not compute.
So far as New Zealand is concerned, take the ‘G’ out of AGW: we don’t fit.
So whats next?
Once the knee-jerk protecting of Mann/Gore starts to subside and reality sets in, where will the AGW mob go next?
IMHO, Gore will be left to fend for himself, he has the resources and lack of morals to succeed (in his own mind) against reality, but what of Mann?
I strongly suspect that quite soon now he will be gone from the scene. He is an obnoxious personality, and I doubt that many of his compatriots would shed too many tears over throwing him to the wolves.
It has taken far to long (IMHO) for reputable scientists to do what was required and expose cargo cult science for what it is. However, it looks like its about to happen, which restores a lot of my faith in the scientific method not being dead and buried.
Great post Rex from NZ. Thank you!
Mike Roddy says:
August 14, 2010 at 7:13 pm
“[…] Glaciers and Arctic ice are melting at unheard of rates. […]”
Maybe some people are just hard of hearing. If one listens to him carefully, Otzi the Ice Man just might tell you differently about the melt rate of glaciers. Unfortunately, the Viking farmers buried on Greenland didn’t have much to say about the rate of Arctic melt, though the way they left things suggest they’d have something to say about how it can get pretty darn cold in a hurry in that neck of the woods.
If we keep up with the satellite monitoring for a few centuries, humans might have something more concrete to say about the rate of Arctic melting (and icing) we’ve observed over the past 30 years. Right now, not so much.
My take is that in the paper figures 15 and 18 show that their model needs some work to explain the modern warming.
Figure 16 still looks like a hokey stick, and if I could see the whole of the grey areas of figure 17, I would be able to predict how much further warming is necessary to say that the current warming is unprecendented in the last 1000 years.
Still have a way to go before the current warming is unprecedented for the Holocene, let alone the Cretaceous.
Still warming after all these years
Pamela Gray-
There is a gigantic difference between taking a grad level stats class, and being a statistician. Mann proves that, for sure!
No, no joke. Even the authors state as much.
Lay the graphs over each other if you need “eye-ball confirmation”.
@ Chris H,
I completely agree with you re: medical research. I’ve served as a reviewer once and it’s very time consuming to do the job well. You literally have to dissect each and every aspect of the study. I’ve never reviewed a paper by authors I had even heard of. Frequently in medical research (and drug studies in particular) the researchers employ the assistance of respected statisticians to crunch their numbers. You seldom encounter running gun battles over statistical methodology in medical research (usually it’s stuff like appropriate end points or sampling methodology).
In medical research theories and findings are challenged and restudied constantly. Something like the MBH98 paper would never survive for over a decade without being challenged. But then, we’re science, not religion.
Doug McGee says:
August 15, 2010 at 2:33 pm
Not sure why everyone is jumping up and down. The “hockey stick” is still within the uncertainties cited by these authors.
So is this.
http://tinyurl.com/28x3hl7
Lucy Skywalker says:
August 15, 2010 at 1:27 am
I cannot get the pdf page 21 to show up without disrupting Adobe. Unfortunately it’s the nice graphs page. Had to whisk past it. Anyone else had probs??
I have had no problems with the document but then i dont use Adobe, I use Foxit reader.
Try it, it’s a free download and it’s faster than Adobe Reader.
At such a pivotal moment in this clash of titans, one wants – as in any important historical event – to be able to say “I was there. I witnessed it.” Which is why I step briefly into the great light cast by the the ‘deniers’/ heroes and their supporters in order to say that I was here.
The debt owed to the stalwart seekers of truth is great.
To that end, Anthony’s contribution has been and remains immense.
(And Smokey. You’re smokin’! ;P
‘The people who understand and develop the data are the reliable sources,’
The only data you can develop are the ones that you yourself create as in computer modeling. Mann et al are using data that other people measure, store, and manage, so in essence Mann et al use other peoples’ measured data to create their own data.
‘Besides… Species are migrating north.’
Then come winter they’re migrating south again. And besides if the SH gets colder all them animals are all welcome to come stay in the NH, unless of course you’re an animal hater?
‘Glaciers and Arctic ice are melting at unheard of rates.’
Really how many of the handful of thousands of the 110 000 and then some glaciers are melting at an unheard of rate? How many are growing at an unheard of rate you think? And apparently arctic has stopped melting early this summer, and besides the damn ice grows still during winter time.
‘The ocean is becoming more acidic, and has experienced a 40% decline in fish biomass since 1950 due to CO2′s effect on phytoplankton.’
Right and you can prove that, and that overfishing didn’t’ve anything to do with it at all. In any case I hope, for you sake, you don’t eat fish then.
And do you know how limestone form and grow?
Pamela Gray says:
August 15, 2010 at 2:34 pm
============
Pam, and Chris
I didn’t say I was in your field of study and I didn’t say the way it works in mine is the same as anyone elses.
I said, it’s the way it works in my field, and I stand by it because it’s true….
Yea verily, in the beginning there was only noise. The Not So Great Statistician molded that noise into the image of a Mann and Mann said, “It is good! I will call it ‘hockey stick’.”
Then the Really Great Statistician molded that noise into a Womann and Womann said, “It is good. I will call it anything I wish; today a plow share; tomorrow a plump chicken or perhaps some new dancing shoes!”
Mann was not pleased. The Not So Great Statistician looked like a deer in the headlights.
CH
But it’s universally agreed that increases in manmade CO2 emissions significant enough to affect global temperature didn’t begin until 1950.
In order for the “hockey stick” to be alarming, the shaft must be flat and horizontal, making the current warming trend uniquely steep and the current temperature uniquely warm. As Geo says:
D. King,
Prove it?
I mean really, posts like that and “skeptics” wonder why they viewed with contempt and aren’t taken seriously?
John A says:
August 15, 2010 at 12:38 pm
“Prediction: Mann will claim this paper has already been debunked, […]”
LOL!
I eagerly await confirmation of your prediction and it shouldn’t take long ;o)
I emailed Kuccinelli this article. Maybe he’ll find something he can use – at some point being consistently incompetent in the direction of a single conclusion smacks of fraud.
Mike says:
August 15, 2010 at 3:03 pm
“According to Steve McIntyre, this is one of the “top statistical journals”. ”
“A very minor point here, the journal is new, only in its forth year. So, it is not likely to be a top journal yet.”
Yes, it is. It is a high impact journal, which by a recognized standard, is a “top” journal. And it’s “fourth” year. The number of years a journal has published is not a global criteria for determining status.
“It takes many years to establish a reputation.”
Actually, it has a very good reputation after only 4 years of pubs.
“The journal claims to have the 6th highest impact factor among stat journals, but it is not clear what that really means.”
Clear to those who know what it means and can check. But your previous claims would have more weight by saying that.
“The authors of the paper work in business schools (good ones) and have little background in science.”
Really? How much background, and what is “little” and what is “enough”? Does everyone that “works in business schools” lack science background?
Doug McGee says at 4:09 pm:
“D. King…
I mean really, posts like that and ‘skeptics’ wonder why they viewed with contempt and aren’t taken seriously?”
I LOL’d when I clicked on the link in D. King’s post @3:33 pm. I guess some folks lack a sense of humor.
Re: skeptics being viewed with ‘contempt,’ let me explain something to you.
Without skeptics there would be no Scientific Method. With no Scientific Method you would be going to your neighborhood witch doctor to cure cancer.
It is the job of skeptics to shoot holes in a hypothesis if they can. So far, skeptics have been doing an excellent job of deconstructing the CO2=CAGW hypothesis, to the point where it is now only a conjecture; an opinion.
A skeptic is the only honest kind of scientist. Why do you have contempt for honest scientists?
Mike Roddy says: August 14, 2010 at 7:13 pm
The authors of the 20- odd studies that confirmed Mann’s data are not really interested in what professional statisticians and mathematicians are saying about it.
_____________________________________
Sonicfrog says: August 14, 2010 at 7:32 pm
Yet they rely in stats and math to deduce the state of climate….. do you realize just what you’re saying?
_____________________________________
I know I just about bust a gut laughing at that statement. Mike Roddy just acknowledge that Mann and the other ” authors of the 20- odd studies” are not scientists but advocates!
Thanks Mike for openly acknowledging that Mann and Co. are psuedo-scientists intent on dishing out propaganda.
All those Ph.D.’ed statistician professors in “good” business schools would have a thing or two to say about whether or not they have a background in science.
Smokey,
I was laughing (because I believe he believes his statement is true), just not with him.
And there was a reason “skeptic” was in quotes. By the uncritical and automatic acceptance of this paper (just based on the title it seems) one can scroll through the comments and discern who the real skeptics are. [snip]
A skeptic critically examines all claims, not just the ones they find ideologically uncomfortable.
Ulf says at Aug. 15 10:47 AM:
“Generally speaking, this sort of advance does not necessarily cast previous work in disrepute, even though it may overturn their conclusions. Authors of previous work can, OTOH, cast themselves in disrepute by refusing to accept that their results were wrong, even if confronted with convincing evidence.”
MM, Wegman and Beenstock and Reingewertz have all demonstrated that Mann and his fellow climatological statisticians were wrong yet this same group has refused to accept that their results were wrong and they were certainly aware of the evidence.
James Allison says:
August 15, 2010 at 2:53 pm
Mikael Pihlström says:
August 15, 2010 at 11:33 am
But, the accusation that Mann and others neglected to do so, just to be
able to manipulate and distort results;I don’t believe it.”
Does the quote “We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period.” ring a bell?
Doug McGee says:
August 15, 2010 at 4:09 pm
D. King,
Prove it?
I mean really, posts like that and “skeptics” wonder why they viewed with contempt and aren’t taken seriously?
I’m glad you didn’t take it seriously!
latitude says:
August 15, 2010 at 7:11 am
…
If this paper proves to be true, then it can only mean one of two things:
1 Mann lied and cheated
2 Mann doesn’t know what he’s doing and is inept
Which of these, or both, were removed from consideration at his review at PSU?
duckster says:
August 14, 2010 at 7:48 pm
Looking at the paper above…
No medieval warming period, I see. And no temperature decline post-1998?? I thought you were arguing that the world was getting cooler, and arctic ice was recovering? [Cough, cough].
I guess we can put those ones to rest then, can’t we? After the way you’ve embraced this paper!……
____________________________________________
You totally misunderstand what this paper is all about. Anthony even TELLS you up front:
“…instead of trying to attack the proxy data quality issues, they assumed the proxy data was accurate for their purpose, then created a bayesian backcast method. Then, using the proxy data, they demonstrate it fails to reproduce the sharp 20th century uptick….”
The paper is not about the temperature readings at all. It is about the mathematics and statistics used in the proxy reconstructions to generate the “hockey stick graph” and the paper shows the proxy reconstructions are worthless. “We find that the proxies do not predict temperature significantly better than random series generated independently of temperature.”
@Glenn
I said: “The journal claims to have the 6th highest impact factor among stat journals, but it is not clear what that really means.”
Glenn said: “Clear to those who know what it means and can check. But your previous claims would have more weight by saying that.”
The impact factor is a measure of how often the articles in a journal are cited. But if a paper is cited a lot because others are criticising it, that counts the same as when it is cited by others praising it. That is one reason impact factors are not clear indicators of quality. See http://www.ams.org/notices/200603/comm-milman.pdf for another view of this. (A sub may be required.)
I will repeat that the M&W article seems interesting and should be judged on its merits.
AGW opponents may mourn the passage of the ‘Hockey Stick’ as this was one of the first and most obvious indications that the climate company store was selling a rotten bill of goods.
Perhaps we are seeing reports like this because many modern scientists have been required to take courses like ‘Ecology 101’ or ‘Environment 101’ which may be crossing the line between science and indoctrination in a modern form of nature and animal worship. It seems that a new cadre of educated professionals may have arrived who believe that there is an urgent need to halt the impact modern industry is having on this planet and the genesis of the ‘hockey stick’ seems to show that they are willing to use questionable scientific methods and perhaps outright falsehood in a desperate effort to prove their belief to be correct.
Nick Stokes says:
August 14, 2010 at 6:20 pm re run-up period that ends in 1998. Now, 1998 was an anomalous year, if the recording was accurate. It therefore is an unfortunate choice for the final data point through its potential ability to exaggerate detail in some forms of treatments.
You have made some good points in the past, to be fair, and a few horrible ones, to be unfair, so here’s a chance for another good score. Was the anomalously hot global year 1998 caused by an additional anomalous heat input into the system, by a less-than-usual subtraction, or from a redustribution of heat already in the “closed” global system?
Nobody I have asked can offer an answer as to why 1998 was so much hotter, apart from being at the extremity of statistical fluctuation. But, it does have some strange character of its own. Any thoughts? Would McShane & Wyner be better if they chose a different final point?
Finally, we learn the true meaning of “climate justice”!
Mike Roddy says: August 14, 2010 at 7:13 pm -“a 40% decline in fish biomass since 1950 due to CO2′s effect on phytoplankton.”
You forgot to count the big one that got away.
References?
I would not surprised that all the young climate researchers in their old age become the most ardent skeptics yes even Gavin, Mann etc.. its very common for this to happen, so skeptics you will get satisfaction eventually.. of course the main driver is the actual weather year by year and that is not revealing any consistent warming/cooling anywhere LOL. Again I repeat we only live max 100 years we will never experience palpable climate change. At least 1000=3000 years life span would be required…. so we can all go home and get a life and forget this nonsense chao…..
It is nice to see some experts becoming involved rather than the rather amateur approach often found in climate science. When processing statistics it is important to process them with skill to get the right results, not the ‘desired’ results.
This is the crux of science : to get an idea, assemble the data and process it to see if you are correct. Hopefully ‘yes’, but even ‘no’ is useful information. It is knowledge.
In some areas of climate science it is manipulating data until you get the ‘desired’ result then if anyone questions it they should, variously : lose their job, be banned from publication, be shunned, be put on trial, be deported [and I am sure some would wish a worse fate on these blasphemers]. This is just degenerate pseudo-scientific propaganda. It is not knowledge.
Mike says:
August 15, 2010 at 5:33 pm
@Glenn
“I said: “The journal claims to have the 6th highest impact factor among stat journals, but it is not clear what that really means.”
You said more than that. “Not likely to be a top journal” and “It takes many years to establish a reputation.”
“Glenn said: “Clear to those who know what it means and can check. But your previous claims would have more weight by saying that.”
“The impact factor is a measure of how often the articles in a journal are cited. But if a paper is cited a lot because others are criticising it, that counts the same as when it is cited by others praising it. That is one reason impact factors are not clear indicators of quality. See http://www.ams.org/notices/200603/comm-milman.pdf for another view of this. (A sub may be required.)”
That is true for all journals, but whether “quality” can be determined by how many “praise” the journal articles is what is not clear. What I do know is that journals are measured by their impact.
You have provided absolutely no support for your contentions, your reasons seem to be nothing more than to cast doubt on the journal and the authors.
“I will repeat that the M&W article seems interesting and should be judged on its merits.”
Yet you didn’t, except to take a sentence from the paper out of context in another post, quote:
“…our model offers support
to the conclusion that the 1990s were the warmest decade of the last millennium,…”
What “merit” does that have, and what does it imply about you in light of your attempt to discredit or downplay the journal and authors reputations?
If 2005 is the hottest year ever, then allowing the series to continue only exacerbates the problem. Choosing 1998 as an endpoint is as valid as, say, anomalously hot 2010?
@roger Knights says:
August 15, 2010 at 4:03 pm
Thank you, Roger. I for one will “Huzzah” from the rooftops at a more realistic debate over percentages of causation.
And I feel the need to point out that Anthony’s work re UHI (which I have contributed a goodly amount of time and mony to over the last few years, because basic R&D is always a worth endeavor, whatever the results) moves front and center with the Hockey Stick in tatters.
Understand, I consider myself a “lukewarmist” and bristle more than most at being called a “denier”. I think C02 almost certainly has played a role in modern warming. But whether that role is 1/5, 1/3, 2/3, or 4/5, is a vitally imporant question to determine in the next 20 years. I think we will. But then I’ve always been an optimist about the human race in the longer-term, and as a semi-pro historian tend to take with a large grain of salt the contretempts and mud-slinging of the moment from a historical perspective.
[REPLY – Yes, geo, you have been a staunch footsoldier for the surfacestations project. (I’ve personally evaluated a lot of your work.) Thanks to all of you who have hunted down stations; you know who you are (and so do I) — so take a proud moment out. ~ Evan]
@ Mike Roddy. Follow link below.
Physical tests were done with raising CO2 levels in ocean water. Most tests showing damaging affects to shell fish and plankton were done lowering pH with other than CO2.
Plankton actually thrive on excess CO2 in the water.
http://tinyurl.com/37v9pd2
Geoff Sherrington, the reference to the study published in Nature showing a 40% decline in phytoplankton was the link I posted in that comment.
Mann’s hockey stick and the blogosphere (not scientific) controversy that came from it was studied by NAS, or the National Academy of Sciences. His work was vindicated in all respects, and was shown to be robust. Here’s the link:
http://live.psu.edu/fullimg/userpics/10026/Final_Investigation_Report.pdf
I also suggest that readers take a look at the Realclimate post on the subject that I linked in my previous comment. If neither of these convinces you, then nothing I can say will. Have WUWT commenters and readers actually read them? If not, you should.
Here is a poem I wrote about this – written to the tune of “Blowin’ in The Wind.”
___________________________________________
Blowin’ in the Trees
How many times must Mann get spanked
Before he admits he was wrong!
Yes, and how many emails must scream out, “Denier!”
That some scientists don’t belong!
Yes and how many times must statistics be damned
To invent Mann-made catastrophe!
The answer my friend, is blowin’ in the trees,
The answer is blowin’ in the trees.
How many times must Briffa measure wood
Before he can make a hockey stick?
Yes, and how many times must McIntyre insist
That bad math should never persist?
Yes, and how much cooling can push back the lies
Claiming any given storm proves the fit!
The answer my friend, is blowin’ in the trees,
The answer is blowin’ in the trees.
How much C02 is the “proper amount?”
And what temperature is the “best?”
Yes, and how many years can ‘the team’ suck up Grants
Before it’s exposed by the Press?
Yes and how many newspapers can publish foolish claims
Pretending that they understand this mess?
The answer my friend, is blowin’ in the trees,
The answer is blowin’ in the trees.
___________________________________________
©2010 Dave Stephens
(with apologies to Bob Dylan)
geo says:
August 15, 2010 at 7:44 pm
Understand, I consider myself a “lukewarmist” and bristle more than most at being called a “denier”. I think C02 almost certainly has played a role in modern warming. But whether that role is 1/5, 1/3, 2/3, or 4/5, is a vitally imporant question to determine in the next 20 years.
============================================================
Whichever fraction you choose to attribute to CO2, hopefully you will properly accept the fraction of CO2 that we contribute.
Whichever fraction you choose to attribute to CO2, hopefully you will properly accept the fraction of CO2 that we contribute.
Naturally (well, okay, anthropogenically).
What is, is. All we are trying to do it to find out. Preferably while not flushing half of world growth while we’re about it!
Evan–
Hopefully while not *unnecessarily* flushing half of world growth while we’re about it.
Fixed it for you. . .
[snip – invalid email – see policy page ~mod]
Adding to what Gail mentioned above … From the paper itself – and noting the hundreds of BAD data inputs, selections of data from the record, selective picking of sources of that data from the total environment, errors in processing, errors in statistics, errors in counting, and double-selecting redundant and self-duplicating errors displayed by Mann – and his white-washed cohorts – in dissembling their propaganda as related by the Hockey Stick Illusion by Monkton …
The following discussed Mann 2008:
“This is by far the most comprehensive publicly available database of
temperatures and proxies collected to date. It contains 1,209 climate proxies
(with some going back as far as 8855 BC and some continuing up till
2003 AD). It also contains a database of eight global annual temperature
aggregates dating 1850-2006 AD (expressed as deviations or ”anomalies”
from the 1961-1990 AD average4). Finally, there is a database of 1,732 local
annual temperatures dating 1850-2006 AD (also expressed as anomalies
from the 1961-1990 AD average)5. All three of these datasets have been substantially
processed including smoothing and imputation of missing data
(Mann et al., 2008). While these present interesting problems, they are not
the focus of our inquiry. We assume that the data selection, collection, and
processing performed by climate scientists meets the standards of their discipline.
Without taking a position on these data quality issues, we thus take
the dataset as given.We further make the assumptions of linearity and stationarity
of the relationship between temperature and proxies, an assumption
employed throughout the climate science literature (NRC, 2006) noting
that ”the stationarity of the relationship does not require stationarity of the
series themselves” (NRC, 2006).”
—…—…—
Thus, one wonders what the critiques of Mann-made CAGW would become if the full story with the full set errors were discussed honestly.
GeoFlynx says:
August 15, 2010 at 2:56 pm
You are seriously deluding yourself. The statisticians didn’t take on measured data because they knew better. Mann did it for nefarious reasons.
Mike Roddy says:
August 15, 2010 at 8:04 pm
Geoff Sherrington, the reference to the study published in Nature showing a 40% decline in phytoplankton was the link I posted in that comment.
Mann’s hockey stick and the blogosphere (not scientific) controversy that came from it was studied by NAS, or the National Academy of Sciences. His work was vindicated in all respects, and was shown to be robust.
—…—…
False. Mann’s methods, motives, and opportunities were reviewed twice by Congressional hearings – and they were far less biased than Penn States’ whitewash, and his conclusions were rejected. That an administration chooses to select the result they want – vitally needed to receive 1.3 trillion in unnecessary taxes from the world’s poor and middle class, condemning billions to a life cut short by disease and poverty by your policies of restricting energy development based don FALSE premises and FALSE processing is not surprising.
I just saw a sign that reads, “CO2 HOAX”, right by the US Marine base at Quantico, Virginia…!!!
Watts up with that ???
Well, at least one university in the state of Pennsylvania has the courage to put science before the almighty dollar.
Mike Roddy says…..
“His work was vindicated in all respects, and was shown to be robust. ”
Ha ha ha! That Mike Roddy! Don’t bother him with the facts, it will burst his “reality bubble”.
His work was vindicated in all respects, and was shown to be robust
Ok now we have entered into the fantastical. In reality, he was politely chastised. That North chose to back pedal a bit in his use of language was likely political.
The NAS did find some of Mann’s work “plausible” — that’s the closest that it comes to actually supporting Mann’s findings — but then it immediately states there are so many scientific uncertainties attached to Mann’s work that it doesn’t have great confidence in it. The committee then proceeds to further downgrade its view of Mann’s work: “Even less confidence can be placed in the original conclusions by Mann et al. (1999) that ‘the 1990s are likely the warmest decade, and 1998 the warmest year, in at least a millennium.’ ”
Mike Roddy-
Your link is to the Penn State whitewash report, not to the NAS report.
In the Penn State report, Dr. Mann is not found to be pure as the driven snow, by any means.
This is not about anyone’s behaviour in any case, its about the data and the truth.
Its amazing to me that UV and other radiation absorbing volcanic ash aerosols in the atmosphere have increased, probably close to a good 30% in the last three decades, especially since 1995. Right along with people being convinced that human CO2 emissions were to blame.
How did they manage to stage that?
Well, geo, as I have commented in the past, for every $billion wasted (or never produced) anywhere in the world, babies starve somewhere in the world. I am sure we agree on that.
And no false appeals to Pascal, please, people. Pascal’s wager presumes there’s no material cost to taking the precaution in question. (AND that the solution will be effective if the danger is real!) But this one’s a cost-benefit deal with innocent blood on the line for every iota of cost.
So we better be very damn sure what we are about. Not only do we need to be reasonably certain there is a problem in the first place, but we also need good reason to believe that the proposed solution is going to turn the trick.
And, so far, not only does the supposed problem not add up, but the proposed solution wouldn’t add up even if the problem did.
Hahahahahahah. Exactly
Mike Roddy says:
August 15, 2010 at 8:04 pm
“Mann’s hockey stick and the blogosphere (not scientific) controversy that came from it was studied by NAS, or the National Academy of Sciences. His work was vindicated in all respects, and was shown to be robust.”
I fear that you missed the point to the parable of the “Emperor’s New Clothes”. Get ready for more “disciplined reviewed literature” to pile onto this robust abomination of statistical nonsense. M&M, Wegman, the blogosphere and now M&W, you have to realize that you have been worshiping a turnip. I am not saying that there is not room for improvement on the “Anthropogenic Side”, us skeptics find *CAGW* is * FUNDAMENTALLY* flawed for only a political reason.
Just because O.J. Simpson was found innocent in the criminal case, does that force you to understand that he did not kill his ex-wife? That is why politics need to stay out of science.
Mike Roddy, your link does not support your assertion.
I’ve read it before, I’ve re-read it now. It does not vindicate his hockey stick; at best it shows there is no evidence he intentionally falsified research. Many people here would probably disagree with the the whitewashed conclusion that his mistakes were unintentional, but whatever.
To reference that investigation as vindication of his results is insulting. I can’t figure out what your purpose was. Did you mean to link something else?
“Climate scientists have greatly underestimated the uncertainty of proxy based reconstructions and hence have been overconfident in their models. ”
Why does uncertainty of global temperatures as deduced from proxies necessarily mean there is no AGW problem? Couldn’t it also mean that the problem is even worse than predicted? Would it not be wise to prepare for the worst case scenarios?
I would hope the building I am sitting in right now was not desigened assuming every day would be 60 degrees with no wind or precipitation, but was designed with consideration for weather cases that are possible in this region even though the engineer might not be “certain” they would ever happen.
The findings were Mann was not right, but also not pathological. One of those findings was a courtesy. Can you spot it?
moondog,
Pascal’s gamble is a religious argument, made by the faithful. It is not a principal upon which to build global energy policy.
Mike Roddy: The authors of the 20- odd studies that confirmed Mann’s data are not really interested in what professional statisticians and mathematicians are saying about it.
I’m confused. Which side are you arguing here? You write this as if you think it is a good thing that a bunch of paleontologists are (mis)using statistical techniques like PCA and don’t care what the trained professionals think. Am I missing something?
moondog says:
August 15, 2010 at 10:01 pm
Why does uncertainty of global temperatures as deduced from proxies necessarily mean there is no AGW problem? Couldn’t it also mean that the problem is even worse than predicted? Would it not be wise to prepare for the worst case scenarios?
Here’s the way I see it. We may have a problem, we may not. I would prefer to have unbiased scientists study the question. The current cabal of “climate scientists” have repeatedly told us the debate is over, the science is settled. Well, I guess they were wrong. That makes them either foolish or dishonest, you may choose. As a US taxpayer, paying the salary, benefits and potential retirements for these so called “scientists”, I’ve seen enough of this obvious scam. I’d like to see people fired over this. Let’s get some real honest scientists that thrive on debate and fully understand that science is never settled. If a new crop of quality scientists who are unafraid to share their data and methods can make a strong case that we have a problem, I’m perfectly willing to listen and do my part to mitigate the problem. The Gore, Mann, Jones, Schmidt team is a bust. Time for some new blood.
Pascal’s gamble is a religious argument, made by the faithful. It is not a principal upon which to build global energy policy.
More to the point, it is a case where taking precaution comes at no cost and where said precaution is guaranteed effective if the danger proves real.
In the case of CO2 “solutions”, the cost is intolerable and the efficacy dubious.
For the 1 or 2 here who seem to be in dobt over the Medieval Warm Period
Papers ranked in 3 levels, one of which allows direct comparision of MWP temps
to todays. Also Shows rather nicely that MWP was global in nature.
http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/mwpp.php
Hope this helps you come to the realization that climate change IS real, but very
little to do with mankind…
cheerio..
Jim
moondog says:
August 15, 2010 at 10:01 pm
“Why does uncertainty of global temperatures as deduced from proxies necessarily mean there is no AGW problem? Couldn’t it also mean that the problem is even worse than predicted? Would it not be wise to prepare for the worst case scenarios?”
It doesn’t mean there isn’t an AGW problem. It means the people proclaiming the problem were amateurish(to be charitable). Yes, it could be worse than we thought, but that’s not likely seeing that the climatologists were overstating their levels of certainty, as seen in this study and others.
Still, it doesn’t hurt to be prudently cautious. By that, I mean to ensure the precautionary measures don’t do additional and probably more harm than the “supposed” potential harm.
What we are seeing today isn’t prudent caution.
A question for you: What is the most deadly, socially disruptive, health damaging, ecologically destroying, violence causing, economically burdensome, liberty taxing human condition ever known to man throughout written history?…………………………. Give up?
The answer is poverty.
Care to tally what our “preparation” has done for us so far? Moondog, the proposed cures are worse than any real or imagined threat a little warming could do to us.
Henry@Evan Jones
Evan, on what (actual) measurements do you base your believe that CO2 is a greenhouse gas i.e that its warming properties are greater than its cooling properties?
Evan, you say:
So far, not on a lot. Too many unknown. There is behavior under lab conditions. And there has been some measurable warming. But I am guessing the trend is exaggerated by a factor of two between spurious adjustments and various site biases (UHI, microsite, TOBS, what have you).
Then there is natural recovery from the LIA and non-CO2 anthropogenic issues such as land use and particulates (i.e., “dirty snow”).
Not to mention the mysteries of how the atmosphere behaves in practice and all the oceanic and interactive variables (clouds, pressure variables, what have you).
To say nothing of radiation, which is what CO2 GH theory is all about.
Then there are all the unknown factors. Since we don’t know them, we can’t list them.
Between all that, there is still room for CO2, though not a heck of a lot. Possibly the raw effect is real, but damped down by negative feedback.
Thank goodness we have microwave proxies for lower troposphere or we’d not only be shooting in the dark, but aiming at a raindrop while standing on a revolving platform.
Henry @ Evan again, just to let you know:
I posted this question to the university of Cape Town here (hoping to get an answer of the state of research on CO2 in South Africa) :
Dear Prof. Shillington
I heard you on the radio this afternoon and it seemed to me that you are also getting to a point where you are starting to get doubts about the influence of CO2 on global warming. Please bear with me to hear my story, and see if you can perhaps provide an answer to the questions that I have.
A few months before Climategate broke, I started my own investigations to see if my carbon footprint (CO2) really causes global warming, as claimed. To start off with, I found Svante Arrhenius’ formula completely wrong and since then I could not find any correctly conducted experiments (tests & measurements) that would somehow prove to me that the warming properties of CO2 (by trapping earth’s radiation between the wavelengths 14-15 um) are greater than its cooling properties (by deflecting sunlight at various wavelengths between 0 – 5 um). Even more disconcerting to me was finding that pupils at school and college are shown experiments with 100% carbon dioxide (representing earth’s atmosphere of only 0.04% or 380 ppms CO2!) and a light bulb as an energy source (representing the sun!). Obviously such crude experimentation can only lead to incorrect results and completely incorrect conclusions…e.g. what about the IR and near IR absorptions of CO2 and the UV absorptions of CO2 that have only been discovered recently and that also deflect sunlight?
I also found untruths in Al Gores story (An Inconvenient Truth). A lot of CO2 is dissolved in cold water and comes out when the oceans get warmer. Any chemistry student knows that the first smoke from the (warmed) water in a kettle is the CO2 being released. So, quite a number of scientists have reported that the increases of CO2 in the atmosphere in the past lagged the warming periods by quite a few hundred years… Cause and effect, get it? Smoking causes cancer but cancer does not cause smoking. But Al made it look from the past that our CO2 output must be the cause of global warming.
Just to put the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere into the right perspective: it has increased by about 0.01% in the past 50 years from ca. 0.03% to 0.04%. This compares with an average of about 1 % for water vapor in the air. Note that most scientists agree that water vapor is a very strong green house gas, and a much stronger green house gas than carbon dioxide… (if indeed carbon dioxide is a green house gas, which, like I said before, has yet to be proven to me). It is also logical for me to suspect that as a result of human activities relating to burning, bathing, cooking, boiling, countless cooling processes (including that for nuclear energy), erection of dams and shallow pools, etc. etc. a lot more water vapor than carbon dioxide is put up in the air. (sunshine on shallow water causes a lot of water vapor!)
The paper that confirmed to me that CO2 is (also) cooling the atmosphere by re-radiating sunshine is this one:
http://www.iop.org/EJ/article/0004-637X/644/1/551/64090.web.pdf?request-id=76e1a830-4451-4c80-aa58-4728c1d646ec
they measured this radiation as it bounced back to earth from the moon. So the direction of the radiation was:sun-earth-moon-earth. Follow the green line in fig. 6, bottom. Note that it already starts at 1.2 um, then one peak at 1.4 um, then various peaks at 1.6 um and 3 big peaks at 2 um.
This paper here shows that there is absorption of CO2 at between 0.21 and 0.19 um (close to 202 nm):
http://www.nat.vu.nl/en/sec/atom/Publications/pdf/DUV-CO2.pdf
There are other papers that I can look for again that will show that there are also absorptions of CO2 at between 0.18 and 0.135 um and between 0.125 and 0.12 um.
We already know from the normal IR spectra that CO2 has big absorption between 4 and 5 um.
So, to sum it up, we know that CO2 has absorption in the 14-15 um range causing some warming (by re-radiating earthshine) but as shown and proved above it also has a number of absorptions in the 0-5 um range causing cooling (by re-radiating sunshine). This cooling happens at all levels where the sunshine hits on the carbon dioxide same as the earthshine. The way from the bottom to the top is the same as from top to the bottom. So, my question is: how much cooling and how much warming is caused by the CO2? How was the experiment done to determine this and where are the test results? (I am afraid that simple heat retention testing might not work here, we have to use real sunshine and real earthshine to determine the effect in W/m3 [0.03%- 0.06%]CO2/m2/24hours). I am also doubtful of just doing analysis (determining surface areas) of the spectral data, as some of the UV absorptions of CO2 have only been discovered recently and I think the actual heat caused by the sun’s IR at 4-5 maybe underestimated, e.g. the amount of radiation of the sun between 4 and 5 maybe small but how many Watts does it cause? Here in Africa you can not stand in the sun for longer that 10 minutes, just because of the heat of the sun on your skin.
Anyway, with so much at stake, surely, someone actually has to come up with some empirical testing?
If this research has not been done, why dont we just sue the oil companies to do this?? It is their product afterall.
I am going to state it here quite categorically again that if no one has got these results, then how do we know for sure that CO2 is a greenhouse gas? Maybe the cooling properties are equal to the warming properties?
I have also been thinking of the ozone concentration in the air: Assuming that its cooling properties are higher than its warming properties (did anyone test that?), then lower concentrations, as in the past, before CFC’s were banned, can be a cause for global warming; increasing levels, as noted in the past 10 years can be a cause of global cooling?
So the net effect of the increases in CO2 and ozone is close to zero or even cooling?
(I have no financial interest in any of this, I just started my investigations because I felt a bit guilty about driving my car. I do think that if this research has not been done we should still do it, I think it is important?)
Mann’s modelling was the cornerstone of the whole alarm over global warming and all subsequent modelling was based on the same techniques and data sets. Hence the Email exchanges with Jones that ensured they were singing from the same song sheet.
The only real question here is: Has this latest paper discredited Mann’s (and therefore most subsequent) models? If so, it is not for the sceptics to prove their case. If you remove the cornerstone from a building, it may appear to stand for a little while but it will fall.
As for arguments that even if the whole alarm over global warming is based on unreliable data we should still go ahead with measures that force the abandonment of fossil fuels: try to tell the Chinese , Indians and other developing nations that their emergence from poverty must be put on hold ‘in case’ false arguments turn out to have accidentally predicted the future.
Evan–
I think we’re on the same page re “opportunity costs”. . . Even the UN started squirming about the cost of corn a couple years ago, re the human opportunity cost of using it for fuel rather than foodstuffs.
An excellent summary about the history of the hockey stick discussion is given here:
http://www.quadrant.org.au/magazine/issue/2010/7-8/the-tree-ring-circus
This thread contains little, if any, actual analysis of the MW2010 paper… is this the best so-called “skeptics” can do/offer? Comical – indeed! I’d appreciate even a token attempt to question the techniques, results, claims/conclusions… you know, a chance to read something other than 300+ comments vilifying Mann, or repeated shouts of “vindication”, or high-fivin/back-slappin. Are there any real skeptics in the house?
richyRich: Did you not even read this article? Did you miss the exact quotes from the paper? What part of “We find that the proxies do not predict temperature significantly better than random series generated independently of temperature” do you not understand?
RE: Mike Roddy: (August 15, 2010 at 8:04 pm) “Mann’s hockey stick and the blogosphere (not scientific) controversy that came from it was studied by NAS, or the National Academy of Sciences. His work was vindicated in all respects, and was shown to be robust.”
The problem here, I believe, is that these are all vindications in name only. These climate scientists appear to have attempted to redefine an established history by selectively ignoring data that did not conform to their beliefs. Perhaps they did this in good faith, believing they were right, but all their work seems to fall apart under the light of critical scrutiny. Most of these supposed ‘vindications’ only seem to be saying that these dedicated scientists cannot be blamed for giving it ‘the old college try.’
[REPLY – Unfortunately, and to their ultimate detriment, they gave it the “new college try”. ~ Evan]
Mike Roddy says:
August 15, 2010 at 8:04 pm
“Mann’s hockey stick and the blogosphere (not scientific) controversy that came from it was studied by NAS, or the National Academy of Sciences. His work was vindicated in all respects, and was shown to be robust.”
This is one of the truly ludicrous falsehoods of the CAGW-mongers. What the head of the NAS panel said (under oath before the congressional committee):
“CHAIRMAN BARTON: Dr. North, do you dispute the conclusions or the methodology of Dr. Wegman’s report?
DR. NORTH: No, we don’t. We don’t disagree with their criticism. In fact, pretty much the same thing is said in our report. But again, just because the claims are made, doesn’t mean they are false”
– from “The Hockey Stick Illusion”, p 255, Andrew Montford.
So Mr. Roddy, what part of Mann’s statistical methods are as phony as his cherry-picke stripbark trees do you not understand? We stand ready here to enlighten you!
Here are two simple Excel charts of that data. The top one shows a linear fit and the bottom an exponential fit. To my 20×20, 70-yeae old eyes, I can’t tell them apart.
http://i924.photobucket.com/albums/ad87/baltwo2/CO2-2.png
Andrew Russell: “richyRich: Did you not even read this article? Did you miss the exact quotes from the paper?”
“Exact quotes” do not amount to critical analysis. They merely demonstrate a facility in copying and pasting. Nor does cheerleading count as critical analysis.
Critical analysis involves taking a claim and subjecting it to scrutiny, while withholding judgement. The technical term is “scepticism”.
“Hockey Sticky Wicket”
Umpire Wegman: You can’t bat with that, it’s been made with the wrong method.
Mann: It’s OK I’ll hold it upside down. It doesn’t matter.
Umpire Wegman: No! Consult some proper bat makers and they’ll show you how it should be done.
Mann: But it’s perfectly robust. According to my PCA analysis, it fits bat making data better than traditional bats do. Look, I’ll show you. No, wait a minute, I won’t show you, but you can take my word for it.
Umpire Wegman: I’ll ask the opposing captain if he’s happy to let you bat with it.
McKintyre: Sure, as long as he doesn’t mind me using these 9 Standard deviation sized stumps his star batsman Briffa brought home from Russia.
Mann: But that’s not cricket!
McKitrick: We told you that long ago.
McKintyre: What shall we bowl with Ross? Apples or oranges?
McKitrick: Foxtail pine cones I think Steve.
Smokey says:
August 14, 2010 at 6:07 pm
Natural climate variability is not well understood and is probably quite large.
We have been saying this here for the past few years.
Well Smokey, this is called ‘projecting your ignorance on the climate professionals’.
[REPLY – Well, turnabout is fair play, wot? ~ Evan]
Not to forget, there was also another recent evaluation:
“Professor David Hand, president of the Royal Statistical Society, said that
a graph shaped like an ice hockey stick that has been used to represent the
recent rise in global temperatures had been compiled using “inappropriate”
methods.”
“Prof Hand said his criticisms should not be seen as invalidating climate
science. He pointed out that although the hockey stick graph – which dates
from a study led by US climate scientist Michael Mann in 1998 – exaggerates
some effects, the underlying data show a clear warming signal.”
Financial Times
—–
Through the link below, you can verify that David Hand (Imperial
College, London) definitely should know his Statistics,
http://www2.imperial.ac.uk/~djhand/
Interesting that he does not come to the conclusion of M&W 2010:
that the whole venture of backcasting is senseless. Clearly, there
is a need for more debate…
Henry Pool
Excellent post.
There have been two recent CO2 heating effect posts on WUWT
One by Tom Vonk saying that (I think) radiation absorption equals radiation emission in the troposphere with little or no thermalisation because of quantum mechanical considerations.
A reply by Jeff ID argues that there is a heating effect and provides a heating effect thought experiment involving a CO2 laser.
My own twopence worth of thoughts is that the CO2 molecules at troposphere temperatures will largely have only translational KE and be quite receptive to 15um and even the smaller chance of 4um ir radiation from Earth surface upwards.
These photons provide a relatively huge addition to the CO2s KE.
For 15um it is over twice the average translational KE of a molecule at that temperature.
For 4um it is over eight times!
Given that molecules experience ten to the power of ten collisions per second this extra energy is shared out by collision with N2 and O2 molecules by the equipartition of energy.
However the emission of 4um and 15um from the atmosphere seems a lot less likely than absorption.
Using Maxwell-Boltzman statistics and the back of an envelope
15um emission is only 5 per hundred absorptions.
4um emission is only 4 per million absorptions.
So if Jeff ID is correct the CO2 thermalisation effect is a temporary local heating in the atmosphere.
If Tom Vonk is correct then there is no effect as there is no thermalisation.
Hmmm….methinks “Mike” Roddy is the alter ego of Mike Mann….
Richy, I’d like to ask you yourself to be a bit more scientific yourself, before you wonder about others. Scientific Method has to do with, first of all, paying close attention. So – Have you noticed that many readers here have clearly READ the paper, for starters? Have you noticed how many are drawing on the paper for their remarks here? Have you considered how such remarks imply having done earlier homework and research, too? Have you simply allowed for the fullness of human nature, that, when the careful analysis has been done, still needs to shout whooppee or c**p? Have you considered the function of WUWT and how it dovetails into, and balances, the function of Climate Audit? Have you looked at the CA thread for more careful scientific analysis? Have you considered that many posters here also post there? And if these remarks of mine look vague and “unscientific” to you, just click my name. Think for yourself. Here we don’t expect to be spoonfed with “scientific results”, we want to understand the science for ourselves, and one consequence of this is, we need to include not only all the counter-arguments but also something of all the facets of our humanity, if we are really to know in the depth of our beings that the science is being done. This might look messier than RealClimate but we know our science is real because it does not involve suppression.
@Gail Combs
Thanks. I have read the paper now. I understand what it is about. On face value, it looks really good – a very solid piece of research. I also think that it will be 4 – 5 years before we can objectively evaluate whether the paper is successful in doing what it claims to be doing. Mann et al need a chance to respond. It’s way too premature to be claiming that the Hockey Stick is dead in the water.
@warren in Minnesota
Once again – the timing of the MWP, if you accept the M&W graph above, wildly conflicts with the timing of the MWP graphs that have commonly been used here – cited earlier – which clearly placed the MWP at 1200 – 1400ce. I could use this paper to therefore discredit many of the lines of argument that have been made here in support of a medieval warming period (it almost completely disappears into the margin error, temporal placement wildly inconsistent etc.). Not that I am doing this. My point is that this paper also undermines much of the work that has been ‘published’ here.
@Jaye
Actually not. For the purposes of rejecting a hypothesis all “we” need is one counter example.
But if you are using an argument that conflicts with previous arguments that you have used to discredit CAGW, then that’s not science. What it amounts to is the logical fallacy of Logical Inconsistency. What I just don’t get is why no-one here thinks that this paper doesn’t also call into question many of the models and arguments and theories that have been flying around here for the past couple of years.
Rather than cheering the death of the hockey stick (‘Gotcha’ Science), you should be using the paper to re-evaluate all the arguments you have made that might be affected by the paper. That would at least make your process scientific, even if it didn’t lead to the generation of a new theory.
intrepid_wanders says:
August 15, 2010 at 9:25 pm
Just because O.J. Simpson was found innocent in the criminal case, does that force you to understand that he did not kill his ex-wife? That is why politics need to stay out of science. ))
The reason we are here and the world is being dragged into ruin is because immoral Political Activists are using twisted science as a social engineering tool. Politicains using like minded lackeys as a Higher Authority.
regards
duckster says:
August 14, 2010 at 7:48 pm
No I don’t need a theory to explain what is happening now when pointing out a error in your theory.
For example, let’s say the local veterinary society announces the theory that storks are responsible for the appearance of human babies. They are doing this hoping we will all agree to raise taxes to pay for a bird care facility in Denver, staffed by veterinarians.
I point out that storks are never seen outside of the zoo, yet, human babies continue to arrive. Therefore, the stork theory of baby origins is obviously flawed.
I do not need to present another theory on baby origins, only that the vets (much as I like them) are wrong.
BTW, can anyone explain the appearance of human babies?
Reply: They seem, loosely, to have a positive correlation with the presence of diamonds. Diamonds may catalyze the formation of babies, or perhaps diamonds are the babies’ larval stage. ~ ctm
James Sexton says:
Mike, can you imagine what this world could have accomplished in the last 30 years if all of the mental, financial, and social energies hadn’t been diverted to this issue, from both sides of the debate?
I say this to my acquaintances but they look me back with poker face.
Congratulations to you all for keeping the debate and this site so vigorous.
Alexej Buergin says:
August 15, 2010 at 1:43 am
Sticky wicket: Some people call the cricket pitch “wicket”, and a sticky wicket would e.g. be a wet pitch which makes it a difficult situation for the batsman.
Another interpretation: The real wicket ist the construction of three stumps with two bails that the bowler is trying to hit. If the bails are sticking to the stumps (in climatology “because of some chewing gum” would come to my mind) it will be difficult for the bowler to make them fall.
Either that, or it’s named after Edward Greer Sticky, a 19th century batsman who was extremely difficult to bowl out. Sticky never scored many runs, because he worked on the precautionary principle that it was better to be safe behind his crease than sorry halfway down the pitch. In 1883, playing for Nottinghamshire versus Surrey, Sticky opened for Nottinghamshire and was not out for all of 3 runs scored after 17 hours at the crease, after having successfully blocked 337 deliveries.
tallbloke, to carry on the white flannelled fools analogy –
Dr WG Grace was bowled out on the first ball of a charity match, but continued to play, exclaiming “They came to see me bat, not to see you umpire”.
Somewhat like the team’s approach to scrutiny.
And BTW, the Ashes will be heading south this year, although unfortunately the MCC as usual will not have the good (W.G) Grace to actually send them, unlike the NY Yacht club in similiar circumstances. Work that out US readers.
Michael Jankowski says:
August 14, 2010 at 8:47 pm
I wonder how many emails went back-and-forth between team members today?
Not many I think, Gavins recent posting outside of RC saying temp paleo recontructions are not scientifically interesting show they may have already known about this paper for some time and were preparing the ground for ‘Well we never used this much for justifing AGW anyway’ and let the whole matter drop. They plan to fall back on the CO2 is a Greenhouse gas lab experiment as their last wheel on the wagon, pity no body has tried seeing if its true in an earth like atmosphere experiment.
Henry@Brian & Evan
Sorry Brian, I did try to follow those 2 discussions , but I am afraid it is above me or at least I don’t understand what they are talking about, mostly to do with thermology, I suspect..
I do believe that what I see is happening is simple enough: in the places where there is absorption in the molecule there is deflection of light (=radiation) . It absorps up to a point (probably causing some heat transfer in the process) until it is saturated. The only way I can understand what happens next is that I must see these (wavelengths ) spots in the molecule as places where the radiation is first absorbed and once filled it then becomes reflective, like a mirror. That is the only way to explain what I see is happening. Because of the random position of the molecule, 50% is send back in the direction where the light came from!
To give you a simple example. An observation I made here: if I stand in the African sun, and during the day the humidity goes up, then I can feel that the sun’s heat on my skin becomes less as the humidity increases.. . This happens because the water vapor is doing its re-radiation of sunshine and 50% of the sun’s radiations in the areas of where water absorps are sent back to space (remember: light cannot stand still).
What I discovered in my search for answers is that nobody made a detailed balance sheet of substances in the atmosphere as to how much they cool (by re-radiating sunshine) and how much they warm up (by re-radiating earthshine).
So my original question to Evan, who, as a lukewarmer, seemed sure that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, was : How do you know for sure that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, if nobody has some actual results from experimentations on the cooling and warming?
(remember that without oxygen/ozone/water vapor, CO2 and other gases in the atmosphere, an additional 25-30 % radiation would be slammed on top of our heads – this is difference in radiation between the top of the atmosphere and at sea level).
My recall is that Mann’s claim about the MWP was not the it had never occurred, but rather that It only had a regional effect that had been limited to Northern Europe. While I understand that substantial evidence has been found that indicates that the warming was global and not just regional, the examples cited as evidence that Mann got it wrong about the MWP in these comments have largely focused on Europe (such as grape growing in England). While I am very displeased with what seems to be Mann’s failure to even attempt to live up scientific standards, I still take an ACLU like perspective on this issue. Blaming him for a position that he did not take is not fair, and besides, there is so much more about many of his other claims that call for criticize.
Actually I don’t see the big importance of the article ! The reworked data representation still shows a hockey stick. Slightly different in shape than the original one. Also shows the reworked graph that we live in the highest temperatures since 1000 years. More alarming is the fact that the new representation shows temperature deviations of ± 1° C for the nowaday times. The original Mann graph kept the actual temperature rise restricted to ± 0,5°C. Personnally I would not see this paper as a victory of the skeptical climate science….but rather as a confirmation even a strengthening of the original Mann message….the earth is warming and it deas that rather fast !
Just wondering: Would it be legitimate to construct a couple of alternative graphs that fit within the data as circumscribed by M&W, i.e., within the error bars, that are equally plausible, statistically, with the hockey stick? You know, something for the shaft that is lumpy and bumpy, but still possible, given Mann et al.’s data? Leave the blade as is.
If legitimate, I would like to see them. So would the newspapers.
BTW, can anyone explain the appearance of human babies?
Reply: They seem, loosely, to have a positive correlation with the presence of diamonds. Diamonds may catalyze the formation of babies, or perhaps diamonds are the babies’ larval stage. ~ ctm
Not so, it’s BEER that causes babies. Fact
[REPLY – I theorize that it may relate to positive feedback from the beer/diamond combination. (I am looking for volunteers for a robust series of field-tests.) ~ Evan]
C Colenaty:
At August 16, 2010 at 4:10 am you assert:
“My recall is that Mann’s claim about the MWP was not the it had never occurred, but rather that It only had a regional effect that had been limited to Northern Europe. While I understand that substantial evidence has been found that indicates that the warming was global and not just regional, the examples cited as evidence ”
Sorry, but that is an Orwellian rewriting of history.
The MBH ‘hockey stick’ was constructed (contrived?) from proxy data obtained from the Northern Hemisphere mostly in Northern Europe. It showed no MWP.
So, if it were to be claimed that the MWP was “regional” on the basis of the analyses by MBH then those analyses showed the Northern Hemisphere was the region where the MWP did NOT happen.
Richard
Willem de Rode:
Please read the original paper (it is linked from the above article).
Altenatively, if that is too difficult for you, then read the several contributions (above) that have explained the matter and refuted your point. To save you finding them, I copy one randomly selected example here:
“Mike Jowsey says:
August 14, 2010 at 8:32 pm
duckster says:
August 14, 2010 at 7:48 pm
Looking at the paper above…
The main point of this paper is to debunk the maths Mann used. You can get similar hockey sticks by using random numbers. Speak to that subject please.
By shifting focus to whether or not the graph shows a MWP is a strawman and is completely irrelevant to the point of the paper. Besides, the graph (fig.16) uses the same proxy data Mann used, with correct maths. Mann’s proxy data (and maths) explicitly set out to remove the MWP so it is no surprise that his biased proxy selections camouflage the MWP. Nevertheless, fig.16 does show temperatures 1000 years ago were on a par with today’s (according to Mann’s proxies).”
On a WUWT thread it pays to read the existing comments before posting one yourself.
Richard
Willem!
Dont you see the elephant? The statistic METHODS climate science use is flawed.
With flawed methods not understanding the underlying data you end up with wrong conclusions.
“Environmentalism, which in its raw, early form had no time for the encrusted, seized-up politics of left and right, has been sucked into the yawning, bottomless chasm of the ‘progressive’ left.”
…-
“Confessions of a recovering environmentalist
Paul Kingsnorth, 16 August 2010″
“Environmentalism, which in its raw, early form had no time for the encrusted, seized-up politics of left and right, has been sucked into the yawning, bottomless chasm of the ‘progressive’ left.” A personal, twenty-year journey through the world’s wild places and the movements to protect them is also, for Paul Kingsnorth, an education in the limits of a project that has forgotten nature and lost its soul.”
“Some see Nature all ridicule and deformity … and some scarce see Nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, Nature is imagination itself – William Blake
Scenes from a younger life # 1:
I am 12 years old. I am alone, I am scared, I am cold and I am crying my eyes out. I can’t see more than six feet in either direction. I am on some godforsaken moor high up on the dark, ancient, poisonous spine of England. The black bog-juice I have been trudging through for hours has long since crept over the tops of my boots and down into my socks. My rucksack is too heavy, I am unloved and lost and I will never find my way home. It is raining and the cloud is punishing me; clinging to me, laughing at me. Twenty-five years later, I still have a felt memory of that experience and its emotions: a real despair and a terrible loneliness.”
http://www.opendemocracy.net/paul-kingsnorth/confessions-of-recovering-environmentalist
http://pajamasmedia.com/richardfernandez/2010/08/15/talking-down-to-a-bigoted-nation/#comment-119296
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/archives/014654.html
Willem de Rode,
This paper is extremely important. Here’s why:
The MBH98 hockey stick provided two separate arguments for the CAGW crowd. First, it showed a recent, rapid rise in temperature [the blade], and second, it showed that no MWP occurred [the stick]. That would make the current rise in temperature unprecedented.
Both claims were based on faulty statistics used improperly, and on very carefully picked proxies, selected after many computer runs and using statistically invalid methods, until one was found that gave the desired hockey stick shape. Mann threw out the proxies after 1960 because they stopped showing a rise in temperature, and he replaced them [without the necessary acknowledgement] with an instrumental overlay after 1960.
When the statistical analysis is done correctly using Mann’s own carefully selected tree ring proxies, the resulting graph shows that the current warming has happened just like the past MWP warming that happened well before the industrial revolution. That destroys the MBH98 hypothesis that current temperatures are “unprecedented.”
Since what is occurring now has happened in the past [and the planet has warmed even more, prior to the MWP], the null hypothesis remains standing: no one has falsified the theory that the observed temperatures changes are the result of natural variability, which fully explains the current temperature fluctuations without the need for an extraneous variable like CO2. Occam’s Razor warns against adding any unnecessary variables to an explanation that completely describes a hypothesis.
Next, this proper statistical analysis means that MBH98, MBH99, and follow-up Mann et al. papers are far from robust, and in fact are so riddled with bad statistics that they are essentially worthless; they are falsified.
Finally, Mann claims that no MWP happened. This paper clearly shows the high temperatures in the Middle Ages — verifying supporting historical documents and first-hand contemporary accounts from around the world showing the MWP was at least as warm as today, and very likely warmer.
This paper decisively breaks the hockey stick by showing a clearly recognizable MWP, and by showing that current temperatures are within past parameters. Nothing unusual or unnatural is occurring, and the coincidental rise of CO2 has much less to do with the [very mild] 0.7° temperature rise over the past century and a half than the effect of natural variability.
You conclude by saying “the earth is warming and it does that rather fast!” But even a chastened Phil Jones shows that the current rise has happened repeatedly.
None of this would be necessary if Michael Mann had produced his data and methodologies as required by the scientific method, and as required by the written policies of the journals that published his findings. Mann understands very well that producing his methods — paid for by public taxes — would cause his iconic chart to be promptly falsified. So for the past twelve years he has used every trick in the book to avoid allowing other scientists the opportunity to replicate his methods.
Now Mann’s statistics have been debunked, destroying his hockey stick. Whether or not you believe that is unimportant doesn’t matter. This paper is yet another torpedo in the side of the Mann CAGW ship. It’s going down.
Willem de Rode says:
August 16, 2010 at 4:24 am
Actually I don’t see the big importance of the article ! The reworked data representation still shows a hockey stick.
————Reply:
Mann’s central point is that the current warming is UNPRECDENTED–he does that by using bogus statistical methods to flatten past temperature variations. You yourself state that it shows temperatures this warm 1000 years years ago, a direct refutation of Mann’s central point (whether it was regional or global is immaterial, although more evidence indicates it was a global phenomena, not just regional).
You see, the “C” in CAGW stands for “Catastrophic”; hence, if temperatures in the past have been as warm or warmer than they currently are, it means two things: It wasn’t due to man’s influence and it won’t have catastrophic impact. Of course, the “climate scientists” that push their CAGW agenda like Mann through the use of home-made “statistics” are going to ignore this, but the rest of the world (particularly thinking voters and most likely a certain attorney general from Virginia) are going to see through the charade. By the way, the rate at which the earth is currently warming is a very debatable topic, since so many temperature stations have been dropped, and due to other irregularities (for example, their “homogenization” adjustments are highly questionable as pointed out in a companion post on this site that indicates New Zealand’s NIWA is being sued for “cooking” the temperature data); there is far more information of this type that you can find in past postings here at WUWT. Not only are “climate scientist’s” mathematical abilities highly questionable (and perhaps erroneous on purpose), but their data-gathering abilities are highly suspect too.
Willem de Rode says:
August 16, 2010 at 4:24 am
“Actually I don’t see the big importance of the article ! The reworked data representation still shows a hockey stick.”
William, I don’t mean to be overly critical, but you have, as many others here, simply looked at the graph and drew an errant conclusion. In doing so, you’ve made it abundantly clear that you haven’t even bothered to read the discussion, (I know it is lengthy, but you could at least skim) much less the paper itself. The authors didn’t seek to make a statement of past or present temperatures or anomalies. They were trying to determine if the temp proxies(ie, tree rings) were valid proxies. The graph was presented to show levels of uncertainty not some perception of reality.
From the paper. “We decompose the uncertainty of our model’s backcast by plotting the curves drawn using each of the methods outlined in the previous three
paragraphs in Figure 16. As can be seen, in the modern instrumental period
the residual variance (in cyan) dominates the uncertainty in the backcast.
However, the variance due to β uncertainty (in green) propagates through
time and becomes the dominant portion of the overall error for earlier periods.
The primary conclusion is that failure to account for parameter uncertainty
results in overly confident model predictions.”(emphasis mine)
As you can see, they don’t have any confidence this graph(or any other from the proxy data) reflects reality. Do yourself a favor and read the paper. The statistics are difficult(for me anyway), the read and reasoning are not.
Ken Harvey says:
August 15, 2010 at 5:44 am
…Why would they want to spend some of their grant money on professional numbers men? …
Note well that your drugs and food additives are approved with even greater prudent savings on unnecessary expenditure on professional statisticians.
___________________________________________________________
Food and drug safety is the other worldwide hoax. That is why all the real data on the cause of food borne illness is swept under the rug. There is very big money in controlling the food supply. And just as tax and regulation (Markey’s Cap & Trade bill) is the means of controlling energy, Markey’s other bill “Food Safety” is all about gaining complete control the food supply
“Food is power! We use it to change behavior. Some may call that bribery. We do not apologize.” These are the words of Catherine Bertini, Executive Director of the United Nations World Food Program, former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Agriculture – UN World Food Summit in November of 1996.
REFERENCES:
To understand the implications of food safety regulations on private kitchen gardens you have to understand The Interstate Commerce Clause and The Kitchen Sink
The WTO and the Politics of GMO
History, HACCP and the Food Safety Con Job
The Festering Fraud behind Food Safety Reform
FARM ANIMALS AND CORPORATE PATENT STRATEGIES
STOP ‘MONSANTOSIZING’ FOOD, SEEDS AND ANIMALS!
No End Seen to Cartel’s Destruction of Food Capacity
Food Safety Bill:
HR 2749: Totalitarian Control of the Food Supply
Text of H.R. 2749: Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009
(2009) HR 2749 Food Safety Regulation Amendments: A Politicians summary
http://aboutpolitics.com/politicians/Colorado-CO/Markey/Executive%20Branch
(How interesting–I see Smokey and I often argue the same points in tandem! (And no, we’re not corroborating behind the scenes!) Of course, I think Smokey has a deeper grasp of the subject matter than I do, so make sure you concentrate on his replies.)
[Reply: GMTA. ~dbs, mod.]
There’s another point in the article that is poignant. They talk about how one will select series that agree with known temperatures. This is something you should never do in statistics. This ends up skewing the data toward what you want it for the data that you know, but will lead to erroneous data everywhere else.
In classical cryptography, you can see the same thing with Vigenere type ciphers. Suppose you think it’s English, you can test for that by calculating the IC. Each language has a different IC. But if you get a huge spike in IC, it will look strange, but it is meaningless. You cannot take this high IC, even though it is very rare to get such a value, to mean you’ve found anything significant. That high IC was found after the fact.
Same thing with tree ring proxies. You cannot select good matches AFTER THE FACT. You need to have a hypothesis BEFOREHAND and then test for that will ALL data. If it happens that there are serious flaws outside of this (like something went wrong with the collection of tree ring data), then sure you can remove it. But otherwise, all data must be use within the hypothesis. This is why the paper included all the data. If one of them skews the data, then that can be analyzed later. However, the first step is to include everything. If the paper in question did not do this, they could be accused of cherry picking themselves and of doing what they themselves say cannot be done. Which is to select tree series based on what we already know.
In short, the correct way is to make a hypothesis and then check to see if it fits the data we already have. Not the other way around.
I find that this is the more important point of the paper that has perhaps been glossed over.
It’s the same problem that happened with hiding the decline. If a proxy series does not match the instrumental data, then it’s possible that it won’t match actual data in the past either. So that entire series is no good. By the same token, if some tree proxy series don’t match actual temperatures (or changes in temperature), then none of the tree series can be trusted, even those that do match, because we don’t know if it’s just by chance that they match the last 100 years or so.
[REPLY – Gosh, yes. When I was reviewing CRN ratings for surface stations I avoided looking at the raw trends first. ~ Evan]
Barefoot boy from Brooklyn says:
August 16, 2010 at 4:37 am
“Just wondering: Would it be legitimate to construct a couple of alternative graphs that fit within the data as circumscribed by M&W, i.e., within the error bars, that are equally plausible, statistically, with the hockey stick? You know, something for the shaft that is lumpy and bumpy, but still possible, given Mann et al.’s data? Leave the blade as is.
If legitimate, I would like to see them. So would the newspapers.”
One could, but it wouldn’t be legitimate. The paper concludes the proxy data itself isn’t sensitive enough to pick up the upticks (nor downturns) in our historical data. Given the margins of error in the various graphs and analysis, a child with a crayon would be as valid as anything you’ve seen if the graph was constructed by the proxy data used in paleo-climatology.
From the paper, “Still, it seems there is simply not enough signal in the proxies to
detect either the high levels of or the sharp run-up in temperature seen in
the 1990s. This is disturbing: if a model cannot predict the occurrence of a
sharp run-up in an out-of-sample block which is contiguous with the insample
training set, then it seems highly unlikely that it has power to detect
such levels or run-ups in the more distant past. It is even more discouraging
when one recalls Figure 15: the model cannot capture the sharp run-up
even in-sample. In sum, these results suggest that the ninety-three sequences
that comprise the 1,000 year old proxy record simply lack power to detect a sharp increase in temperature.” and “Since our model cannot detect the recent
temperature change, detection of dramatic changes hundreds of years
ago seems out of the question.”
Barefoot, it is tempting to do such things. And I suspect it has been done to the populace by less scrupulous people. But there wouldn’t be justification for it. Again, the graphs are only representative of the proxy data, which, the authors state doesn’t have the ability to detect historical temps to such a sensitive degree. The reality is the temps could be and may be greater and lower than the error bands of the graphs. See figure 15 for as to why I stated such.
Well, as Ernest Rutherford said:
“If your experiment depends on statistics, perhaps you should have designed a better experiment.”
BTW, the acronym “CAGW” deserves mention: As this paper illustrates, the “C” (for “Catastrophic”) is gone because temperatures in the recent past (say the past thousand years or so) have been as high as today with no associated catastrophe (indeed, those were better times by far than during the Little Ice Age).
The “A” in the term stands for “Anthropogenic”, but following the argument above, it can be asserted that past warmings weren’t of Anthropogenic origin, so that’s gone.
Finally, the “GW” (for “Global Warming”) is apparently exaggerated and is most likely of natural origin.
So with no “C”, no “A”, and little or no “GW”, they’re down to practically nothing. One could assert, then, that “CAGW” doesn’t exist.
If you google “Mann climate” you get one news story from PrisonPlanet.com. Obviously a lot of ignorring going on here, who are the deniers now?
Duckster you said:
“…MWP graphs that have commonly been used here – cited earlier – which clearly placed the MWP at 1200 – 1400ce…”
Are you citing the graphic called the “Battle of the graphs” for your date range of 1200-1400 for the MWP? The comparison shows the global steady state temperatures with hockey stick by Mann and the hot and cold variation in Europe over similar time spans. Using the second graph, not Mann’s, I would describe the hot time from 950 to 1400 as the medieval warm period and peaking at 1200. I would not say the medieval warm period was from 1200 to 1400.
duckster: M&W are not scientists and their point is not scientific. They are statisticians and their point is statistical. They do not claim to present a new, “valid” reconstruction. Their point is that proxies will not support any reconstruction. In other words, the Hockey Stick is not so much broken as it is a castle in the air.
duckster says:
August 16, 2010 at 2:13 am
“………….Once again – the timing of the MWP, if you accept the M&W graph above, wildly conflicts with the timing of the MWP graphs that have commonly been used here – cited earlier – which clearly placed the MWP at 1200 – 1400ce……………”
‘GROAN’
duckster, are you intentionally disregarding some of the things the paper states? Or the efforts for many here to clarify the assertions of the paper? Are you intentionally mis-informing people that come here to read about climate issues?
duckster, the paper itself states rather clearly that they don’t believe the proxy data is sensitive enough to detect “upticks” in the warming. I’ve quoted several places in the paper where they state as much.
duckster, the lack of an apparent MWP in the graph was generated by proxy data in which the authors state they have no confidence. You are entirely mis-interpreting what the graph means. If you disagree with my statements, please show me where in the paper that I’m wrong. I’m beginning to think this is a willful attempt at disinformation dissemination.
duckster says:
“Once again – the timing of the MWP, if you accept the M&W graph above, wildly conflicts with the timing of the MWP graphs that have commonly been used here – cited earlier – which clearly placed the MWP at 1200 – 1400ce. I could use this paper to therefore discredit many of the lines of argument that have been made here in support of a medieval warming period (it almost completely disappears into the margin error, temporal placement wildly inconsistent etc.). Not that I am doing this. My point is that this paper also undermines much of the work that has been ‘published’ here.”
duckster, you have raised this strawman about the timing of the MWP a couple of times on this thread. Have a look at http://pages.science-skeptical.de/MWP/Loehle-2007.html and if you wish go and read the full Loehle, C. 2007 paper. it shows that 1000 ce is right in the middle of the MWP. By 1200 it was already waning, and by 1400 it was well over. Maybe you could link to the item on this site where you believe graphs have been presented showing the MWP started in 1200 ce.
Now that we have that strawman out of the way, maybe we can get back to the statistical methods that this paper is all about. If the maths behind Mann’s hockey stick is wrong, then there can be no confidence in the conclusions. In other words, the hockey stick may be correct, but more likely it isn’t.
#
#
evanmjones says:
August 15, 2010 at 2:02 pm
I am not concerned with the politics. But the Medieval Warm period is in the literature, architecture, geology, and archaeology. Even the statistics, such as they were (e.g., “the emperor’s cherry trees”). Climate scientists have got to face up to the fact that they are, as on wit put it, like Truman Capote trying to marry Dolly Parton. The job is just too big for them.
Nice post Evan, but this next comment really hit home, especially when I read that some like Richy were calling foul at sceptics “villifying” Michael Mann……………..
“Climatology takes a village. A Full and Complete village”.
I know what you meant, but I suppose every village needs a village idiot, and Mann has sadly self cast himself in that role.
The facts, the science, the numbers make that abundantly clear. He did the trick “his way”…….
[REPLY – Every village needs an idiot. No village would be complete without one. (The problem only arises when he get elected mayor.) ~ Evan]
Jabbed this on Taminos blog, will it survive?
“What perplexes me the most is why the majority of folk on this thread are so fixated on a catastrophic outcome and seem to welcome a doomsday scenario.
Instead of welcoming a study that might point to a less damaging outcome for the future of our children there is an instant cry for blood when a new paper emerges that might indicate otherwise.
Even before the paper has been analysed or assessed there are attempts to discredit the authors, why? What is the motivation here and why is it not possible to give this new analysis a fair hearing? Something to hide?
Why is it that historical evidence of a roman warming/medieval warming/little ice age that are absent in the original Mann analysis ignored? These folk were all lying nutters? Were they anticipating this argument and telling porkies to discredit the deniers? The still buried settlements in Greenland were planted evidence?
Just saying.”
[REPLY – I think it may have something to do with the fact that if we survive, they don’t. ~ Evan]
I don’t think that Rutherford said ‘perhaps’….
“If your experiment needs statistics, you ought to have done a better experiment.”
Vorlath says:
August 16, 2010 at 6:14 am
“They talk about how one will select series that agree with known temperatures. This is something you should never do in statistics. This ends up skewing the data toward what you want it for the data that you know, but will lead to erroneous data everywhere else.”
Indeed!
From the paper: “All three of these datasets have been substantially
processed including smoothing and imputation of missing data
(Mann et al., 2008). While these present interesting problems, they are not
the focus of our inquiry. We assume that the data selection, collection, and processing performed by climate scientists meets the standards of their discipline. Without taking a position on these data quality issues, we thus take
the dataset as given.We further make the assumptions of linearity and stationarity
of the relationship between temperature and proxies, an assumption
employed throughout the climate science literature (NRC, 2006) noting
that ”the stationarity of the relationship does not require stationarity of the
series themselves” (NRC, 2006). Even with these substantial assumptions,
the paleoclimatological reconstructive endeavor is a very difficult one and
we focus on the substantive modeling problems encountered in this setting.”
(Please note, for consistency, I’ve been quoting the article by putting them in italics. In the paper itself, the word assume is in italics, for clarity I put it in bold.)
One could read the paragraph in one of two ways. One could state this is a nice way of saying “We believe the processing and collecting of samples were done in a professional manner and we don’t have any exception to the data.” I read it a bit differently though. It seems to me, the authors knew many would have taken exception to the data collection and processing(including the imputation) and were forced to put an early disclaimer in the paper as opposed to some footnote. To me, it reads something akin to “Yes, we know they gathered and processed the data in errant fashion, but there’s only so much we can write about without publishing a textbook on how not to apply statistics.” The sentence “We assume that the data selection, collection, and processing performed by climate scientists meets the standards of their discipline.”, seems to be a particular harsh slap at an entire profession. OUCH!!!
duckster says:
August 16, 2010 at 2:13 am
I don’t know what you are babbling on about. If there is a theory out there that says “If X then Y” and I produce an experiment that shows “If X then not Y”. That’s it, theory gone poof. Its still very much science and its a valid result to reject the hypothesis without any attempt to explain what the theory might actually be. You might well counter with “If X in the presence of Z, then Y” and start the whole process over again. However, it is definitely scientific to independently verify a result and if the result is not verified, then it is well within accepted norms that the burden of correction is on the original purveyor of the hypothesis.
Mark in Oz: August 16, 2010 at 6:30 am
Well, as Ernest Rutherford said:
“If your experiment depends on statistics, perhaps you should have designed a better experiment.”
Or, “If your stats don’t fit, you’d better quit.”
Willem’s claim is simply untrue. Anyone who looks at the two graphs from the paper as Anthony has reproduced here can see the point clearly. There is an uptick in the 20th century, but temps are still not as high as they were during the Medieval Warm Period. The new graph is very like the pre-1998 reconstruction of temperature history… before Michael Mann photoshopped the temp record. This means, even with all of the CO2 in the atmosphere, the Earth’s energy budget is not imbalanced in any unprecedented way. The Earth has been this warm before and warmer…. the polar bears survived and the human race survived. We have time to figure out how, if at all, increasing atmospheric CO2 is changing our climate.
Nope, deleted.
This paper is beautifully and clearly written and a welcome addition to undoing past careless work in climate science.
There is a lot in McShane and Wyner 2010 and much of it is dense in statistics and specialized mathematical treatment; but the result is clear:
(from pg 42) “Natural climate variability is not well understood and is probably quite large. It is not clear that the proxies currently used to predict temperature are even predictive of it at the scale of several decades let alone over many centuries…”
To come to such a conclusion is devastating to the so-called Hockey Stick, but McIntyre and McKitrick did so in 2005 by showing that (pg 19) “…that random sequences (also referred to as “pseudo-proxies”) with complex local dependence structures can predict temperatures.”
What? a pseudo-proxy or a “random sequence” predicts temperature about as well as the actual proxies, used by Mann et al? (pg 17) “Since these pseudo-proxies are generated independently of the temperature series, we know they cannot be truly predictive of it. Hence, the real proxies – if they contain linear signal on temperatures – should out perform out pseudo-proxies, at least with high probability.”
At this point, I am on the edge of my seat – do the real proxies outperform the pseudo-proxies and if they do not, then the Hockey Stick isn’t much more of an important or valid contribution to climate science than say, palm-reading or reading tea leaves, and it is time to recognize this and move the science on. It also tells us the science was not settled science at the time of that oft made proclamation.
So are skeptics the only ones using pseudo-proxies? Not at all.
(pg 16) “The use of pseudo-proxies is quite common in the climate science literature where pseudo-proxies are often built by adding an AR1 time series (“red noise”) to natural proxies, local temperatures, or simulated temperatures generated from General Circulation Models (Mann and Rutherford, 2002; Wahl and Amman, 2006). These pseudo-proxies determine whether a given reconstruction is “skillful” (i.e. statistically significant). Skill is demonstrated with respect to a class of pseudo-proxies if the true proxies outperform the pseudo-proxies with high probability (probabilities are approximated by simulation). In our study, we use an even weaker benchmark than those in the climate science literature: our pseudo-proxies are random numbers known to be completely independent of the temperature series.”
They continue and describe, with helpful detail, precisely what pseudo-proxies they employ and provide a rationale for using them and then reiterate their aim:
(pg 17) “Since these pseudo-proxies are generated independently of the temperature series, we know they cannot be truly predictive of it. Hence the real proxies – if they contain linear signal on temperature – should outperform our pseudo-proxies, at least with high probability.”
Do the real proxies outperform the pseudo-proxies? No. They do not.
(pg 18) “Finally, the empirical AR1 process and Brownian Motion both substantially outperform the proxies. They have a lower average holdout RMSE and lower variability than that achieved by the proxies. This is extremely important since these three classes of time series are generally completely independent of the temperature data. They have no long term predictive ability, and they cannot be used to reconstruct historical temperatures. Yet, they significantly outperform the proxies at thirty-year holdout prediction!”
“In other words, our model performs better when using highly auto-correlated noise rather than proxies to “predict” temperature. The real proxies are less predictive than our “fake” data.”
More rationale for their methods and procedures and of note if slightly out of page number order:
(pg 17) “This suggests that climate scientists are using a particularly weak null benchmark to test their models. That the null models may be too weak and the associated standard errors in papers such as Mann et al. (1998) are not wide enough has already been pointed out in the climate literature (von Storch et al., 2004).”
This is already getting to be a long post, but their paper is 45 pages long and I have to get back to work.
Paul Jackson says:
August 15, 2010 at 7:51 am
Paul, the encryption is for sending and receiving the emails. They are still stored in plain text (depending upon the email program of course) on the server – from whence the climategate information was obtained.
They would have to change their email server software (something they probably have no control over) to try to get encryption there.
Mark in Oz says:
August 16, 2010 at 6:30 am
I wonder what Rutherford would have to say about the politicizing of science in his home country?
Did you not get what I was saying earlier:
The climate (and temp) in 1200 AD was the same as it was now. This is because in that time there were many animals. They produced a lot of methane. And that caused warming. Unfortunately, the humans killed the animals. And then it became ice cold. (they still call it the “little ice age”). Lucky for us, we have now many humans producing carbon dioxide. Othewerwise it would become (very) cold again!!
bushy says:
August 16, 2010 at 7:46 am
======================================
Everyone is noticing the same thing bushy.
They are shouting “do it for the children”, but every time any good news comes out that maybe we are not all going to die, they all go ballistic.
Excellent and exciting post, but headline is a bit of a mess: no wickets in hockey, let alone the ice hockey of the hockey stick debate. You’re thinking of cricket, when the wicket may be sticky, but the bat is always straight!
Doug Proctor, August 15, 2010 at 10:22 am
Read it with wonder when first saw it. Two points: one of the authors is at the University of Pennsylvania. Direct smack at Mann.
Not really. The University of Pennsylvania and Penn State are two different schools. Penn is Ivy League; Penn State is a state school.
Perhaps following this paper and the hard work of M&M we should update an old adage?
Statistics has done us, the people, a great service so a re-write seems the least we can do..
My suggestion would be:
‘Lies, damn lies, and robust AGW science’
Any other suggestions?
Ron Cram says:
“Willem’s claim is simply untrue. Anyone who looks at the two graphs from the paper as Anthony has reproduced here can see the point clearly. There is an uptick in the 20th century, but temps are still not as high as they were during the Medieval Warm Period.”
-Yet the TREND is clearly upward Ron. And the observed data correlates with the modeled data where it exists.
For Evan & Brian (in case you missed it)
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/14/breaking-new-paper-makes-a-hockey-sticky-wicket-of-mann-et-al-99/#comment-458382
And sea levels are not rising as predicted. Journal of Geophysical Research – Oceans, 15th August 2010
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2010/2009JC005630.shtml
So how many wheels are left on the (band)wagon?
Many are obviously missing the main point. The study is not intended to indicate that its predictions are BETTER only that making accurate predictions of any true significance is not possible even using their bayesian method (and though not stated specifically, any other method for that matter). Too many potential causal variables which are themselves intercorrelated and really of unknown past and future value. Time series assumes that the only real causal variable is the continuation of time.
two moon,
I like your comment overall.
However, your “M&W are not scientists and their point is not scientific” is misleading in that it misrepresents by oversimplification the overall area of relationships between of all the disciplines of study that are called sciences.
It seems that a discipline of study like statistics (a part of applied mathematics) that can audit and validate the theories of a physical science (such as the physics, chemistry and biology that constitute climate science) is a part of science itself. If part of science then it is not “not-science”.
I do not think we need to go further into the history of the science of the philosophy of science in this post. That would be OT, therefore a separate post.
John
James Sexton at 11.14 – absolutely spot on!
This paper clearly shows that any paper, publication or policy statement which cites MBH98 and bases its conclusions on MBH98 is discredited and falsified. A fact which is apparently not lost on Anthony, which is one reason I am sure that he has made this article a ‘sticky’ remaining at the top of the website for some days.
Hilary Barnes says:
August 16, 2010 at 9:22 am
Excellent and exciting post, but headline is a bit of a mess: no wickets in hockey, let alone the ice hockey of the hockey stick debate. You’re thinking of cricket, when the wicket may be sticky, but the bat is always straight!
—-Reply:
That’s ok, Hillary. The “sticky wicket” applies to ice hockey about as much as the hockey stick interpretation applies to climate science–that is, not at all.
“If you ask me as a person, do I think the Russian heat wave has to do with climate change, the answer is yes,” said Gavin Schmidt, a climate researcher with NASA in New York. “If you ask me as a scientist whether I have proved it, the answer is no — at least not yet.”
This simply shows Gavin’s personal bias and predisposition to a particular outcome. A malaise that inflicts many of his cohorts likely causing them to suffer from extreme confirmation bias.
-Yet the TREND is clearly upward Ron. And the observed data correlates with the modeled data where it exists.
You need to pay attention. Two clearly bogus proxies have been left in the reconstruction. The paper is mostly about the efficacy of using proxies to model temps.
evanmjones says:
August 15, 2010 at 9:18 pm
Well, geo, as I have commented in the past, for every $billion wasted (or never produced) anywhere in the world, babies starve somewhere in the world……
____________________________________________________________
What bothers me the most about CAGW and the “precautionary principle” argument is that all those who use it leave out the OTHER half of the equation. It is even stated in a Warmist peer reviewed paper:
Lesson from the past: present insolation minimum holds potential for glacial inception
“Because the intensities of the 397 ka BP and present insolation minima are very similar, we conclude that under natural boundary conditions the present insolation minimum holds the potential to terminate the Holocene interglacial. Our findings support the Ruddiman hypothesis [Ruddiman, W., 2003. The Anthropogenic Greenhouse Era began thousands of years ago. Climate Change 61, 261–293], which proposes that early anthropogenic greenhouse gas emission prevented the inception of a glacial that would otherwise already have started….”
On top of that Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution states:
“Most of the studies and debates on potential climate change, along with its ecological and economic impacts, have focused on the ongoing buildup of industrial greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and a gradual increase in global temperatures. This line of thinking, however, fails to consider another potentially disruptive climate scenario. It ignores recent and rapidly advancing evidence that Earth’s climate repeatedly has shifted abruptly and dramatically in the past, and is capable of doing so in the future.
Fossil evidence clearly demonstrates that Earthvs climate can shift gears within a decade….
But the concept remains little known and scarcely appreciated in the wider community of scientists, economists, policy makers, and world political and business leaders. Thus, world leaders may be planning for climate scenarios of global warming that are opposite to what might actually occur…“
As far as I am concerned neglecting a possible change towards a COOLING world is down right criminal negligence – my biggest gripe with CAGW. We are so busy watching the yapping little poodle we can not see the mammoth that just walked into the room.
If politicians and scientists were really concerned about the welfare of people instead of the welfare of their wallets we would be seeing great strides made in converting most of the world towards nuclear power ASAP.
Re: Ben U
“It’s not unusual in science to work on a theory that one knows not be in full accordance with reality, if one has no alternative theories nearly as good. The least bad scientific theory often gets to get worked on. People work both inside the box and outside the box of the theory, in hopes of ending up with a better theory.”
I hear you and agree in principal though sometimes you have to accept that you just know too little to have any theory whatsoever. I believe that this case is also a little different since it does not refer to a theory but to a method for fishing out temperatures of the past. If you believe as I do that this method is crap then all interpretations of past climate using this method are also invalidated.
I agree that in order to further the science one should optimally come up with a new method for fishing out past temperature that is better. In lack of such innovative skills I do think however that admitting the crapiness of the mentioned method and disregarding the message that has been distributed by using it allows for previously documented archeological findings to once again be the best knowledge to date. By this I mean the previously melted glaciers in the Alps etc. For people claiming this to be a regional European event I would very much like to see a sense making theory for how a regional effect made it possible to farm on Greenland for a couple of hundred years.
Sticky-wiki?
I find the sticky entry to be extremely annoying; it’s way too annoying to look for new items this way… 🙁
REPLY: Wow that’s a new one, use of the scroll bar is too annoying. The “annoying” story comes off the top tomorrow, until then, use of the scroll bar will be required. – Anthony
Interesting topic and reactions, especially at Tamino where there seems to be a lack of an “Open Mind” amongst the regulars.
On another note, it would seem Gavin has disappeared his original response to this at RC. The comment was there yesterday, now it is gone. As if the topic had never been mentioned.
Thoughts?
James Sexton quoted:
It is an unfortunate fact that, most likely, this is completely true. And it’s not just hurling insults to point out that the discipline of “climate scientist” does not appear to include high quality data selection, collection or processing.
Mann, to me, aspires to be the Ringo Starr of climate science, but alas, has only risen to the level of Justin Beiber’s drummer.
This tale is slightly off-topic but it illustrates how politics and statistics can collide.
Sixty years ago cases of Gram negative (G-) septicemia were associated with a 50% mortality. Today, with all our advances in antimicrobial therapy, the mortality remains at about 50%. What kills is not the infection, per se, but rather exotoxins that G- bacteria release which initiate a cascade of events in the body that lead to end organ failure and death. All G- bacteria share a common J-chain which acts as a toxin. Some smart folks figured out how to develop a human-mouse chimeric antibody which binds the G- common J-chain toxin. This product came within a gnat’s hair of being a new, approved drug for the treatment of G- sepsis. The manufacturer had already prepared marketing pieces and had hired a sales force.
The problem was that the drug would only be efficacious in cases of G- sepsis. It would be utterly ineffective in cases of G+ sepsis, viral infections or fungemia. What’s more, the drug would cost $4,000 a dose. Our diagnostic acumen was not sufficiently developed to immediately differentiate between G-, G+, viral or fungal causes of sepsis (and still isn’t). Here’s the hitch…most cases of G- sepsis occur in patients > 65 (i.e. Medicare age). Further, the drug only conferred a 10% improvement in mortality. The government went into panic mode. If approved, this drug could cost well over $1,000,000 per life saved…maybe as much as $2,000,000 or more.
So the FDA responded. On a mere technicality (end point of death at 30 days rather than 31 days), they insisted that that the manufacturer run their studies again. This was enormously expensive and difficult as it required that study subjects be drawn from hundreds of sites and that G- sepsis be confirmed before therapy was initiated (and, of course, the study must be double blinded so there was always a placebo group). It turned out badly for the manufacturer. The second study was halted half way through when the drug could not be shown to be efficacious and this promising drug was essentially dead.
Statistics killed it. I actually believed (and still believe) that this drug could theoretically save lives. But when do you use it and at what cost to society? This story reminds me of CO2 mitigation. MAYBE it could prevent some future warming, but at what cost?
Perhaps a more important lesson in this case is the need to challenge and retest methodologies. The manufacturer of this drug (which went on to make a fortune on other products) followed all the “rules” to bring a drug to market. Their study design and statistical analysis were largely above reproach…yet they were still wrong. Now, the government had a financial interest in not allowing this drug to be brought to market (it could have been devastating to Medicare), but all it took to kill it was to insist they run their experiment again. The favorable results could not be replicated.
Today we have a similar situation with CAGW except that the financial incentives have been reversed. Government makes out like a bandit under CO2 mitigation schemes, but for how much “good” and at what cost to society? The M&W paper illustrates why it is important to insist that “conclusions” be restudied.
I apologize if this comment is long and rambling, but the moral of the story is that at the end of the day good statistics are our friends and, if unchallenged, the improper interpretation of bad statistics can lead to financial ruination with no net societal gain.
BPW says:
August 16, 2010 at 11:52 am
Interesting topic and reactions, especially at Tamino where there seems to be a lack of an “Open Mind” amongst the regulars.
On another note, it would seem Gavin has disappeared his original response to this at RC. The comment was there yesterday, now it is gone. As if the topic had never been mentioned.
Thoughts?
—–Reply:
Hear no logic, see no logic, speak no logic. (Or substitute “truth” for “logic” and the same applies.)
Jaye Bass says:
August 16, 2010 at 10:55 am
“You need to pay attention. Two clearly bogus proxies have been left in the reconstruction. The paper is mostly about the efficacy of using proxies to model temps.”
Agreed. I’m wondering if what we are seeing here isn’t something worth studying itself? It seems an overwhelming majority of the alarmists seem only to look at the pretty pictures and assume a story from there, discerning nothing from the colors of the graph or even noting the “high water” marks about the year 1100. They don’t seem to even read the caption under the fig. 16. and either don’t know what to make of fig 15 or simply can’t see it. So, my question is this;
Is this why there are so many CAGW believers out there? Do they simply look at the pictures and let someone else tell them what it means or is it left to them to make wild assumptions to the meaning of the pretty pictures without actually reading an explanation? It is true some skeptics did the same, but not many and once explained what it means, they endeavored to READ THE DAMNED PAPER!!!!
It is a small wonder MSNBC thought they could put a penguin with a polar bear and get away with it. All they have to do is photo-shop something and let the believers imagination tell the story. Dear God! Has it come to this? Has this world, as the majority of the population, capitulated its God given right to contemplate and even think for itself? I guess I now know why when I make a reference to 1984 I get very few responses from the alarmists. There aren’t any pictures to assume a story. I’m simply flabbergasted at the either willful refusal to read or the inability to accomplish the reading.
Dr Dave,
Excellent analogy and relevant to the context of M and W.
Marc Blank says:
I find the sticky entry to be extremely annoying; it’s way too annoying to look for new items this way… 🙁
===================
I use the page down button (2 taps to reach recent comments, three for links) 🙂
@ davidc says:
August 15, 2010 at 3:07 pm
From New York Times:
“If you ask me as a person, do I think the Russian heat wave has to do with climate change, the answer is yes,” said Gavin Schmidt, a climate researcher with NASA in New York. “If you ask me as a scientist whether I have proved it, the answer is no — at least not yet.”
Is this the first time Gavin has expressed anything but total certainty?
And elsewhere in the article nytimes says:
‘Seemingly disconnected, these far-flung disasters [floods, fires] are reviving the question of whether global warming is causing more weather extremes’
Well, the Russians themselves aren’t buying it, but I guess Gavin doesn’t think they’re aware of what’s going on in their own country. The fires were caused by poor forest management, not global warming.
http://notrickszone.com/2010/08/12/russian-scientist-extreme-central-russian-heat-wave-not-an-indication-of-a-future-climate-change/
The original article is in German.
John Whitman: Point taken. Thank you.
New Zealand sceptics to challenge climate science in court http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/08/16/2984597.htm?section=justin
The kiwi’s don’t f**k around, man.
Off topic:
Met office acknowledges problems with siting of weather stations…
‘Putting measuring instruments on your roof isn’t technically the best place to have them because they might absorb more sunlight and therefore record a temperature a few degrees hotter than it actually is.’
Read more: http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/news/article-1303400/One-man-weather-centre-Simon-Cansick-accurate-farmers-snubbing-Met-Office.html#ixzz0wnk4TMcY
BPW: August 16, 2010 at 11:52 am
On another note, it would seem Gavin has disappeared his original response to this at RC. The comment was there yesterday, now it is gone. As if the topic had never been mentioned.
Thoughts?
He was probably rushed and inadvertently deleted himself…
2010. Blakeley B. McShane and Abraham J. Wyner.
“Natural climate variability is not well understood and is probably quite large”.
1950: Charles Ernest Pelham Brooks
The weather of one year differs from that of another year, the weather of one decade from that of another decade ; why should not the climate of one century differ from that of another century ?
Please read “Climate Through the Ages”!
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=4PLu8lIfSFEC
http://people.wku.edu/charles.smith/chronob/BROO1888.htm
The main conclusion is that we do not know. We do not know whether CO2 is the origin of dangerous climate change and we do not know why the climate of one century may differ from that of another century.
We do not know.
This sentence is just priceless: We find that the proxies do not predict temperature significantly better than random series generated independently of temperature.
Ouch. In addition, data quality issues were not assessed at all, so these findings are based on an assumption that proxy data was collected and processed properly.
Author Bios:
Blakeley B. McShane, B.S. Economics Summa Cum Laude, University of Pennsylvania (2003), B.A. Mathematics Summa Cum Laude, University of Pennsylvania (2003), M.A. Mathematics, University of Pennsylvania (2003), Studies in Philosophy, University of Oxford (2004-2005), M.A. Statistics, University of Pennsylvania (2010), Ph.D. Statistics, University of Pennsylvania (2010), Donald P. Jacobs Scholar; Assistant Professor of Marketing, Northwestern University (2010-Present)
Abraham J. Wyner, B.S. Mathematics Magna Cum Laude, Yale University (1988), Ph.D. Statistics, Stanford University (1993), National Science Foundation Fellowship (1989-1991), Acting Assistant Professor of Statistics, Stanford University (1993-1995), National Science Foundation Post-Doctoral Fellowship in the Mathematical Sciences (1995-1998), Visiting Assistant Professor of Statistics, University of California at Berkeley (1995-1998), Assistant Professor of Statistics, University of Pennsylvania (1998-2005), Associate Professor of Statistics, University of Pennsylvania (2005-Present)
It is always good to have these handy.
As copied from Kay’s post above:
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
From New York Times:
“If you ask me as a person, do I think the Russian heat wave has to do with climate change, the answer is yes,” said Gavin Schmidt, a climate researcher with NASA in New York. “If you ask me as a scientist whether I have proved it, the answer is no — at least not yet.”
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Well, at least Mr. Schmidt used the words “climate change” , the new code words for what used to be called AGW. However, maybe we shouldn’t be so critical of those new code words. After all, Earth’s climate temperatures have been changing for millions of years.
During more recent times, temperatures have risen fairly steadily since the mid-1800’s, (following the end of the “little ice age”), and during the subsequent century, even before CO2 began its big rising trend after the 1940’s. So what else could have caused temperature’s big rising trend from about 1850 to about 1950, as clearly shown in McShane and Wyner’s Figure 16 if levels of CO2 stayed fairly stable during that century?
Could the big rising trend during those 100 years have resulted from anything other than unknown natural causes? If not, then what else, Mr Schmidt et al AGW fanciers?
.
Henry: I think it has something to do with the CO2 letting through the long waves, which hit the surface, and a percentage are reflected back out as short waves, some of which hit the CO2 and deflect every which-a-way (with some going back down).
Then saturation, angular deflection, and band limitation and all that fun stuff gets involved resulting in a stream of mysterious symbols I can’t decipher.
Oh, my indeed, Anthony. You have whipped this one up into a right old meringue! Google McShane Wyner 2010…..
Personally, I’d prefer to read the final published version, then read the contributions for or against the paper’s claims. Until lately, that was always how it was done, in each and every strand of science.
People were yahoo-ing within less than an hour of your first post on this. How can that credibly have given them time to work through the paper itself, let alone the supporting material?
The draft paper – and I have now read it twice – offers some interesting and challenging thoughts. That is all, and, as the scientific method goes – you will need to wait for considered responses. I emailed both authors last night and both expressed surprise that the spin-machine had kicked-off in this way – from my perspective it is incredibly immature. A discussion is planned, I was told. They both seem very reasonable people.
My advice: stop spinning. It gets nobody anywhere. I expect that you will snip my comment, but the advice is from the heart. I repeat – let the paper go to press and digest post-publication commentary, and THEN decide what makes sense.
All the best – John
[REPLY – You don’t know us very well if you think we’d snip something like this. We permit and encourage opinions from all sides of the argument. We do not delete a post unless it is abusive or over the line or otherwise contrary to blog policy (fake email address, etc.). ~ Evan]
I do not understand why WUWT does not make continual reference to the Beck paper (Ernst-Georg Beck Dipl. Biol.; ENERGY & ENVIRONMENT; VOLUME 18 No. 2, 2007) which uses 90,000 measurements made by over 100 scientists during the last 180 years to show CO2 trends. In particular, the 180 year graph shows CO2 at 425 ppm in 1825, higher than it is today, bottoming out at 315 ppm in 1958, just when the Mauna Loa measurements started.
Instead, everyone is left with the brainwashed image of the Mauna Loa graph. Mauna Loa sits in the middle of the world’s largest CO2 belching ocean, atop the world’s largest CO2 belching volcano. ML is perhaps the worst place in the world to measure manmade influences; it is measuring natural influences. And don’t give me this night-time downward convecting flow crap, either. What’s the source of this flow, anyway – the Moon?
Another continual refernce should be made to Ferenc Miskolczi’s paper (Miskolczi, Ferenc M. 2010. “THE STABLE STATIONARY VALUE OF THE EARTH’S GLOBAL AVERAGE ATMOSPHERIC PLANCK-WEIGHTED GREENHOUSE-GAS OPTICAL THICKNESS”, Energy and Environment, 21, 243-262) , and Gerlich and Tscheuschner’s paper (Falsifiation Of The Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects within The Frame Of Physics, Gerlich, G. and R. D. Tscheuschner, International Journal of Modern Physics B Vol. 23, No. 3, 2009, 275-364). These two papers alone drive the stake thru the heart of this manmade global warming nonsense.
Anthony Watts says:
August 14, 2010 at 7:18 pm
“Nice try at misdirection Mike Roddy- FAIL”
I didn’t read all the comments yet so maybe this is redundant, but I thought Mike was being satirical. Sure sounded like satire to me.
Evenjones, do you mean to say that CO2 is invisible to SW? Which it is? The Earth’s surface, depending on the surface can bounce SW back out, which would then also just fly right past CO2.
The mechanism that is plausible for CO2 cooling has to do with rising, LW absorbing, CO2 laden air. Once it gets high enough, CO2 is not only lifted off the ground (where it likes to be because it is a heavy gas), but that CO2 is also going to emit LW at an atmospheric level that might prevent those LW’s from coming back down to Earth.
Woo-Hoo! Stu gets it! “Stu Ostro, senior meteorologist for The Weather Channel, is a rare breed of meteorologist who is increasingly focused on the intersection between climate and weather. A former climate change skeptic, he has compiled a lengthy presentation showing changes in weather patterns that he believes may be related to climate change.”
voices dot washingtonpost.com/capitalweathergang/2010/08/one_meteorologists_view_of_ext.html
Oh, and lookee here, it’s a story published in the Wash Post…one of the more notorious climate change [snip] rags. I bet George Will has wet himself…
Let’s see, that’s another former [snip] (and public figure) recanting. That makes four in the past week. Wow. How soon will you, Anthony, and you, sTeve, be joining them? We’re planning the party and we need a head count!
-hugs,
-sTv
[~dbs, mod.]
Another awesome thread of awesome posts and comments!
It is amazing how some simply refuse (lack the ability?) to understand the purpose of the paper and tenaciously hold to the CAGW meme. I reminds me of, ‘A Few Good Men’, the movie with Nicholson, Cruise, and Demi Moore. You know…where Nicholson is on the stand and starting to get irate? (Paraphrased):
“In the Team we use words like ‘Trick’, ‘Hide The Decline’, and ‘Homogenized’. We use these words as a code in a life spent defending something. You use them as a punchline.”
“I have niether the time or inclination to explain myself to a people that I provide data and graphs to save the world from CAGW, then questions the manner in which I derived my results. I would much rather you just said, “Thank You” and went on your way. Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a weapon and stand opposed.”
“Either way I don’t give a damn what your observations and factual data prove or disprove because deep down inside, in places you don’t go to at dinner parties…
you WANT that hockey stick…
you NEED that hockey stick…”
Cross question: “Did you, with forethought of malfeasance and a clear political agenda corrupt the science, alter data, and intentionally attempt to subvert any opposing viewpoints of your fellow scientists and colleagues?”
“YOU’RE DAMN RIGHT I DID!!! AND I’D DO IT AGAIN!!!
But seriously folks, they cannot see the significance of the M&W paper…dare not. The reason being being that it destroys what Mann et al have done AT THE VERY FOUNDATION. It didn’t pick holes in it, didn’t question minute details that were controversial. Hell, it used the same crap data sets and crap proxies!!
It pulled the friggin’ carpet out from under it. Best said by someone else above, “…Castle in the air…”
That was fun…moving on 😉
Tamino and Romm deleting comments with refs to a scientific paper? Really? What cowards. These guys deserve to lose.
Evan – no – I don’t know you very well really. But on this occasion I had to add in – perhaps if anything for sake of the reputation of “scepticism”….
Some of your regular readers seem to have difficulty with this. Hence all the “Ya-Hoo” comments. A true sceptic will wait for the paper to be published and then digest the post-publication comments and question anything in either that does not make sense. Depending on the answer(s), they will then adjust their opinion accordingly.
Surely to goodness, that is a better way to form a conclusion?
Does that seem reasonable?
cheers – John
[REPLY – No problem at all with that. Feel free to stick around and contribute to the discussion. ~ Evan]
I read the paper today.
The key argument comes down to be the same argument as Steve McIntyre’s – that the proxies are, if anything, very weak measures of temperature and cannot be distinguished from red noise (random series with autocorrelation) in terms of any statistical metric.
Also the close match of the proxies with the instrumental record says much about the proxy selection but tells us nothing at all about how they behave “out of sample” (ie before the instrumental record)
The authors use Bayesian analysis to clearly argue that the RealClimate non-statisticians are simply fooling themselves.
John Mason says:
August 16, 2010 at 2:33 pm
Some of your regular readers seem to have difficulty with this. Hence all the “Ya-Hoo” comments. A true sceptic will wait for the paper to be published
==============================
John, read the post directly above your post, and say that again with a straight face.
John, the post by sTv…….
Thanks, Evan… I’ll pop in now and then.
Regards from Mid-Wales 🙂
Cheers – John
[Not at all. But you may have poked a hornets’ nest with a stick! I’ll leave you to deal with that as you see fit . . . ~ Evan]
Third paragraph in my post above should have read, ” I would much rather you just said Thank You, and went on your way to pass Cap&Tax legislation”.
We do stand opposed, and we have picked up a weapon: facts & truth.
Everyone here is opposed to only a very few things: the way the science was done (non-scientifically), they way the science was reported (non-factually), and the way dissenting views were ignored, ridiculed, and villified.
We just always wanted the truth, John Mason your comment above is thin and irrelevant. Thanks to M&M, and the Wegman report, we already knew the Team et al were tripe & charade (at least our taxes didn’t go up) and that the Mann graph was/is bunk.
Evenjones, do you mean to say that CO2 is invisible to SW? Which it is? The Earth’s surface, depending on the surface can bounce SW back out, which would then also just fly right past CO2.
I’m not up on the wave physics. It’s just my understanding (correct or not) that the energy coming in is not the same wavelength of that which is reflected back out and that is why CO2 does not prevent as much energy from coming in as it does from going out.
Having said that, I think CO2 has a very minor effect and is probably subject to fairly heavy negative feedback. Otherwise a 40% rise in CO2 would have produced one heck of a lot more warming than it has already. IF the adjusted 20th century surface trends are correct (which I doubt), IF the 20th century warming isn’t largely natural (I suspect it is), and IF any manmade warming is 100% attributable to CO2 (which I doubt).
John Mason, you seem to be writing with a patronizing pen. Are you saying that only published scientists have “first rights” because the rest of us need their comments in order to truly understand and discuss the research? Reminds me of the hubris of Kurdish chieftains (khafirs) in Western Armenia who reserved the right to bed Armenian brides on their wedding night. The Kurds thought themselves to be higher up the ladder than Armenians. Do you think this is so about the authors and those who have been invited to the “discussion” as you call it? If this is so, you can bet I would rather spend my tax money on something other than hubris.
@ John Mason,
I couldn’t personally agree more. But the same could be stated about those who are quick to poo-poo anything which purports to go against the status quo. For instance, there are those over at “Open Mind” who have already decided this paper is flawed and simply another attempt at denial of the “known” truth. Heck, good ‘ol Eli has already identified the flaws. Go figure. Pretty quick work for a chemist/spectroscopist!
Someone here earlier posted a fairly reasonable question over there which was, if you believe them, deleted. Something to the effect of “why wouldn’t your guys be happy if Mann’s conclusions were proven to be flawed?” One would think the hope we all have is that we have not done as much damage to the planet as previously thought. But it would seem the Tamino’s of the world are more intent on continuing the “fight” to prove something. Not the way science should be conducted I think you would agree.
That said, I don’t much understand the “ya-hoo!” response. For me, though I have my opinions, I find the pissing match petty and tiring. The warmest folk seem to be a fairly small, self-affirming clique, one entirely unable to admit that even one single shred of their mantra may be flawed or overcooked. At least here I find that there are myriad opinions. Some intelligent, some less so. But at least there is a diversity when it comes to posting and commenting regardless of your opinion of the content.
I would agree, though, that a wait and see approach is ultimately best regardless of the subject. Time to digest before jumping in the water so to speak.
Well, the burden shouldn’t have to be on the laymen. But as the scientists have dropped the ball so badly, what choice do we really have?
(Meanwhile, John, have fun doing battle with the yahoos. Yer on yer own!)
Pamela Gray 2:47 – Right on Pamela.
It is now posted at Deltoid.
“Their reconstruction appears to be closest match to a hockey stick shape yet seen”
The post and some of the comments are actually funny.
Hockey stick hooke(y) schtick on the wall, prey tell, who’s the greatest climate scientist of all?
This comes at an interesting times. The Oxburgh Report stated as a conclusion that “there would be mutual benefit if there were closer collaboration and interaction between CRU and a much wider scientific group outside the relatively small international circle of temperature specialists.” (Page 5).
It also stated, “With very noisy data sets a great deal of judgement has to be used. Decisions have to be made on whether to omit pieces of data that appear to be aberrant. These are all matters of experience and judgement. The potential for misleading results arising from selection bias is very great in this area. It is regrettable that so few professional statisticians have been involved in this work because it is fundamentally statistical. Under such circumstances there must be an obligation on researchers to document the judgemental decisions they have made so that the work can in principle be replicated by others.” (Page 3).
“We cannot help remarking that it is very surprising that research in an area that depends so heavily on statistical methods has not been carried out in close collaboration with professional statisticians.” (Page 5).
This paper comes as a timelyexample of the recommendations of the Oxburgh report. How the climate scientists will respond will be interesting.
RE: John Baltutis: (August 16, 2010 at 12:20 am) “Here are two simple Excel charts of that data. The top one shows a linear fit and the bottom an exponential fit. To my 20×20, 70-yeae old eyes, I can’t tell them apart.”
Not that it makes any difference, but I have found that it seems possible to get a very good fit to the Mauna Loa season corrected data (to within 0.677 ppm average RMS error) over the current segment of available data using a hyperbolic curve where:
X=decimal_date – 1941.106
CO2=126.146 + 2.721347*SQRT(4516+X^2)
The curve is now at about 70 percent of its ultimate linear rise rate of 2.72 ppm / yr. This curve seems to work with the Mauna Loa data as it is now – it says nothing of the future or of the past. The primary residual error appears to be a two-cycle periodic function that might be related to El Nino events.
Bill Tuttle & BPW: Not sure if this was the first one, but Gavin’s response to my own initial post is still there. #235 on thread about expert credibility.
For the warmists among us, please look at the temperature reconstruction from Greenland ice Core GISP2 for the Holocene (10,000 years):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:GISP2_ice_core_eng.svg
On this graph a thousand years ago looks cold.
So it now appears that the current warm period is actually one of the coldest periods of the Holocene.
@ two moon,
You are correct. I missed it. Looked at the wrong thread. My apologies to Mr. Schmidt for having intimated that he retracted/erased it. I was wrong.
Will be interested in seeing how it is addressed in full over there when the time comes.
BPW
“Because the truth is that promoting science isn’t just about providing resources — it’s about protecting free and open inquiry. It’s about ensuring that facts and evidence are never twisted or obscured by politics or ideology.” Barack Obama
sTv says:
August 16, 2010 at 2:22 pm
I’ve read Stu’s comments about his views and apparently, but not suprisingly you are missing the point.
First: Stu says, “changing climate”, get it? I did not find one comment (maybe I didn’t look long enough, I haven’t read ALL his stuff) mentioning AGW or CAGW. In fact he said at the outset, His delivery was, IMHO, was logical, level headed and well laid out. He did say that he was formulating this report for about 2 years (as of OCT 2009), so you’re a little behind the times to be claiming some sort of voctory (?).
Stu, in fact, opens with:
‘Before you fire up the flamethrower, though, let me say what this long entry is NOT about.
It’s not about H.R. 2454 (more commonly known as the Waxman-Markey bill).
And I’m not telling you that you can’t drive your SUV.
This blog is about the effect of climate change upon day-to-day weather. About physics and thermodynamics not politics.’
See, NOBODY, denies that the climate changes…that would be just plain stupid. Enough factual evidence has surfaced in the last 650,000 years, its been culled, extrapolated, and presented by scientists…real scientists, and some not-so-real. We want is the truth, plain and simple. What we don’t want:
1. 1200km smoothing of surface station temps “planted” in warm locals.
2. Ice retreat when it’s actually advancing.
3. Warming when it’s actually cooling.
4. Subversion of the peer-review process (See Obama’s quote at top of post).
4. A trillion dollar tax that won’t control anything.
The Anthony’s, M&M’s, Wegman’s and now M&W’s are helping to sift through the blatant, flagrant, and I believe malicious and premeditated, attempts by purely political parties to make/take more of our money, “out of thin air”.
I will post the link to Stu’s post here, but not to my claims above due to the fact that they are OLD, OLD, OLD news and anyone can find them. I really don’t like doing people’s homework for them.
Another reason is that I have seen few (if any) people come back from said, “source checks”, no matter how reasonable, factual, or peer-reviewed and say, “You now what, that was good. I’m going to have to do some more research and re-think my position. I’ll let you know what I find.” No, they typically come back with responses (see above from the AGW, CAGW, and YOU) missing the point entirely of said ‘source’.
Through lies and misdirection your position attempts to make this a competition (I know, we also post/report when someone in the AGW community becomes sceptical).
As far as the science goes, honestly, what do you prefer: scepticism or consensus?
Here’s the link,
http://climatechangepsychology.blogspot.com/2009/10/stu-ostro-senior-meteorologist-twc-off.html
A fifth-order polynomial, also fits well:
y = 1E-07x^5 – 0.0012x^4 + 4.8096x^3 – 9446.3x^2 + 9E+06x – 4E+09
but still isn’t easily distinguishable from a linear fit. So, Mr. Hanley, what say you now?
the horizontal en verical scales in the ‘before’ and ‘after’ graph in the article are different (do measure yourself!) and are manipulating me in the direction of your opinion;
regards
REPLY: Oh puhleezze, and you expect me to make the authors of an IPCC work and the authors of a new work create graphs on an identical basis? Just like that?
Perhaps you also think I can change the gravitational constant of the universe and make rainbows at the snap of a finger?. OTOH if I redid the graphs, I’d be vilified for “modifying” them. Catch-22.
Your comment qualifies for “comment of the week” – Anthony
John Mason 1:53 PM
“Oh, my indeed, Anthony. You have whipped this one up into a right old meringue! Google McShane Wyner 2010…..”
John,
I did just that and it is astounding the interest in this paper (19,100 results). Wow. And WUWT (specifically Anthony Watts) is to blame? Not surprising given that WUWT is a top science blog. Welcome John, to the discussion here. Yes, I am interested in further analysis of this paper and apparently so are a lot of other interested parties. Isn’t that exciting? I can hardly wait for publication, cross examination, and further analysis.
Something tells me the “Ya-Hoos” you see here are just the beginning…
Oh incidentally, on my Google search, I found a good source collecting like papers:
http://fabiusmaximus.wordpress.com/2010/08/15/20419/
John, I am interested in hearing what you have to say on this paper once it has properly aged for you.
“If you ask me as a person, do I think the Russian heat wave has to do with climate change, the answer is yes,” said Gavin Schmidt, a climate researcher with NASA in New York. “If you ask me as a scientist whether I have proved it, the answer is no — at least not yet.”
Since the Russian heat wave could be counted in days, and the American dust bowl can be counted in years -decade-, ‘splain it.
I have one thought about the silence of the ‘team’ on this one. It could be that there is an ‘official’ response pending and they are under embargo to not speak publicly about the issue. I recall Steve M. having similar issues wrt his Nature submission a while back.
Gaylon says:
“Through lies and misdirection your position attempts to make this a competition (I know, we also post/report when someone in the AGW community becomes sceptical).
As far as the science goes, honestly, what do you prefer: scepticism or consensus?”
I neither lied nor attempted misdirection. Mr. Ostro made it clear that he has changed his mind, and the fact that he works in such a prominent position at The Weather Channel should give some deniers reason to pause. At least, one would hope so.
Having said that, when can we expect you, Gaylon, to join Mr. Ostro, and other prominent former skeptics? I’m afraid Mr. Watts, sTeve, Mr. Monckton, M&M and Dr. Singer will take a little more urging before they come around. I’m hopeful that more catastrophes are not necessary to convince them.
We’ll hold places for each of you at table. You’re welcome anytime.
-sTv
CodeTech says:
August 16, 2010 at 11:56 am
James Sexton quoted:
“We assume that the data selection, collection, and processing performed by climate scientists meets the standards of their discipline.
It is an unfortunate fact that, most likely, this is completely true. And it’s not just hurling insults to point out that the discipline of “climate scientist” does not appear to include high quality data selection, collection or processing.
Mann, to me, aspires to be the Ringo Starr of climate science, but alas, has only risen to the level of Justin Beiber’s drummer.”
Lol, and I was expecting a Pete Best to be at the end of the Beatles analogy. Justin Beiber has a drummer?
James Sexton says:
August 16, 2010 at 8:08 am It seems to me, the authors knew many would have taken exception to the data collection and processing(including the imputation) and were forced to put an early disclaimer in the paper as opposed to some footnote. To me, it reads something akin to “Yes, we know they gathered and processed the data in errant fashion, but there’s only so much we can write about without publishing a textbook on how not to apply statistics.” The sentence “We assume that the data selection, collection, and processing performed by climate scientists meets the standards of their discipline.”, seems to be a particular harsh slap at an entire profession. OUCH!!!
___________________________________________________________________
I had the feeling there were a few more “hidden” slaps besides that one.
Remark from paper
“For example, 1998 is generally considered to be the warmest year on record in the Northern Hemisphere. Using our model, we calculate that there is a 36% posterior probability that 1998 was the warmest year over the past thousand. If we consider rolling decades, 1997-2006 is the warmest on record; our model gives an 80% chance that it was the warmest in the past thousand years. Finally, if we look at rolling thirty-year blocks, the posterior probability that the last thirty years(again, the warmest on record) were the warmest over the past thousand is 38%. […] For k = 10, k = 30, and k = 60, we estimate a zero posterior probability that the past thousand years contained run-ups larger than those we have experienced over the past ten, thirty, and sixty years (again, the largest such run-ups on record). This suggests that the temperature derivatives encountered over recent history are unprecedented in the millennium.”
So whats all the fuss about? Everyone is acting as if this is the silver bullet?
Swap short for long and you got it nailed. Sun emits primarily in visible spectrum (violet through red) and the clear sky is largely transparent to it. These rays hit the ocean and are mostly absorbed in the first 30 meters or so. It warms the water. The warm water then emits the energy upward in long wave infrared. Visible light is shorter wavelengths. CO2 and especially water vapor are not transparent to infrared like they are to visible light. Those gases absorb a portion of the upwelling infrared and then the gases in turn get warmed up and emit the energy in long wave infrared. The difference is, as you noted, that the warm gases emit the energy in all directions, a portion of which is straight back down from whence it came. The net effect is it slows downs how quickly the infrared radiation can escape into space. The gases are insulators. They don’t actually trap much energy because the gases have so little heat capacity compared to water. The net effect is that the water doesn’t cool off as quickly.
Think of two separate rocks heated nice & warm by sun during the day. You throw a blanket over one of them at night. The one with the blanket over it will be warmer in the morning. Now imagine the blanket is transparent so it lets the light in during the day to warm the rock but still insulates it at night because heat doesn’t pass through the blanket like light does.
Tallbloke put it in the best nutshell I’ve seen:
The sun heats the ocean, the ocean heats the air, the air is cooled by the cold empty void of outer space.
Just curious, for I don’t know the answer, and can’t find it. What are the requirements to be a climatologist? For that matter, a pollution meteorologist, as some say they are ?
Pardon my ignorance on the subject, and TIA~
and the fact that he works in such a prominent position at The Weather Channel should give some deniers reason to pause
==========================================
Yes it does, and the second they get Cantore in the same state the hurricane is in, I’ll get back to you……..
I thought when weathermen disagreed, we were supposed to ignore them because they are not climatologists.
bob paglee says:
From New York Times:
“If you ask me as a person, do I think the Russian heat wave has to do with climate change, the answer is yes,” said Gavin Schmidt, a climate researcher with NASA in New York. “If you ask me as a scientist whether I have proved it, the answer is no — at least not yet.”
————–
Gavin has now given us as “persons” the green light to call the recent COLD SNAP in South America CLIMATE, this includes all cold weather events. Just wait till this winter man. :o)
do a google news search on any aspect of this McShane & Wyner paper and u will find NOT A SINGLE MENTION in the MSM.
extraordinary but not at all surprising.
Roughly 1 degree C of surface warming per doubling of atmospheric CO2 content is consistent with both physics, historical observations, and proxy evidence from the distant past in the geologic column.
Because CO2 must be doubled each time to get the same amount of surface warming (which is consistent with the physics) this handily explains why in the distant past the earth’s average surface temperature was never more that 7 or 8C warmer than today even though atmospheric CO2 content was up to twenty times more than today. It’s actually all quite consistent in both theory and observation.
Whether the CO2 rise since 1880 is anthropogenic I suppose is debatable but the circumstantial evidence that it’s anthropogenic is pretty convincing.
The bottom line from thus becomes a question of what we have to fear from burning all the fossil fuel we can dig up. There isn’t enough fossil fuel available to quadruple atmospheric CO2 so we’re looking at a maximum of 2C temperature rise and 1400ppm CO2 in the atmosphere.
If we look again at the geologic column these conditions have existed before and when they did the earth bloomed. When it was 5C warmer than today with ten times the amount of CO2 the earth was green from pole to pole and the biosphere reached its most productive point ever. It was called the Ecocene Optimum and occured about 55 million years ago.
So if you like lots of plants and animals then when it comes to fossil fuels the word is “burn, baby, burn”. If you like bare rocks and ice instead then you want to do just the opposite. Personally I like plants and animals more than rocks and ice so it’s an easy choice for me.
Henry Pool says:
August 15, 2010 at 10:59 am
“on what measurements do you base your believe that CO2 is a greehouse gas i.e that its warming properties are greater than its cooling properties?”
The optical depth of CO2 at visible wavelengths emitted by the sun compared to the optical depth of CO2 at infrared wavelengths emitted by the ground. Those would be the measurements. CO2 is transparent to visible wavelenghts and an insulator at infrared wavelengths.
Insulators insulate. Write that down.
Shouldn’t someone be updating all the Wikipedia Global Warming subjects with hockey stick diagrams to reflect this update and statistical correction ???
HaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHa, Bill and Kim may not approve.
Wow! It has taken me nealry 2.5 hours just to read through the comments. I agree with a couple of others above, this is devastating to CAGW science due to the reliance on that Mann paper as the lynchpin of proxy-instrument temp constructions.
For those who are CAGW true believers it is difficult to not want to see in these new graphs something they know has to be there. M and w (2010) simply show that there just is not any there, there.
John Mason says:
August 16, 2010 at 1:53 pm
“Oh, my indeed, Anthony. You have whipped this one up into a right old meringue! Google McShane Wyner 2010…..”
Mr. Mason, how is it you believe Anthony is “whipping” this paper in any way? He simply posted it for people to read and comment on. Does that qualify as “whipping up”? Honestly, do you see Anthony or the moderators encouraging or discouraging the posts or the content? Further, WUWT wasn’t the first science blog to post this paper. I believe, but I could be wrong, that http://climateaudit.org/ was the first place it was posted. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with CA or not, but McIntyre(CA is his blog) did a similar paper a few years back. Here is a comment you should read.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/14/breaking-new-paper-makes-a-hockey-sticky-wicket-of-mann-et-al-99/#comment-458319
As far as whether we should be commenting on it or letting the “experts” chime in first, forgive me if I think that is a blathering, yet in a greatly condescending way, ignorant(I mean no insult but apparently you’re not familiar to the reasons why blogs such as this exist) statement. Admittedly, for myself, the statistical ability presented in this paper is probably beyond my reach, for now. (I’m working through it as we speak, but I’ll probably have to consult some trusted friends in the field.) However, in this blog, I’m not anywhere close to some of the people in terms of ability in the maths/statistics science.
That’s from Lucy Skywalker. In it she said, “Have you considered the function of WUWT and how it dovetails into, and balances, the function of Climate Audit?” While there may be some here that disagree, I don’t. I don’t often post there, because the forum lends itself to a different direction than what I can contribute to. That being said, many, if not most of the regular readers/posters here often go there, and visa versa. If you are doubting the abilities of the commentators here and there, you should do as Lucy suggests in her post and click on her name and enter into a mathematical discussion with her. Or, try Steve McIntyre, or many of the other commentators here or there.
Yes, there have been several “yea!’s” and several “boo!’s”. So what? As stated, I’m not a statistician, but the paper is well written and clear and can be followed quite easily. To use a baseball analogy, (consistent with the Cricket theme) while I’m not a pitcher, I know a strike when I see one. (Someone please translate that in Cricket terms for me!) When I learned Mann was discarding proxies that didn’t fit a criteria of his, I knew he wasn’t accurate in his conclusions regarding his proxy studies. But, so did Steve Mac. So did Lucy, (I’m not sure when Anthony converted) so did the rest of the world that cared to know. As far as waiting for the “experts” to chime in, I did. Even before 1998. When Hansen was turning off air-conditioners and giving literally thousands of interviews about how the government was silencing him, I waited, and waited, and waited. As far as your “experts” go, and I’m no where close to being one, (as I alluded to before, there are several, here and now, much more skilled at climate science than myself)I’d take a one-on-one with Gavin, Hansen, Phil, Pachy, Mann, or any of the other cast of …..and hand them their azz walking away.
P.S. I wrote a complete post, but I thought it rather lengthy, so I broke it up in two. Also, Mr. Mason, if this post seems angry, it is because it is. Only, it isn’t directed at you. Believe it or not, I enjoy discussing things of import with people of different views and different points of view, as do many here. Please come back and contribute to the discussion.
Second part:
The point is, WUWT, and CA, and many others exist because people fell down on the job while we waited for the “experts”. If they had done their job and showed just a little intestinal fortitude, the arbitrary altercations of historical data would not have happened as they continue to do today. The manipulation of the peer-review process would not have happened as continues to be done today. The idiotic hockey stick would have never been in a paper much less journals and text books as is today. The 1200 meter invention of thermometers would have never happened as it is today. Concern over the polar bears would have never happened. Does any alarmist know the polar caps had essentially melted in the middle of the last century? If the “experts” had been doing their job, we’d all know this. The Urban heat would have been accepted much earlier. The inspection of the thermometers would have, should have been done much earlier than Anthony’s endeavor. How many “experts” corrected Gore’s work of fiction? I could and probably should go on, and on, and on. Just as much as I waited. Now, if you subtract the hysteria generated by the things that should have never happened and add the things that should have happened when they should have happened, consider where this discussion would be today.
Sorry, if it hasn’t registered by now, it will soon. Even Gavin alluded to it earlier.
WE ARE THE EXPERTS NOW. The rest capitulated that title when they capitulated their integrity. Apparently, grant money holds more value than convictions to them. If they want the title of expert back, all they have to do is be open and honest and correct when they make assertions, or state that it is an assumption and admit there is a possibility they could be in error.
Personally, I’d be very happy to be able to quit worrying about what law is going to be passed to keep the polar bears from eating all the penguins and go back to focusing my energies on something more egocentric.
P.S. If my previous sentence is confusing, or any parts of my posts for that matter, just ask.
This is funny. Romm has posted on this story finally, after two days of ignoring it:
http://climateprogress.org/2010/08/16/hockey-stick-paper-mcshane-and-wyner-statisticians/
He’s grasping at the one paragraph in the paper that he can, no other quotes from it were posted:
Using our model, we calculate that there is a 36% posterior probability that 1998 was the warmest year over the past thousand. If we consider rolling decades, 1997-2006 is the warmest on record; our model gives an 80% chance that it was the warmest in the past thousand years.
Heh, no mention by Romm of the fact that 1998 was caused by El Nino, and not by global warming, that would ruin his rant and yet another chance to plug his failing book.
The counterclockwise spin is creating a whirlwind of denial over there. In the SH, Deltoid is spinning clockwise, making little mini denial vortices.
It is fun to watch.
RC will come out with something tomorrow or Wednesday I’ll bet.
What I’ve gathered about the hockey stick investigations by congress is that the Republicans assigned the job to the Wegman committee (staffed with three statisticans) and the Democrats assigned the job to the NAS group (which had a couple of statisticians and about seven (?) climatologists, including North, the Chairman). These latter were all or mostly members of the climate cabal and were “solid” on Mann’s behalf, as he averred re North in one of his Climategate e-mails. The fix was in to give him a pass. This sort of whitewash by the overseeing bodies of institutionalized science (and institutionalized democracy) is a scandal that vastly eclipses the scandal of climate science. It’s the grossest story every told.
It’s a deliberate mash-up of two phrases (hockey stick / sticky wicket), more formally known as a conflation. There’s a site devoted to collecting humorous instances of such mash-ups: http://www.conflations.com/pages/intro.html
Here’s my favorite example: “When the going gets tough, make lemonade.”
PS: insert “and mainstream journalism” after “institutionalized democracy.”
“For example, 1998 is generally considered to be the warmest year on record in the Northern Hemisphere. Using our model, we calculate that there is a 36% posterior probability that 1998 was the warmest year over the past thousand. If we consider rolling decades, 1997-2006 is the warmest on record; our model gives an 80% chance that it was the warmest in the past thousand years”.
Did I miss something or is that remark based on the flawed statistics that they are criticising ?
How can they make that remark if the whole thrust of their analysis is that the proxies fail to reveal the ups and downs of past temperatures sufficiently well to make a valid comparison with recent thermometer records ?
Wasn’t ‘their’ model itself based on flawed or randomly produced data in order to show that such data with the benefit of a flawed statistical technique can produce a spurious hocky stick shape ?
Perhaps they are just illustrating that their model based on similarly flawed mehodology produces similarly flawed results to those produced by Mann et al.
Damnit! Corrections and clarifications. When I stated, “That’s from Lucy Skywalker. “, read 2 paragraphs above. When I stated, “..and giving literally thousands of interviews..” it was literally closer to a hundred or so. Sentences got caught in transitional thoughts.
ctm & evan.
Maybe Diamonds, but beer doesn’t necessarily make babies
Last month, Montreal University scientists released the results of a recent
analysis that revealed the presence of Phytoestrogens in beer hops.
To test the theory, 100 men each drank 8 schooners of beer within a one (1)
hour period.
It was then observed that 100% of the male subjects,
1) Argued over nothing.
2) Refused to apologize when obviously wrong
3) Gained weight.
4) Talked excessively without making sense.
5) Became overly emotional
6) Couldn’t drive.
7) Failed to think rationally, and
8) Had to sit down while urinating.
Reply: If you only knew about the mystery third roommate. ~ ctm
Henry:
So my original question to Evan, who, as a lukewarmer, seemed sure that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, was : How do you know for sure that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, if nobody has some actual results from experimentations on the cooling and warming?
To be clear: It’s climate. There is no “sure”.
Robert says:
August 16, 2010 at 6:05 pm
“………….
So whats all the fuss about? Everyone is acting as if this is the silver bullet?”
Uhmm, because also from the paper,
“This is disturbing: if a model cannot predict the occurrence of a
sharp run-up in an out-of-sample block which is contiguous with the insample
training set, then it seems highly unlikely that it has power to detect
such levels or run-ups in the more distant past. It is even more discouraging
when one recalls Figure 15: the model cannot capture the sharp run-up
even in-sample. In sum, these results suggest that the ninety-three sequences
that comprise the 1,000 year old proxy record simply lack power to detect a sharp increase in temperature.” and next paragraph,
“As mentioned earlier, scientists have collected a large body of evidence
which suggests that there was a Medieval Warm Period (MWP) at least in
portions of the Northern Hemisphere. The MWP is believed to have occurred
from c. 800-1300 AD (it was followed by the Little Ice Age). It is
widely hoped that multi-proxy models have the power to detect (i) how warm the Medieval Warm Period was, (ii) how sharply temperatures increased
during it, and (iii) to compare these two features to the past decade’s
high temperatures and sharp run-up. Since our model cannot detect the recent
temperature change, detection of dramatic changes hundreds of years
ago seems out of the question.” and from page 41 in the conclusions section,
“On the one hand, we conclude unequivocally that the evidence for a
”long-handled” hockey stick (where the shaft of the hockey stick extends
to the year 1000 AD) is lacking in the data.” later from the conclusions, “Furthermore, the
lower frame of Figure 18 clearly reveals that the proxy model is not at all
able to track the high gradient segment. Consequently, the long flat handle
of the hockey stick is best understood to be a feature of regression and less
a reflection of our knowledge of the truth. Nevertheless, the temperatures
of the last few decades have been relatively warm compared to many of the
thousand year temperature curves sampled from the posterior distribution
of our model.” and finally, “Climate scientists have greatly underestimated the uncertainty of proxybased
reconstructions and hence have been overconfident in their models.
We have shown that time dependence in the temperature series is sufficiently
strong to permit complex sequences of random numbers to forecast
out-of-sample reasonably well fairly frequently (see, for example, Figure
9). Furthermore, even proxy based models with approximately the same
amount of reconstructive skill (Figures 11,12, and 13), produce strikingly
dissimilar historical backcasts: some of these look like hockey sticks but
most do not (Figure 14).”
Robert, I think you missed the point of the statement. Their statement is qualified that they are using the proxy data available. Later, they go on to say the proxy data doesn’t amount to much. Try again.
Reading the paper:
A similar reconstruction but more uncertainty. Ok.
This effort to reconstruct our planet’s climate history has become linked to the topic of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW). On the one hand, this is peculiar since paleoclimatological reconstructions can provide evidence only for the detection of AGW and even then they constitute only one such source of evidence. The principal sources of evidence for the detection of global warming and in particular the attribution of it to anthropogenic factors come from basic science as well as General Circulation Models (GCMs) that have been fit to data accumulated during the instrumental period (IPCC, 2007). These models show that carbon dioxide, when released into the atmosphere in sufficient concentration, can force temperature
increases.
Paleoclimate reconstructions are not primary to the theory of AGW. So what motivates this paper?
The paper is motivated by policy implications. This should be ringing alarm bells for both sides of the debate. I think we can all agree that policy considerations should be separate from scientific analysis. Roger Pielke Jnr made this point just recently.
However, that does not necessarily mean the work is biased or second-rate, but it gives me pause, and should do for anyone who holds that policy implications should not form any part of scientific analysis.
The conclusion that the error bars have been underestimated in paleoclimatology, is clear enough. As they produce their own reconstruction, it is interesting to note what their results were.
What I get from the paper is that the story is pretty much the same as in the IPCC, but that the confidence attached to it has previously been too high. This is a qualified vindication of M&M, where their criticisms are somewhat corroborated, but that the essential conclusions of Mann et al are not significantly impacted. There is no impact on the greater body of AGW theory and projections.
Let’s keep up to date with this paper, and see how it endures post-review scrutiny.
Anthony Watts says:
August 16, 2010 at 7:27 pm
“This is funny. Romm has posted on this story finally, after two days of ignoring it:
“Using our model, we calculate that there is a 36% posterior probability that 1998 was the warmest year over the past thousand. If we consider rolling decades, 1997-2006 is the warmest on record; our model gives an 80% chance that it was the warmest in the past thousand years.”
The counterclockwise spin is creating a whirlwind of denial over there. In the SH, Deltoid is spinning clockwise, making little mini denial vortices.
It is fun to watch.
RC will come out with something tomorrow or Wednesday I’ll bet.”
lol, A made a funny!!! And, yes it is fun. Is it wrong to lulz these days? Seriously, apparently that is the talking points marching orders. Funny.
De-italicising the blockquotes proved more problematic than assumed. Sorry, once again, for the formatting. The indents are the paper, the rest is me.
(The mods are no doubt sick of hearing it, but – oh, for a preview button)
Richard S Courtney says:
August 16, 2010 at 4:49 am
Sorry, but that is an Orwellian rewriting of history.
———-
Richard’s comment referred to rewriting of the history around Mann et al 98. My contribution to this most excellent thread is the one liner:
Mann-98 accomplished the Orwellian goal of disappearing the Medieval Warm period.
As several poster have eloquently noted, the issue was never really the blade- it was the disappearance of a similarly warm period in geologically recent history with no know forcing. An earlier even warmer period since the last ice age, the Holocene Optimum, is attributed to the Milankovitch cycle. Not much is written about the Roman Warm Period.
The other comment is that wine is now and has always been grown in England. The current northern extant is of viticulture similar to that during the MWP.
http://www.winelandsofbritain.co.uk/lecture.htm
Finally, the Holocene Climate Optimum seems alluring:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_climatic_optimum
p.s. To those who say that the MWP is not “global” I would respond that the current warming trend is not global in a similar manner.
James Allison says:
August 16, 2010 at 7:52 pm
8) Had to sit down while urinating.
Not a chance!!!! Mind you I’m testing the theory now, but my experience is, no matter how hard(did I mean difficult?) or messy things get, we still stand. While anecdotal, witness your local tavern’s men’s latrine. I’m just guessing, but I don’t think there is a lot of setting going on there.
[REPLY – We aim to please, so please aim. ~ Evan]
Further, I think that beer causes diamonds that cause babies, but that just a theory I’m working on. I did the test myself once, but I’m too scared to attempt to replicate the experiment. (On several different levels.)
[REPLY – No percentage in it. Besides, you’ll just get accused of being a control group. ~ Evan]
Well, we understand that without preview and correction abilities that errors will inevitably occur.
We ask our readership to remember this and entertain the noblesse oblige appropriate under the circumstances.
(P.S., Well, okay, half the fun of being a mod consists of the ability to edit one’s posts. Please don’t hate me!)
Alarmist Roundup:
Climate Progress: The Curious Case of the Hockey Stick that Didn’t Disappear. Part 1: The Police Lineup
Deltoid: A new Hockey Stick: McShane and Wyner 2010
Rabett Run: A Flat New Puzzler
Team Science is being mobilized to “correct” two Ph.D. Statisticians on statistical methods. This should be interesting.
Anthony Watts says:
August 16, 2010 at 7:27 pm
“Heh, no mention by Romm of the fact that 1998 was caused by El Nino, and not by global warming, that would ruin his rant and yet another chance to plug his failing book.”
How do you know that “global warming” wasn’t the cause of the 1998 mother of all El Ninos?
Isn’t it possible that so-called AGW ramped up what might have been an average El Nino in 1998?
Oops…
REPLY: No oops there. Well one would think it would “hold” since it is based on CO2 concentration…look at the sharp turndown afterwards. Explain that in terms of CO2 induced global warming. Note also 2008, when CO2 concentration actually fell as temperatures dropped and the ocean absorbing more CO2. Which came first?
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/webdata/ccgg/trends/co2_trend_mlo.png
– Anthony
Anthony, I’ll take that bet and raise that it will not happen until Thursday or Friday. I’m thinking he will wind up the entrenched closer to the weekend as any good propagandist would. Timing is everything. By the way, what is with the very teeny smiley at the bottom of the page?
REPLY: you mean this?
Explanation here: http://en.support.wordpress.com/smiley-on-your-blog/
It also describes how I feel about WUWT and readers, so it is a good fit. – Anthony
Barry, I agree, a preview would be handy. Although, I’d probably screw that up too. However, what I think you are stating, and you’re right, your formatting makes it a bit difficult to see what is coming from where, is that you believe several things that I believe are incorrect. Please correct me if I’m wrong about the assertions.
Your saying? “The principal sources of evidence for the detection of global warming and in particular the attribution of it to anthropogenic factors come from basic science as well as General Circulation Models (GCMs) that have been fit to data accumulated during the instrumental period (IPCC, 2007).”
Uhmm, I’m not sure how familiar you are with computers, so I’ll be base, if I may. COMPUTER MODELS DO NOTHING OTHER THAN WHAT THEY ARE TOLD TO DO!!!! If you are unclear about that statement, please ask. I would be more than happy to elucidate. Further, in my view, detection of GW would come from basic READING OF THERMOMETERS. With the caveat of not mucking with the reading after the read. At least not without a published (for public dissemination and discernment.) and accepted reasoning.
“Paleoclimate reconstructions are not primary to the theory of AGW. So what motivates this paper?”
Wrong, they absolutely are. How do you know this temperature swing is “unprecedented”? Hottest ever. Does that ring a bell? How do we believe it is “hottest evuh”? Because of the hockey stick and the rest of the tripe people are made to believe. Its really not that scary to say hottest ever since 1979!!!!
“The paper is motivated by policy implications. This should be ringing alarm bells for both sides of the debate. I think we can all agree that policy considerations should be separate from scientific analysis….”
Uhmm, mirror check!!! Himalayas or Amazon? Or any other of the half-baked tripe loaded studies of political expedience thrown at us on a almost daily fashion. Fact is, I believe this paper was motivated by statisticians tired of the statistical malpractice of climatologists. For evidence, I’d offer the OTHER PAPERS WRITTEN BY STATISTICIANS STATING MANN WAS WRONG!
“Nevertheless, the temperatures of the last few decades have been relatively warm compared to many of the thousand year temperature curves sampled from the posterior distribution of our model.”
No, Barry, that statement is greatly distinguished from statements such as “hottest ever” and “unprecedented”. Neither does it infer the ‘OMG!!! We need to pass industry crippling laws now!!!’ generalized statement and occurrence.
“….but that the essential conclusions of Mann et al are not significantly impacted. There is no impact on the greater body of AGW theory and projections.”
Well, you certainly are entitled, but given that your beloved GCMs in part are generated by accepting historical data created by paleo-climatology, I beg to differ. Further, given that the study was based on the proxies in the Mann studies, how do you go from “Climate scientists have greatly underestimated the uncertainty of proxybased reconstructions and hence have been overconfident in their models.” to your statement above?
Barry if I’ve mischaracterized your assertions, first, I apologize, secondly, please let me know how and where I did such. Thanks for playing.
James
[REPLY – We aim to please, so please aim. ~ Evan]
We aim to please, so you aim too please.
Fixed that for ya!
It appears it did “hold” and you can certainly see its effects ringing to this day in the arctic sea ice. The average global temperature hasn’t declined in the decade since. It held steady. This is the CO2 signature. We have from 1880 to 2000 two obvious complete 60 year cycles (H/T to Tom Vock for pointing it out) where there is a warming trend for 30 years and a “cooling” trend for 30 years. The fact of the matter is the cooling trends don’t go down as much as the warming trends go up. The result is we have a net increase in temperature of O.4c from 1880-1940 and another net increase of 0.4c from 1940-2000. During the same 60 year periods CO2 increased by 25ppm in the first and 50ppm in the second. This is consistent with the physics behind CO2 surface warming – additional insulation has diminishing effectiveness. Furthermore, this agrees nicely with IPCC calculation of each CO2 doubling raising surface temp by 1.1C.
Where the IPCC loses the plot is the silliness about a positive feedback associated with CO2 driven warming. There is not a shred of evidence of any positive feedback and a ton of evidence that there’s no feedback at all. CO2 doublings raise the avg. surface temp 1.1C (close enough for government work but endlessly debatable in the exact number by pedants) and that’s the extent of what CO2 does other than fertilize the atmosphere and ramp up biological productivity of the planet (which is a good thing).
REPLY: Here’s the graph I was thinking of, I was remiss for not providing it for you to look at:
Note the return to the zero anomaly line after the 1998 El Nino event. It was zero before also. If it were CO2 it would have returned to a null + value. Point is you can’t link CO2 to specific events. “weather is not climate” and all that. – Anthony
Anthony Watts says:
August 16, 2010 at 7:27 pm
“It is fun to watch.”
Indeed it is.
The new “McShane-Wyner Hockeystick”:
http://a.imageshack.us/img844/7051/mcshanewynerhockey.png
At first glance, it appears that the graph has been intentionally altered, (presumably by Lambert at Deltoid) but comparing it to the unaltered version shows that they are identical. If one looks closely, the blade doesn’t encompass the first 30 odd years starting at 1850. Also, the shaft/blade combination tends to de-emphasize the uncertainty bars. Carnival sideshow trickery at it’s best.
@Anthony
I will agree with you on one thing. The McShane paper highlighted in the OP clearly demonstrates that the Mann hockey stick is a piece of dishonest rubbish. Of course we knew that already and it was confirmed for us in the Climategate emails.
The MWP, according to the paper quoted in the top post here:
Mann 98 [PDF] reconstruction began in 1400.
You’re thinking of the 99 paper, and the MWP wasn’t ‘disappeared’. It was qualified.
[side note on Orwell…]
Orwell’s book highlights the jargon-ization of language for propagandistic purposes. Using the word ‘disappearing’ as a transitive verb, in this context, is a good example.
One hopes that truth will finally be heard but still they give a backcast which shows that the temperature a thousand years ago could have been much warmer or much cooler than the present day. This is perfectly consistent with their deep reservations about the predictive ability of the proxy data.
—————————-
Joseph
@Anthony
I think perhaps further explanation of the connection between 1998 El Nino and melting Arctic sea ice is in order. You implied that because the global temperature quickly declined after the event that the energy involved didn’t stick around.
Actually it did stick around as latent heat of melting.
http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/water-thermal-properties-d_162.html
It takes 337 kilojoules per kilogram to turn ice at 32F into water at 32F. This latent heat is called insensible heat because it doesn’t register on a thermometer. That is why the thermometer record didn’t show the energy from that El Nino sticking around. The energy went into non-sensible heat of fusion. It stuck. It just didn’t stick in a form that a thermometer can measure.
Hi James,
The theory of AGW does not rest on global Climate models, either. The original calculations were done half a century before electronic computers were invented (Arrhenius).
You may be unaware that such reasoning is documented. GISS, CRU and NCDC have many papers outlining there reasoning and methods. GISS have all their documentation online, as does CRU. GISS has all their data online, while CRU is hamstrung by agreements with the national meteorological services of a number of countries – ie, they don’t have permission to release that data – yet.
The GHCN data is also accessible online, in the raw and adjusted form. There has been a flurry of activity over the last year comparing raw time series with the institutional products (GISS, HadCRU etc), rural, airport, urban, pre and post station drop out. The results will probably surprise you – considering that some of them come from popular skeptical websites. Again, if you are genuinely interested, I will provide references that require only a click of your mouse to explore.
Which “historical data created by paleo-climatology” is ‘accepted’ to help generate GCMs? Please provide a reference.
I can assure you you have not mischaracterised my assertions, just introduced new ones from what is probably popular media. If you mean to say that the press exaggerates, I completely agree.
Barry,
I don’t understand how you can end with, “There is no impact on the greater body of AGW theory and projections.”
Really?
I understood the paper to say that the statistical methods used were, at best, inadequate. Does this not invalidate the MHB result? In addition the paper also invalidates the use of the proxies due to the “weak signal” issue. Does this not also invalidate the MHB product (graph)? Invalidation meaning that the anthropogenic theory is now no longer known.
I may be way off base here, but wasn’t it the use of this graph, the misuse of the data, and the subsequent foaming at the mouth of the CAGW crowd that brought us to this juncture? IMO this paper strikes a fatal blow at the very foundation of the AGW theory and its predictions simply because this is where it all started, “patient zero”, as it were.
All subsequent graphs foisted on the public have used the same, or similiar methodologies and the same data (Yamal, Bristlecones, Boreholes, etc). They continue to push this on us as though invalidation never occurred, starting with M&M and I predict they will/are going to continue more of the same with the M&W paper.
Listen, I’m no scientist (duh) but at what point do people responsible for advising governments start standing up and tell the truth, “we don’t know, our GCM’s say one thing but observation is telling us we don’t yet understand how the whole picture fits together…we’ll keep you posted.” Why is that so hard?
sTv says:
August 16, 2010 at 5:30 pm
I apologize, I was posting in response to your earlier post and lapsed into a generalization that should not have been directed at you. I stand by the generalization, on general terms anyway.
I stand by what I posted: Stu said he believes in ‘climate change’, so do we all, that’s what it does. He never says in his post that it is caused by antropongenic forcings. In fact it is not a far leap to infer that he is still undecided as to man’s role in CC based on his opening comments which I posted, unless of course he has stated exactly that and I am unaware of it, which is completely plausible. As I said, I thought he did a good job.
You failed to answer my question: Do you prefer scepticism or consensus in science?
Add to paragraph immediately under, Really? Last sentence…is not known with any certainty.
“You’re thinking of the 99 paper, and the MWP wasn’t ‘disappeared’. It was qualified.”
Are you looking at the same graph the rest of the world is?
BTW, yes, disappeared, is indeed a jargon-ization, of an Orwellian nature, I doubt it. As I recollect, the word, in the context being used, was a reference to the internet and it’s ability to change historical data at a whim. For instance, if a statement was made on a website which was posted at one time and then later was removed, it was deemed “disappeared”, as in “it never happened.” Later, during the Bush administration, shortly after 911, the paranoid group of bloggers applied the term to people that may have been removed from the U.S. society under the Patriot act. If someone critical of the Bush admin. went missing, they were deemed “disappeared”. Currently, we see this phenomena in climate science. For instance, once, the GISS’ database had a year in the 1930s(1934 if memory serves me.) to be the warmest year on record. Sometime after or during 1998 the recorded temps of 1934 were lowered and 1998 became the warmest year on record even though the previous recorded temps were higher. However, since the data had been removed and thus “disappeared”, to date 1998 is the warmest year on record. I believe it is here where it may be appropriate to apply the Orwellian analogy. Down the memory hole it went! I screen shot a lot of stuff now.
@Anthony
I suspect right now you’re busy looking at the Arctic Sea Ice extent record going back to 1979 and have now noted that right around 1998 it began melting faster and accelerated for a few years until it peaked in 2006. You’re probably also thinking about how many years it might take for a pulse of warm water to travel from the tropical Pacific to the Arctic ocean and there start getting soaked up in latent heat of fusion in the sea ice. I think you’ll find that a few years for the ocean currents to make the several thousand mile journey up there is reasonable and then took a similar amount of time to be completely absorbed and then the ice extent stabilized at about a million square kilometers less than before the 1998 El Nino.
You’re probably also wondering why this never dawned on you before. Don’t feel bad. You weather guys only look at thermometers. Pretty much everyone ignores the latent heat of fusion and vaporization. The latent heat of vaporization is why there isn’t any positive feedback associated with CO2 driven warming. The so-called missing heat is carried right through the densest layer of CO2 as latent heat of vaporization and released high in the atmosphere where it’s much easier to radiate out into space than to wend its way downward through a lower layer of CO2 that’s now serving to insulate the warm clouds from the surface.
I have a minor fascination with heat pumps and if you don’t constantly keep in mind the latent heat involved in phase changes of your working fluids you’ll never come close to understanding how they work or how to improve one. I’m an engineer to the core and I can’t look at a damn thing without wondering how it works and how it might be improved so these heat transfer mechanisms like the El Nino energy going into Arctic sea ice melt jump right out at me.
Dave Springer, I imagine the ’98 surge in SST’s has a mathematical equation. First, the trade winds that blow East to West died down, allowing the Sun to do its thing without the constant mixing of the thermocline that the trade winds churn up. That allowed water vapor and whatever CO2 was in it (outgassed from the oceans or put there by human activity), to build up. That in turn would, according to AGW theory, heat up the surface. The Sun’s SW infra-red energy can be fairly well calculated in its ability to penetrate a large body of water and warm it. That part is fairly easy.
For CO2/water vapor to make an El Nino worse (or cause one), one would have to up the amount of water vapor and CO2 by a huge amount to make even a tiny difference in ocean temps. Why? Because CO2/water vapor does not emit SW infra red. They emit LW, a very weak source of heat when it comes to heating a large body of water to several measures of depth. Besides, when the sea surface is being heated by the Sun, it immediately starts to evaporate. What LW warming there is at the surface is immediately evaporated away.
The bottom line is that El Nino’s are caused by a steady Sun allowed to beam down on a calm ocean, a lack of trade winds, which normally bring cooler water to the surface. CO2/water vapor does not have the capacity to increase SST’s to El Nino levels. Plain and simple.
Doesn’t all this go to show what a big heap of steaming $hi7 these computer projections really are. This is what Prof Tim Patterson of Carleton University was saying in his recent radio broadcast, which is available at my site.
Professor Tim Patterson – CKCU Radio July 2010
[off topic and rude as well. bye ~ ctm]
@Anthony (con’t)
You might also note that when the arctic ice extent stabilized it now appears as a step change to a lower extent. At the same time in the satellite temp record you’ll also note a step change to a higher average surface temperature. This is indicative of the El Nino energy pulse being completely absorbed as latent heat of fusion and the thermometers are now registering normal again. The arctic temps are now steady or in decline as they should be because in 2000 we completed the upside of the the 60 year cycle and there hasn’t been any significant warming indicated on the satellite record since then (it’s a travesty that Trenberth can’t explain while I can). I’ll have to step out on a limb now and predict we won’t see any significant warming for another 20 years but we won’t see any significant cooling either. Then about in the year 2030 (if mankind is still alive) we’ll see a 30 year warming trend begin. And if during the 60 year period from 2000 to 2060 we see a concomitant increase in CO2 of 100ppm (which seems rather certain because no one nation is really going to slow down fossil fuel consumption and wreck their economic growth in the process – it’s just big talk and no action) then we’ll see a global average temperature increase of 0.4c again.
Of course a big volcano blowing its top could muck up my prediction big time!
Dave Springer says:
August 16, 2010 at 9:44 pm
@Anthony
“It takes 337 kilojoules per kilogram to turn ice at 32F into water at 32F. This latent heat is called insensible heat because it doesn’t register on a thermometer.”
Dave, I clicked on the link and found a wonderful treasure chest! Thanks. However, I found no reference to your “insensible heat”. Your statement is counter intuitive. While I could probably google the answer, I think it bears more explanation here. This could be because I’m tired and or the gross amount of beer I’ve had.(in terms of ounces) I get the joules thing. And I understand mercury doesn’t move the same in different pressures. But joules do convert to heat and joules, to my knowledge, do not convert or exert pressure…..????
Probably the beer and I’m going to call it a night, but I will check back if you have a better explanation, I’d be more than grateful.
Thanks,
James
The hockey stick model is wrong then but we already knew that. This has not and will not stop the politically motivated scientist in the UK citing the hockey stick model of past temperatures as evidence supporting their political agendas. The people in the UK are being “trained” to accept the doctrine of anthropegenic global warming .Pedestrians are being encouraged to walk out in front of you, if you drive a car ,by car hating politicians.More accidents are caused also because their are more bicycles on the congested roads and given the behaviour of cyclists that we observe they need to pass a test before being allowed to ride a cycle on the road. We are building more speed humps installing more speed cameras but most drivers including the police regularly ignore all the regulations on UK roads. The idea is if we can brainwash everyone into believing that anthropegenic global warming is true then it becomes true, you do not have to prove what you are claiming, you do not need evidence, government can then regulate every aspect of our life.Science should be objective and should not start with preconceived ideas of truth or what should be true,who are scientists to tell us what should be true.
Henry@DaveSpringer/Evan/Bryan
Dave, the idea that CO2 is completely transparent to UV, visible and (near) IR is not correct.
It seems you did not catch the questions I posted here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/14/breaking-new-paper-makes-a-hockey-sticky-wicket-of-mann-et-al-99/#comment-458246
and comment here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/14/breaking-new-paper-makes-a-hockey-sticky-wicket-of-mann-et-al-99/#comment-458382
@Pamela
Sorry, I’m not buying it. SST oscillations are known only through statistical analysis of history. There is no theory of SST oscillations to explain them. Sort of like climate science in general, actually. Or perhaps I should say actuarily…
You seem to have ruled out it was energy accumulated over many years of CO2 driven temperature surface temp increase. If it didn’t come from that then where did it come from? Regardless of the source it was a god-awful big lot of heat that appeared virtually overnight. Had to come from somewhere – energy is neither created nor destroyed. Account for it. The books have to balance.
Hi Gaylon,
I’m simply paraphrasing what the authors say themselves.
I think that’s pretty clear, and no need to go into greater detail.
Like you, the authors are motivated by popular and policy considerations – this is what they discuss in the paragraph following the one I just quoted. This has nothing to do with the scientific underpinnings of AGW, which were in place a century before MBH 98/99 etc, but how certain ideas have been projected. I believe this distinction is blurred in much of the commentary upthread.
It’s obvious enough that the paper tends to support M&M criticisms of Mann’s paleo-reconstruction techniques. It might be tempting to draw a broader conclusion about the science behind AGW theory from this, but the authors clearly state that millennial temperature reconstructions are somewhat of a side-issue WRT AGW theory and projections. Climate sensitivity, for example, does not rest on this branch of paleoclimatology. Climate models don’t either (nor do they form the underpinnings of the theory of global warming from increasing ‘greenhouse’ gases).
There is a tendency to try to discredit the whole of climate science from a dispute over this or that component. It’s a simple narrative, and seems to be effective, but it is a stranger to reason.
It’s correct for all practical purposes in this context.
@James
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latent_heat
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensible_heat
It’s really true. Not all heat registers on a thermometer. The above articles hopefully will explain it for you.
Yes, and I’ve read the papers that spawn them.
Regarding MBH 1999, for which the reconstruction does cover the putative MWP, they say;
They also mention the “Medieval Warm Epoch.”
The new paper says:
There’s not a hell of a lot of daylight between the two quotes. The main difference between the conclusions is the likelihood of 1998 being the warmest year in the last 1000, and in the level of confidence attached to the other conclusions.
It seems like a good paper, though. I’ve learned that it was done with no input from paleoclimatologists, which seems unfortunate when both sides agree (M&M and Gavin Schmidt, for example) that there should be more collaboration between statisticians and paleoclimatologists on the issue. I’ll be interested to see how it pans out after publication.
barry says:
August 16, 2010 at 9:58 pm
“Hi James,…….”
Hi Barry! Barry, as I alluded to in an earlier post, I’ve gotta call it. Wish I could stay and play, but….work is calling in just a very short few hours. I’ll leave you with this, I know it is incomplete, my apologies. I will check back en la manana.
You should check Arrhenius out the second time around.
And GCMs ain’t done by hand. The models are computer generated. I’d cut and paste, but ….
Peace to all.
James
@Pamela
Sorry if I was a little short in my previous reply. Been busy here tonight.
Sure, CO2 isn’t going to directly warm a localized mass of water more than some other mass as CO2 is more or less evenly distributed.
Can the stratification it causes around the globe of warmer surface air and colder stratosphere perhaps influence the trade winds that in turn influence the mix rate of surface and deep water that in turn allows the ocean surface to heat and cool in localized cyclic patterns?
Your explanation of SST oscillations just pushes the question back to a different point. What drives cyclic changes in trade winds which in turn drive cyclic changes in localized SSTs?
Henry@DaveSpringer
Again: The idea that CO2 is transparent in the sun’s radiation range of 0-5 um is not correct, in any context! How else could they measure CO2 coming back from the moon, showing its exact spectral fingerprint data?
Thanks for the comments. Over here it was night-time so that’s why I didn’t respond – busy zzz-ing. I was not setting out to patronise anyone: my point was that, given the obvious complexity of the detailed issues set out in this paper, I just think it is best to wait for the specialists in this particular field to give their measured responses prior to coming to any quick conclusions. I guess we are looking at just a few weeks from now to publication-time. We have an idea as to the climate of the past thousand years – a warm period in Medieval times that transitioned to colder conditions by the middle of the last millennium and then gave way to the warmer period we are currently within. These things we know – regionally – not only via proxies but from historical accounts in some countries, and some appear to have been global, others more regional e.g. the MWP is historically well-documented in NW Europe, but documented history from that time is largely to wholly absent in e.g. the USA, Australia etc. Thus to determine whether such things were global or not, we need a valid global proxy record, and it is important to ascertain how accurately that may be constructed. Anything that improves its reliability is to be welcomed on that basis. Let’s wait and see how others working in this specialist field interpret the findings when they have spent time going through the paper and the package of supporting information.
Cheers for now – John
@two moon says:
August 16, 2010 at 7:03 am
duckster: M&W are not scientists and their point is not scientific. They are statisticians and their point is statistical. They do not claim to present a new, “valid” reconstruction. Their point is that proxies will not support any reconstruction. In other words, the Hockey Stick is not so much broken as it is a castle in the air.
See this is exactly what I am saying. If you accept MW (2010), then it also undermines every argument made here which has also relied on proxies. Either the arguments presented here – use of proxies is fundamentally flawed – are true, and you throw out many of your previous arguments, or they are not, and you get to keep your incredible moving MWP at 1200 – 1400 attested to by various proxies.
Say ‘yes’ to this paper and WUWT’s MWP reconstruction is broken too! Back to the drawing board guys.
And this isn’t a straw man argument – it’s about logical consistency. Simple really.
I think the tide is turning. My New Scientist (cancelled, but paid in advance) has an article on the recent weather events such as the fires in Russia among many others. About 2/3 of the way through before Cliamte Change in mentioned, and even then, it is NOT blamed! “Impossible to say” is the answer!
This is a first!
Dave Springer:
At August 16, 2010 at 10:47 pm you say:
“I’ll have to step out on a limb now and predict we won’t see any significant warming for another 20 years but we won’t see any significant cooling either. Then about in the year 2030 (if mankind is still alive) we’ll see a 30 year warming trend begin.”
Well, I stepped out on to that limb 10 years ago, and I am still there.
In the past there was an idea that one observed the world, looked for patterns, made predictions on the basis of those patterns, then checked the predictions against real-world outcomes
(a) to gain confidence in the obtained understanding of real-world behaviour
or
(b) to reject the understanding of the real world that was inferred from the observations.
If (b), then start again.
This idea was called the scientific method. And it utilised mathematics and statistics to model the observed patterns and to help make the predictions from those observations.
On the basis of that idea, over the last 10 years I have repeatedly said the following in several places including in threads of this blog.
The global temperature seems to vary in cycles that are overlaid on each other. The cause(s) of these cycles is not known but some are associated with known phenomena (e.g. ENSO, NAO and PDO) although the causes of these phenomena are not known.
There is an apparent ~900 year oscillation that provided
the Roman Warm Period (RWP),
then the Dark Age Cool Period (DACP),
then the Medieval Warm Period (MWP),
then the Little Ice Age (LIA), and
the present warm period (PWP).
And there is an apparent ~60 year oscillation that provided
cooling from ~1880 to ~1910,
then warming from ~1910 to ~1940,
then cooling from ~1940 to ~1970,
then warming from about ~1970 to ~2000,
then cooling since.
These oscillations form a pattern of climate change over time.
And if this pattern continues then either
(A) cooling will continue until ~2020 when the ~60 year oscillation change phase and warming will resume until global temperature reached the levels it had in the RWP and the MWP
or
(B) the ~900 year oscillation will change phase and the globe will start to cool to the temperatures it had in the DACP and LIA.
There is no observation that indicates there has been any change to this pattern.
Richard
Dave Springer asked:
“Your explanation of SST oscillations just pushes the question back to a different point. What drives cyclic changes in trade winds which in turn drive cyclic changes in localized SSTs?”
Try latitudinal shifts in the air circulation systems driven by the oceans below and the sun above in a complex interplay.
@Henry Pool:
“How else could they measure CO2 coming back from the moon, showing its exact spectral fingerprint data?”
CO2 coming back from the moon?
Duckster is determinedly dense – enough wrtitten historical records and on-site remaining physical evidence supports the MWP as fact without the need for proxies.
He reminds me of an elderly chap who was a devout Anglican but would not recite the Nicene Creed as that was, in his mind, admitting to being a Catholic.
duckster says:
August 17, 2010 at 1:47 am
@two moon says:
August 16, 2010 at 7:03 am
duckster: M&W are not scientists and their point is not scientific. They are statisticians and their point is statistical. They do not claim to present a new, “valid” reconstruction. Their point is that proxies will not support any reconstruction. In other words, the Hockey Stick is not so much broken as it is a castle in the air.
See this is exactly what I am saying. If you accept MW (2010), then it also undermines every argument made here which has also relied on proxies. Either the arguments presented here – use of proxies is fundamentally flawed – are true, and you throw out many of your previous arguments, or they are not, and you get to keep your incredible moving MWP at 1200 – 1400 attested to by various proxies.
Say ‘yes’ to this paper and WUWT’s MWP reconstruction is broken too! Back to the drawing board guys.
And this isn’t a straw man argument – it’s about logical consistency. Simple really.
———-Reply:
Sorry, duckster. You’ve tried to deflect the content of this paper every which way but how it was presented, which is this: It reveals and refutes Mann’s bogus interpretation of the data. Now, is there work to be done in other areas? Without a doubt. But back to the main question: is Mann’s work (which again is the SALIENT subject here) of any value? The mathematically rigorous answer would be NO.
That’s it! That’s the bottom line. The foundation of AGW is broken and with it all the bogus hysteria the CAGW camp has been howling for the past two decades. It means the science wasn’t settled; it means their scare tactics where they said “everybody is going to die” were lies. Their imaginary “tipping points” are just that–imaginary.
Besides, the MWP doesn’t have to even exist for the total annhilation of CAGW–the fact that there have been multiple glacial and interglacial epochs that have cycled repeatedly without any influence of man (with temperature extremes far beyond what we’re currently experiencing) means there are much larger factors at play in Earth’s climate than anything that existed in just the past 1000 years.
So let the theory of CAGW die; the basic premise upon which it was built has been destroyed.
Dave Springer says:
August 16, 2010 at 10:47 pm
(…)
Of course a big volcano blowing its top could muck up my prediction big time!
—–Reply:
Count on Katla in the next year or two.
forgive me for my ignorance, but what are those “proxies” based on? u.u
The proxies that are most contentious are tree-ring proxies in the NH. But millennial paleoclimatic reconstructions use an array of proxies – sediment, coral, bore holes etc.
This is straying off-topic, but since the post is allowed…
There has been no cooling since 2000 according to any of the surface or satellite temperature records. There might have been a slow-down of warming since 2000 (depending on which data set you use – GISS, RSS and UAH show warming. HadCRU shows negligible warming or flat trend), but no cooling as yet.
Of course, 10 years is too short a period to say anything with respect to climate, but one can play the hand one is dealt.
It would appear from the paper cited that there has been a long cooling trend from 1000 – 1900, followed by a sharp uptick during the 20th century. As you posit 900-year cycles as comprising two phases of 450 years, warming and cooling, the paper du jour doesn’t seem to support your contention.
Well yeah, the science team always looks at things, and finds answers. It looks like the basic error on this one is that by calibrating against the hemispheric average, rather than smaller grid cells, they loose information and kill the signal to noise. Averaging out the local signal means that noise looks better than signal and in their words, noise provides a better fit than the proxys. There are, however, some other useful ideas in the paper.
Duckster: See this is exactly what I am saying. If you accept MW (2010), then it also undermines every argument made here which has also relied on proxies. Either the arguments presented here – use of proxies is fundamentally flawed – are true, and you throw out many of your previous arguments, or they are not, and you get to keep your incredible moving MWP at 1200 – 1400 attested to by various proxies.
In fairness, this is actually a valid point. The conclusion of that paper does indeed cast doubt over not just Mann’s proxy reconstruction, but all of them.
However, that’s not to say that other proxy reconstructions all used the same methods as Mann – the authors of the paper were arguing a general point. It could well be the case, that under more rigorous statistical examination, the methods used in other proxy reconstructions might prove to be a lot more robust than Mann’s.
All of that however doesn’t escape from the fact that Mann’s reconstruction is fatally flawed. Even if, as Duckster says, other proxies that have been used on here to make arguments against AGW also turn out to be flawed, it doesn’t alter the fact that in this case one of the cornerstone’s of the argument for AGW has been completely undermined.
The foundation of AGW is broken and with it all the bogus hysteria the CAGW camp has been howling for the past two decades.
This is, as I said before, about five years premature – based on this paper alone. No-one has had a chance to respond to this paper yet at all, and from what I hear, the publishing journal is withholding publication until it can elicit a range of critical responses.
Anyone prematurely claiming the death of CAGW based on this paper alone is engaging in ‘Gotcha’ science, which might make nice soundbites, but it’s not science. The death of the hockey stick, were it to happen, would not mean the end of CAGW, which would not mean the end of climate change theories.
Another real statistician weighs in:
http://wmbriggs.com/blog/?p=2773
People are still looking at the graph and saying “Look, it says this…”
The graph represents nothing. All it demonstrates is the Hockey Stick is broken. Nothing is created to replace it – welcome to the ‘void’ of Hidden Global Warming hypothesis.
Let me get this straight. Pamela says the trade winds drive the cyclical ocean SST patterns and then when I ask what drives the trade winds you say the ocean.
Circular reasoning much?
Granted the sun provides the energy that keeps the ocean in motion but its cyclicity doesn’t match the beat of the heat.
Bruce Foutch,
That was great. Thanks.
John
henry@katabasis
Can you believe it that they can identify CO2 by measuring its radiation fingerprint bouncing back from the moon? You must actually read my previous posts, like I said to DaveSpringer.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/17/breaking-new-paper-makes-a-hockey-sticky-wicket-of-mann-et-al-99/#comment-459228
He has become quiet now on the issue and the fact remains that he could indeed not prove to me that the warming property of CO2 is greater than its cooling properties. (in the correct SI dimensions). So we don’t know really, for sure, even whether or not CO2 really a greenhouse gas.
[REPLY – Well, turnabout is fair play, wot? ~ Evan]
(This was a reply on my post on August 16, 2010 at 1:07 am)
Fair if there were symmetry in the game. But there isn’t in this case. Comparable to mathematicians who poke fun at those ignorants believing the ratio of circumference and diameter of a circle to be a rational number; there is no fun vice versa, just Inquisition or this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Pi_Bill .
@Steve Wilde
At any rate where the energy came from to drive a 100-year record El Nino has nothing to do with where that energy ended up. It pretty clearly ended up as latent heat of fusion turning a million square kilometers of arctic ice at 32F into a million square kilometers of arctic water at 32F. It also doesn’t alter the fact that no thermometer of any kind will register a change in latent heat. That’s precisely why it’s called latent heat. The only means of observing that energy is to note the phase change from ice to water and try to estimate the kilograms of ice involved. From there you can determine the kiloJoules in latent heat it took to melt it. If you can somehow estimate the kiloJoules of energy it took to raise the temperature of the water in the 1998 El Nino and how many kilograms of water were involved we could compare it to the latent heat in the ice and figure out exactly how much of the El Nino energy was sequestered and didn’t register as a temperature change anywhere.
In science we don’t have proofs. Science is about best explanations that fit the observations. Moreover the principle of Occam’s Razor demands that among equally good explanations we presume the correct one is the simplest. I think my explanation of the recent loss of 1 million square kilometers of Artic Ice is that it was a consequence of the 1998 El Nino. It’s simple, elegant, and fits all the facts. A pulse of warm water in the tropical pacific with an energy content setting a 100-year record made its way to the arctic ocean and melted a bunch of ice and none of it showed up on a thermometer anywhere because it became latent of heat of fusion and until that mass of water changes back into ice the latent heat will remain right where it is invisible to thermometers.
My hypothesis should make predictions of course. I’m predicting that a step change in artic ice extent of about a million square km less has occured and it won’t return quickly unless something like a 100-year record El Nino comes along to provide the energy sink required to absorb the latent heat of fusion and turn water into ice again. I also predict that you won’t see this happening in the temperture record except as rapid drop in global average temperature followed by an equally rapid rise. At the end of that downward spike all the evidence of it will be an upward step change in the ice extent. Absent some record ocean cooling event the return of the lost ice will be slow at best.
duckster says:
August 17, 2010 at 6:41 am
The foundation of AGW is broken and with it all the bogus hysteria the CAGW camp has been howling for the past two decades.
With due respect, you don’t understand some of the basic concepts of the scientific method or independent replication of results or the consequences of a counter example to a theory or the nonexistent requirement that after an experiment shows that a theory or some aspect of a theory is nullified the experimenter must show an alternative theory. Given all that you comments don’t appear to have much substance.
Once again, using the MW paper to show something specific about temperature trends is missing the point. Only a valid technique combined with a proper set of proxies…no upside down sediments please…will do the job. MW is not answering that question.
What the graphs shows me is that C02 increase is too slow and arduous to be responsible for previous sharp movements of the the temperature record. Other, unidentified forces are at play, and if they cannot be isolated, neither can they be predicted.
The Climate will move at will where it desires to go.
The usual way of observing a backlit cold dense gas – by a characteristic absorption band. Astronomy 101.
Duckster
You are still missing the point. The MWP was founded on the pre-existing statistical models. That is those which existed before Mann et al. When the Hokey-pokey stick appeared it claimed to have destroyed the old stats and replaced them with the proof that the planet has warmed more in the last 30 years than at any time in the last 1000.
This paper effectively shows that the Mann stats and many others do not have the ‘skill’ to displace the MWP. The MWP was built not only on stats but on physical and written evidence, albeit some what anecdotal.
You are correct when you say that this paper debunks all paleo recons but you are FUNDAMENTALLY WRONG in thinking that it leaves in place the AGW theory.
You are wrong and blinded by you own beliefs. The AGW theory was based on Arrhenius’ CO² proposition which has never been proven scientifically to raise atmospheric temperature with any acceptable science based / engineering method. While we all accept that there has been an apparent warming over the past 30 yrs and a definitive warming since the little ice age, the amount of that warming cannot be defined accurately, according to this paper. We have neither the data nor the stats with which we can definitively say it has warmed by xxx °C.
The hockey stick is defunct and Hansen and Mann’s stats are defunct. C’est ça!
All belief is a cover up for insecurity. Romm, Tamino and Mann are just like Deprak Chopra
Jaye
that after an experiment shows that a theory or some aspect of a theory is nullified the experimenter must show an alternative theory
Suggest you read Feynman. This is not STRICTLY true. It is not necessary to show an alternate theory merely to show where the current theory breaks down.
Henry @ DaveSpringer
The paper that confirmed to me that CO2 is (also) cooling the atmosphere by re-radiating sunshine is this one:
http://www.iop.org/EJ/article/0004-637X/644/1/551/64090.web.pdf?request-id=76e1a830-4451-4c80-aa58-4728c1d646ec
they measured this radiation as it bounced back to earth from the moon. So the direction of the radiation was:sun-earth-moon-earth. Follow the green line in fig. 6, bottom. Note that it already starts at 1.2 um, then one peak at 1.4 um, then various peaks at 1.6 um and 3 big peaks at 2 um.
This paper here shows that there is absorption of CO2 at between 0.21 and 0.19 um (close to 202 nm):
http://www.nat.vu.nl/en/sec/atom/Publications/pdf/DUV-CO2.pdf
There are other papers that I can look for again that will show that there are also absorptions of CO2 at between 0.18 and 0.135 um and between 0.125 and 0.12 um.
We already know from the normal IR spectra that CO2 has big absorption between 4 and 5 um.
So, to sum it up, we know that CO2 has absorption in the 14-15 um range causing some warming (by re-radiating earthshine) but as shown and proved above it also has a number of absorptions in the 0-5 um range causing cooling (by re-radiating sunshine). This cooling happens at all levels where the sunshine hits on the carbon dioxide same as the earthshine. The way from the bottom to the top is the same as from top to the bottom. So, my question is: how much cooling and how much warming is caused by the CO2? How was the experiment done to determine this and where are the test results? (I am afraid that simple heat retention testing might not work here, we have to use real sunshine and real earthshine to determine the effect in W/m3 [0.03%- 0.06%]CO2/m2/24hours). I am also doubtful of just doing analysis (determining surface areas) of the spectral data, as some of the UV absorptions of CO2 have only been discovered recently. Also, I think the actual heat caused by the sun’s IR at 4-5 maybe underestimated, e.g. the amount of radiation of the sun between 4 and 5 maybe small but how many Watts does it cause? Here in Africa you can not stand in the sun for longer that 10 minutes, just because of the heat of the sun on your skin.
So your Astronomy 101 must be wrong?
Has anyone overlayed the two graphs, M&W and MBH on their proper X, Y coordinates, to show Eli and the others why Manns is off, that the handle stays much lower on MBH than on M&W, which debunks the 98 assertion that the MWP didn’t exist.
Isn’t there some suitable metaphor about chickens coming home to roost that would be wholly appropriate here ?
Actually I just wanted to get a comment in – haven’t seen this many since last November!
The alarmist camp is circling their wagons (Romm, Rabbett, Deep Climate, etc.) I hope that some of our knowledgeable posters here will rebut their rebuttals. Of course they are focusing on the “If we consider rolling decades, 1997-2006 is the warmest on record; our model gives an 80% chance that it was the warmest in the past thousand years…” statement in the paper. They are also (big surprise here) explaining that McShane and Wyner aren’t climatologists and don’t understand dendroclimatology. Funny, to me, dendroclimatology is all about statistical validation of the proxies to estimate temperatures. Briggs’ excellent and entertaining piece starts to address these issues.
It’s only clear in your mind.
Arctic ice melts every single year. The sun provides the latent heat required to melt arctic ice when the northern pole is exposed to a greater amount of radiation.
It would be foolish to think that there would be no variation with respect to the extent of such annual melt.
30 years worth of satellite measurements of arctic ice certainly aren’t enough to study simple variations of annual melt.
Occam’s Razor simpest explanation would be that 2007’s melt was merely an outlying variation of annual arctic ice melt.
The simplest explanation certainly isn’t that 2007’s melt was a result of residual heat from the 1998 El Nino – 9 years prior.
rbateman says:
August 17, 2010 at 7:50 am
“What the graphs shows me is that C02 increase is too slow and arduous to be responsible for previous sharp movements of the the temperature record. Other, unidentified forces are at play, and if they cannot be isolated, neither can they be predicted.
The Climate will move at will where it desires to go.”
I totally agree, the spikiness in the temperature record from even a single thermometer is massive, but the Mona Loa CO2 data shows only a gradual increase over time and does not even correlate well with long-term climate measures.
What we call climate is just the sparse record of poorly observed local weather averaged over time, then smeared spatially to global scale. It is meaningless in terms of what happens at any specific location/time and no one on earth can experience climate.
Weather/climate are driven by mechanisms which exhibit deterministic chaos. This means that “trends” for any climate metric can be cherry picked, depending on the time period chosen, which makes them meaningless regarding historic climate behaviour. It also makes long-term predictions impossible, as the ultimate accuracy/granularity of our observation systems is insufficient even to set the initial conditions for the computer GCM’s correctly.
Chuck L says:
August 17, 2010 at 8:26 am
The alarmist camp is circling their wagons (Romm, Rabbett, Deep Climate, etc.) I hope that some of our knowledgeable posters here will rebut their rebuttals.
—–Reply:
That’s ok. None of them are statisticians, and the very root of their so-called “science” is statistics. Like William Briggs states in his post, Mann has committed errors that wouldn’t be allowed in a 300-level statistics course. So they may circle their wagons, but the discussion moves beyond them, leaving them with nobody to fight. How appropriate.
“Statistically speaking, McShane and Wyner emulate Howe by applying a forearm check to the throat to Mann’s proxy reconstruction of temperature, cracking his hockey stick irreparably, leaving his models sprawling on the ice.”
That’s kinda the way I saw it too, but I lacked the literary skill Mr. Briggs used.
Pamela Gray: August 16, 2010 at 2:47 pm
Reminds me of the hubris of Kurdish chieftains (khafirs) in Western Armenia who reserved the right to bed Armenian brides on their wedding night.
*koff*
The Kurmanji word for “chieftain,” depending on his rank within the tribe could be “Agha” of “Beg”– a khafir is an infidel, or in that context, an Armenian.
Thank you for the link to William Briggs’ review of MW 2010. Brilliantly devastating humor even if you are not a hockey fan. I strongly recommend that your readers take the time to look at the articles cited in his second footnote in which Willis E. is well-represented.
RayG
John Mason says “the MWP is historically well-documented in NW Europe, but documented history from that time is largely to wholly absent in e.g. the USA, Australia etc. ”
But there is evidence that the MWP was global – checkout
http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/mwpp.php
Don Keiller says:
August 17, 2010 at 9:06 am
John Mason says “the MWP is historically well-documented in NW Europe, but documented history from that time is largely to wholly absent in e.g. the USA, Australia etc. ”
Would that be because there was no one in the US or Australia apart from indigenous peoples at the time? What do their ‘records’ say?
Statistics may not prove the hypothesis.
http://wmbriggs.com/blog/?p=2773
We can use stats as a baloney detector.
We may apply statistical methods as a sniff test.
Mann was calling junkyards after cash for clumkers when someone suggested “monte Carlo”
@Chuck L:
“The alarmist camp is circling their wagons (Romm, Rabbett, Deep Climate, etc.) I hope that some of our knowledgeable posters here will rebut their rebuttals. Of course they are focusing on the “If we consider rolling decades, 1997-2006 is the warmest on record; our model gives an 80% chance that it was the warmest in the past thousand years…” statement in the paper. ”
—
reply:
If that’s all they have, then they are grasping at straws and no rebuttal is necessary. The model is what gives those odds, but that model is worse than random data. They are stuck between a rock and a hard place on this one. Or rather stuck between the choice of random data or MWP.
Jimmy Haigh says:
August 17, 2010 at 9:10 am
Would that be because there was no one in the US or Australia apart from indigenous peoples at the time? What do their ‘records’ say?
=======================================
A strong argument can be made using the Incas and Machu Picchu.
It is believed that they constructed Machu Picchu around 1400, the end of the MWP, and then abandoned it only 100 years later, which would be the beginning of the LIA.
Makes sense, they built it at a time they could grow crops and feed themselves, and then had to leave when it got too cold to grow crops.
Machu Picchu, has terraced plots to grow crops, but even now it’s not warm enough and too cold to grow anything.
Latent heats of water in British Thermal Units.
A BTU is a unit of heat equal to the amount of heat required to raise one pound of water one degree Fahrenheit at sea level.
For all you older Brits and Americans like me this is the unit you’re most comfortable with and can equate to everyday things in your life like thermometers and weight scales, melting and boiling points of water, and so forth.
Water is rather uniquie in latent heat capacity. It’s got a lot of it. Much moreso in vaporization but still a lot in fusion (melting).
Latent heat of fusion is 144 BTU/pound. This is the heat required to turn a pound of 32F ice into a pound of 32F water. No change in temperature. Just all locked up in the physical phase change. If the same energy is applied to water already liquid it will raise a pound of it at 32F to 176F. A stark and surprising thing for those who don’t happen to know about latent heat of fusion in water. That’s why a few ice cubes plunked into a glass of tepid water will change it’s temperature so much.
Latent heat of vaporization is more where the action is at for some serious shuffling around of heat like in a steam engine. Latent heat of vaporization is 1050 BTU/pound – nearly times the heat of fusion! This is the energy required to turn a pound of water at 212F into a pound of steam at 212F. If that same energy is applied to a pound of steam at 212F it will raise its temperature to 1262F. Now that’s some hot stuff. But this is precisely why we prefer to use steam instead of hot water when we’ve got to transport large quantities of heat around. This is why there are steam pipes under the streets of New York dating back to before any electrical grids. Steam was and still is a very efficient means of moving heat around. When that steam condenses in a radiator it liberates all that latent heat into the metal of the radiator and then into the air surrounding the radiator.
This same latent heat capacity is what makes thunderstorms into such awsome heat pumps.
Love this from Briggs: focus their efforts where it counts, exploiting Mann’s huge, gaping statistical five hole.
Had to laugh. Drudge had two stacked headlines up:
Russian Scholar Warns Of ‘Secret’ U.S. Climate Change Weapon…
Heat ‘probably killed thousands’ in Moscow…
What came to my mind is the first one being completed as:
Russian Scholar Warns Of ‘Secret’ U.S. Climate Change Weapon Shaped Like A Hockey Stick.
Which would be easy to refute / deny because we all know the Hockey Stick is just a bit of creative art.
Lee Kington says:
“Russian Scholar Warns Of ‘Secret’ U.S. Climate Change Weapon…”
Oh no! They found out about our secret weapon.
@Henry Pool
There’s almost zero energy at 202 nanometers in the solar spectrum.
http://solardat.uoregon.edu/SolarRadiationBasics.html
Doesn’t matter if CO2 scatters it. Absorbing 100% of almost zero is still almost zero.
Duckster says “and from what I hear, the publishing journal is withholding publication until it can elicit a range of critical responses.”
Can anybody confirm this?
Would a journal withhold publication of an article which had already been reviewed in normal protocol, simply because the article might be controversial?
I’m concerned.
William M Briggs has the best analogy ever!!! Play hockey!!!
Jordan
From climate audit
Abaraham Wyner
Posted Aug 14, 2010 at 8:34 PM
Thanks for the welcome response. For the record, Blakely just graduated with a Phd in Statistics under my supervision from the University of Pennsylvania (not Penn State!).
The paper has been accepted, but publication is still a bit into the future as it is likely to be accompanied by invited discussants and comment. Stay tuned…
@Jaye Bass
With due respect, you don’t understand some of the basic concepts of the scientific method or independent replication of results or the consequences of a counter example to a theory or the nonexistent requirement that after an experiment shows that a theory or some aspect of a theory is nullified the experimenter must show an alternative theory.
Since when has it been science to accept a paper as scientifically valid without its findings being independently repeated? This is a core part of the scientific process. Moreover authors of a peer reviewed paper which has come under attack need to be given the right of reply? Until this paper has been picked over and withstood critical analysis, it should not be given the status of settled science (sound familiar?).
latitude says:
August 17, 2010 at 9:39 am
Jimmy Haigh says:
August 17, 2010 at 9:10 am
Would that be because there was no one in the US or Australia apart from indigenous peoples at the time? What do their ‘records’ say?
=======================================
A strong argument can be made using the Incas and Machu Picchu.
It is believed that they constructed Machu Picchu around 1400, the end of the MWP, and then abandoned it only 100 years later, which would be the beginning of the LIA.
Makes sense, they built it at a time they could grow crops and feed themselves, and then had to leave when it got too cold to grow crops.
Machu Picchu, has terraced plots to grow crops, but even now it’s not warm enough and too cold to grow anything.
———————————————————–
Another argument can be made for the Anasazi people in the (North) American Southwest. The height of their culture was during the MWP from 900-1150 AD and they disappeared with the onset of the LIA.
See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Pueblo_Peoples
However, I have been recently converted from sceptic to warmist because of the measureable personal effects climate change I have seen on myself.
The increase in the amount of wrinkles in my face can be shown to have a statistically significant correlation with the increase in CO2 and the global temperature increase according to GISS in the last 20 years.
My personal rate of hair-loss also correlates statistically significant with these factors.
The only positive effect is that the fraction of white hair relative to the total hair mass has also increased, causing my personal albedo to rise. Which of course amounts to a negative feedback. Hence possibly the slowdown in temperature rise in the last decade.
However, at some point the hair-loss will exceed the albedo growth of the white hair fraction and a catastrophic tipping point will be reached.
wobble says:
August 17, 2010 at 8:27 am
“Arctic ice melts every single year.”
It doesn’t stay melted through the next winter every single year. A million square kilometers has gone missing.
“The sun provides the latent heat required to melt arctic ice when the northern pole is exposed to a greater amount of radiation.”
Correct. But the amount of radiation doesn’t change much from one year to the next.
It shall be interesting indeed to see the response from both the statisticians and climate experts once this paper is actually peer reviewed…
stephen richards says:
August 17, 2010 at 8:07 am
Jaye
that after an experiment shows that a theory or some aspect of a theory is nullified the experimenter must show an alternative theory
Suggest you read Feynman. This is not STRICTLY true. It is not necessary to show an alternate theory merely to show where the current theory breaks down.
Well you didn’t read the entire phrase which was :
or the nonexistent requirement that after an experiment shows that a theory or some aspect of a theory is nullified the experimenter must show an alternative theory.
duckster you are very confused or maybe you have 1000 monkeys typing on your keyboard.
@wobble
Here’s what can change the heat equation a lot at the periphery and below the arctic ice cap when we pick up more or less warm water as the surface conveyor cruises the through the warm side of ENSO, PDO, and AMDO. The mother of all El Ninos was a biggie picking up the 100-year record warm water in the tropical pacific and shuttling it right on up until it hits the far north atlantic.
http://oceanmotion.org/html/background/ocean-conveyor-belt.htm
Don’t worry, duckster… The chance of Mann’s hockey stick being certified viable is nill. Even if they manage to somehow bury this paper, Mann is still toast. He was toast 20 years ago; the bigger crime is that he’s defended his nefarious “science” in the face of all superior and weighty criticism. The flood of criticism stated with Climategate and continues to swell. It is that simple.
I’d like to see more in-depth statistical analysis of this sort on non-cherry-picked datasets so a better understanding of past climate can be constructed. Like datasets I’ve worked with in the past, skewed or tampered datasets can be identified and eliminated by testing their intrinsic characteristics.
Dave Springer says:
August 17, 2010 at 10:43 am
wobble says:
August 17, 2010 at 8:27 am
“Arctic ice melts every single year.”
It doesn’t stay melted through the next winter every single year. A million square kilometers has gone missing.
_________________________
Does it make any sense in this discussion of latent heat to treat the Arctic as if it was a separate sealed container? There is the rest of world isn’t there? How does the overall global sea ice budget and sea temperature (surface and deep) factor into this. What about the temperature of the air? Aren’t these things all interrelated? And further, even in the Arctic isn’t your “missing” ice showing back up a bit more year by year? To bring this discussion back to the subject matter of this thread. Isn’t there a lot we don’t know about the way heat, ice, temperature, wind, currents, clouds and the like behave? Just stating that some ice has gone missing is an admission that we don’t know much, especially when the ice may not be missing for long or even at all if we knew where to look for it, or even how to accurately measure it.
People complaining about scrolling are probably nursing some strange ulterior motive(s).
(or they are irritably looking for the punched card that says ‘0.8 deg C’ – needed to complete their latest (peer-reviewed) submission to The International Journal of Climate Change, Juicy Grants, and Exotic Conference Locations’)
I have a few comments. I am definitely a skeptic from RC’s point of view.
Don’t underestimate the Team, they will have a response, and they have a large mass of foaming at the mouth followers that will accept the response as golden and spread it widely. Don’t be surprised.
When faced with a problem like this where the authors have shown legitimate problems with methods and have reached reasonable conclusions, you don’t fight the methods or conclusions, you will attack the very basis of their paper. When you are guilty, argue the law.
Something along the lines of these guys aren’t climate scientists, and their methods of data reduction are OK from a purely neutral data point of view, and we have always agreed the data is difficult to interpret.. However our insider expert knowledge on the proxies allows us to “intelligently” reduce the data in a much more meaningful way than a blind statistician can. Unless someone can substantiate why our expert data reduction processes are invalid from a climate science perspective, our results stand.
This moves the argument back into their arena where they can argue from authority again. They won’t be giving up anytime soon. Their careers and legacy depend on it. It’s personal.
This is probably a very weak argument, but the response will likely be along these type of lines. They may praise the mathematics, but will dismiss the results as an amateur hour attempt to refute the science which the authors have little knowledge of.
That has been the pattern with M&M.
This paper was in fact very readable and the explanations made it easier to understand exactly what they were saying, and they do make some very good arguments:
The estimated skill of models are overestimated with two block approach because filling in the center 30 year block is an interpolation (i.e. the model knows the starting point and ending point of the estimate). When asked to either predict or backcast, where only the starting point is known, the model performs much more poorly.
The creation of a null model that has localized matches, but no long term trend was quite illuminating. It basically showed you aren’t going to get a very good backcast when only a short time period of training data is available.
In summary the backcast using proxies is simply unreliable to use for decision making. I think anyone who has been around this stuff for a while already knows this though.
Henry@DaveSpringer
You said that Co2 is transparent to sunshine.
Well is it or is it not. What do the spectra tell you, and at what wavelengths does the sun shine?
RockyRoad says:
August 17, 2010 at 10:57 am
Hi Rocky,
One of the points I took away from the paper was that the proxies in general were insufficient to predict anything, I thought, on the basis of sample size: that there just aren’t enough to extrapolate a meaningful result.
You seem to be saying that there are proxy data sets out there that are unaltered and in sufficient quantity to produce a meaningful, and hence, a predictive result?
Just form reading above I was begining to think that all past reconstructions were thrown into the mix with MBH. Of course pre-1986 products, most likely not Mann-handled, would have more integrity/credibility.
@Henry
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/06/21/a-window-on-water-vapor-and-planetary-temperature-part-2/
Has a nice chart of different major absorption bands for GHGs.
CO2 in visible spectrum (shorter than 1.2um which is near infrared) has no appreciable absorption band. I don’t doubt that with a sensitive enough instrument you can dig some characteristic scattering at visible frequencies out of the dirt but the power just ain’t there compared to the infrared absorption bands.
Barry:
You mistakenly assert to me August 17, 2010 at 5:16 am :
“It would appear from the paper cited that there has been a long cooling trend from 1000 – 1900, followed by a sharp uptick during the 20th century. As you posit 900-year cycles as comprising two phases of 450 years, warming and cooling, the paper du jour doesn’t seem to support your contention.”
No, that is a misreading of the paper.
JER0ME stated the matter clearly at August 17, 2010 at 7:03 am so I can do no better than quote his post that said:
“People are still looking at the graph and saying “Look, it says this…”
The graph represents nothing. All it demonstrates is the Hockey Stick is broken. Nothing is created to replace it – welcome to the ‘void’ of Hidden Global Warming hypothesis.”
However, there is an enormous amount of information from history and from archaeology (in addition to proxy studies) that indicates the existence of the ~900 year global temperature cycle. The importance that was placed on the MBH ‘hockey stick’ was that it seemed to deny all that evidence.
But the MBH ‘hockey stick’ is now in the refuse bin so all that evidence is again seen to be valid.
Richard
Eli Rabett:
“Well yeah, the science team always looks at things, and finds answers. It looks like the basic error on this one is that by calibrating against the hemispheric average, rather than smaller grid cells, they loose information and kill the signal to noise. Averaging out the local signal means that noise looks better than signal and in their words, noise provides a better fit than the proxys. There are, however, some other useful ideas in the paper.”
Uhuh. The thing that really strikes me about the climate debate, is that on the one hand you have a bunch of people pointing out what you would expect an everage ten-year-old to notice. On the other hand you have people spinning complicated verbiage to try and convince you that the issue is so complex that only the experts can tell what the truth is.
Apparently “calibrating against the hemispheric average” is the major issue here. Gosh, it just sounds so sciencey. It must be right.
It couldn’t possibly be as simple as “we can’t find any genuine proxies that actually have the shape of graph that we are looking for.”
It has happened just as predicted numerous times above.
“While WattsUpWithThat thinks this paper is so important that he has been running a post on it at the top of his blog for days, he conveniently omits this rather remarkable statement from the authors:
Using our model, we calculate that there is a 36% posterior probability that 1998 was the warmest year over the past thousand. If we consider rolling decades, 1997-2006 is the warmest on record; our model gives an 80% chance that it was the warmest in the past thousand years.
Doh!”
http://climateprogress.org/2010/08/16/hockey-stick-paper-mcshane-and-wyner-statisticians/
REPLY: And Climateprogress ignores everything else in the paper, such as the predictive ability of fake data being better than the proxy data. 1998 was caused by an El Nino, not by “global warming” as the next year, 1999 was near the zero anomaly line. Romm has no point. – Anthony
For those claiming the paper has not been peer reviewed. Note that in one of the first links provided at the top of this thread the paper is listed to appear in one of the next issues. That means it has already been peer reviewed.
The process works like this: sumbit paper to journal – journal sends the paper to anonymous referees for peer review – based on the referee reports, the journal editor rejects or offers a revise/resubmit or accepts the paper (the review period can take serveral months). The que for most journals is long, so that acceptance today may mean that the authors have to wait months+ before the paper is actually in print.
The authors probably finished this paper 6 months to a year ago and are only now learning it has been accepted. It’s also possible they received a revise and resubmit which means they submitted the paper well over a year ago, but the referees wanted some revisions before publication. Revisions take time and then the paper goes back to referees or journal editor. Few papers are accepted without revision.
The next step is for the profession to extend or refute the paper by basing new research based on the papers assumptions/methods/data set, etc.
Stephen Brown says:
August 17, 2010 at 11:56 am
A commenter at Briggs site raised a similar issue. Briggs response says it better than I ever could
Briggs says:
17 August 2010 at 9:29 am
Bernie,
The money quote is
Using our model, we calculate that there is a 36% posterior probability that 1998 was the warmest year over the past thousand. If we consider rolling decades, 1997-2006 is the warmest on record; our model gives an 80% chance that it was the warmest in the past thousand years. Finally, if we look at rolling thirty-year blocks, the posterior probability that the last thirty years (again, the warmest on record) were the warmest over the past thousand is 38%.
Recall our litany: All probability statements are conditional on certain premises or evidence. One premise here is the truth of the model. It’s unlikely that this model is perfect. If we allow some chance for other, better models, then the chance that, say, that the last thirty years were the warmest would be less than 38%. And the chance that the rolling decade 1997-2006 is the warmest would be less than 80%.
Another piece of evidence is the purity of the data, assumed by their model to be measured without error. Again, not true, so we must damp down the probabilities even more.
A third piece of evidence, an assumption, is stationarity of the proxy-temperature relationship: not that this is not the same as assuming the stationarity of either series; we only require that the statistical relationship between them is stationary. There is good evidence that this is not so (see the above, and the main article). Once more, this being so, the chances are lowered yet again.
Since we don’t have a model for these premises, we cannot say explicitly how low the probabilities should drop; but a reasonable guess is by at least a quarter to a half. That’s based on my subjective assessment of the likelihood that (1) the model is perfect and (2) the data are measured without significant error, and (3) the relationship is stationary.
In other words, we just can’t be that sure what the pre-historical-record temperatures were—at least, not to the tune of fractions of degrees Celsius. Ice ages we can tell, the difference between last year and, say, 1640, about the best we can do is say, “It was about the same.”
Dear Stephen Brown
Go back to Climate Progress – wherein lives the comment-deleting Mr Romm. Go to his Usual Suspects post. Give him first a bit of the earful, for spoiling the name of a good movie.
Draw a straight line parallel to the X-axis at the ‘0’ point, on the MW paper graph. Draw a straignt line parallel to the X-axis at the ‘0’ point on the graph above that.
What do you see?
Romm thinks MW did not ‘break’ the hockey stick, because he draws an actual hockey stick overlying the MW graph. What a joke! Someone should tell him he can draw a hockey stick over Lamb’s graph with the huge medieval warmth as well.
I occasionally counsult with statisticians about the analysis of my scientific data and the collaboration can be quite helpful. However, based on my experience, statisticians analyzing scientific data without the help of a scientist would be more likely to make mistakes than scientists who analyze their own data without the assistance of a professional statistician. I get help from statisticians from departments of mathematics and statistics who have experience with scientific projects. I have not tried working with statisticians, such as M & W, who work primarily (I assume) with economic and business data, rather than scientific data. Even though the M & W paper was submitted to a statistics journal, the editors would have been well advised to include some scientific input.
Tom Scharf: I believe that you have it exactly right.
This statement is untrue. There have not been any winter freeze data which indicate a million square kilometers less of arctic ice since 2007. Additionally, there isn’t any data which indicates that there is a million square kilometers less of summer arctic ice since 2007.
So what? It’s irrational to believe that a materially equal amount of radiation would cause the same exact amount of arctic summer ice melt year-after-year-after year. Surely, you accept that some natural variance should be expected. Can you quantify the amount to natural variance that a rational person should expect?
Duckster is not confused. He is father Duckster of the great warming religion a complete zealot and evangelist of the great warming faith. The Galileo’s of statistics have pronounced the self evident truth and here begins the inquisition with no regard for the integrity of their domain as it is not of the global warming faith.
I just started reading the paper and acame across this;
All data and code used in this paper are available at the Annals of Applied
Statistics supplementary materials website:
http://www.imstat.org/aoas/supplements/default.htm
Well done!
REPLY: Thanks for that- added your note and link to main page – Anthony
My point is quite simple.
Massive amounts of latent heat is adsorbed during every spring and summer arctic ice melt. The amount of latent heat required to melt an additional million square miles of ice might only be one, two, or even three standard deviations from the average amount of heat which melts the arctic ice every year.
We don’t have enough data to quantify the average amount of annual heat, and we certainly don’t have enough data to calculate standard deviations.
So while I’m not trying to claim that you’re hypothesis is wrong, I am absolutely claiming that it’s far from “clear.”
In another comment response at his site Mr. Briggs addresses what has always been one of my biggest personal bugaboos in “climate science”, that being the pervasive practice of presenting graphs with the central tendency plotted in bold color while the error bars are represented by the palest of grays and pastels. The clear, though unstated, implication is that the central tendency best reflects reality. To quote Mr. Briggs
“Their red line would be the best guess, if you had to commit yourself to just one number. Chance that that one number is right is near zero. The error envelope is always—always—a superior way to do business. It says that there’s a 95% chance that the observable temperature was somewhere in that window.”
Some of the comments above suggest that the M & W paper will be published with discussion and critical comments. Perhaps that would be a chance for Michael Mann (maybe with a statistics Ph.D. as a co-author) to defend his analysis and to criticize the M & W paper.
I was the editor for such a critique and the procedure was to have comments from both sides where the authors who disagreed acted as one set of peer reviewers for each others comments. Presumably, M & W would have a chance to defend their work in view of the critique, just as Mann and his colleagues would have a chance to defende their work.
This would certainly cut down the extent of disagrement and made sure that neither side’s criticism was based on misunderstanding or misinterpretation. The down side of the precedure is that a couple of rounds of peer review will delay publication.
In any case, I would expect that M & W would want to be sure that their critique was not based in part of any misunderstanding of the Mann et al. papers.
BillD says:
August 17, 2010 at 12:23 pm
Are you just speaking in general terms, or are there specific issues you think could have been addressed/avoided with this consultation?
Henry@ Dave
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/06/21/a-window-on-water-vapor-and-planetary-temperature-part-2/
Has a nice chart of different major absorption bands for GHGs.
If you would look carefully at the incoming and outgoing radiation, you would have noticed that only a small corner of earth’s radiation is cut off by the CO2 at 14-15 due to the water vapor overlap. Co2 has reasonably strong absorption at around 2 um – (3 peaks) hence they can measure it coming back from the moon. It does make a dent here in the sun’s radiation. A better solar graph will show this more clearly.
CO2 also absorbs strongly at between 4-5 where both earth and sun radiate. But who of the two radiates stronger here?
I would say, even looking at these stupid graphs, that it is pretty much evens with the cooling and warming.
But I wanted results in W/(0.03%-0.06% CO2/m3/m2/24hours cooling and warming, please ….
You have not proven to me that CO2 is a greenhouse gas….sorry
Didnt Mann recently say his hockey schtic should not have gotten as much play in the IPCC?
1. The Oxburgh Report stated ”We cannot help remarking that it is very surprising that research in an area that depends so heavily on statistical methods has not been carried out in close collaboration with professional statisticians.”
2. Rasmus Benestad stated ”I think neither McKitric or McIntyre (or Michaels) is very strong in statistics – but it does not prevent them from being very loud. Unfortunately, I have the impression that too few scientists have a very good grasp of statistics.” Translation from http://www.forskning.no/artikler/2009/november/235924.
3. Judith Curry stated: ”Not sure if you have caught the emerging hoopla about a new hockey stick paper, by leading statisticians[McShane and Wyner], to be published (in press) by a leading statistics journal.” http://www.collide-a-scape.com/2010/08/04/gavins-perspective/#comment-14404
Now I wonder what the response by The Team will be? I think that they risk insulting the larger professional academic statistical community if the continue as before.
An interesting paper, several Inquiries (Wegman, Oxbourgh) have noted that Climate Science should utilize more statisticians in their work. Hopefully, they will embrace the LASSO and not just circle the wagons.
Its been a tough summer for the Team, what with Smerdon et al, McShane and Wyner 2010, McKitrick, McIntyre and Herman (2010) being published.
@ BillD says:
I occasionally counsult with statisticians about the analysis of my scientific data and the collaboration can be quite helpful. However, based on my experience, statisticians analyzing scientific data without the help of a scientist would be more likely to make mistakes than scientists who analyze their own data without the assistance of a professional statistician. … Even though the M & W paper was submitted to a statistics journal, the editors would have been well advised to include some scientific input.
That’s all well and good. In fact if all this paper does is call out Mann & the team to fully scientifically justify their use of this data for temperature reconstruction to shame the statisticians, that in itself is a huge victory. To my knowledge they have never provided a single paper fully investigating the usefulness of tree rings as proxies for temperature (correct me here if I’m wrong, but I’m quite sure that any argument made in the affirmative has been decidedly weak and not vetted out by the scientific process). It is one of the very first questions ever raised, and if that’s what it takes to shut up the statisticians, fantastic, we should all welcome that kind of scientific debate on reality.
Since we don’t have a model for these premises, we cannot say explicitly how low the probabilities should drop; but a reasonable guess is by at least a quarter to a half. That’s based on my subjective assessment of the likelihood that (1) the model is perfect and (2) the data are measured without significant error, and (3) the relationship is stationary.
So the 36% is under ideal conditions, but the authors’ reasonable guess is dropped to 18% – 27% or to 0% – 11% depending on what you think they mean by dropping the probabilities by at least a quarter to a half.
Blake McShane has posted a clarification wrt M&W2010 at his website:
(Aug 16, 2010 at 8:23pm EDT)– Note on “A Statistical Analysis of Multiple Temperature Proxies: Are Reconstructions of Surface Temperatures Over the Last 1000 Years Reliable?” by Blakeley B. McShane and Abraham J. Wyner:
“The paper has been accepted at the Annals of Applied Statistics and a draft version is posted on the journal’s website in the forthcoming section. The posted draft was submitted for referee and editor comments and is not yet in “final” form. Likewise, some have obtained the code and data which was intended for the referees and editors as part of the review process. This code and data is not yet in final form nor is the documentation complete. The final draft of the paper and the code and data bank will be posted at the journal’s website come publication.”
http://www.blakemcshane.com/
Posted on tips & notes by mistake 🙂
They provide confirmation of what many of us have known. They limited their study to temperature proxies. The ice core CO2 proxie is much less reliable. The legs of the CAGW myth are being broken. The “true believers” should be preparing for the fall instead of shouting that their platform is sturdy and everyone should join them.
Has anyone seen this comment on Deltoid and would like to address it?
“The funny thing is that this paper actually replicates Mann et al. 2008 without even noticing it…
To partake in this dirty little secret, see their Figure 14 on page 30: the blue curve is wiggle-identical and practically a photocopy of Mann’s corresponding EIV NH land curve. As it should be. The higher (green) curve they canonize and which is shown above is the result of an error: they calibrate their proxies against hemispherical mean temperature, which is a poor measure of forced variability. The instrumental PC1 which the blue curve is based on, is a much better measure; its EOF contains the polar amplification effect. What it means is that high-latitude proxies, in order to be made representative for global temperatures, should be downweighted. The green curve fails to do this. Thus, high latitudes are overrepresented in this reconstruction, which is why the “shaft” is at such an angle, due to the Earth axis’s changing tilt effect on the latitudinal temperature dependence described in Kaufman et al. 2009.
The authors have no way of detecting such an error as their RMSE goodness-of-fit seems to be also based around the hemispherical average…”
Jaye Bass says:
August 17, 2010 at 10:54 am
Jaye I did read it all but quite clearly misinterpreted the english. I guess it was the experimenter and realising which one you were writing about. The first or the second.
I apologise
BillD says:
August 17, 2010 at 12:23 pm
BillD,
The fact that the ‘Team’ had/has not consulted with statisticians turns out ot be the crux of the problem. This way they could do whatever they wanted, and as it turns out that is exactly what they did: whatever they wanted. Please recall the numerous and hard fought FOI requests and denials (see climategate). Why?
The M&M articles, the NAS report and the Wegman Report a long time ago should really have put an end to this dung-pile and the $$billions that have been wasted on it…your tax dollars, my tax dollars. The governments decision to accept the results MBH based on the North Report but denounce the method was purely a political move. How could any person do that with a straight face?
The M&W paper deconstructs the MBH et al products on a statistical basis rendering any conclusions based on their reconstructions null and void; our tax dollars wasted.
The only possible input the “scientist’s” could possibly have had would be along the lines of, “Huh? Why’d you do that? Really?…so we were wrong all along? huh, that’s wierd. Really?…random noise is a BETTER predictor? Huh, that’s weird.” I am certain you will not be hearing that from the CAGW crowd.
From what I’ve read of their resume and comments on this blog and others it is apparent that these guys are “heavy-hitters”, or perhaps more aptly put: above reproach
as statistical scientists.
The fact that they are not “climate scientists” bolsters their conclusions by the simple facts that, 1) They did not have preconceived parameters that dictated the outcome and, 2) They did not care about the quality control of the data-sets, they used the original data as-is. How damning is that?
Their goal was to determine IF a signal could be detected statistically from the proxies and IF that signal had the statistical integrity to make meaningful predictions. Turns out it didn’t/doesn’t. End of story…kaput.
Its been said many times before and in many different ways, I will repeat it for affect:
This destroys the very foundation that the CAGW ‘house-of-cards’ is built upon, IMO.
“The funny thing is that this paper actually replicates Mann et al. 2008 without even noticing it…
Oh, okay, in that case the Deltoid will be perfectly happy when the MW curve is substituted for Mann’s. I propose they do so immediately.
DCA, engineer:
At August 17, 2010 at 1:24 pm you ask:
“Has anyone seen this comment on Deltoid and would like to address it?”
I would never visited that website but if your quotation of the comment is correct then the comment it is mistaken in that it completely fails to understand the M&W analysis.
Of course, the Figure 16 of M&W has some similarity to the MBH ‘hockey stick’: the M&W graph was derived from the same proxies as the’hockey stick’. And, of course, by adjusting the weightings applied to individual proxies either analysis could be made to have similar shape to the other.
But so what?
The paper by M&W shows that the errors of the graphs are such that anything (including MWP and the LIA) may exist within those errors, so NEITHER GRAPH TELLS ANYTHING OF USE.
Richard
DCA, engineer says:
August 17, 2010 at 1:24 pm
Has anyone seen this comment on Deltoid and would like to address it?
“The funny thing is that this paper actually replicates Mann et al. 2008 without even noticing it…
Josh has http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2010/8/17/josh-31.html
From Deltoid:
“The funny thing is that this paper actually replicates Mann et al. 2008 without even noticing it…
OK then. Lets plug in the data from Mann 2008 and see what we get there.
BillD says:
August 17, 2010 at 12:23 pm
“…I have not tried working with statisticians, such as M & W, who work primarily (I assume) with economic and business data, rather than scientific data….”
Instead of making assumptions, you could look at their CV’s.
Blakeley B. McShane https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/facseminars/events/marketing/documents/cv_McShane.pdf
Ph.D. in Statistics, University of Pennsylvania ,The Wharton School, 2010; Thesis: Integrating Machine Learning Methods with Hidden Markov Models: A New Approach to Categorical Time Series Analysis with Application to Sleep Data
Abraham J. Wyner http://statistics.wharton.upenn.edu/documents/cv/Resume-4-5-10.pdf
PhD in Statistics, Stanford University, 1993; Research Areas: Probabilistic modeling; information theory; entropy; data compression; estimation
Jimbo,
The study you link to from the NAS repeatedly states it is confined to the Icelandic shelf. It is not a global temperature reconstruction and tells us nothing about the “Roman Warm Period”.
Josh, the well-known cartoonist, has joined the fray.
Hilarious!
http://www.cartoonsbyjosh.com/
wobble says:
August 17, 2010 at 1:06 pm
You appear to be responding to a comment of mine above and I should clarify. I posted a comment response from W.M. Briggs made on his site. In the original the first paragraph was italicized and is the only part that is a quote from the paper. Italicization was lost in C&P and everything after the first para is Mr. Briggs analysis. Your concluding paragraph is a reasonable summary of that analysis, but we shouldn’t assume the authors share Mr. Briggs view, although I suspect they probably wouldn’t argue to stridently against it.
Stephen Brown says:
August 17, 2010 at 11:56 am
It has happened just as predicted numerous times above.
“While WattsUpWithThat thinks this paper is so important that he has been running a post on it at the top of his blog for days, he conveniently omits this rather remarkable statement from the authors:
Using our model, we calculate that there is a 36% posterior probability that 1998 was the warmest year over the past thousand. If we consider rolling decades, 1997-2006 is the warmest on record; our model gives an 80% chance that it was the warmest in the past thousand years.
Doh!”
Uhmm,
becausealso from the paper,“This is disturbing: if a model cannot predict the occurrence of a
sharp run-up in an out-of-sample block which is contiguous with the insample
training set, then it seems highly unlikely that it has power to detect
such levels or run-ups in the more distant past. It is even more discouraging
when one recalls Figure 15: the model cannot capture the sharp run-up
even in-sample. In sum, these results suggest that the ninety-three sequences
that comprise the 1,000 year old proxy record simply lack power to detect a sharp increase in temperature.” and next paragraph,
“As mentioned earlier, scientists have collected a large body of evidence
which suggests that there was a Medieval Warm Period (MWP) at least in
portions of the Northern Hemisphere. The MWP is believed to have occurred
from c. 800-1300 AD (it was followed by the Little Ice Age). It is
widely hoped that multi-proxy models have the power to detect (i) how warm the Medieval Warm Period was, (ii) how sharply temperatures increased
during it, and (iii) to compare these two features to the past decade’s
high temperatures and sharp run-up. Since our model cannot detect the recent
temperature change, detection of dramatic changes hundreds of years
ago seems out of the question.” and from page 41 in the conclusions section,
“On the one hand, we conclude unequivocally that the evidence for a
”long-handled” hockey stick (where the shaft of the hockey stick extends
to the year 1000 AD) is lacking in the data.” later from the conclusions, “Furthermore, the
lower frame of Figure 18 clearly reveals that the proxy model is not at all
able to track the high gradient segment. Consequently, the long flat handle
of the hockey stick is best understood to be a feature of regression and less
a reflection of our knowledge of the truth. Nevertheless, the temperatures
of the last few decades have been relatively warm compared to many of the
thousand year temperature curves sampled from the posterior distribution
of our model.” and finally, “Climate scientists have greatly underestimated the uncertainty of proxybased
reconstructions and hence have been overconfident in their models.
We have shown that time dependence in the temperature series is sufficiently
strong to permit complex sequences of random numbers to forecast
out-of-sample reasonably well fairly frequently (see, for example, Figure
9). Furthermore, even proxy based models with approximately the same
amount of reconstructive skill (Figures 11,12, and 13), produce strikingly
dissimilar historical backcasts: some of these look like hockey sticks but
most do not (Figure 14).”
RobertStephan, I think you missed the point of the statement. Their statement is qualified that they are using the proxy data available. Later, they go on to say the proxy data doesn’t amount to much. Try again.My response is a copy and paste(reason for the strike through) from another response to one of the many making the same illogical argument. Is there some place giving you guys directions to take out of context the statements of the authors? Do you guys really think that’s going to work? I should have started that early in the discussion to see how many of you would do this exact same illogical argument.
” Stephen Brown says:
August 17, 2010 at 11:56 am
It has happened just as predicted numerous times above.”
The point that I was trying to make was that Romm picked on just the paragraph that many said that he would, without his considering another word from the rest of the paper.
And so it came to pass!
Might I typify Romm, in the finest English vernacular, as a “plonker”?
Stephen Brown says:
August 17, 2010 at 2:28 pm
lol, OIC, my bad, I had missed your point.
My post, made at 2257 on 17/08/2010 at Climateprogress. Will it pass moderation? I think not.
” John Mason says:
August 17, 2010 at 4:37 am
Copy of my post over at Tamino’s blog:
I did try posting on WUWT last night, not something I do often, suggesting that people waited until the paper was published and other specialists in the relevant field had formally responded before arriving at a considered opinion – as per standard academic procedure.
It didn’t make me that popular, although some of the membership did seem to broadly agree.”
So, WUWT not only permits but welcomes dissenting opinions!
Mr. Romm, please afford me the same courtesy.
The McShane and Wyner 2010 paper renders the well-known ‘hockey-stick’ graph beyond the moribund state. The graph, the fallacious data and statistics which were its progenitors have been shown to be incorrect and all conclusions drawn therefrom are equally wrong.
Read the paper carefully. The light at the end of the tunnel is the breaking dawn of scientific and statistical truth.
Sincerely,
Stephen Brown.
James Sexton,
I appreciate your comments above. Since you have read the paper and appear to have a good understanding, would it be possible for you to oblige us all with a comment addressing an issue brought up by Eli on this blog and one on deltoid by a poster named Martin Vermeer.
“The funny thing is that this paper actually replicates Mann et al. 2008 without even noticing it…
To partake in this dirty little secret, see their Figure 14 on page 30: the blue curve is wiggle-identical and practically a photocopy of Mann’s corresponding EIV NH land curve. As it should be. The higher (green) curve they canonize and which is shown above is the result of an error: they calibrate their proxies against hemispherical mean temperature, which is a poor measure of forced variability. The instrumental PC1 which the blue curve is based on, is a much better measure; its EOF contains the polar amplification effect. What it means is that high-latitude proxies, in order to be made representative for global temperatures, should be downweighted. The green curve fails to do this. Thus, high latitudes are overrepresented in this reconstruction, which is why the “shaft” is at such an angle, due to the Earth axis’s changing tilt effect on the latitudinal temperature dependence described in Kaufman et al. 2009.”
And also on Eli Rabbets’ blog.
http://rabett.blogspot.com/2010/08/flat-new-puzzler.html
Whoops! Thanks for taking the time to correct my sloppiness!
One question from a sserious person I have seen is why did MW not use a fourier transformation in their analysis?
Any insights on this would be greatly appreciated.
I guess the followup question would be did Mann use an FT? If so, why? If not, why not?
Gaylon says:
August 17, 2010 at 11:32 am
(…)
Just from reading above I was begining to think that all past reconstructions were thrown into the mix with MBH. Of course pre-1986 products, most likely not Mann-handled, would have more integrity/credibility.
—–Reply: I’m admittedly an idealist, but I’d love to see this paper scuttle Mann, and after that take all the money that’s been going to “The Team” and use it to support factual investigations where REAL mathematicians and statisticians have a go at it using uncontaminated data. I believe that day is coming. And I believe we’d finally come to a concensus on climate.
stephen richards says:
August 17, 2010 at 1:33 pm
Jaye Bass says:
August 17, 2010 at 10:54 am
Jaye I did read it all but quite clearly misinterpreted the english. I guess it was the experimenter and realising which one you were writing about. The first or the second.
I apologise
No need to apologize, I reread my post it was a bit awkward.
Getting closer to this.
Also, not to give anyone ideas, but…
Hunter,
While it may be an interesting exercise I am not sure it would add anything to the debate since the underlying data is not periodic. We would all just be arguing about what the output of the domain shift “meant”.
If Mc S&W are trying to chop the blade off the hockey stick, they have an odd way of doing it.
Amongst the clutter on the floor of Mr. Watts’ snippery will be found an excerpt reading, unedited :
“we calculate that there is a 36% posterior probability that 1998 was the warmest year over the past thousand. If we consider rolling decades, 1997-2006 is the warmest on record; our model gives an 80% chance that it was the warmest in the past thousand years.”
REPLY: Amongst the clutter of facts not written with this paragraph when cited as above is the fact that 1998 was a super El Nino anomaly event, not a super global warming event. Weather, not climate. Wind pattern driven, not CO2 driven. -Anthony
One question before I stick both feet in my mouth…
Didn’t Mann substitute the tree ring data with real temperature data for the last 30 years?
“”“[T]he proxy record has some ability to predict the final thirty-year block, where temperatures have increased most significantly, better than chance would suggest.”
Gaylon says:
August 17, 2010 at 1:40 pm
BillD says:
August 17, 2010 at 12:23 pm
BillD,
The fact that the ‘Team’ had/has not consulted with statisticians turns out ot be the crux of the problem. This way they could do whatever they wanted, and as it turns out that is exactly what they did: whatever they wanted. Please recall the numerous and hard fought FOI requests….
Gaylon:
I think that your basic premise that statistics is relatively straight forward and that a group of well trained statisticians would be able to agree on the best procedure is not correct. The Bayesian approach used by M & W has recently gained favor among many scientists and statisticians, but that does not mean that more traditional statistics are wrong. Also, the fact (I think) that Mann et al. did not include a statistican as coauthor does not mean that they did not consult with statisticians. Getting statistians to agree is easier than getting agreement among economists, but there is a lot of room for alternative statistical approaches to complex data sets. I am glad that most of my data is experimental, not descriptive.
For a basic introduction of McIntyre and the history, start here.
http://climateaudit.files.wordpress.com/2005/09/ohioshort.pdf
For those of us who are mere mortal scientists, skip the heavy math and just grasp the overview of his detective work.
This is an example where a doubled-side laser printer is absolutely necessary to print out these monographs, don’t worry we have plenty of tree.
Scroll to page 18 and look at the cross section of the “tree” which much of this hysteria and fear mongering is based on. We are not talking about symmetrical redwoods.
But have the 20th Century even warmed since 1940?, except for the step up with the 98 El Nino. Why not look at the data. The thermometer record from 1940 to 1979 shows NO WARMING, both of them, the satellite record from 1979 to 1997 show NO WARMING, both of them.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1940/to:1979/mean:12/plot/uah/from:1979/to:1997/mean:12/plot/rss/from:1979/to:1997/mean:12/plot/gistemp/from:1940/to:1979/mean:12
Something is very wrong here!
Russel Seitz-
Another way to look at it is that there is a 64% posterior probability that some year other than 1998 was the hottest in the last thousand years.
For example, it might have been hotter in 1066.
@NofreeWind
But have the 20th Century even warmed since 1940?, except for the step up with the 98 El Nino. Why not look at the data. The thermometer record from 1940 to 1979 shows NO WARMING, both of them, the satellite record from 1979 to 1997 show NO WARMING, both of them.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1940/to:1979/mean:12/plot/uah/from:1979/to:1997/mean:12/plot/rss/from:1979/to:1997/mean:12/plot/gistemp/from:1940/to:1979/mean:12
Something is very wrong here!
Yeah there’s something very wrong here! You’ve cherry picked the dates to show there was no warming in the 20th century, by choosing the (warm) early 40s, and then comparing them to a date (1979) where warming had not advanced significantly. Extend the satellite records out by even a couple of years and you’ll also get a completely different picture (and one who’s trends match the overall temperature trend). I strongly advise anyone doing this little plot to extend the dates out to cover the whole century, not just the dates that have been pre-chosen for you here.
But nice cherry picking though.
Dear Romm,
I’ve just completed my own trick of adding in a real hockey stick over the temperature graph to hide its demise
Cheers
Tim
DCA, engineer says:
August 17, 2010 at 3:06 pm
James Sexton,
“I appreciate your comments above. Since you have read the paper and appear to have a good understanding, would it be possible for you to oblige us all with a comment addressing an issue brought up by Eli on this blog and one on deltoid by a poster named Martin Vermeer.”
I’ll try, with caveats and disclaimers first. As I’ve pointed out a few times in this post, I’m not the most qualified individual in this discussion. Further, if one were to read all of my posts here, it would be apparent that I lost several brain cells last night via consumption of copious amounts of a barley/hops liquid concoction. So much so, I was apparently to comprehend what a poster or two were trying to convey. My apologies to them.(Barry) I wish I had a bartender here that would tell me I’ve had enough and take away the keys on my keyboard. Sadly, even though I’m not consuming that awful concoction tonight, I’m still a bit on the slow side, so please forgive the sluggish thought process.
First, the post at deltoid because it is easier. Others may have a different take on this, but the post at deltoid and the post by Martin Vermeer essentially echo each other. By that I’m saying they look at the pictures and assume a story. Deltoid puts another fallacy in play by quoting out of context some statements of the study. I really don’t know how many different ways I can state this and be any more clear. The graphs they present show show the results of applying the data to what they believe is the best statistical method to be used in this particular situation. Read the statement, “Using our model, we calculate that there is a 36% posterior……” Especially in academic papers, words carry meaning. There is a person here who deconstructs statements quite well and I believe one should try to deconstruct this one. “Using our model” is the key part to this sentence. It is a caveat. It doesn’t state these percentages are probably the correct answer, it states, our best model gives us this answer.
When I read studies, the very first thing I try to understand, is what does the study try to understand. This is imperative when reading studies. So, let’s look at the title of the study. “A STATISTICAL ANALYSIS OF MULTIPLE TEMPERATURE PROXIES: ARE RECONSTRUCTIONS OF SURFACE TEMPERATURES OVER THE LAST 1000 YEARS RELIABLE?” The title certainly doesn’t say they are seeking to make a statement regarding the past climate of the earth, but rather, they are seeking to determine reliability. They didn’t state the proxies are reliable and therefore these percentages and graphs are true. Quite the contrary. The absolute most important part of any academic paper is the conclusions the papers draw. Let’s read the conclusions. “While our results agree with the climate scientists findings in some
respects, our methods of estimating model uncertainty and accuracy are in
sharp disagreement. On the one hand, we conclude unequivocally that the evidence for a ”long-handled” hockey stick (where the shaft of the hockey stick extends to the year 1000 AD) is lacking in the data.“ In other words, the authors don’t believe the percentages stated and the graph represented are accurate. Given that statement, I don’t know how even the authors could be any more clear about attaching meaning to their hockey stick graph. The people that are using it as some sort of validation for CAGW are either willfully taking the authors out of context or simply have a reading comprehension problem, or they have the same difficulty that I had late last night only they haven’t stopped imbibing.
The post at the Rabett site is a bit more difficult for me. As I’ve stated before, I’m not a statistician. I have disagreed with statisticians before, and I’m proud to state unequivocally, I’ve won every argument I’ve had with any statistician in discussions not relevant to the math sciences! Further, to add to my difficulties with this question, having people refer to themselves in 3rd person with the identity extended to the readers(bunnies) and trying to discern what they are saying would be akin to me trying to read Edmund Spenser in a hip-hop disco. Rabett seems takes issue with the way M&W calibrated the proxies, arguing they should have calibrated against local instead of global temperatures. About the only thing I can say is the authors certainly were aware of the approach and touched on it in sections 3.3 and 3.7 . And apparently rejected that approach. I simply don’t have the skill or knowledge to make an intelligent comment or argument for or against the approach. I certainly would be interested in what the discussion after publication produces.
Those are my thoughts anyway, thanks for asking, I hope they’ve help in some small way, but again, I’m not the one with technical statistical answers. There are many more here who’s opinion I’d value much more than mine in this question.
James
latitude says:
August 17, 2010 at 5:17 pm
“One question before I stick both feet in my mouth…
Didn’t Mann substitute the tree ring data with real temperature data for the last 30 years?”
Sort of, his trick. He merged the data on the graph to make it look seamless, when in fact, the proxy data, using his methodologies diverged significantly from the temp record. Apparently, the reason why this was successful is because most alarmists respond to pictures more than they do numbers or words. (See this entire thread for evidence of my prior sentence.)
Russell Seitz says:
August 17, 2010 at 5:13 pm
If Mc S&W are trying to chop the blade off the hockey stick, they have an odd way of doing it.
“we calculate that there is a 36% posterior probability that 1998 was the warmest year over the past thousand. If we consider rolling decades, 1997-2006 is the warmest on record; our model gives an 80% chance that it was the warmest in the past thousand years.”
But then after that they state, “While our results agree with the climate scientists findings in some respects, our methods of estimating model uncertainty and accuracy are in sharp disagreement. On the one hand, we conclude ,unequivocally that the evidence for a ”long-handled” hockey stick (where the shaft of the hockey stick extends to the year 1000 AD) is lacking in the data.”
Bold emphasis is mine.
I don’t understand why the meaning is so lost on so many people. Wait! I think I know!
Unequivocally is a big word with many syllables! Apparently its meaning is unclear to many posting here. I’m hesitant to do this, but I deem it necessary. From thefreedictionary.com———-Admitting of no doubt or misunderstanding; clear and unambiguous. Now, I’m not sure if I did any good here or not, because unambiguous is a big word with many syllables too.
Russell Seitz says:
August 17, 2010 at 5:13 pm
-Anthony- REPLY: Amongst the clutter of facts not written with this paragraph when cited as above is the fact that 1998 was a super El Nino anomaly event, not a super global warming event. Weather, not climate. Wind pattern driven, not CO2 driven. -Anthony
1998 was not a particularly unusual El Nino event in the longer term, such El Nino’s occur every 70+/-20 years according to http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2010/2009JD013508.shtml
Richard S Courtney says:
August 17, 2010 at 11:43 am
Fine, let’s call it ‘the’ contention, rather than ‘your’ contention. It appeared in your post, so I addressed it to you.
M&W produce their own reconstruction and conclusions about millennial trends. I understand that they have large error bars, and that they think MBH results were over-confident.
(Weirdly, they say that MBH flat blade is not supported by data, but MBH commentary indicate the medieval warm epoch as having similar warmth to the 20th century, and LIA as being significantly cooler than both.)
I think that is an bald and inaccurate interpretation of a nuanced paper. But for the purposes of argument, I will accept it. In which case, neither paper is able to support a contention about 900 year cycles.
Anecdotes and local accounts. This is even less useful than attempts at composite reconstructions.
There is a famous MWP chart produced by a skeptic attempting to show that the MWP was global.
http://pages.science-skeptical.de/MWP/MedievalWarmPeriod.html
However, if you examine the temperature profiles for each of the proxies on the map, you discover that the warm peaks early in the millennium can be as far apart as 500 years. The irony of this chart is that it actually shows what the literature (including MBH) says – that medieval warming was not spatially and temporally coherent.
Do you have any composite, multi-proxy study that shows the 900-year cycle? You indicate that you do where I quote you above. I’d be interested to read up if you could provide references.
Also, you indicate that you think there are reliable proxy records (on which the 900-year cycle is based). Could you reference these, so that we can see how they stack up regarding the MWP/current temps?
At no time did any of the MBH reconstructions discount or even consider a 900-year warming cycle. This notion appears to have been superimposed on the studies by you. MBH do distinguish a MWP and LIA. If you focus on the graph and exclude the content of the paper, this may be how you think otherwise. But I presume we are talking here about the scientific findings of MBH rather than graphical representations.
May I again bring to your attention the contention you raised re the alleged 60-year ‘cycle’ in the instrumental record. You have told us that the current cycle (from 2000) is supposed to be one of cooling. Yet current trends indicate warming.
Trends from 2000 to present:
RSS = 0.11C/dec
UAH = 0.15C/dec
(I avoid using the surface records as they seem to be too problematic for people here. Nevertheless, they also show warming for the supposed, current cooling phase)
@richard S Courtney
However, there is an enormous amount of information from history and from archaeology (in addition to proxy studies) that indicates the existence of the ~900 year global temperature cycle.
In addition to Barry’s good questions, I’d also be interested to know what kind of mechanism you would see as driving such 900 year cycles – and what evidence you have that this mechanism is still operational.
…I’ve never seen the geeks at RC and other pro-AGW blogs so riled up!! Clearly, this must be hitting all the right nerves!
Anthony, thank you for being so open regarding who can post to WUWT. At many times, I have posted constructive comments to RealClimate etc., and these are not allowed into the “Tower of Babel” of climate scientists yacking at each other about how right THEY are, vs. how stupid WE are!
As a public health scientist, I’m very comfortable with bringing in the high-level academic & practicing biostatisticians to help out in data analysis, study design etc. From the McShane/Wyner publication, we can see that the Hockey Team have taken the exact opposite tack….and the reasons why they would seek to do this (their entire argument falls apart upon statistical analysis).
But hey, isn’t that what the Oxburgh Report said? According to University of East Anglia’s official statement:
“The Report points out where things might have been done better. One is to engage more with professional statisticians in the analysis of data. Another, related, point is that more efficacious statistical techniques might have been employed in some instances (although it was pointed out that different methods may not have produced different results). Specialists in many areas of research acquire and develop the statistical skills pertinent to their own particular data analysis requirements.
However, we do see the sense in engaging more fully with the wider statistics community to ensure that the most effective and up-to-date statistical techniques are adopted and will now consider further how best to achieve this.”
http://www.uea.ac.uk/mac/comm/media/press/CRUstatements/oxburgh
…my hat’s off to McShane and Wyner for getting the process started!!
Hey everybody !!! The medieval warm period IS interesting after all, ……
CRS, Dr.P.H. says:
August 17, 2010 at 9:53 pm
“…I’ve never seen the geeks at RC and other pro-AGW blogs so riled up!! Clearly, this must be hitting all the right nerves!…..
As a public health scientist, I’m very comfortable with bringing in the high-level academic & practicing biostatisticians to help out in data analysis, study design etc. From the McShane/Wyner publication, we can see that the Hockey Team have taken the exact opposite tack….and the reasons why they would seek to do this (their entire argument falls apart upon statistical analysis)……”
Yes, else they’d have done like us rational people. My background is in the computer sciences. Most of us are exposed to and have considerable knowledge about mathematics and data, meta data, ect. But, when I have an electrical problem at my house, I’ll call an electrician.
The alarmist defenders are seeming to imply that climate scientists are now even better at statistics than statisticians. I wonder if any of the CAGW climatologists have considered how all of this might have been avoided had they listened so many years ago. Naw, that would require introspection. I don’t think they have that ability.
You know, if I thought I had knowledge of impending doom of this planet and its inhabitants, I think I’d welcome and be relieved if someone were to attempt to prove my knowledge wrong. But maybe that’s just me.
James Sexton says:
August 17, 2010 at 10:26 pm
“I wonder if any of the CAGW climatologists have considered how all of this might have been avoided had they listened so many years ago. ”
What? And miss out on all those years on the gravy train and the Tahiti conference circuit?
I marked up the MW graph to show the high and low water marks, and the zero line, then added a straight line trend line. It is astonishing to behold – all this workup over THAT? I have to tell you – a lot worse has happened to humanity in the last 1000 years than global warming. A lot worse has happened in the last 10 years than has happened in 1000 years of climate variability. Draw your own – it’s amazing what it shows. It shows there has been more variability than change. And it happens at a time in history that predates Henry Ford and the death trains delivering coal.
This pig need wings or a BBQ – what WE don’t need is more Mann-made misery.
orkneygal :
Madame, were I as far north as you, I should welcome global warming with a torchlight parade.
But given McS& W’s Bayesian 4 to 1 odds that 1066 did _not_ fall in the warmest decade of the last millennium , I’d sooner sail for Lofoten in a fog than bet it on its being the warmest year.
I started reading the comments here and time and again the comment was “RTFD”.
So I did. I read the preamble, I read the tone of the document and I read the “executive summary” style of presentation at the beginning of the document.
What I took from it was
– The data is not good although there is a lot of it
– We do statistics better than the climate scientists
– The historical data cannot predict the future from the historical trend using statistics
Then I got to Figure 8.
There is simply no point in reading the document any futher. The rest is an excercise in statisticians telling us they don’t understand the science and can’t get the data to make sense no matter what they do.
EXACTLY
What they do NOT say. And I don’t expect anyone who thinks this analysis is wonderful to agree with me. Is that the Scientists do not use statistical models to predict future changes in the climate; they use physics models!
The statisticians say that in the last 1,000 years the data is patchy and causes huge error bars. However they say that the reconstructions track extremely well with 120 out of the 150 years of the instrument record. Then they go on to say and SHOW that the reconstructions can’t predict the warming in the last 30 years.
YET the physics models have predicted the warming in the last 30 years. In fact the physics models have slightly underestimated the warming in the last 30 years with the recorded warming at the upper end of the scale.
What is more, the physics models work on the basis that CO2 and other gasses warm the planet and that another set of gasses and contaminants in the atmosphere cool it.
I’m not surprised the scientists are up in arms about this document. In plain English all it says is that statistical analysis of historical trends in weather and climate cannot predict, or account for, the current warming trend today.
EXACTLY THE POINT
Once the statisticians throw their arms up in the air and say they can’t use the data to predict what is going to happen next, it is down to the scientists (who do know what they are doing), to use their knowledge of climate interactions with known gas emissions to predict the future warming trend.
I expect this article to be rebutted for adding nothing new to the debate except for the facts that
1. Statisticians know litte or nothing about climate science
2. Whilst climate scientists can use statistics quite well to do their job, they CAN see the woods for the trees in terms of statistics and climate forcing, whilst the statisticians can’t.
As an outsider looking in on this field of “expertise” with a great deal of concern, it sounds like there was no professional academian except a retiree with a pair that has challenged this Mann in 20 years? Who has failed science here? I am embarrassed to have thought that science was an ethical and moral discipline that was to be respected and an institution that could be trusted. Help restore the status of your academic professions. What of Beck’s work? Has CO2 really risen or not? Is petroleum of abiotic origin? The big picture of this “global warming”/”climate change”/”CO2 is bad” boondoggle has to include answers to all of these. Nobody believes what the weatherman says for the next 24 hours. Quit pissing back and forth here and write some papers like Anthony did on surface temperatures so that inquisitive amateurs like me don’t have to do the work of professionals – you know, when you want the job done right, do it yourself, like how you feel when a “professional” tradesman does work for you… and grandly screws it up. Thank God for people like McIntyre.
NeilT:
But surely Mann (1998) was not a physics model. It was a proxy study based on multiple statistical series. It seems to me as if your criticisms may be fundamentally misplaced.
And quite regardless of whether a statistician is not a climatologist, a non-statistician climatologist conducting a statistical study without outside consultation has gone toad-sticking without a light.
Furthermore, any scientist in this very poorly understood field who thinks he “knows what he’s doing” doesn’t know what he’s doing. Q.E.D.
How could it be misplaced. Mann did not try and forecast future climate change with this reconstruction.
When you strip away all the equations, verbiage and everything else and analyse what they are saying, it is not in line with what they are showing.
In fact what they are saying is that you follow the rules rigidly and if, when you are looking for a number between 1 and 1000, the answer comes back as yellow, you stop there an say it’s all rubbish.
Well that might be OK for a statistician, but for someone who actually has to use this data as One of may datum points in their calculations, that’s not good enough. The person who has to make sense of this must go back and find out why 1-1000 = yellow, correct the misconceptions and move on.
This article is nothing more than academic nitpicking in which they have used assumptions (in their language), which are not valid to prove their point.
What more do I need to know? There is no point in doing a degree class study in statistics to analyse the paper, I already know enough English to understand that the premise behind the paper is not fit for purpose in the theatre of science to which it is being applied.
Which might be why the scientists are getting so riled about it.
It’s arguing apples with potatoes. Not even the same food class.
Russell Seitz-
I’m a university student and live in Wellington, New Zealand. My father is from the Orkney Islands.
A big lawsuit has been filed here against NIWA over their mucking with raw temperature data and failure by them to explain why they have been mucking with it.
Don’t you think it is sad that taxpayer funded scientists have to be sued to make them tell the truth?
barry: August 17, 2010 at 8:59 pm
Richard S Courtney says:
August 17, 2010 at 11:43 am
“However, there is an enormous amount of information from history and from archaeology (in addition to proxy studies) that indicates the existence of the ~900 year global temperature cycle.”
Anecdotes and local accounts. This is even less useful than attempts at composite reconstructions.
Archaeological findings are not anecdotal accounts, they are physical evidence, and the sum total of the proxies — including oxygen isotope variations drawn from stalagmites — in both Northern and Southern Hemispheres are indicators that the MWP was a global event.
@NeilT: I don’t think you read it quite right. From your tone, I also got the feeling that you browsed the document until you found what you felt was an excuse to stop reading. I think it’s a good idea to instead read it more carefully and assume, for the sake of argument, that there is some substance in the paper.
MW10 stated that their model cannot capture the run-up in recent years. If you look carefully at the MBH papers, they suffer from the same problem, although it is not really pointed out as a problem (unless I missed it). MBH98 truncated some of the data, since it didn’t agree with the recent instrumental record (the much-debated “trick”), implicitly following previous papers that did so absent any empirical explanation for the divergence. In MBH08, the reconstructions do not have nearly the same slope as the instrumental record, but you have to really zoom in to see it, since the temperature graphs are overlaid on top.
What MW10 are saying is that their model validates as well as any other for the period where there is an instrumental record, but they place significance on the “in-sample” divergence, whereas some of the other papers seem to suggest that we don’t need a good fit for recent years, since we have the CRU temps. Even in MBH08, you can draw a horizontal line back from the most recent reconstructed temps and be within the error bars pretty much all the way from 1400 and back. The grafted temps indicate that it is much warmer now than in the past, but the reconstructed temps really don’t. MW10 clearly disagrees with this approach.
The way I understand some of the comments at Deltoid (and I’m by no means a climate scientist), they seem to say that “ah, but these statisticians don’t understand all the stepwise procedures we use to increase the confidence in our reconstructions”.
My problem with that argument is that those stepwise procedures seem to have a fairly weak grounding in actual underlying physical processes. And besides, given all the issues with the underlying data itself, including bristlecones expressly sampled because they were believed to have been affected by C02 contamination, upside-down proxies, use of proxies known to be contaminated, proxies located in the wrong gridcell, mixing different types of proxies (presumably assuming that they show the same linear response to temperature) – all seem to suggest to me some kind of belief in divination rather than methodical application of adjustments based on known physical relationships.
2 papers from M&M (2003/2005), the Wegman report and this latest directly challenge MBH studies.
Meanwhile, other groups of scientists have collected data and drawn up their own millennial reconstructions. There are at least 12 other studies (probably more by now) using various proxy data, some overlapping with MBH 98/99, and some independent. These people are doing the hard yards while others make use of their research.
Not too bad for a relatively new field with few participants and with proxy data difficult to get from nature and assess. Let there be more. And let climate scientists and statisticians collaborate more.
Here is an incomplete list of papers on the MWP.
NeilT, try not to use red herrings (or red noise) . What Mann & Co have been doing is not physics, but statistical manipulations using tree ring (and a few other proxies) to “get rid of the Medieval Warm Period”. As McIntyre and McKitrick showed in 2003 was that Mann’s proxies were not valid temperature proxies, and his statistical methods were wrong. That was confirmed by the Wegman Panel and the North/NAS panel.
One of the two legs of CAGW is that the 20th Century exhibited “unprecedented” warming. But the Hockey Stick is more than wrong, since Mann and “The Team” have deliberately continued to use bad data (Graybill, Yamal, Tiljander, etc) and bad statistical methods to create yet more phony Hockey Sticks to eliminate the MWP and LIA. That’s not science, it’s Lysenkoism.
M&W clearly show a MWP and LIA using Mann’s own bogus data.
Where is there valid scientific evidence that the MWP and LIA did NOT exist, as the CAGW crowd contend? Where is their valid scientific evidence that 20th Century warming was “unprecedented”
There are no “scientists getting riled” about M&W (or M&M for that matter), since a scientist is someone who follows the Scientific Method. Someone who allows independent replication of their results. Someone whose data and methods are transparent. It’s long been demonstrated that “climate scientists” aren’t in fact real scientists.
Anthony, would you consider asking McShane and Wyner to do a guest post here, perhaps touching on some of the issues raised/points of contention?
duckster: August 17, 2010 at 9:26 pm
In addition to Barry’s good questions, I’d also be interested to know what kind of mechanism you would see as driving such 900 year cycles – and what evidence you have that this mechanism is still operational.
Natural variation, which is the null hypothesis. And it’s your task to provide evidence that it *isn’t* still operational.
Didn’t notice the time-frame before.
Mann’s contentious studies were published 13 and 12 years ago, and didn’t hit the public until 2001, in the IPCC TAR. So it took 2 years for the first challenge to be published, and another 2 years for a second challenge and a governmental enquiry. The challenges occurred before the next IPCC report, and are discussed in that report (IPCC AR4, 2007).
Oh, and a lot of people in this debate seem to have the impression that error bars are just there for decoration purposes. They’re not. Careful treatment of margins of error, and understanding of how the uncertainties add up, or even multiply, during processing of the data, are absolutely key to good analysis.
Strictly speaking, any value within the error bars could be the “correct” one.
MW10 seems to be mainly about assessing the uncertainties of the reconstructions. This is where they claim that “Climate scientists have greatly underestimated the uncertainty”.
Actually, Neil, Apples and Potatoes are in the same food class. Vegetable/Fruit, ie Starch.
Orkneygal – taxpayer funded = taking the King’s shilling……I suspect they massage/produce only what they’re told to.
Truth’s got nothing to do with it, but I’m VERY happy to hear the lawyers are after the NIWA. 🙂
Best,
OL
p.s. brass monkeys up here……summer’s over.
Henry@DaveSpringer
In case you missed it –
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/17/breaking-new-paper-makes-a-hockey-sticky-wicket-of-mann-et-al-99/#comment-459755
You have not proven that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, i.e. that its cooling properties are smaller than its warming properties.
Unless there is something wrong with the definition of a GHG. I think they also call ozone a GHG. But if you look carefully at the incoming radiation, then ozone on its own cuts away almost 15-20 op the sun’s radiation. It compares to not much with what ozone cuts away from earth’s radiation. So I am sure ozone is cooling more than it is warming. But they still call it a CHG?
Sorry abt the typos’
Henry @ Dave Springer
You have not proven that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, i.e. that its cooling properties are smaller than its warming properties.
Unless there is something wrong with the definition of a GHG. I think they also call ozone a GHG. But if you look carefully at the incoming radiation, then ozone on its own cuts away almost 15-20% of the sun’s radiation. That what ozone cuts away from earth’s radiation compares to not much with that 15-20%. So I am sure ozone is cooling more than it is warming. But they still call it a CHG?
The process that should follow, once the MW10 paper is finally in print, is clearly outlined in How to Publish a Scientific Comment in 1 2 3 Easy Steps”
A great summary of the Scientific Process at its best! 🙂
Russell Seitz says:
August 17, 2010 at 5:13 pm
REPLY: Amongst the clutter of facts not written with this paragraph when cited as above is the fact that 1998 was a super El Nino anomaly event, not a super global warming event. Weather, not climate. Wind pattern driven, not CO2 driven. -Anthony
Are you trying to say that in the year 1998 CO2 played no role for just that year? Allright, I will not believe that. Then de question is whether the 30% extra CO2 compared to 1900 (and before) wouldn’t have helped 1998 to become so warm as it was. It seems you are denying this. But then I’ll to believe my first remark after all.
In fact what they are saying is that you follow the rules rigidly and if, when you are looking for a number between 1 and 1000, the answer comes back as yellow, you stop there an say it’s all rubbish.
I don’t understand. A trend is a trend. It fits or it doesn’t. Multiple trends are properly normalized or they are not. It doesn’t matter whether the series is bananas or degrees C.
If Mann had been working with proper statisticians and the answer came back yellow, they might have worked it out. Or not. But Mann was too busy working out his own private PCA. (There is also the problem of weighting.) That is why a statistician was indispensable.
Even if one is doing very basic stuff (like what I play with), a proper statistical review is necessary. At the very least it should be part of the peer-review process. It really ought to be part of internal review. To leave it to independent review is jaw-dropping.
And to refuse to release data and method until threatened by congressional subpoena is mind boggling. How could anyone even pay heed to such a piece of work? Far less prominently use it as a basis for staggeringly expensive and intrusive policy?
I have read the paper as best I can, as well as all comments (so far) here and at CA. Being somewhat mathematically challenged, I want to be sure that I have taken home the key messages of the paper, and so below, I outline what appear to me to be the essential points. If I have those right, it would be very helpful to know; and if wrong, to know how I might need to amend my understanding. TIA for any responses.
1. The paper seeks to assess the reliability of multiple proxies in reconstructions of surface temperatures over the past 1000 years as evidenced primarily in papers by Mann et al.
2. The authors accept the data used by Mann et al. as it stands. Questioning its veracity is beyond the scope of the paper. It is not addressing scientific issues, but is solely an investigation of the data by professional statisticians, who have often not been explicitly involved in past statistical analyses. This point has also been made, for example, in the conclusions of the Oxburgh “Climategate” enquiry.
3. The key conclusion is that proxy data is not good enough to give a reliable reconstruction for the pre-instrumental period, and even that for the instrumental period is circumspect.
4. The authors have developed a model for analysing the data and producing new reconstructions. They say, amongst other things:
“We calculate that there is a 36% posterior probability that 1998 was the warmest year over the past thousand. If we consider rolling decades, 1997-2006 is the warmest on record; our model gives an 80% chance that it was the warmest in the past thousand years.”
However, because of 1-3. above, this cannot be taken as supporting previous results, e.g. as in the so-called “hockey stick” graph. The error bars for the data are extremely wide (more so than in prior reconstructions by Mann et al.), so that no definitive conclusions can be reached from it about the presence (or absence) of the MWP or LIA, for example.
5. The authors are not claiming that their model should be used in preference to the methods used by Mann. et al, or that they provide support for the latter. The overall inference is that there is so much uncertainty that there can be no support in reconstructions so far produced for the hypothesis of unprecedented effects of anthropogenic, CO2-induced global warming. Putative firmer evidence for such could only come from other kinds of study not addressed or commented on in this paper.
After Mr Mann has failed so badly in his work but stuck to the political line, I await his appointment to the house of lords or an MP even, either that or he’ll be left out to dry which could be intresting as he’ll ever take people down with him or mentally implode.
This is a pop corn time of deleting post fame.
Barry and Duckster:
Barry, your tendentious post at August 17, 2010 at 8:59 pm is iterative to some degree so I am only copying its statements that I interpret to be your substantive points, and I am answering those. If I have omitted anything significant then that is inadvertant so please get back to me.
In response to my having written:
“However, there is an enormous amount of information from history and from archaeology (in addition to proxy studies) that indicates the existence of the ~900 year global temperature cycle.”
You respond with:
“Anecdotes and local accounts. This is even less useful than attempts at composite reconstructions.”
You are entitled to your opinion, but historians and archaeologists would not agree with it. Importantly, your quotation of me seperates from this an important statement that goes to the crux of the discussion on this thread.
My actual statements said in context;
“However, there is an enormous amount of information from history and from archaeology (in addition to proxy studies) that indicates the existence of the ~900 year global temperature cycle. The importance that was placed on the MBH ‘hockey stick’ was that it seemed to deny all that evidence.
But the MBH ‘hockey stick’ is now in the refuse bin so all that evidence is again seen to be valid.”
Then, you say.
“There is a famous MWP chart produced by a skeptic attempting to show that the MWP was global.
http://pages.science-skeptical.de/MWP/MedievalWarmPeriod.html
However, if you examine the temperature profiles for each of the proxies on the map, you discover that the warm peaks early in the millennium can be as far apart as 500 years. The irony of this chart is that it actually shows what the literature (including MBH) says – that medieval warming was not spatially and temporally coherent.”
But that depends on what you mean by “spatially and temporally coherent”. For example, there are places on Earth that show warming trends and others that show cooling trends over the twentieth century. Are you saying that, therefore, there was no global warming over the twentieth century?
The fact is that all those isolated places around the globe show periods of warming and cooling and they each show a peak of temperature (i.e. the MWP) in the period from 750 to 1250 AD. Together they indicate a peak near 1000 AD. This peak is the MWP.
After that you ask me:
“Also, you indicate that you think there are reliable proxy records (on which the 900-year cycle is based). Could you reference these, so that we can see how they stack up regarding the MWP/current temps?”
And, of course, the answer is YES there are hundreds and they are linked from the URL which you cite; viz.
http://pages.science-skeptical.de/MWP/MedievalWarmPeriod.html
You follow that by quoting my statement (that I put back into context above) which says;
“The importance that was placed on the MBH ‘hockey stick’ was that it seemed to deny all that evidence.”
And then assert:
“At no time did any of the MBH reconstructions discount or even consider a 900-year warming cycle. This notion appears to have been superimposed on the studies by you. MBH do distinguish a MWP and LIA. If you focus on the graph and exclude the content of the paper, this may be how you think otherwise. But I presume we are talking here about the scientific findings of MBH rather than graphical representations.”
This conflates a misrepresentation of what I wrote with an Orwellian distortion of history. In context (see above) my statement was about the MWP and the LIA, not the ~900 year cycle. Then one only has to see
(a) the graphical representation of the MWP and the LIA presented in the first two IPCC Reports
and
(b) their displacement by the ‘hockey stick’ in the Third IPCC Report
to recognise that what I said is true.
And please note that Michael Mann was a Lead Author for the Chapter of the IPCC Report that replaced the previous IPCC paleoclimate history with his ‘hockey stick’.
Then you write:
“May I again bring to your attention the contention you raised re the alleged 60-year ‘cycle’ in the instrumental record. You have told us that the current cycle (from 2000) is supposed to be one of cooling. Yet current trends indicate warming.
Trends from 2000 to present:
RSS = 0.11C/dec
UAH = 0.15C/dec”
Please read what I wrote at August 17, 2010 at 2:52 am because you do claim to be discussing it. I wrote there:
“The global temperature seems to vary in cycles that are overlaid on each other.
[snip]
There is an apparent ~900 year oscillation.
[snip]
And there is an apparent ~60 year oscillation”
And I said the ~900 year oscillation is in a warming phase and has been since the depths of the LIA while the ~~60 year oscillation has been in a cooling phase since ~2000. If you cannot understand why this provided rapid warming from ~1970 to ~2000 but little (or no warming) since ~2000 then I doubt that I am capable of explaining it to you.
duckster:
At August 17, 2010 at 9:26 pm you ask me:
“In addition to Barry’s good questions, I’d also be interested to know what kind of mechanism you would see as driving such 900 year cycles – and what evidence you have that this mechanism is still operational.”
I do not know the mechanism that creates the ~900 year cycle. I merely observes that it has existed in recent millenia. Similarly, nobody knows the mechanism that creates gravity but we observe that it keeps the planets in their orbits.
Science is about determing how and why the universe behaves as it s observed to behave. It is not about proving the universe has not stopped behaving as it is observed to be behaving.
Richard
I have cherry picked my two favorite comments on this paper from over a thousand on various sites,
From CA…
GrantB Posted Aug 15, 2010 at 5:51 AM
Blakeley McShane is from the Kellogg School of Management and is obviously funded by big corn.
And from CP…
lerogue | August 15, 2010 at 11:16 am
One is disappoointed to see that some well known denialists, McShane and Wyner, have managed to scrape a paper through the peer review process which is critical of Michael Mann’s work. A great pity.
Having used “Climate Science” statistical methods to analyse my cherry picked sample I find that my conclusion that climate sceptics have a better sense of humour is robust 🙂
@Bill Tuttle
Natural variation, which is the null hypothesis.
This is baffling. How can natural variation be responsible for a 900 year cycle? And how would it be any different from noise – in which case it wouldn’t be a cycle. If there is a cycle, then there must be something driving it – something that would be measureable and predictable.
I’ve really enjoyed the diverse comments on this issue, as part of questioning and checking I’ve also visited other sites. What has amazed me is the fact that not all the other sites (particularly RC) seem to discuss the other opinion. You are hard pressed to even find the link to this breaking news. Surely the opinion around the world must be changing with the majority of people now, Gallup polls indicate more Australians are not taken in by Mannmade Global Warming, the UK are sick of the wind farms that do not work and get shut down on windy days, even located in the wrong place. Australians do not want a great big tax on everything to finance China as a developing nation. The farmers in Australia are supposed to grow food to feed the nation and export to the world, in reality the Greens are trying to cut production and lock up the land. Even Kevin Rudd had a go at the farmers by locking up the trees on the farmers land in the name of Kyoto.
Here are a few interesting facta re Australia and it’s CO2 output and government promises:
World Annual CO2 emissions (in thousands of metric tons) is 29,321,302. (Wikepedia)
Australia is ranked 16th in the world. (Wikepedia)
We produce 374,045.00 tonnes, 1.28% of World production
18702.25 tonnes = the 5% reduction of Australia output promised by politicians.
355342.75 = new level (Simple subtraction)
1.2188928 = new % (1.22 approx)
1.28 – 1.22 = 0.06% of world output.
We are risking the collapse of our economy and mining industry for 0.06% saving, IF we stopped all output and shut down Australia we would still have minimum impact.
The whole scenario by Labor is a tax grab and a scam.
If we bring in an ETS or Carbon scheme all the benefits will go to China and India. We will become a minor player in world economy. If you want to go backwards vote Green. Green means Stop.
Sooo. What happens to parlor talk when the entire global warming thing becomes a passe’ non-topic. Whatever will we talk about then? What about the politicians, the poor dears – what will they use to beat their opponents with when the issue is no-longer an issue? Oh, my.
Poptech says: (August 16, 2010 at 1:38 pm)
“Author Bios:…”
Very impressive but sadly they are not “experts” in climatology so therefore their opinion doesn’t count, only if sanctioned by “the Team”.
@duckster:
Micheal said: In essence you are correct but the English language is the problem, I think
2. The authors accept the data used by Mann et al. as it stands. Questioning its veracity is beyond the scope of the paper. It is not addressing scientific issues, but is solely an investigation of the data by professional statisticians, who have often not been explicitly involved in past statistical analyses. This point has also been made, for example, in the conclusions of the Oxburgh “Climategate” enquiry.
This was not an investigation of the data, as I read it but of the statistical method(s). In effect, they concluded that their non-novel statistical analysis indicated that there was too much uncertainty in the results to make the conclusions offered by Mann et al. In other words, both warming and cooling were within the range of uncertainty of their analysis using Mann’s data. There is no conclusion to be found about the data. You must also read this paper with tongue in cheek. Ie look for the hidden sarcasm.
But essentially your on the nail.
Curiousgeorge says:
Sooo. What happens to parlor talk when the entire global warming thing becomes a passe’ non-topic.
Global warming is so last year!
By latching on to apocalyptic claptrap like AGW, the policies our leaders come up with in respect to the issue are never going to work, and what little good the policies actually do will be at a far higher price than the actual cost should be.
James Sexton says:
August 16, 2010 at 12:18 pm
”
Agreed. I’m wondering if what we are seeing here isn’t something worth studying itself? It seems an overwhelming majority of the alarmists seem only to look at the pretty pictures and assume a story from ther… So, my question is this;
Is this why there are so many CAGW believers out there? Do they simply look at the pictures and let someone else tell them what it means or is it left to them to make wild assumptions to the meaning of the pretty pictures without actually reading an explanation?…
… Dear God! Has it come to this? Has this world, as the majority of the population, capitulated its God given right to contemplate and even think for itself? I guess I now know why when I make a reference to 1984 I get very few responses from the alarmists. There aren’t any pictures to assume a story. I’m simply flabbergasted at the either willful refusal to read or the inability to accomplish the reading.
________________________________________________________________
It is the inability to read and to reason. That is the objective of John Dewey’s “Modern Education” to make people co-dependent (team players) not IN-dependent.
“On average, American high school graduates are two years behind much of the world, including some countries that could be called “third world.” Prior to the 1930’s, students were given an exam to graduate from the eighth grade, which typical high school graduates couldn’t pass today, because it’s too difficult. One modern social commentator educated during this era, has remarked that “even the ‘F’ students could read.” The kind of things that literate people need to know hasn’t really changed enough (at a primary and secondary level anyway) that this phenomena is justified. The vast increases in the relative number of “leaning disabled” students, and the resulting loss of human potential, is just sickening. The bulk of the responsibility for these massive, tragic declines in education can be laid at the feet of the leaders of the Humanist education community. Their obsessive meddling with the basic process and pedagogy of education, conducted in their zeal to make education more philosophically (e.g. “modern” Humanist) and politically correct, is the primary cause of the decline.” http://ldolphin.org/humanism.html
“…..Dewey’s philosophy had evolved from Hegelian idealism to socialist materialism, and the purpose of the school was to show how education could be changed to produce little socialists and collectivists instead of little capitalists and individualists. It was expected that these little socialists, when they became voting adults, would dutifully change the American economic system into a socialist one.
In order to do so he analyzed the traditional curriculum that sustained the capitalist, individualistic system and found what he believed was the sustaining linchpin — that is, the key element that held the entire system together: high literacy. To Dewey, the greatest obstacle to socialism was the private mind that seeks knowledge in order to exercise its own private judgment and intellectual authority. High literacy gave the individual the means to seek knowledge independently. It gave individuals the means to stand on their own two feet and think for themselves. This was detrimental to the “social spirit” needed to bring about a collectivist society. …” http://www.ordination.org/dumbing_down.htm
Note: This is an older paper. Pamela Grey has said they have finally moved away from the reading method discussed in the paper. Unfortunately we have generations of voting adults who were effected and the Humanist philosophy and “Political Correctness” is still a major force in today’s education.
evanmjones says:
August 18, 2010 at 1:41 am
Evan, spot on as always. Climate science has very little to do with science at the conclusion level. Yes to science for gathering and understanding the data, it’s significance, it’s problems, etc but no to science for the analysis. It is entirely about stats. That’s why Steve Mc’s work has been so precious. It’s why the dogs of climate science were never able to dismiss his work. It’s why these websites are so important.
NeilT
After reading your first comment, I thought you had forgotten to include the
/sarc off
Your second comment shows how sociology majors look at science and scientists.
The old saying stands: Sufficiently high technology (no great height in your case) is indistinguishable from magic.
Hal
nofreewind says: August 17, 2010 at 6:10 pm
But have the 20th Century even warmed since 1940?, except for the step up with the 98 El Nino. Why not look at the data. The thermometer record from 1940 to 1979 shows NO WARMING, both of them, the satellite record from 1979 to 1997 show NO WARMING, both of them.
I have looked at the temperature series this way previously. The thermometer record pre-1979 is probably pretty good, some UHI. The introduction of the MMTS and moving recording stations to airports, plus adjusting temperatures up for UHI certainly invalidates the ground readings post-1979. While some might complain this is cherry-picking, it may be true but only to include the best data.
duckster says: August 18, 2010 at 3:46 am
Good question. What’s the answer? Is there a 900 year cycle, or are people confusing correlation with causation, as has happened with CO2 and temperature.
That’s why you should ask a statistician. Is this signal, or is this noise? How certain am I that the signal is really there, or it’s statistically significant?
Indeed, and you might even see it in some of the long timescale proxies. But you’d still have to explain it. Climate change isn’t anything unusual. We’ve just been oversold on the idea that this one is somehow different, and that may not be correct.
@Henry Pool
“You have not proven that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, i.e. that its cooling properties are smaller than its warming properties.”
Evidently not to your satisfaction. The radiation energy available in CO2 absorption bands are overwhelmingly in frequencies that a 10,000 degree Fahrenheit source (i.e. the sun) emits very little of but are rather in the bands that a 60F source (the ocean) emits copiously.
The overall effect is the sun heats the ocean, the ocean heats the atmosphere, the cold void of outer space cools the atmosphere.
CO2 plays a small role as an insulator slowing down the transport of energy from the ocean to outer space. Water vapor is the main actor among the insulating gases.
“Unless there is something wrong with the definition of a GHG. I think they also call ozone a GHG.”
Ozone is a different story as it has a strong absorption band in ultraviolet where the sun emits strongly as well as in infrared where the ocean emits strongly.
“But if you look carefully at the incoming radiation, then ozone on its own cuts away almost 15-20% of the sun’s radiation. That what ozone cuts away from earth’s radiation compares to not much with that 15-20%. So I am sure ozone is cooling more than it is warming. But they still call it a CHG?”
It does in fact insulate the earth from ultraviolet energy which the sun emits copiously but it also absorbs infrared which the earth emits copiously. The difference is a few percent in favor of infrared absorption.
Keep in mind water vapor is the mother of all greenhouse gases and its infrared absorption bands overlap those of other greenhouse gases to a large extent so where there is significant water vapor (just about everywhere in the troposphere) the other gases play a very small role.
I’m sure you knew all that but choose to disbelieve parts of it and nothing I can say is going to change that.
Henry Pool
…..”CO2 also absorbs strongly at between 4-5 where both earth and sun radiate. “….
I agree this wavelength is almost ignored by climate scientists.
Yet is should be quite the opposite as its the one wavelength that does not overlap with water vapour and could identify the extent of any CO2 effect.
It seems obvious that the team is really frightened about this one and are tryin to push the line that it confirms Mann et al what a joke! Deltoid represents what Australian education and science has become… 3rd world level…. period.
NeilT says:
August 17, 2010 at 11:17 pm
The statisticians say that in the last 1,000 years the data is patchy and causes huge error bars. However they say that the reconstructions track extremely well with 120 out of the 150 years of the instrument record. Then they go on to say and SHOW that the reconstructions can’t predict the warming in the last 30 years.
============================================================
“”“[T]he proxy record has some ability to predict the final thirty-year block, where temperatures have increased most significantly, better than chance would suggest.”
============================================================
Neil, that’s hogwash and here’s why.
They used Mann’s numbers and statistics to recreate the entire thing.
Their process did not change for the last thirty years, only Mann’s numbers changed.
The exact same process – statistics – gives foggy results in the beginning, and then more accurate results the last thirty years.
That has nothing to do with physics, statistics, or who did it.
That only points out that Mann changed his numbers the final thirty years. The process did not change in the final thirty year block, only the numbers they plugged in.
@Atomic Hairdryer and Duckster
There are cycles as short as daily to at least as long as one hundred thousand years. There are many cycles of intermediate length in between those two. Where or not the data exists to identify them with some degree of confidence is the crux.
Science is in the business of collecting the data. Math is in the business of correlating the data. Then science is back in the business of explaining the correlations in terms of causation.
What we have here in Mann’s case is he’s a go-to guy for data collection. A mathmetician specializing in statistical probability is the go-to guy for correlating the data. A physicist is often the go-to guy in coming up with explanations of causation.
Michael Larkin says:
August 18, 2010 at 1:46 am
That’s pretty much the way I read it, too.
However, stephen richards says: August 18, 2010 at 5:21 am nails it! “You must also read this paper with tongue in cheek. Ie look for the hidden sarcasm.” Throughout the paper, it seems to be a continuous stream of what I referred to as (b)slaps. Simplify the statements and re-word them into familiar language. For instance, the final statement of the conclusions, “Our work stands entirely on the shoulders of those environmental scientists who labored untold years to assemble the vast network of natural proxies. Although we assume the reliability of their data for our purposes here, there still remains a considerable number of outstanding questions that can only be answered with a free and open inquiry and a great deal of replication.”
While this isn’t the most harmful of (b)slaps, it is quite humorous to me. The first sentence acknowledges the work the scientists have done in collecting the data throughout the years. Given the use of the data, I can’t help but recall what Dr. Phil had to say when he was given some FOI requests. “Why should I when………” And so M&W did exactly that. Only to a different player on the “team”. The second sentence is in two parts. The first one reiterates the “assumption” of the reliability of the data. But with the caveat “for our purposes here.”, I infer that caveat means quite the opposite because they immediately follow with the words, “considerable number of outstanding questions”. And the final part of the final sentence in the conclusions section. “can only be answered with a free and open inquiry and a great deal of replication.” Given the history of Mann and his unwillingness to share methods and the like and given replication is a huge missing component of current climate science, I can’t see how any CAGW “scientist” could read that with out having a stroke! They don’t do replication, they don’t share and they believe their data is “robust”. The last paragraph addressed all 3 of those points in carefully crafted words. Just for fun, go up one paragraph and do the same exercise I just described. It’s really quite funny.
“Natural climate variability is not well understood and is probably quite
large. It is not clear that the proxies currently used to predict temperature
are even predictive of it at the scale of several decades let alone over many
centuries. Nonetheless, paleoclimatoligical reconstructions constitute only
one source of evidence in the AGW debate.”
Henry@DaveSpringer&Bryan
dave says:
It does in fact insulate the earth from ultraviolet energy which the sun emits copiously but it also absorbs infrared which the earth emits copiously. The difference is a few percent in favor of infrared absorption.
Richard.
You restate:
As I have already agreed with this (for the sake of argument), I don’t understand why you reassert it.
The composite of data records (thermometer readings) for the 20th century show warming. There is much better coverage and continuity in these records (though not perfect) than in proxy indicators stretching back over the last millennium.
They do not. Some show a cool period for that time frame, and warming at different times. Here are some examples.
Buddha Cave, Qin Ling, China (top right reconstruction) shows the peak of medieval warming at 1400 AD. That peak is cooler than the current warm period, and the period 750 to 1250 AD is much cooler.
New Zealand Stalagmite (bottom right) has MWP peak at about 1400, and the classic MWP period much cooler than the latter part of the 20th century.
Northern Icelandic Ice shelf records show a warm spike at 750 AD, immediately followed by 3 centuries of temperatures much cooler than today’s.
Teletskoye Lake, Siberia has two warming peaks at 1400 and 1450, and significantly cooler temps prior to 1250 (although the record does not extend before 1200)
Southampton Island, Canada, shows a peak at 1300, and strikingly cool temps centred on 1150.
A number of the records do match the curve you describe. Others show the MWP being relatively cool compared to recent temps. And that’s just the 40-odd proxy records on the interactive map. There are hundreds more.
Therefore, the putative MWP is not spatially and temporally coherent on a global. Composite studies indicate that temperatures were generally warm in the period 750 – 1250 AD, but this is by no means true for all proxies.
You then refer me back to the interactive map.
So these are reliable – even though some of them are used by MBH (and Gavin Schmidt). This brings us back to the question of what the result is when these records are combined.
You go on:
You previously stated
This comment was the first time the alleged 900-year cycle and MBH were brought together. No mentio0n of MWP or LIA. In fact, I introduced those phenomena on this particular topic in my following reply to you.
The graphical representations show wide error bars. Both MBH and the IPCC maintain there was a MWP of similar warmth to the mean of the 20th century, and that the LIA was significantly cooler. If you wish to discuss the graphs, then we are moving into a political discussion, in which I am not interested. If you wish to talk about the scientific findings of MBH (and/or IPCC), then we must look beyond the graphs at the text of the documents. They bear out what I am saying. The MWP and LIA are real phenomena, and their amplitude is estimated in MBH 99 (and 98).
————————————————————————————–
In the first decade of the previous two cooling phases (1880 – 1890, and 1940 – 1950), the temperature trend was downwards. This is not the case for the alleged cooling phase 2000 to present.
If you contend that a few more years will make a cooling trend apparent, could you give an estimate (nominate a year in the future) when you think this will be demonstrated. When might be the earliest date we could expect a downward trend from 2000 to emerge?
Ulf says:
August 18, 2010 at 1:01 am
Strictly speaking, any value within the error bars could be the “correct” one.
MW10 seems to be mainly about assessing the uncertainties of the reconstructions. This is where they claim that “Climate scientists have greatly underestimated the uncertainty”.
========================================================
Exactly, you can run a straight horizontal line, never get out of “error”, and show no warming or cooling at all.
Duckster,
Go back and read my presentation, http://www.kidswincom.net/climate.pdf, with an open mind. In analyzing the the ice core isotope depletion data with several different statistical techniques, I was able to identify 13, statistically significant, naturally occuring cyles. The shortest significant cycle from the combined data was around twenty years and the longest was around 100,000 years. Plotting the best fit of all these natural cycles clearly shows both the MWP and LIA, as well as the Roman warm period.
If you question my ability to use statistics correctly, Google “Fred H. Haynie”+ statistics.
@Brian and Henry
http://www.te-software.co.nz/blog/auer_files/image001.gif
The sun and the earth both emit very little energy at 4-5 microns so it has very little impact one way or another.
Henry@DaveSpringer&Bryan
Dave says:
It (ozone) does in fact insulate the earth from ultraviolet energy which the sun emits copiously but it also absorbs infrared which the earth emits copiously. The difference is a few percent in favor of infrared absorption.”
Henry says:
You have to be kidding me? Where do you get this 6% from? In what Si units?
From the graph you quoted ozone makes a little dent in earth’s radiation (blue) at 13 um, the area of which is much, much smaller than that whole white area caused by ozone in the red zone (left).
The point is: there are no results of research that will give me an accurate balance sheet of the cooling and warming of CHG’s in W/m3 %GHG/m2/24 hours.
So, unless you have those results, you don’t know if CO2 is greenhouse gas.
DaveSpringer says:
The sun and the earth both emit very little energy at 4-5 microns so it has very little impact one way or another.
Henry says:
So how come here in Africa you cannot stand in the sun for longer than 10 minutes because of the IR heat on your skin?
It may be very little to you, but how many Watts/m2 does it cause?
@richard
The fact is that all those isolated places around the globe show periods of warming and cooling and they each show a peak of temperature (i.e. the MWP) in the period from 750 to 1250 AD. Together they indicate a peak near 1000 AD. This peak is the MWP.
How would you know when the peak was from historical and archeological proxies? How would you be able to compare France and Argentina, Australia and Nigeria? There simply is no system for establishing peak MWP without temperature proxies. And remember, you can’t use these any more (if you have accepted this paper), but you are willing to fall back on historical records and archeological evidence. I studied quite a lot of both, and I have to tell you that very few in either profession would go much beyond “some evidence that it was a bit warmer here.” Even the forensic archeologists I know would use lots of ifs, buts and maybes. So the evidence for the Incredible Moving Medieval Warming Period™ looks very slim indeed.
If a CAGW theorist made the kind of claims you are making, you would quite rightly destroy them. Historical and archeological records were only ever useful in establishing an alternative record for confirmation of temperature proxies, not in verifying those actual temperatures.
You are way out on a limb here. Come back in. 🙂
@Gail Combs August 18, 2010 at 5:24 am
The US ranks in or near the top 20 in scientific literacy. If you look at the questions in standardized scientific literacy tests you’ll find a couple that Americans don’t do well on that are related to evolution of life and age of the earth. Obviously the reason is that these clash with certain religious beliefs which are more widely held in the U.S. If you subtract the results of those two questions then the US rises well into the top ten and exceeds the average of western Europe.
There’s nothing really wrong with science education in the US nor the scientific literacy of the adult population in comparison with the rest of the world. There is very little practical impact in not believing mud-to-man evolution nor in the belief that God created the universe. This is why the U.S. has been and continues to be a leader in scientific discovery and engineering accomplishment – although no small part of that is the success of the constitutional republic form of government and capitalism which combine to encourage and provide great funding for scientific discovery and practical application thereof.
Duckster,
Go back and read my presentation, http://www.kidswincom.net/climate.pdf, with an open mind. In analyzing the the ice core isotope depletion data with several different statistical techniques, I was able to identify 13, statistically significant, naturally occuring cyles. The shortest significant cycle from the combined data was around twenty years and the longest was around 100,000 years. Plotting the best fit of all these natural cycles clearly shows both the MWP and LIA, as well as the Roman warm period.
If you question my ability to use statistics correctly, Google “Fred H. Haynie”+ statistics.
I’ve read this and it will be very educational for you.
Henry@Fred Haynie
Fred
“Go back and read my presentation, http://www.kidswincom.net/climate.pdf, with an open mind”
Henry
I liked this presentation . However, I could not figure out where we are now, within all these cycles. Do you expect cooling or warming?
CRS, Dr.P.H. says:
August 17, 2010 at 9:53 pm
“…As a public health scientist, I’m very comfortable with bringing in the high-level academic & practicing biostatisticians to help out in data analysis, study design etc. From the McShane/Wyner publication, we can see that the Hockey Team have taken the exact opposite tack….and the reasons why they would seek to do this (their entire argument falls apart upon statistical analysis)….”
I agree. Working in big Pharma, where our every scientific move is heavily scrutinized by various agencies around the world (such as the FDA) we work with statisticians as much as possible. In fact, when we want to put some real “teeth” behind our results, we most definitely bring in the statisticians. It’s a great relationship: they don’t necessarily know the science and we don’t necessarily know the math but by working together we achieve our greatest and most sound results. In other words, the statisticians are indispensible in our industry to ensure our results show that our drugs are both safe and efficacious. The fact that Mann et al. avoids statisticians makes me highly suspicious of their science.
So far, and I am reading this paper in digestible chunks, the model was able to reproduce the Mann blade, meaning that using the observations Mann used, the model these authors used was as good as the one Mann used in drawing the blade portion of the stick. And both models reproduced a rise that matches the data Mann chose as the observed temperature data. What the authors’ model could not do was backcast a trend that matched Mann’s backcast.
So we have a couple of questions.
1. What is the essential difference between the two models? Where is the code different from each other?
2. Do the models have a CO2 variable that reproduced the recent rise? Okay, fine. But I would have used a real control model. Is there another naturally occurring weather pattern variation that can send temperatures soaring (IE ENSO and Artic oscillations anyone)? These model runs, in my opinion, should also have a real (not made up random stuff) statistical model control: A model that is based on a training run of oceanic/atmospheric conditions tied to temperature data without adding a CO2 statistic. If both models (CO2 driven dynamic model and non-CO2 statistical only model) can predict a fast temperature rise, the hypothesis must continue to be null.
My criticism: The paper lacks a real control model and instead uses random data as the control. Why not get the two birds in the bush?
Fred H. Haynie says:
August 18, 2010 at 6:59 am
Duckster,
Go back and read my presentation, http://www.kidswincom.net/climate.pdf, with an open mind.
—-Reply:
Thanks, Mr. Haynie. That’s an excellent presentation!
This is an interesting paper. Watts has copied (but not highlighted) the following acknowledgment in the paper’s conclusion:
“Nonetheless, paleoclimatoligical reconstructions constitute only one source of evidence in the AGW debate. Our work stands entirely on the shoulders of those environmental scientists who labored untold years to assemble the vast network of natural proxies.”
In summary, there is still much work to be done in improving our measurements and our statistical analysis of natural temperature proxies. But the fundamental science of AGW by way of GHG emissions accelerating since the beginning of the industrial revolution is unchallenged. We have a problem on our hands, and it’s time we acknowledged this reality and moved on to addressing it somehow.
Duckster, temperature proxies are a dime a dozen. But to say you can’t use them anymore is going too far. The Pacific Decadel Oscillation was discovered when studying the ups and downs of salmon population and migration habits. Ship logs were, and still are, a treasure trove of temperature, winds, storm tracks, and currents. Salmon behavior turned out to be such a good proxie for the PDO that marine fisheries now use the PDO to plan out fishing trips.
Dave Springer, good post. Those science literacy quizzes should remove the bias from questions that have bearing on religious faith. The faithful will always answer these from a theological point of view, returning to science when questions go elsewhere. You can verify this easily by asking how a religious person would think about an “origins” question versus, for example, a chemical science question. They easily and readily report than such questions will always cause them to view possible answers from a religious point of view, thus destroying the question’s ability to measure scientific knowledge and understanding.
Besides, science fact/theory knowledge is different from understanding the scientific method. When I took the multiple subjects exam for teachers in Oregon, there were both kinds of questions: Multiple choice and scientific method essay. Interestingly, there were no questions related to how old the Earth/Universe is or how it was made. The essay questions were worth many more points than a single multiple choice question.
lattituide, you should go back and read the document. That figure shows that they stopped using the proxy at 1968 and then used the statistical method to try and predict the warming from 1969 to 2000. At the same time they put in the real recorded figures (the black line).
The point I was making is that the whole thing is rubbish. The scientists don’t use the proxies to predict the future. They use them as a single datum point for historical action in a physics model.
So it doesn’t matter what statistical model you use. If the proxies track the 130 year temprature record well then we can assume they also track the derived historical temperature record well.
What they cannot do is predict future warming using the historical temperature record by any statistical model known to man. Which is one of the reasons we know that WE are driving the current Global Warming.
However I’m sure it will be discussed to death here and trumpeted as some kind of justification for vilifying Mann.
Personally it’s not worth any more comments.
I think this snippet from the paper says it all.
“Finally, we construct and fit a full probability model for the relationship
between the thousand year old proxy database and Northern Hemisphere
average temperature, providing appropriate pathwise standard errors
which account for parameter uncertainty.”
They should have constructed their model using the local temperature series applicable to each proxy database, rather than to the hemispherical mean. After all a tree ring proxy predicts local temperature, not hemispherical mean.
I think it is an example of garbage in garbage out as I have seen posted numerous times on this site.
Stephan says:
August 18, 2010 at 6:33 am
It seems obvious that the team is really frightened about this one and are tryin to push the line that it confirms Mann et al what a joke! Deltoid represents what Australian education and science has become… 3rd world level…. period.
That site is almost unbelievable.
Some poor new poster asks a polite question and a pack of piranhas descend on him/her and hurl really unrestrained vile abuse.
I think that WUWT should provide a link to Deltoid and label it as ” a site where the science of AGW gets logically explained”
bob says:
“They should have constructed their model using the local temperature series applicable to each proxy database, rather than to the hemispherical mean. After all a tree ring proxy predicts local temperature, not hemispherical mean. I think it is an example of garbage in garbage out as I have seen posted numerous times on this site.”
Bob, the statistical study used Michael Mann’s own data. The difference is that they are statisticians and Mann is a rank amateur on statistics.
[I am giving Mann an easy excuse as an incompetent, rather than as a scientific charlatan who tortured his carefully selected data until it said what he wanted it to say.]
Did Ryan Z say this:
In summary, there is still much work to be done in improving our measurements and our statistical analysis of natural temperature proxies. But the fundamental science of AGW by way of GHG emissions accelerating since the beginning of the industrial revolution is unchallenged. We have a problem on our hands, and it’s time we acknowledged this reality and moved on to addressing it somehow.
I doubt if I would agree with this statement, and I am not sure if the problem is CO2.
Suggest you read my blog:
http://letterdash.com/HenryP/more-carbon-dioxide-is-ok-ok
NeilT says:
“So it doesn’t matter what statistical model you use. If the proxies track the 130 year temprature record well then we can assume they also track the derived historical temperature record well.
What they cannot do is predict future warming using the historical temperature record by any statistical model known to man. Which is one of the reasons we know that WE are driving the current Global Warming.”
Huh? Your last sentence is a complete non-sequitur, and makes the usual argumentum ad ignorantium that is constantly employed by the alarmist contingent.
The “current global warming” is no different whatever from past global warming cycles. Even arch-alarmist Phil Jones acknowledges that fact.
Making a baseless assumption that what we see today is from a demonstrably different cause, than the same exact cycles happening in the past, is what always trips up the Chicken Licken crowd.
Construct a testable, replicable experiment using raw data, showing that CO2 is the cause of the current [mild] warming cycle. If you do you will convince me. But so far, all the hand-waving over what is clearly a natural event has been completely unconvincing.
CO2 may cause a small amount of warming. If so, it has turned out to be much less than assumed. If the minor warming from CO2 is insignificant, then there is no cause to throw good taxpayer money after bad for any more expensive, wild-eyed ‘global warming studies.’
and Smokey says:
“Bob, the statistical study used Michael Mann’s own data. The difference is that they are statisticians and Mann is a rank amateur on statistics.
[I am giving Mann an easy excuse as an incompetent, rather than as a scientific charlatan who tortured his carefully selected data until it said what he wanted it to say.]”
And I’m saying that although they may be competent statisticians, they did not apply statistics properly to the problem.
They made a calibration error in calibrating the proxies to the hemispherical mean, rather than to the local mean.
I mean it is as simple as that, a proxy predicts local temperature, not the hemispherical mean.
If I want to choose a coat to wear, I take a tree ring sample from my backyard, not averages from 93 samples across the northern hemisphere.
Just because they are good statisticians doesn’t mean they are setting up the problem they are trying to solve correctly.
bob says:
August 18, 2010 at 9:00 am
“They should have constructed their model using the local temperature series applicable to each proxy database, rather than to the hemispherical mean. After all a tree ring proxy predicts local temperature, not hemispherical mean.”
Yeh bob, they were probably totally unaware of that particular option being available. If only they’d asked bob before hand.
From the paper,
“3.6. Proxies and Local Temperatures. We performed an additional test which
accounts for the fact that proxies are local in nature (e.g., tree rings in Montana)
and therefore might be better predictors of local temperatures than
global temperatures. Climate scientists generally accept the notion of ”teleconnection”
(i.e., that proxies local to one place can be predictive of climate
in another possibly distant place). Hence, we do not use a distance restriction
in this test. Rather, we perform the following procedure.”…it goes into great detail of the testing procedure. Later, “The results of this test are given by the second boxplot in Figure 9. As can be seen, this method seems to perform somewhat better than the pure global method. However, it does not beat the empirical AR1 process or Brownian Motion. That is, random series that are independent of global temperature are as effective or more effective than the proxies at predicting global annual temperatures in the instrumental period. Again, the proxies are not statistically significant when compared to sophisticated null models.“
bob, it seems they regarded the local vs. global considerations and actually did the testing. Apparently the results were just as dismal.
bob says:
“… a proxy predicts local temperature, not the hemispherical mean. If I want to choose a coat to wear, I take a tree ring sample from my backyard, not averages from 93 samples across the northern hemisphere.”
That is exactly what MBH critics have been saying: Mann carefully selected proxies that reflected very local conditions [if they reflect anything at all]. But he foisted off his erroneous results as proof of anthropogenic global warming.
Seriously, get a copy of A.W. Montford’s The Hockey Stick Illusion. You will see the endless shenanigans used by Mann, the IPCC and the climate journals to promote a scientifically untenable agenda in order to keep the taxpayer loot flowing into their pockets.
Why do you think it is that 12 years after MBH98, Mann still refuses to allow skeptical scientists to see his methodologies? He’s not protecting nuclear defense secrets here — this is only the weather and climate; what’s the big secret? But Mann is still hiding his work product from the public that paid for it. Can anyone justify that?
bob says: (August 18, 2010 at 9:45 am )
“And I’m saying that although they may be competent statisticians, they did not apply statistics properly to the problem.”
But Mann, not a statistician, applied the statistics properly to the problem?
Pamela writes:
So far, and I am reading this paper in digestible chunks, the model was able to reproduce the Mann blade, meaning that using the observations Mann used, the model these authors used was as good as the one Mann used in drawing the blade portion of the stick. And both models reproduced a rise that matches the data Mann chose as the observed temperature data. What the authors’ model could not do was backcast a trend that matched Mann’s backcast.
BINGO!
I have no idea why that is so hard for people to understand. I also see a lot of comment about this paper calling into question the use of proxies to find temperature signals. No. It is not questioning that, but simply using the specific ones Mann used for this particular study.
Henry Pool August 18, 2010 at 7:44 am
The proxie data used to identify the cycles is calibrated to measured Western Equatorial Pacific SSTs where a great bit of energy goes into the atmosphere. The timing of each cycle is an average of 10,000 years of cycles. There is variability in the wave length between individual cycles. I did not analyze that variability but estimated that it could range within about plus or minus 25%. That said, in the presentation it stated that the proxie data suggested that we were on the up slope of a 20 year cycle and expected to be on a down slope within a couple of years. Based on recent satalite data, we have been on that down slope for several years. That said, the longer wave length cycles suggest we are on an up slope that will have a maximum at around 2090. This is consistent with a 308 year cycle that is statistically significant for CO2 data.
Re: Tom Scharf says:
August 17, 2010 at 11:22 am
When faced with a problem like this where the authors have
shown legitimate problems with methods and have reached
reasonable conclusions, you don’t fight the methods or conclusions,
you will attack the very basis of their paper. When you are guilty,
argue the law.
The elegant feature of the McS & W2010 paper is the use of
the Mann et alia data as the basis for the various reconstructions,
backcasts, and comparative statistical processes. They
(the Team) picked the facts to use… and proffered conclusions
based on their pick of the litter.
Since Mike Mann and the Team selected the proxies and temp
reports in the first place, there’s really not much left to refute
in McS & W other than the application of the maths in the statistical
treatments.
Having the database nailed to the side of the shed for all to
ponder may induce Mann to give up his actual coding… or look
rather foolish.
Let this rather rusty stats man presume Brigg’s yellow line is the most devastating peer review line drawn through an iconic hockey stick the world has ever seen, based on McShane and Wyner’s peer review of same. What that means is the world can be as 95% confident in the straight yellow line of temperature through the IPCC’s world’s best historic climate record gatherings as any other line within that 95% confidence band. In which case it completely verifies what Congress, Mckintyre and Mckitrick with Wegman told us all some years ago and were reviled and pilloried for in the greatest scientific scandal of our age- Advocacy pseudo-science.
If all that is true there is some immediate Nobel stripping to be done and some great names to be added to the roll call of Science, to retrieve the Nobel from the gutter and place it back on its rightful pedestal.
I think the problem with climatology is the failure to separate the problem in smaller units in order to make it accessible to critique. In computer programming it is called modular programming. The goal is to separate the problem in small modules so each of them is easy to manage and any programmer can criticize(debug) them.
In this case, scientists should have decomposed the problem in several units(tree growth in relation to time, correlations between recent tree growth and recent temperatures, reconstruction of past temperature). Each of these units should have been so easy, the methodology would have been clearly expressed and a lot of people would have been able to criticize them.
In computer programming, I might fail to do a good modularity if I think too much about the final program instead of looking to the different part needed. I think science based on goals will always fail against science based on modularity and application of the scientific method because the former will often fail to be accessible to a larger pool of critics.
—————
Gail Combs,
I enjoyed your post and agree with your critique of the mainstream US educational philosophy of the majority of the 20th century. Dewey was a part of the so-called American Pragmatist philosophical movement. I agree it had its root in the Kant to Hegel stream. The American Pragmatist movement had a high content borrowed directly from then current European thinking . . .
I have been a long term admirer of Marie Montessori’s educational methods (k through 12).
Also, I have been a long term admirer of the greater merits of private versus public education including collegiate level. My problem with US public education is the politicization, the group think base of its techniques and the dumbing down of the higher to the lower performers in a student body. Private I find is, overall, more individualistic, varied and has better focus on achievement. NOTE: I was educated mostly in public institutions.
John
So Mann’s sharp uptick is refuted by this paper but it still shows a significant warming trend for the last 150+ years does it not? So the climate has been warming for 150 years.
Scipio says:
“So the climate has been warming for 150 years.”
Is that in dispute? The LIA ended about that time.
Smokey says:
“Is that in dispute?”
I don’t know for sure, as I’m certainly no expert in this field, but I don’t believe it is and that most people agree that it has been. What I am a bit perplexed about is that Mann, while fudging his numbers by reducing the size of his data set until he obtained that data he needed to support his ideas about AGW, gave us the infamous hockey stick. Yet I look at the 2 graphs and while Mann’s severe uptick has been smoothed out by the work of McShane and Wyner their graph too shows(?) a somewhat significant warming trend over the last 30(+/-) years.
The warming over the last 200 years (as shown by the graphs) coincides with the beginning of the burning of large volumes of fossil fuels. This may just be coincidental or perhaps not, I don’t study this type of science.
I personally don’t believe in AGW, but I sometimes wonder.
[snip – thanks for that, but I’m not going to let that confusion over being the first running a press release versus the spotting actual event take over this thread, since the two aren’t related. If you wish, you can repost on the source thread where it is relevant. I’d move it, but wordpress.com has no move feature – Anthony]
Atomic Hairdryer:
Thankyou for your lucid post at August 18, 2010 at 6:21 am .
You state the issues exactly.
Each of your points is important and I choose to comment on only one of them. You say:
“Is there a 900 year cycle, or are people confusing correlation with causation, as has happened with CO2 and temperature.”
The test of this is prediction. If the ~900 year cycle exists then during this century the global temperature will start to fall towards the value it had in the LIA whether or not atmospheric CO2 concentration continues to rise. (Please see my post at August 17, 2010 at 2:52 am).
Some may say this is too long a time to wait, but science does not set such limits. For example, Halley made a prediction for the return of ‘his’ comet that proved correct long after his death. And the proof of the present AGW ‘projections’ for the next 50 and 100 years will not be seen for several decades to come.
Even then, “one swallow does not make a Spring” so a single correct prediction based on the assumption of a ~900 year oscillation could be a result of mere chance so – although it would provide confidence to the assumption – it would not be a proof that there is a ~900 year oscillation. Hence, the importance of your comment concerning statistical evaluation.
However, the apparent existence of the ~900 year cycle does provide a reason to seek a plausible and falsifiable physical explanation for such a cycle.
Richard
Scipio, the amount of CO2 poroduced 200 years ago was inconsequential. The temp rise then, as it was, was not due to CO2.
This is old romanticist nonsense about the evil Dark Satanic Mills
Scipio
Please look at the Hockey stick at the head of this paper from, around 1600 onwards .
Now look at the worlds oldest actual instrumental records here;
http://i47.tinypic.com/2zgt4ly.jpg
http://i45.tinypic.com/125rs3m.jpg
The distinct downwards trend on the hockey stick blade is not shown by the records-in fact the blade of the stick seems to be pointing in the wrong direction, down instead of up.
CET from 1660 is backed up by various other records which show the latter stages of the early 18th Century warming, such as this one from Uppsala.
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/10/09/how-long-is-a-long-temperature-history/
We are fortunate with this particular record- from our friend Arrhenius’s home town- to have the botanical garden records as well. These take us back to around 1695. Around 1710 the custodians start to plant outside some quite exotic plants-together with mulberries.
The temperature rise throughout the record can be readily sen in this larger graph of CET.
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/jdrake/Questioning_Climate/_sgg/m2_1.htm
The instrumental record is backed up by high quality contemporary observational records. Anyone browsing the diary of Samuel Pepys for January 1660/61-the year the Royal Society was established- would read;
“It is strange what weather we have had all this winter; no cold at all; but the ways are dusty, and the flyes fly up and down, and the rose-bushes are full of leaves, such a time of the year as was never known
So we can see this warm year was unusual and the cold trend can be traced further back before the records, indeed if we look further back, before the English Civil War, we know that the coldest part of this second phase of the LIA occurred in the early part of the 17th Century, so we can actually trace that rise from around 1601, which some say was the coldest year in our history.
So temperatures have been rising -albeit in notable fits and starts- throughout most of the instrumental records with the coldest decade around 1680 and a notable and remarkable rise commencing in 1698 for three decades that exceeds anything seen in the modern warm period.
It would appear that the Giss records -which start at in 1880- merely ‘plug’ into this well documented, gently warming, centuries long trend as a continuation of it -not the start.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/
Our international institutions appear to have inexplicably forgotten their climate history and not be aware that, far from being ‘unprecedented,’ the apparent cyclical nature of our climate explains the current temperature trends rather nicely.
Historic instrumental temperature records can be found here on my web site together with a variety of related articles.
http://climatereason.com/LittleIceAgeThermometers/
tonyb
stephen richards says:
August 18, 2010 at 5:21 am
“Micheal said: In essence you are correct but the English language is the problem, I think… You must also read this paper with tongue in cheek. Ie look for the hidden sarcasm.”
Many thanks, Stephen. Good to see I was essentially on the nail and I am grateful for your refinement of what the paper means. I played it dead straight, but I did pick up on some likely and rather delicious, if understated, digs! 🙂
James Sexton says:
August 18, 2010 at 6:53 am
“Michael Larkin says:
August 18, 2010 at 1:46 am
That’s pretty much the way I read it, too.”
I enjoyed your expurgation of one particular slap. That might be one I wasn’t overly sure was such… maybe, I thought, they were just being polite to molify the AGW people, i.e to sugar the pill somewhat.
Thank heavens for this great blog where I can check my understanding of a paper knowing I won’t be gunned down if I don’t toe some party line or other.
Smokey says:
“That is exactly what MBH critics have been saying: Mann carefully selected proxies that reflected very local conditions [if they reflect anything at all]. But he foisted off his erroneous results as proof of anthropogenic global warming.
Seriously, get a copy of A.W. Montford’s The Hockey Stick Illusion. ”
Right, and somehow you think Mann was wrong to do that, however, McIntyre disagrees not with Mann using PCA (principle component analysis), but with which kind of PCA to use.
Since tree growth can be considered to be a function of more than one variable, at least temperature and rainfall to name two, it seems to me to be appropriate to use PCA to determine which proxies best reflect the temperature to growth function rather than an average of all available proxies.
And it’s a global conspiracy, seriously?
And Davil L said:
“But Mann, not a statistician, applied the statistics properly to the problem?”
So, are you saying one has to be a statistician to use statistics?
Anyway, Mann’s reconstuction agrees better with past sea-levels for the past 1000 years than McShane and Wyner.
Sea level was flat from 1000 to 1850 or so, if McShane and Wyner are correct we should have seen a measurable decrease in sea level over that time period.
barry:
Your post at August 18, 2010 at 6:56 am seems to be an attempt to deflect discussion of this thread into an ‘Angels On A Pin’ debate.
The important issue is that you choose to deny all the historical and archaelogical evidence for the existence of the MWP. But you provide no reason why anybody should agree with your denial.
Furthermore, you have ignored my point that not all the globe warmed – some regions cooled – over the twentieth century but this does not disprove the globe warmed over the twentieth century. Similarly, the finding of a few places that were cooling at the time of the MWP – when most of the Earth’s surface warmed to hotter than now – does not disprove the MWP. Your argument is ‘cherry picking’ of an extreme kind.
The fact is that history, archaelogy and paleo data from locations around the globe agree that most of the globe warmed to be hotter than now during the MWP.
The M&W paper throws doubt on the MBH reconstruction but until some similar analyses are conducted on the hundreds of other paleo reconstructions then their evidence of the MWP remains.
Therefore, I shall ignore all else in your post except your concluding point and question to me; viz.
“In the first decade of the previous two cooling phases (1880 – 1890, and 1940 – 1950), the temperature trend was downwards. This is not the case for the alleged cooling phase 2000 to present.
If you contend that a few more years will make a cooling trend apparent, could you give an estimate (nominate a year in the future) when you think this will be demonstrated. When might be the earliest date we could expect a downward trend from 2000 to emerge?”
There is no reason to expect that this cooling phase must be at the same rate as the previous two because it is a combination of at least two apparent cycles (i.e. the ~900 and the ~60 year cycles). They would only be the same if the phase of the ~900 year cycle were the same in each case, and this does not seem to be so: i.e. the present cooling period seems to have a less negative trend than the last one which seems to have a less negative trend than the one before that.
Richard
Re: Barry and duckster regardning the MWP
Do you believe that the farming done by “vikings” on Greenland during an extended period of time was the result of a sustained local climate variation?
If so what might that kind of variation consist of? A changing gulf stream seems unlikely since both northern Sweden and Norway were inhabited and farmed.
I myself find it very hard that you would in this manner be able to insulate a specific part of the globe for such a long time.
Duckster:
At August 18, 2010 at 7:19 am you assert:
“There simply is no system for establishing peak MWP without temperature proxies. And remember, you can’t use these any more (if you have accepted this paper), but you are willing to fall back on historical records and archeological evidence.”
No!
Proxies of various kinds from individual sites have not been disproved by the M&W paper. And the historical and araeological evidence exists.
Please read my last reply to Barry.
Richard
Pogo says “we have met the enemy and he is us.” Statisticians are not the enemy. They are needed in the very beginning of a reseach project to help frame the question and strategize data collection so that a meaningful answer can be obtained. Statistics at the end of the research project help frame the answer as to what can be said from the data. Statistics in general are straight forward as long as one follows the rules. When combining dis-similar data sets, such as proxy data, there are a lot more rules. One needs some high level statisticians to be sure all the rules have been followed for one to be able to say what one wants to say. It seems that MacIntyre & McKintric in 2004 told Mann that he had not followed the rules and he shouldn’t say what he wanted and ultimately did say about the data. In March of this year, VS on Bart Verheggen’s blog developed the arguement that the entire insturment temperature time series data fell within the boundaries of natural variation. McShane & Wyner demonstrate that the entire last 1000 year proxy data set falls within the statistical limits of natural variation. To me, that is strike three. Its time to listen; hard at times after all the blood, sweat & tears.
Henry@Fred Haynie
thanks Fred!
What do you think of the Easterbrook paper?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/12/29/don-easterbrooks-agu-paper-on-potential-global-cooling/
tonyb, thanks a lot. Your post and links helps to clear some of the fog for me.
bob says: August 18, 2010 at 12:18 pm
“And Davil L said: ‘But Mann, not a statistician, applied the statistics properly to the problem?’
So, are you saying one has to be a statistician to use statistics?”
Not at all. I don’t have a degree in statistics but I use them all the time. However I take the time to learn and use them correctly and seek the advice of statisticians when it really matters. But I wouldn’t prefer my statistics over a professional statistician’s. Your comment seemed to prefer to believe Mann, the amateur statistician who clearly didn’t follow conventional rules of statistics, over professional statisticians.
I tried posting the link to the fantastic take on the paper by Briggs
(http://wmbriggs.com/blog/?p=2773) on Taminos blog but he was
impressively fast in deleting it =)
REPLY: you and others shouldn’t be bashfull about trying again. – Anthony
NeilT says:
August 18, 2010 at 8:44 am
lattituide, you should go back and read the document. That figure shows that they stopped using the proxy at 1968 and then used the statistical method to try and predict the warming from 1969 to 2000. At the same time they put in the real recorded figures (the black line).
The point I was making is that the whole thing is rubbish. The scientists don’t use the proxies to predict the future.
Did you read the part of the paper that explained how paleoclimate proxies work. The proxy data are not temperatures but measurements of various minutial elements assorted artifacts of the past(trees, ice, sediments,etc,). To arrive at a temperature projection a selection of the data is “trained” against know empirical observations from the same time period. A model or algorithm is constructed which, when a proxy datapoint is entered, outputs a temp which matches the empirical observation. Then to verify the model, not to predict the future, the model is applied to forward proxy data points to see if they continue to match the empirical observations. From what I’ve seen, mostly they don’t. Which is probably the main reason Mann spliced actual temp records on to his proxy in his “neat trick”. The point is that, if they can’t match the record going forward, there is little reason to suspect that they can reconstruct the temperature record of the past with any level of certainty.
If you google “McShane and Wyner 2010” you get get 5,500 hits, if you do the same search on google news you get 2 reports: Prisonplanet.com and Dellingpole writing in the Daily Telegraph.
Scare stories sell newpapers, solid debate like is taking place on this thread is not considered newsworthy. There is a bias in the media for the theories of CAGW and a bias against correcting them afterwards.
REPLY: you and others shouldn’t be bashfull about trying again. – Anthony
Bashful just isn’t our style =)
I think it speaks volumes that they are choosing not to respond and the commentary around the net from skilled and insightful people with advanced statistical skills in no way invalidates the “end of the hockey stick” title.
NeilT says:
August 18, 2010 at 8:44 am
lattituide, you should go back and read the document. That figure shows that they stopped using the proxy at 1968 and then used the statistical method to try and predict the warming from 1969 to 2000. At the same time they put in the real recorded figures (the black line).
=======================================================
Neil, I’m looking for an explanation for the following. There has to be a reason, other than an obvious reason. Would there be something written into the programing, numbers, etc
It’s not dumb luck that takes a program that’s all over the place, that random numbers give the same or better results, then all of a sudden at the end, it pulls it’s act together.
What would cause it to be “better than chance” “to predict the final thirty-year block”?
“”“[T]he proxy record has some ability to predict the final thirty-year block, where temperatures have increased most significantly, better than chance would suggest.”
tonyb says:
August 18, 2010 at 12:04 pm
========================
Tony, thank you
Scipio says: ‘I personally don’t believe in AGW, but I sometimes wonder.’
Here is the latest paper from Erl Happ, which has convinced me beyond doubt that a benign trace gas has nothing to do with climate change. ENSO Rules.
http://climatechange1.wordpress.com/
Scipio says:
August 18, 2010 at 11:47 am
“…Yet I look at the 2 graphs and while Mann’s severe uptick has been smoothed out by the work of McShane and Wyner their graph too shows(?) a somewhat significant warming trend over the last 30(+/-) years……”
Scipio, I would highly encourage you to view the graphs while you read the study. It will help greatly to keep the graphs contextually clear.
Henry Pool August 18, 2010 at 12:47 pm
Esterbrooks results are consistant with my presentation within the limits of estimated errors in wave length, timing, and magnitude of cycle swings. His analysis is based on a relatively few cycles of data yet they show an upward trend to around the turn of the century with the next max at around 2060. I believe temperature leads CO2 but I think the lead is less than thirty years. Background levels of CO2 have been accurately measured since 1957 and that data reveals statistically significant sign waves with wave lengths of 5.1, 9.93, 20.5 years. These could be associated with el-Nino, sunspots, and PDO, responding harmonically with a delay for each. Thus, monitoring the natural background level of CO2 is probably our best lagging indicator of climate change. All bets are off if on one of these cold cycles the Arctic remains frozen in summer and the oceanic conveyer belt pump is shut off or slowed down. I believe we should be concerned about that tipping point.
latitude says:
August 18, 2010 at 1:30 pm
NeilT says:
August 18, 2010 at 8:44 am
lattituide, you should go back and read the document. That figure shows that they stopped using the proxy at 1968 and then used the statistical method to try and predict the warming from 1969 to 2000. At the same time they put in the real recorded figures (the black line).
=========================================================
“It’s not dumb luck that takes a program that’s all over the place, that random numbers give the same or better results, then all of a sudden at the end, it pulls it’s act together.”
———————————————————————————————————–
Latitude, I don’t mean to intrude, but reading your back and forth with NeilT, I think there is some confusion about what graph is tied to what test.
Form the paper, “We pursue that strategy here. First, we fit on 1880-1998 AD and attempt to backcast 1850-1879 AD. Then, we fit on 1850-1968 AD and forecast 1969-1998 AD. These blocks are arguably the most interesting and important because they are not ”tied” at two endpoints. Thus, they genuinely reflect the most important modeling task: reconstruction.
Figure 18 illustrates that the model seems…….”
They are referencing the graph that plots the results. Fig. 18 not fig. 16. Fig 16 was fitted on 1850-1998 and then forecasted backwards(backcasted) from there.
If I followed your conversation properly, I think that will help. In fig. 18, neither going forward to back or back to forward did very will in detecting the uptick in the 1990’s.
“Better than chance” isn’t a bench mark I’d look for in anything but a roulette wheel.
Romm also goes on to question the MWP, saying that it is “open question” whether it was real or not. I provided him with peer-reviewed literature, and my response fell down the rabbit hole. What a joke!
Thanks James, I really wasn’t wanting Neil to answer. 😉
Someone has already mentioned that the strength of the hockey stick was in the handle, not the blade. That’s correct.
What confuses me is that they got as much of an up tick as they did in the last thirty year block.
They said:”the backcast is both in-sample and initialized with the high true temperatures from 1999 AD and 2000 AD, it still cannot capture either the high level of or the sharp run-up in temperatures of the 1990s” and “it was better than chance”
What happened exactly that would have made that last thirty year block “better than chance”?
Mr. Watts, I first heard of ENSO at its AMS symposium debut in 1985. As the Southern oscillation is global in scale and decadal in duration, and McS&W lay 4 to 1 odds of ’98 topping the hottest decade of the last millennium, to dismiss it is” a super El Nino anomaly event, not a super global warming event. Weather, not climate.“ does such Moranic violence to the English language that the mind is repelled.
It would be wonderful to see the reception afforded your reply were you to repeat it at the next AMS meeting on the subject- it is far too good for yack radio, and only wants the attention of an SNL writer to assure its 15 seconds of fame.
REPLY: There’s no reason to call me a moron simply because you disagree.
In March 2006, Dr. James Hansen wrote a paper saying the following:
If that isn’t enough, I always say a picture is worth 1000 words, so here is a picture…or two:
Like it or not, 1998 was indeed a super El Nino event, temperatures soared, and in 1999 subsided.
Here is another image worth looking at, which shows sea level change related to the ENSO event, but also illustrates how quickly a strong positive anomaly went to a negative one, just like we see in the temperature plot.
From: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/teleconnections/enso/enso-sigevents.php
Now if you have something you’d like to present (besides calling me a moron) that shows 1998 was a uniquely warm year out of the past millenium and it had nothing to do with ENSO, but only CO2, feel free to present it here.
But if your reply is like the last one containing personal insults, it will be snipped, MIT physicist or not.
– Anthony
duckster says:
August 14, 2010 at 9:20 pm
“So is this how you get around the fact that McShane and Wyner is showing almost 2 degrees of warming since 1850? This is way beyond what Mann et al show – and would be truly unprecedented, wouldn’t it?
……
Actually no. That would only be true if you used the bottom portion of the error bars for 1850 and the top portion of the error bars for now. That’s an apples to bananas to oranges comparison.
RR Kampen says:
August 18, 2010 at 1:29 am
“Are you trying to say that in the year 1998 CO2 played no role for just that year? ”
Time and time again, people put the horse before the cart when discussing CO2. It’s the role of scientists to prove that CO2 played a role not to disprove it didn’t. To be clear, if you accept that it is necessary to disprove the point, then you shouldn’t stop there. You’ll need to disprove the data was corrupt, temperature variations were due to natural weather variations and the Greek gods weren’t simply having a bad day.
Over to you to prove CO2 played a role. From MW it appears no material data to suggest otherwise.
It’s back to drawing board old man.
latitude says:
August 18, 2010 at 4:05 pm
“What happened exactly that would have made that last thirty year block “better than chance”?”
Yeh, well, I was doing that more for Neil’s benefit anyway. 😉
Flip a coin 100 times. At some point, I bet you’ll get heads or tails 4 times in a row, which would be better than chance. Chance always looks better than chance sometimes. I think that is where many fallacies start. Something occurs every Wednesday while it is observed, so the natural tendency is to attach the occurrence to every Wednesday. I think that sums up the CAGW alarmism pretty well.
“Dave Springer says:
Ozone is a different story as it has a strong absorption band in ultraviolet where the sun emits strongly as well as in infrared where the ocean emits strongly”
Dave, answer me this. About 6% of the solar energy that hits the Earth is uv; and this shorthwave radiation is absorbed by Ozone. This energy must be reradiated, half going DOWN. So what is the emission spectrum of the ozone layer during daylight?
1998 was caused by CO2!?!?!?!?! Did the CO2 content of the earth’s atmosphere suddenly drop then next year? Odd, I don’t recall that occurring. I keep looking at Mauna and I don’t see the spike in the angle nor do I see a drop in the content. Strange.
Holy simplistic bloviating bs Batman!! Will the sophomoric class of 2010 please rise?
McShane and Wyner:
As can be seen in Figure 15, our estimate of the run up in temperature in the 1990s has a much smaller slope than the actual temperature series. Furthermore, the lower frame of Figure 18 clearly reveals that the proxy model is not at all able to track the high gradient segment. Consequently, the long flat handle of the hockey stick is best understood to be a feature of regression and less a reflection of our knowledge of the truth.
What we now have is the HEISENBURG HOCKEY STICK:
either the handle is real but the blade is illusory
or the blade is real but there is no handle
McShance and Wyner attempted to validate the proxies by testing their ability to model the recent upturn in “measured” global temperature in the last 3 decades. The model result from the proxies was also a temperature increase but a much smaller one.
They assumed implicitly that the measured temperature rise is real or “actual” – so thus the proxy modeled result was falsified.
(However logically the proxy based model result could be correct, and the adjusted “measurements” wrong”.)
So they conclude that the failure of the proxies to model the recent and well known temperature curve, combined with other statistical considerations, means that the reconstruction of the last 1000 yrs climate temperature is not statistically valid.
There are two possible conclusions:
(1) M&W are right, the recent temperature rise is real; the failure of proxy based modeling to track it, with recent data where proxies should be most reliable, shows that the whole proxy reconstruction 1000 yrs back must be rejected. So, blade but no handle.
Or
(2) M&W are wrong. The climate temp reconstruction from the proxies both recently and back 1000 yrs is in fact valid. This means however that the proxy reconstruction of a recent shallow temperature rise in the last 30 years is correct and the “measured” steep temp rise is wrong, an artifact of UHI and data massaging. So, handle but no blade.
Thus the “Heisenburg” hockey stick: if the blade is solid, the handle is uncertain. If the handle is well known, the blade fades into uncertainty.
Either blade or handle, not both.
Or in language Joe Romm might recognise, CHECK MATE.
Russell Seitz says:
August 18, 2010 at 4:10 pm
Mr. Watts, I first heard of ENSO at its AMS symposium debut in 1985. As the Southern oscillation is global in scale and decadal in duration, and McS&W lay 4 to 1 odds of ’98 topping the hottest decade of the last millennium, to dismiss it is” a super El Nino anomaly event, not a super global warming event. Weather, not climate.“ does such Moranic violence to the English language that the mind is repelled. […]
REPLY: There’s no reason to call me a moron simply because you disagree.
He didn’t call you a moron, he called you “Moranic.” Maybe he was comparing you to actor Dick Moran. Of course, that would be no less of an insult…
phlogiston says:
August 18, 2010 at 5:53 pm
I think that possibility had been mentioned quite a bit earlier in the thread, maybe only once or twice. I’ve been waiting for someone to articulate that thought as well as you have.
While your point wasn’t specifically stated, I think the statement, Although we assume the reliability of their data for our purposes here,…. probably applies.
Ditto what James said…..
…..that’s what I’ve been getting at
The strength of the hockey stick is showing unprecedented warming.
The only reason it’s unprecedented, is because of the handle.
But even when they initialized with the high true temperatures from 1999 AD and 2000 AD, they were not able to reproduce the blade.
They were not able to reproduce the handle or the blade.
Thank you phlogiston
“What we now have is the HEISENBURG HOCKEY STICK:
either the handle is real but the blade is illusory
or the blade is real but there is no handle”
Richard,
Nonsense. I have repeatedly stated that there was a MWP. For example, this was in my last post to you.
You are mistaken that the “all” the warm peaks in the interactive graph fall within 750 – 1250 AD (same goes for the other hundreds of proxies not included in that map). It won’t harm you to acknowledge that. But it might lead you to a more nuanced view of the difficulties establishing the amplitude, timing and spatial coherence of the MWP.
There is an excellent paper that examines many of the thorny issues with millennial reconstructions. Therein a good number of studies, including MBH are considered and combined. As part of the testing, the controversial US tree proxies are discarded, the Yamal series, Mann’s PC analysis eschewed, and other methods and proxies are either reworked or left out, or retained if they are considered robust.
http://www.geos.ed.ac.uk/homes/ghegerl/cp-2006-0049.pdf
If all of Mann’s studies were discarded, the story generally told by other, multi-proxy, millennial reconstructions matches that which appears in the IPCC.
That is, the MWP seems to have been as warm as the mean of the 20th century, but probably not as warm as the last few decades of the 20th century.
With that in mind, I cannot fathom why there is such triumphalism surrounding criticism of Mann’s 12 year-old papers. Except, perhaps, that the graph from it was much promoted in Canadian schools, at the governmental level, and appeared in people’s letter boxes (it was not so promoted anywhere else), and Canadian Steve McIntyre took exception to that. Now some people seem to believe that this graph was ‘iconic’ worldwide and changed the course of history.
In fact, in the rest of the world, very few people read the IPCC TAR Summary for Policy Makers, very few people would have known what the graph was had it been given to them unlabeled, and the only reason it has emerged into the worldwide public sphere is because of the repeated attempts to portray it as the central pillar of the AGW argument.
That the argument is basically political is apparent in how critics generally do not discuss the findings of MBH 99 from the text of that paper, or even know what they are. It’s all about the graph and perceptions arising from it. As it is for you. Which is why you mistakenly repeat that MBH did away with the MWP and LIA. You would do well to read the paper.
Quote Barry “Now some people seem to believe that this graph was ‘iconic’ worldwide and changed the course of history.
In fact, in the rest of the world, very few people read the IPCC TAR Summary for Policy Makers, very few people would have known what the graph was had it been given to them unlabeled, and the only reason it has emerged into the worldwide public sphere is because of the repeated attempts to portray it as the central pillar of the AGW argument.”
As a non scientist living in the UK I became aware of this graph as part of a presentation in a popular science program on television. It really was the clincher for me that global warming was a fact and that GW was lated to C02 levels. I am quite sure the use of he hockey stick in that program, and others like it, has convinced many ordinary people like me to believe the science was settled and that if we did nothing about burning C02 we were all doomed.
Once I had joined the mindset I discarded listening to the alternative views; my mind became closed on the subject. As a non scientist i only give a small portion of my time to looking at science and questioning what I have been told to believe.
We can see how the media is working; scare stories are picked up and published, rebuttles are boring and under reported. This mechanism has been the engine of the CAGW propaganda success.
Imagine you are a second rate charlatan scientist that craves respect and money, where would you position yourself in this environment? The answer is obvious and it explains why the case for CAGW has often been made by rather disreputable characters. I am of course talking of people like Pachauri (who harvests money through his “charities” that own stakes in the Carbon exchanges and made his “Voodoo Scientist” remarks during the Himalayagate episode. I am talking about M Mann who fakes his own CV to look better than it really is and inverts graphs to suit his wished for conclusions.
Reading this thread I can see that there are many respectable scientists in the side of CAGW debate; there is so much that is not understood and so many counter arguments to the sceptics that need to be thrashed out. I can see that, but I can also see the company the AGW keep and the type of science they defend. I used to have a closed mind towards the sceptics case, nowadays I am rather the other way. I think many of my non scientist friends are also sickened by the constant exaggeration and misrepresentation and plain rudeness of the people making the case for CAGW.
Science has no right to happen in a vacuum; you have to embrace the real world that provide your funds and be moral. The whole hockey stick saga is imbued with immorality. This immorality seems to emanate from flawed characters like Michael Mann and Pachauri.
@NofreeWind
But have the 20th Century even warmed since 1940?, except for the step up with the 98 El Nino. Why not look at the data. The thermometer record from 1940 to 1979 shows NO WARMING, both of them, the satellite record from 1979 to 1997 show NO WARMING, both of them.
Something is very wrong here!
#######################
duckster says:
August 17, 2010 at 7:31 pm
Yeah there’s something very wrong here! You’ve cherry picked the dates to show there was no warming in the 20th century, by choosing the (warm) early 40s, and then comparing them to a date (1979) where warming had not advanced significantly. Extend the satellite records out by even a couple of years and you’ll also get a completely different picture (and one who’s trends match the overall temperature trend). I strongly advise anyone doing this little plot to extend the dates out to cover the whole century, not just the dates that have been pre-chosen for you here.
But nice cherry picking though.
###############################
Duckster, most of here understand and agree there was a step-up of global temperature in 1998, but that was from an El Nino, there is no CO2 footprint whatsoever, the oceans released a tremendous amt of heat in an enormous El Nino, it is likely still with us.
Cherry picking? I showed you 57 years of data, 1940-1997 while CO2 was rising exponentially, from 1,000 MMT of Carbon to almost 7,000 MMT’s!!!!
OK. Let’s extend the data, and this time we’ll use an index which combines the 2 land-based and the 2 satellite series. We’ll go back to 1910, and use Hadley from 1910 to 1979 (BeforeSatellites). Here is what you get, “no-cherry picking”.
What you get is RISING GLOBAL temperatures before 1940, which man made CO2 was “minimal”, so maybe?????……. there can be other forces at work besides “bad-man”. Then we have FLAT GLOBAL temperatures from 1940-1979 while man, in your opinion, is working furiously to poison the world with CO2, natures doesn’t seem to notice though!, then we have the Big El Nino in 1998 and StepUp a paltry .2C? That’s the only REAL global warming that has occurred since 1940??? And it all happened in one year! 1998.
So we are talking about .7C warming in 100 years?? That is all we are talking about. And you trying to convince me that no way jose, the world could never warm an average 1F over a Century? Do you know anything about the geological history of our world. How about the historical record, I suggest you read any of the Brian Fagan books, Little Ice Age and The Great Warming and El Nino. Fagan is a “warmer” – he says so in his preface, but just about every single page of his books give archeological and historical proof of climate change must more drastic than we happen to be experiencing right now. We haven’t seen nothing yet!!!
The weather from literature:
the mwp:
http://booty.org.uk/booty.weather/climate/751_999.htm
Many notably cold winters
the lia:
http://booty.org.uk/booty.weather/climate/1650_1699.htm
Many notably hot summers.
Of course, to accept what the temperature chart and mans CO2 contribution chart really tell use, you would have to accept that just about every scientific organization in this world is completely corrupt. You would have to believe that every high school biology textbook in the US and much of the world is nothing but ideological “drivel”. You would have to believe that just about every TV and major print outlet have been printing nothing but propoganda and capitalizing on your naivetity. You would have to believe that we are completely wasting billions of dollars and millions of man hours, (such as in reading this blog), on absolutely nothingness. You would have to believe that there are vast wings of Government(s) employing and funding thousands of highly educated, VERY smart people, who in reality are doing nothing but wasting their time in frivolous pursuit, living in an imaginary world, that will ultimately make our world a worse place to live.
In the end you would have to believe that the bad are good and the good are bad. Many would have to accept that in the quest to “be good”, they have been duped into “being bad”. For many, what I would term their religion, would be lost.
Pamela Gray says,
“Do the models have a CO2 variable that reproduced the recent rise?”
Do all thousand year hockey sticks have a variable that reproduces, or encourages, 1,000 year hockey sticks?
1ky graph
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/co2/graphics/lawdome.smooth75.gif
Law Dome CO2 ice data
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/co2/lawdome.html
Interesting how the CO2 levels and multiproxy temp series are a neat fit. Of course if you believe that temp changes in the past 1,000 years could only be due to anthropogenic CO2 inputs, then the proxies graphs would have to visually feel like the historic CO2 graphs. And if one believes the proxies graphs must look like the CO2, one can mess the CO2 data into the mishmash of inputs.
MIT physicist
Uhh…like shootin’ ducks in a barrel. They typically are over confident, so they over extend, etc.
barry says:
August 18, 2010 at 7:00 pm
Hi barry!
You amaze me in how correct you can be while missing the point entirely.
You said, “……With that in mind, I cannot fathom why there is such triumphalism surrounding criticism of Mann’s 12 year-old papers. Except, perhaps, that the graph from it was much promoted in Canadian schools, at the governmental level, and appeared in people’s letter boxes (it was not so promoted anywhere else), and Canadian Steve McIntyre took exception to that. Now some people seem to believe that this graph was ‘iconic’ worldwide and changed the course of history.
First, Mann has 2 papers out that say essentially the same thing. It isn’t simply the oldest one, but you know that already. (Many others use the same data and/or methodologies.) The graph wasn’t simply promoted in Canadian schools. But you know that, also. The graph was/is “iconic”. But you know that, still.
You said, “In fact, in the rest of the world, very few people read the IPCC TAR Summary for Policy Makers, very few people would have known what the graph was had it been given to them unlabeled, and the only reason it has emerged into the worldwide public sphere is because of the repeated attempts to portray it as the central pillar of the AGW argument.
Only because it was a launch, of sorts, for the AGW argument. True, very few read the IPCC TAR Summary for Policy Makers, but there isn’t a soul that has a TV or a computer in a first world nation that hasn’t seen the graph tied to the AGW movement/theory.
You said, That the argument is basically political is apparent in how critics generally do not discuss the findings of MBH 99 from the text of that paper, or even know what they are. It’s all about the graph and perceptions arising from it. As it is for you. Which is why you mistakenly repeat that MBH did away with the MWP and LIA.
I agree, however, it is disturbing to note that Mike Mann didn’t correct the errant perception. Certainly he had ample opportunity. Neither did any other AGW scientist of note. The graph was iconic. The press conveyed it as truth. The populace perceived the press as truthful. All the while, nary a correction or clarification from anybody until after a couple of studies that refuted the graph. Oh, and a few international agreements and several laws passed on the basis of the belief in the graph’s representation of truth.
Barry, I’d be happy to discuss CAGW with you or anyone else on an hypothetical level. But that isn’t where the world is at in this discussion. The world is acting upon impressions. Laws are being passed. Treaties are being signed. Lives and livelihoods are being destroyed. Why? Because the perception of the graph is deemed scientific proof.
And no one but a skeptic stands up to say, “wait”, there may be a misconception about reality here! All the while people like Mann, Hansen and Jones, ad nauseum remain silent while people like you say, “He didn’t explicitly say that!”
Barry, I didn’t say that to be mean or condescending in any manner. It’s just I don’t think you’re aware of the ramifications of pursuing this question in the manner the world is presently pursuing it. We can’t starve people while we try to understand all of the dynamics of our climate! We may never know all of the dynamics of our climate. IT IS WRONG on any and every level.
825 responses, quite a bit of debate.
Funny though that the masses of people don’t listen to the science. There are some who do actually care about the science. But for the average person who hasn’t taken the time to check the science for themselves (it’s a shame, and a bit frightening, that most people verify nothing) ClimateGate, and longer winters, are the ruling factors. So poll numbers show most people are not worried about global warming.
The average person has never heard of the Hockey Stick, or Steve McIntyre, or Anthony Watts, and unfortunately never will. They know about Al Gore’s movie, they know longer winters, and they’ve got a whiff that global warming scientists have been doing tricks. That’s it—then they go back to texting, the internet, 3D movies, video games, tv, and porn.
WattsUpWithThat really ought to be in the top 100 web sites in the world instead of down where it is. What most people like to go to is in the top 100. (Some of the top 10 would shock most people.)
This debating over graphs, positive/negative feedback, and Arctic ice, etc, is interesting and fun for most here. And I’d like to think we are changing the world. But, unfortunately, the debate never gets into the mainstream of life. If it did it would fly immediately over people’s heads.
SO THANK GOD FOR CLIMATEGATE!!! 🙂
That all too familiar 2001 IPCC graph, together with Gore’s horror sci-fi movie version, would have left millions (including me) with the impression that the N H temperature (and by implication the global T.) was on a steady slight downslope, varying little more than 0.2°C from a linear mean until c. 1900 then suddenly shot up concurrently with a rise in CO2 concentration, while the Armagh and Central England records show swings of 1°C either side of a mean.
http://www.john-daly.com/stations/cet-1659.gif
In that context, the 0.8°C leap c. 1900 – 2010 is unremarkable.
Why was a graph conjured up by a clique of already committed CAGW shysters based on dodgy proxy data accepted as kosher, while two perfectly acceptable instrumental records, even accepting the limitations of the early data, were ignored?
Richard,
As an experiment since my last post, I removed all the labels from the graph, printed it and showed it to some of my family and a couple of friends (5 people). None of them knew what it was. I asked them all to make a guess, and only one of them figured it was a global temperature graph – but they thought it was for the thermometer record.
They all have televisions and personal computers. 🙂
I would guess that a few thousand people in the world (outside climate scientists) would know what that graph represents unless they read the labels.
Anyone else wants to try the experiment, here is a link to the unlabeled graph.
Select friends and family who don’t spend their time in climate blogs and see how many can accurately tell you what it is. I intend to press on and see how many people guess. I will select people who are unaware of my interest in climate science so that I don’t skew the results.
(1 family member and 1 of my friends knew of my interest – it was that friend who guessed incorrectly that the graph represented the global thermometer record)
Re: Barry, sounds like a perfect study on your part =)
Too bad policy is not being driven by your friends and relatives. The point here is that the hockey stick has been a huge factor in the overselling of propaganda to key persons in activist groups, government and international bodies. I do not think that anyone can deny this or the importance of unprecedented warming.
To go back to the paper I am still surprised at how many people look at the back cast graph in the wrong way. This has been said numerous times, but please note that the important part is not the authors red line but the gray area. The red line is just a guess but the actual temperature (if you believe Manns proxies are accurate in the first place) could just as well be any line of any variation drawn within the gray area.
James Sexton says:
August 18, 2010 at 9:34 pm:
James you finish this piece off so well, I wanted to find the words but you have said them for me. Australia in on the brink of an election (21st August) and this issue is up there with the best of them, immigration, economy, energy etc. People are arguing who will do the best job of tackling an issue that needs no tackling. We do not need wind farms and a tax on everything. The press are just as much to blame for their one -eyed approach. Below is the bit that says it all.
Barry, I’d be happy to discuss CAGW with you or anyone else on an hypothetical level. But that isn’t where the world is at in this discussion. The world is acting upon impressions. Laws are being passed. Treaties are being signed. Lives and livelihoods are being destroyed. Why? Because the perception of the graph is deemed scientific proof.
And no one but a skeptic stands up to say, “wait”, there may be a misconception about reality here! All the while people like Mann, Hansen and Jones, ad nauseum remain silent while people like you say, “He didn’t explicitly say that!”
barry:
I am now convinced that your arguments are an attempt to deflect this thread from a comment that I made and onto a tangent. So, I shall address the pertinent parts of your post at August 18, 2010 at 7:00 pm and touch on the tangential issue after that.
The part of your paper that is directly pertinent to this thread says:
“There is an excellent paper that examines many of the thorny issues with millennial reconstructions. Therein a good number of studies, including MBH are considered and combined. As part of the testing, the controversial US tree proxies are discarded, the Yamal series, Mann’s PC analysis eschewed, and other methods and proxies are either reworked or left out, or retained if they are considered robust.
http://www.geos.ed.ac.uk/homes/ghegerl/cp-2006-0049.pdf
If all of Mann’s studies were discarded, the story generally told by other, multi-proxy, millennial reconstructions matches that which appears in the IPCC.
That is, the MWP seems to have been as warm as the mean of the 20th century, but probably not as warm as the last few decades of the 20th century.
With that in mind, I cannot fathom why there is such triumphalism surrounding criticism of Mann’s 12 year-old papers.”
THAT IS NOT TRUE.
The paper you cite is NOT “an excellent paper that examines many of the thorny issues with millennial reconstructions”. It is – as its title says – an intercomparison of some proxy studies. Which ones? Well that paper says;
“This paper reviews reconstructions of past temperature, on the global, hemispheric, or near hemispheric scale, by Jones et al. (1998) [JBB1998], Mann et al. (1998) [MBH1998], Mann et al. (1999) [MBH1999], Huang et al. (2000) [HPS2000], Crowley and Lowery (2000) [CL2000], Briffa et al. (2001) [BOS2001], Esper et al. (2002) [ECS2002], Mann and Jones (2003) [MJ2003], Moberg et al. (2005) [MSH2005], Oerlemans (2005) [OER2005], and Hegerl et al. (2007a) [HCA2007].”
So, that paper is an intercomparison of the studies which used the flawed statistical analysis method adopted by MBH. The paper of McS&W proves that analysis method provides worthless results so it disproves the indications of ALL those studies.
Therefore, it is disingenuous for you to assert that ;
“If all of Mann’s studies were discarded, the story generally told by other, multi-proxy, millennial reconstructions matches that which appears in the IPCC.”
The paper of McS&W proves their “story” is a fairy tale.
So, you are plain wrong when, on the basis of those discredited studies, you assert;
“the MWP seems to have been as warm as the mean of the 20th century, but probably not as warm as the last few decades of the 20th century.”
The individual proxy studies of individual proxies (e.g. stalagtites) from around the show a general picture of the world being warmer than now in the MWP. And those studies do not suffer from the same statistical defect as the MBH and similar studies which you proclaim.
Indeed, the studies from single locations cannot suffer from the assumption of ‘teleconnections’ that is used by MBH and similar studies because they do not use any such assumption. And the paper by McS&M proves that assumption adds great inherent error to the results of the MBH analysis method.
And you say;
“With that in mind, I cannot fathom why there is such triumphalism surrounding criticism of Mann’s 12 year-old papers.”
This seems to be a meme that has been generated since the McS&M paper was submitted for publication. Even Michael Mann has been saying that he thinks his ‘hockey stick’ should not have been used as a “poster child” of AGW.
This seems to be a policy of tactical retreat.
But there is no ”triumphalism” over the retreat. There is only proclamation and despair.
The ‘hockey stick’ is a zombie. It has been repeatedly destroyed by M&M, Wegman, North, and etc. but it keeps on having a life of its own by being promulgated by AGW supporters as having some validity. Indeed, you try to continue it when you assert:
“If all of Mann’s studies were discarded, the story generally told by other, multi-proxy, millennial reconstructions matches that which appears in the IPCC.”
But ,
ALL THOSE RECONSTRUCTIONS HAVE BEEN SHOWN TO BE WORTHLESS BY THE McS&M PAPER.
The hope is that the McS&M paper is the ‘silver bullet’ that will finally get rid of the zombie. And that is why it is being proclaimed (n.b. not triumphed).
You make an Orwellian assertion that;
“In fact, in the rest of the world, very few people read the IPCC TAR Summary for Policy Makers, very few people would have known what the graph was had it been given to them unlabeled, and the only reason it has emerged into the worldwide public sphere is because of the repeated attempts to portray it as the central pillar of the AGW argument.”
Do you really think that anybody here has so imperfect a memory that they do not know the ‘hockey stick’ was the “proof” of AGW which was presented in thr SPM of IPCC Third Assessment Report (TAR)?
And you follow that with ad hom and falsehood when you conclude saying;
“That the argument is basically political is apparent in how critics generally do not discuss the findings of MBH 99 from the text of that paper, or even know what they are. It’s all about the graph and perceptions arising from it. As it is for you. Which is why you mistakenly repeat that MBH did away with the MWP and LIA. You would do well to read the paper.”
Your insinuation that I have not read MBH98 and MBH99 is unfounded and silly. But your claim that the “argument is basically political” is correct because that is why the IPCC proclaimed it in their Summary For Policymakers. However, your assertion that my opposition to that piece of psudo-science is an unfounded insult. My opposition to it is summarised in a peer review comment I provided IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (AR4): that said;
Page 1-13 Chapter 1 Section 1.5.2 Line 36
For accuracy and completeness, after “(IPCC, 2001a)” it is very, very important to add:
“However, since the TAR several studies have provided doubt to that work of Mann et al.. Many studies provide data that conflict with the findings of that work of Mann et al. (e.g. Beltrami et al) (ref. Beltrami et al “Long-term tracking of climate change by underground temperatures”, Geophysical Research Letters v.12 (2005) ). In 2005 McIntyre and McKitrick published two papers that together provide a complete refutation of that work of Mann et al. (ref. McIntyre S & McKitrick R, Energy & Environment, v 16, no.1 (2005)) (2005), Geophysical Research Letters Vol. 32, No. 3, (2005)). But, perhaps the most important of their studies of that work of Mann et al. was their publication in 2003 (ref. McIntyre S & McKitrick R, Energy & Environment, v 24, pp 751-771 (2003)) that showed it is not possible to replicate the work of Mann et al. There are several reasons for the inability to replicate this work of Mann et al.; not least that Mann refuses to reveal his source codes. The inability to replicate this work of Mann et al. means it has no scientific worth: i.e. this work of Mann et al. is anecdote of similar kind to a report of a ghost sighting. Hence, the IPCC now apologises for including it in the TAR. The IPCC will now disregard this work of Mann et al. and recommends that all others should also disregard it until it can be – and has been – independently replicated.”
But my recommendation was ignored and the AR4 only made a bland comment that natural variability has been found to be greater than indicated in the TAR.
THAT IS POLITICAL.
I conclude by addressing the tangential issue. Your post at August 18, 2010 at 7:00 pm asserts that you have not tried to dispute the existence of the MWP. In that case, I fail to understand the point of your post at August 18, 2010 at 6:56 am that claims some individual proxy studies show warming and cooling that are out of phase with the bulk of studies which show the MWP.
Richard
Deep Climate has just posted its response to the paper:
McShane and Wyner 2010
barry:
Your comment at August 18, 2010 at 11:22 pm is addressed to me but quotes and answers a point from James Sexton (at August 18, 2010 at 7:00 pm), not me.
However, the point made by James is valid. And your family do not make laws; politicians do that.
The’hockey stick’ was presented as proof of AGW to politicians in the Summary for Policymakers of the IPCC TAR.
Richard
This from ‘Deep Climate’ courtesy of the ‘duckster,
Big surprise too! Not.
Lots of talk about the RE value and RMSE (hope I got that right) but nary a word about the R2 statistic/validation. Lots of history too (?). They refer to Wegman’s congressional testimony as lacking peer-review? I’m tired, I probably got that wrong, anyway here’s the ending (if it was a movie I wouldn’t post this, but you already knew what was coming…didn’t ya ;>).
“So there you have it. McShane and Wyner’s background exposition of the scientific history of the “hockey stick” relies excessively on “grey” literature and is replete with errors, some of which appear to be have been introduced through a misreading of secondary sources, without direct consultation of the cited sources. And the authors’ claims concerning the performance of “null” proxies are clearly contradicted by findings in two key studies cited at length, Mann et al 2008 and Ammann and Wahl 2007.These contradictions are not even mentioned, let alone explained, by the authors.
In short, this is a deeply flawed study and if it were to be published as anything resembling the draft I have examined, that would certainly raise troubling questions about the peer review process at the Annals of Applied Science.”
I had to laugh when I read this last sentence…I’m going to bed.
@ Mike Roddy
The fish stocks haz delpeted bcoz we haz eated em. om nom nom.
I’ve read the Deep Climate response and all of the comments above, and to me the bottom line is this: Mann’s reconstruction is indefensible. If it is true that Mann hasn’t revealed his source code, it is high time for him to do so. If he refuses, then his interpretation is simply a figment of his personal imagination and is meaningless.
I found the Deep Climate response to be a lot of deflection from this key point. They seem to be highly concerned about a lot of other areas–as if those will somehow compensate for Mann’s lack of transparency and professionalism, but they do not.
I’ve said it several times in the past but it bears repeating: If a “scientist” refuses to show either his data or his methodology, then he is not a scientist at all. He is a charlatan.
“hunter says:
August 17, 2010 at 3:31 pm
One question from a sserious person I have seen is why did MW not use a fourier transformation in their analysis?
Any insights on this would be greatly appreciated.
I guess the followup question would be did Mann use an FT? If so, why? If not, why not?”
Fourier Transforms…. Damn that was a long time ago… Fourier Analysis as we used it in Physiscs would be used to find out what mixture of frequencies would make up your resulting signal. As far as your second question goes, isn’t looking for underlying cyclic patterns the exact antithesis of what being a CAGWanker is all about……:-)
I was just daydreaming about how lucky Michael Mann is that he “studies” climate science and isn’t selling mining shares. If he were, he’d probably be cooling his heels alongside Bernie Madoff.
But, because he does what he does in the name of something greater than himself (although I don’t believe that for a moment), we’re stuck with him….
…hawking the snake oil from town to town, refusing to give up, despite the fact he knows – and he knows we know and he doesn’t care – until he’s stopped, run out of town on a rail, tarred and feathered. Until then, it will continue to be the same old story.
He will never change, apologize, admit a mistake.
Simply and sadly: he needs to be stopped. …Lady in Red
PS: I just skimmed Deep Climate’s review of McShane and Wyner. I wish I could assess it. I cannot. I find DC much more credible, albeit petty about details to the exclusion of the larger message, than Romm, Gavin or Tamino or Eli. I would find it helpful to read a reaction to his analysis. I, along with other questioning folk I’m sure, have been banned from posting on his site. He don’t like questions! I wonder who he is.
barry says:
August 18, 2010 at 11:22 pm
Thanks, printed and now will test. BTW, isn’t that a mash-up of both proxy and temp?
Barry,
I did the same experiment. 2 out of 10 thought it a temp graph. The fact they thought it was a temp graph is because that is the way it is presented to the public. I don’t think I can add much to Richard S Courtney’s comments or the one I made that you perhaps thought was Richard’s. Again, I believe you’re missing the point.
Scott Walter says:
August 18, 2010 at 4:38 pm
It’s the role of scientists to prove that CO2 played a role not to disprove it didn’t.
Nonsense. Proving something in an empirical science is fiction. Which is why we scientists always come with utterances like ‘very likely’ (check AR4). You are suggesting that Relativity Theory has no value because it cannot be proven in the sense you seem to want proof. This means that your screen is not functioning and you cannot read my post.
To be clear, if you accept that it is necessary to disprove the point, then you shouldn’t stop there. You’ll need to disprove the data was corrupt, temperature variations were due to natural weather variations and the Greek gods weren’t simply having a bad day.
You tell me to disprove the Greek gods had a bad day. Very well. First prove to me the Greek gods exist. The prove to me the Greek gods can actually have good days and bad ones. Then maybe I can oblige.
Over to you to prove CO2 played a role.
CO2 very likely played a role, it being a greenhouse gas whose concentration is rising very strongly. There are no apparent other mechanisms that do the two things necessary to deny AGW: 1) ensure that CO2 has NO effect and 2) the mechanism DOES create the effect. It is the burden of AGW-skeptics to prove their point; meantime AGW-theory is simply the best theory explaining recent quick warming.
It’s back to drawing board old man.
Okay: http://weerwoord.be/includes/forum_read.php?id=1171935&tid=1171935
Dave Springer says:
August 18, 2010 at 7:19 am
@Gail Combs August 18, 2010 at 5:24 am
The US ranks in or near the top 20 in scientific literacy….
____________________________________________________-
That is not what the studies show:
“For 10 years, William Schmidt, a statistics professor at Michigan State University, has looked at how U.S. students stack up against students in other countries in math and science. “In fourth-grade, we start out pretty well, near the top of the distribution among countries; by eighth-grade, we’re around average, and by 12th-grade, we’re at the bottom of the heap, outperforming only two countries, Cyprus and South Africa.”
http://www.enterstageright.com/archive/articles/0804/0804textbooks.htm
… Surveys of corporations consistently find that businesses are focused outside • the U.S. to recruit necessary talent. In a 2002 survey, 16 global corporations complained that American schools did not produce students with global skills. United States companies agreed. The survey found that 30 percent of large U.S. companies “believed they had failed to exploit fully their international business opportunities due to insufficient personnel with international skills.” One respondent to the survey even noted, “If I wanted to recruit people who are both technically skilled and culturally aware, I wouldn’t even waste time looking for them on U.S. college campuses.”
…the U.S. ranks 21st out of 29 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries in mathematics scores, with nearly one-quarter of students unable to solve the easiest level of questions….In 2000, 28 percent of all freshmen entering a degree-granting institution required remedial coursework
http://www.edreform.com/_upload/CER_JunkFoodDiet.pdf
The kids that are home schooled or go to private schools like Phillips Academy, do quite well. Also many of those graduating from US Universities are foreign students. However our government education is terrible.
The substantial [sic] complaint against this paper is stated thus:
DCA, engineer says:
August 17, 2010 at 1:24 pm
Has anyone seen this comment on Deltoid and would like to address it?
“The funny thing is that this paper actually replicates Mann et al. 2008 without even noticing it…
To partake in this dirty little secret, see their Figure 14 on page 30: the blue curve is wiggle-identical and practically a photocopy of Mann’s corresponding EIV NH land curve. As it should be. The higher (green) curve they canonize and which is shown above is the result of an error: they calibrate their proxies against hemispherical mean temperature, which is a poor measure of forced variability. The instrumental PC1 which the blue curve is based on, is a much better measure; its EOF contains the polar amplification effect. What it means is that high-latitude proxies, in order to be made representative for global temperatures, should be downweighted. The green curve fails to do this. Thus, high latitudes are overrepresented in this reconstruction, which is why the “shaft” is at such an angle, due to the Earth axis’s changing tilt effect on the latitudinal temperature dependence described in Kaufman et al. 2009.
The authors have no way of detecting such an error as their RMSE goodness-of-fit seems to be also based around the hemispherical average…”
Eli sums this up succinctly:
1. Eli Rabett says:
August 17, 2010 at 5:36 am
Well yeah, the science team always looks at things, and finds answers. It looks like the basic error on this one is that by calibrating against the hemispheric average, rather than smaller grid cells, they loose information and kill the signal to noise. Averaging out the local signal means that noise looks better than signal and in their words, noise provides a better fit than the proxys. There are, however, some other useful ideas in the paper.
Firstly, this is ironic since Mann in both his hockeystick papers calibrated regional proxies with other regional proxies seperated by time and space; this ‘method’ was also demonstrated in his Antarctic warming paper co-authored with Steig; the proxies Mann uses are calibrated to are “less than or equal to” the base proxy but can be anywhere or anytime; they can also be used more than once and are averaged against the criteria and each other. The proxies are then calibrated with the instrumental data which has been infilled back to 1850; any proxy which does not calibrate with the instrumental data is discarded. the final proxy/instrument hybrid is averaged to give hemispheric averages even though favourably calibrated proxies may not have come from the hemisphere.
So, is this a better ‘method’ of extracting a meaningful temperature history then what M&W do, which, as eli says, is to calibrate each proxy against hemispheric temps? Arguably it is not because it reflects the old dispute about whether a GMST or a world average temp is a proper reflection of regional climate effects. [ see: http://pielkeclimatesci.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/r-321.pdf ] The Mann method smooths the regional effect and ultimately submerges it in the hemispheric averages. The M&W method preserves regional integrity and correctly uses that to generate a meaningful picture of hemispheric and GMST.
1 He lied and/or cheated
2. He doesn’t what he is/was doing
Cucinelli can now proceed. the lawers now have solid proof
I read the critique at Deep Climate, this is my response I posted there.
“So you spend half of this post to refute their interpretation historical events not related to the actual study?
You stated “But not so fast. The proper comparison is really with the very first and very last blocks – the ones actually used in climate studies. And those two blocks tell a very different story.” Isn’t that what they said? In as simple terms as I can……This is a time/temp series. The fact that 2 separate time block preformed well and all other didn’t doesn’t validate anything. In fact it calls into question the entire proxy series. This is much akin to looking at a clock and noting that it is correct twice a day, yet incorrect much of the other parts of the day but because it is correct twice a day the clock is correct. It doesn’t work that way.
Frankly, after reading your response to M&W, I agree, there are questions that probably need answered before stating the paper is valid. But you show little proof behind your conclusion statement. Probably because you spent half your time disputing irrelevant sequences of events. The history of the hockey stick isn’t relevant to the study itself, but rather relevant to the impetus. Which in the end, who really cares why they choose to write a paper on the reliability of proxy data? <—— Remember that? That was the purpose of the study, not historical sequences of a graph debate. Which, btw, I'll have to check but I don't believe you have it proper either.
In another part of your conclusion, you state, “So there you have it. McShane and Wyner’s background exposition of the scientific history of the “hockey stick” relies excessively on “grey” literature…”
Reading the paper, “We are not the first to observe this effect. It was shown, in McIntyre and McKitrick (2005a,c),” and “This approach is similar to that of McIntyre and McKitrick (2005a,c) who use the full empirical autocorrelation function to generate trend-less pseudo-proxies.” Those are the only 2 references in the actual study(unlike you, I don’t include the introduction as part of the study) to McIntyre and McKitrick and it is quite obvious they didn’t use them in the study but only cite observations that are similar. Wegman is cited once in the conclusions to verify their statement, “While the literature is large, there has been very little collaboration with university level, professional statisticians.” I suppose you could disagree with that statement, perhaps you and I can get a grant and study whether that statement is true of false and then submit our conclusion to a climate journal and get peer-reviewed so we could know if in fact climatologists consult with statisticians or not.(Because apparently, only selected climate journals are arbiters of truth.) That being said, I’ve gotta ask, what grey literature are M&W relying upon? Reading your critique, you state it is a flawed paper, but mostly you cited their statements in the introduction not relevant to the study itself. Further, you state they rely on gray literature. Where, and in what manner do they rely upon gray literature? You state the proxies are valid because they perform well in the parts you deem important. Sir, your critique is flawed. Try again. Thanks.”
RR Kampen says:
August 19, 2010 at 6:18 am
There are no apparent other mechanisms
====================================
Of course there is RR.
The most obvious is the climate changes.
To prove AGW you have to believe that temp proxies are correct, it’s unprecedented, computer games are correct, etc.
To disprove AGW all you have to do is go with the most obvious. It’s been warmer in the past, CO2 has been higher, extremely high levels of CO2 did not insulate the planet or prevent an ice age, the oceans hold and release CO2 according to temps, and on and on………
The whole AGW theory could not be any shakier or weaker if you look at it.
RRKampen:
At August 19, 2010 at 6:18 am you assert:
“CO2 very likely played a role, it being a greenhouse gas whose concentration is rising very strongly. There are no apparent other mechanisms that do the two things necessary to deny AGW: 1) ensure that CO2 has NO effect and 2) the mechanism DOES create the effect. It is the burden of AGW-skeptics to prove their point; meantime AGW-theory is simply the best theory explaining recent quick warming.”
Sorry, but No! The AGW hypothesis is denied by observations.
The absence of the tropospheric ‘hot spot’ is direct evidence that the positive feedbacks required for CAGW are NOT happening.
In fact, nothing the AGW hypothesis predicts has been observed and the opposite of some of its predictions is observed.
1.
The anthropogenic emissions and global temperature do not correlate.
2.
Change to atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration follows change to global temperature at all time scales.
3.
Recent rise in global temperature has not been induced by rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations.
Global temperature fell from ~1940 to ~1970, rose to 1998, and has fallen since. That’s 40 years of cooling and 28 years of warming. Global temperature is now similar to that of 1990. But atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration has increased at a near constant rate and by more than 30% since 1940. It has increased by 8% since 1990.
4.
Rise in global temperature has not been induced by anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide.
Over 80% of the emissions have been since 1940 and the emissions have been increasing at a compound rate. But since 1940 there have been 40 years of cooling with only 28 years of warming. There’s been no significant warming since 1995, and global temperature has fallen since the high it had 10 years ago.
5.
The pattern of atmospheric warming predicted by the AGW hypothesis is absent.
The hypothesis predicts most warming of the air relative to the surface at altitude in the tropics. Measurements from weather balloons and from satellites both show slight cooling relative to the surface at altitude in the tropics.
Simply, the AGW hypothesis is denied by observations. It is not a “theory”: it is junk.
Richard
Well Mr Romm and company….
Really puts “deniers” in relevant context and gives it a meaning!!
Richard,
It doesn’t seem so. Jukes 2007 discusses the different methodologies and weighs the pros and cons.
Different methods are then described.
M&M (2005) chief criticisms of MBH 1999 are the “impact of the standardisation
of the proxy records prior to principal component calculation and the other to the validity of specific proxy data(bristlecone pines) as indicators of past temperature variations.” That method is not common to the other papers, and that proxy data does not appear in all of them. Indeed, the ‘Union’ composite that the authors produce is tested without the Mannian PA analysis, and without the bristle cone pines.
But perhaps you are thinking of an alternative, contentious methodology common to the papers. If so, name it, or describe it, and I will attempt to cross-reference (although, I’d be appreciative if you would help me out by substantiating with references).
cohenite:
Thanks for your reply.
I noticed you were making comments on deltoid, which is where the issue was first raised, however I didn’t see you make the same reply there. Was your reply blocked?
So a non-appearance in places is an indication that I’m singing there? My costumers are relieved at how little work they have to do for this performance.
James Sexton says:
August 17, 2010 at 7:56 pm
latitude says:
August 17, 2010 at 5:17 pm
“One question before I stick both feet in my mouth…
Didn’t Mann substitute the tree ring data with real temperature data for the last 30 years?”
Sort of, his trick. He merged the data on the graph to make it look seamless, when in fact, the proxy data, using his methodologies diverged significantly from the temp record. Apparently, the reason why this was successful is because most alarmists respond to pictures more than they do numbers or words. (See this entire thread for evidence of my prior sentence.)
Actually he didn’t do that, he superposed the temperature record in a contrasting color and clearly indicated in the legend that he had done so.
barry:
At August 19, 2010 at 8:13 am you assert that the paper you cited (i.e.
http://www.geos.ed.ac.uk/homes/ghegerl/cp-2006-0049.pdf )
is not an intercomparison of the studies which used the flawed statistical analysis method adopted by MBH.
Firstly, the title of the paper is
“Millennial temperature reconstruction intercomparison and evaluation”
so I think we can agree that it is an intercomparison.
But you list various differences between the adopted reconstructions and cite the paper as saying:
“One factor which complicates the evaluation of the various reconstructions is that different authors have varied both method and data collections….
In addition, the above works also use a range of techniques. The subsections
below cover different scientific themes…”.
However, the McS&M paper considered the statistical methodology adopted by MBH and not the “scientific themes”. Importantly, the McS&M paper did not consider the data and/or its sources: indeed, it accepts and uses the MBH data for the purpose of its analysis. So, variations in the “data collections” are not pertinent.
Most of the differences you cite are differences in data selection and, therefore, they are not relevant to consideration of their validation (or invalidation) by use of the MBH statistical method.
Similarly, different calibration choices used in the reconstructions are not relevant.
And the weightings that the papers apply to various proxies are not relevant, either. Indeed, those weightings merely reflect the prejudices of the people who chose the different weightings.
The other differences are trivial to this discussion in that all the compared time series are obtained by use of the basic MBH methodology.
Furthermore, in some cases the slight differences from the MBH method enhance the problem: e.g. as you say, the paper you cite says;
“Moberg et al. (2005)… discard the low frequency components of the tree-ring data and replace them with information from proxies with lower temporal resolution.”
Deliberately reducing the temporal resolution inhibits ability to observe magnitudes and rates of changes because they are ‘smeared’ over longer time.
And, switching the discussion to the M&M criticisms – as your message attempts to do – does not help. The M&M criticisms have often been attacked and have withstood all attacks. But we are here discussing the McS&M criticism.
Richard
James, kudos to you for helping me test the notion that the MBH 1999 graph is ‘iconic’.
So, they didn’t know what it was exactly?
Madonna and Child is iconic. 7 out of 10 adults in first world nations will recognize the statue of David. I’m pretty confident that virtually no one outside the climate wars will know that the graph, unlabeled, is an estimate 1000 years of global temperatures, or that it appeared in the IPCC.
That was the point. The new one introduced since I last replied is that this graph has had a great impact on governments around the world. So now I’ll address that.
After it was introduced in 2001, my own government, and the US government (and the Czech government, amongst others) remained skeptical of climate change. It wasn’t until the 2007 report, which doesn’t have the MBH 99 graph in the summary for policy makers, that the then government started changing its tune (similar in the US). The current Australian government speaks of the instrumental record, not the last 1000 years. The opposition leader – skeptic – does not talk about Mann et al, but ‘cooling since 1998.’ The graph does not appear in An Inconvenient Truth.
I note that 9 years after this graph appeared, governments around the world have done little to address climate change. In fact, observing government response to date makes me wonder why skeptics are worried.
I think pinning any governmental momentum towards climate change mitigation (such as it is) on a single millennial temperature reconstruction graph is pure speculation, ridiculously simplistic and just wrong. If governments are piqued by this thousand-year record, the first thing they will ask is, “how reliable is it?” The IPCC reports are, after all, agreed on line by line. Government reps at the UN would be familiar with the amplitudes and uncertainty, having participated in great detail with the report. They report back to their political masters, who would like nothing better than for the issue to go away.
The IPCC does NOT say that the graph in MBH 1999 is the ‘truth’, and politicians, for all that they are compromised and, well, political are generally not stupid, especially when it comes to contentious issues that may impact their economies.
One thing I will agree with – the Canadian government promoted the MBH 1999 graph as they campaigned for climate change policies, and that the graph achieved an almost iconic status for a brief time in that country.
Do you not imagine that each national executive is rather more influenced by the instrumental record, the ‘truth’ of increased temps from increasing cO2 now and into the future, and especiallyprojections that indicate problems in the future? Does a single graphic have significant impact than the full IPCC reports and general conclusions, or the advice given by the major national science academies?
In short, climate skeptics make far more of this single graph than is warranted. The narrative suggesting that AGW can be dealt a stunning blow by making the MWP warmer than recent temps (the really true ‘truth’, no doubt) may be appealing, but it is fanciful. It might feel good to stick swords in the dragon, but should that occur in such a way that it reaches the deluded governments of the world, the impact that will have on future policy will be rather less than you hope for, I’d expect. The relative warmth of the MWP really doesn’t impact the GH theory or projections, and the alarmists can always spin it to say that the climate is even more sensitive to change than was supposed if previous temps swung around so much.
I think we’re beating a dead horse.
(For the record, I’m not interested in persuading anyone that MBH, or the general contention on the MWP is ‘true’. I could care less about that. I’m not an advocate. I’m interested in accuracy, and how people interpret science. No one I personally know, or anyone on these climate blogs is ‘alarmed’ by IPCC climate projections. Some online who blog about it say they are ‘concerned’, at the most. Instead, the alarmist views I tend to come across are those espousing economic Armageddon from mitigation, and conspiracy theories about self-interested, or socialistc (take your pick) climate scientists)
Phil. says:
August 19, 2010 at 8:51 am
James Sexton says:
August 17, 2010 at 7:56 pm
latitude says:
August 17, 2010 at 5:17 pm
“Actually he didn’t do that, he superposed the temperature record in a contrasting color and clearly indicated in the legend that he had done so.”
Right, let me clarify. I needed a magnifying glass to determine the “superposing”. Clearly indicated in the legend is quite a stretch, but I would note all of his clarifying remarks after it was obvious that so many people misunderstood what he was showing. He clarified the misunderstanding by stating………..absolutely nothing.
Nice stretch and reach.
Richard, you said that the studies in the paper I cited all “used the flawed statistical analysis method adopted by MBH,” thereby dismissing them all as independent corroborators.
I think I showed it didn’t. That the study was an “intercomparison” does not mean there was commonality of methods between the nominated studies.
intercomparison
“A comparison made between diverse elements”
Let’s deal with this directly, yes?
Please name the the “flawed statistical analysis method” common to the studies listed. Acronyms or short-hand will do.
barry says:
August 19, 2010 at 9:08 am
Barry, I’m at work, so I probably won’t have time to properly address everything you stated, but …”No one I personally know, or anyone on these climate blogs is ‘alarmed’ by IPCC climate projections.”…….So how did we get from where you and your acquaintances are to the EPA control CO2 as a harmful substance?
“The relative warmth of the MWP really doesn’t impact the GH theory or projections, and the alarmists can always spin it to say that the climate is even more sensitive to change than was supposed if previous temps swung around so much.” That’s true, and probably will. I would note, that most of the MWP contention on this thread originates with the “alarmist” side of the discussion. Were it not for the laws and policies being passed, (ethanol, no reliable energy plants being built, EPA’s new found authority over productivity, ect.)I really wouldn’t care about the discussion. My climate observations would be limited to “Boy, it sure is hot/cold out here.”, dependent upon the season.
“It wasn’t until the 2007 report, which doesn’t have the MBH 99 graph in the summary for policy makers,……..” You’re right again, they had generated several more hockey stick graphs by then. I guess one could state Mann’s original was a prototype. Everything seems to have a hockey-stick graph these days. While I understand, and you understand and most in the debate understand that in itself is a trick of perception by scaling the x and y. By it’s very design, it is meant to alarm.
barry says:
August 19, 2010 at 9:08 am
Good post barry, I think you make some rational points but I see the situation differently. I’m a layman in the climate debate but I have been following what happens in the US Congress and House of Representatives very closely for 10 years. I’m left with the impression that the majority of our progressive democrats took for granted that the science was settled. People like US Senator Inhoff and other policy makers who dared to challenge assumptions were ridiculed and charged with being “deniers” whatever that’s supposed to mean. Now we can clearly see through the excellent work by interested citizens and academicians that the science is far from being settled. It appears to me that there are significant data quality issues and statistical analysis issues. If the debate over global warming was restricted to the science community, where is should stay until a true consensus is reached, then it wouldn’t be a critical issue for the general public.
What has happened in the US, however, is special interest groups have used the global warming issue as a way to force their vision for social and political change on the rest of us. These may be well meaning people but they’re asking us to build economic policy on top of bad science. It would be like trying to build a home on a foundation of rubble. I’m not having any of it. I’d urge my fellow US voters to take a hard look at the policy makers that swallowed the global warming story hook, line and sinker. Any policy maker that did may not have the good old fashion common sense needed in these challenging times. I would also urge you to support people like Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli and others trying to get to the bottom of how US taxpayer dollars may be involved in unethical practices at public institutions.
James Sexton says:
August 19, 2010 at 9:45 am
barry says:
August 19, 2010 at 9:08 am
“It wasn’t until the 2007 report, which doesn’t have the MBH 99 graph in the summary for policy makers,……..” You’re right again, they had generated several more hockey stick graphs by then. I guess one could state Mann’s original was a prototype. Everything seems to have a hockey-stick graph these days. While I understand, and you understand and most in the debate understand that in itself is a trick of perception by scaling the x and y. By it’s very design, it is meant to alarm.
Don’t you realize that you diminish the case you’re trying to make when you make stuff up? The Paleoclimate section of the 2007 Summary for Policymakers doesn’t have any graphs in it but refers to section 6 of WG I where the relevant graph does include the MBH 99 graph and explicitly discusses it in the body.
Phil. says:
August 19, 2010 at 10:54 am
Geez Phil, did I anywhere state I was specifically referring to “The Paleoclimate section of the 2007 Summary for Policymakers” ? The fact is, the words Paleoclimate section only appear in this post and yours. If you read my post, I think it was quite clear, by my use of the word “prototype” and the plural of graph that I was inferring to a much more general scope than The Paleoclimate section of the 2007 Summary for Policymakers. Of course, you could have read the next sentence where I state, ” Everything seems to have a hockey-stick graph these days.” Can you see a implication of generality there, Phil? Is your reading comprehension reduced only to explicit commentary? I made no attempt to mislead or misinform or in your uniformed words, “make stuff up.” I’ll try to remember to type slower for you if I think you’re reading the conversation. I’ll try to include pictures next time.
an implication.
Just knocked over my bowl of corn flakes.
Sad day for sports fans. Clemons found guuilty for lying to Congress.
In the other sport, Hockey fans will be saddened if Hockey stickster Michael Mann lies in front of the Virginia AG and gets the penalty box.
James Sexton says:
August 19, 2010 at 9:10 am
Phil. says:
August 19, 2010 at 8:51 am
James Sexton says:
August 17, 2010 at 7:56 pm
latitude says:
August 17, 2010 at 5:17 pm
“Actually he didn’t do that, he superposed the temperature record in a contrasting color and clearly indicated in the legend that he had done so.”
Right, let me clarify. I needed a magnifying glass to determine the “superposing”. Clearly indicated in the legend is quite a stretch, but I would note all of his clarifying remarks after it was obvious that so many people misunderstood what he was showing. He clarified the misunderstanding by stating………..absolutely nothing.
What’s so difficult to see, the ‘raw data AD 1902-1998’ is clearly shown as a red line whereas ‘reconstruction AD 1000-1980’ and ‘reconstruction 40 yr smoothed’ are clearly shown as a thin grey line and thick purple line respectively? It’s explicitly stated on the figure legend, it couldn’t be clearer. Anyone ‘misunderstanding’ that can’t have been trying very hard!
It’s in Figure 3a here:
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/pubs/millennium-camera.pdf
Barry:
At August 19, 2010 at 9:25 am you ask me:
“Please name the the “flawed statistical analysis method” common to the studies listed. Acronyms or short-hand will do.”
Sorry, I assumed you knew since you have displayed such confidence in it (above).
The “flawed statistical analysis method” is to use Principle Component Analysis (or PCA) that applies principal components in a ”skew”-centered fashion such that they are centered by the mean of the proxy data over the instrumental period.
This method was novel to Mann et al. in MBH98. Standard PCA analysis centers by the mean of the entire data record.
But the self-termed ‘hockey team’ are dedicated followers of fashion so they all adopted Mann’s novel method.
And the Mann-‘skew’ induces PCA to generate ‘hockey sticks’.
Richard
I am interested in all this.
However can anyone help me on another matter – is it the case (or not) that the CRU has made available all its raw data and computer programs for its conclusions so others can have a look at it and think around it?
Last time I looked many moons ago they said the raw data had been lost/ thrown away and was protected by confidentiality agreements.
Is this still the case or is it all now available for anyone who asks?
I cannot do this (I have not the ability) but it would be nice to know others could.
I have not heard that Einstein had any difficulty in getting the raw data for his theories – and yet he was only a clerk in the Swiss Patent Office. Doubtless he would be laughed out of court by the current masters of these “universities”.
Are all the workings available (or not) for whoever wants to go over them? If not then that is not “scientific”.
Eduordo Zorita (no Mann fan) has a strong critique of M&W. His conclusion:
re: barry at 9:08 am,
“…..the current Australian government speaks of the instrumental record, not the last 1000 years….”
http://www.bom.gov.au/info/climate/change/gallery/50.shtml
The Australian Government BOM site still makes a feature of it:
There’s a interesting comment on Hans von Storchs Klimazwiebebel worth reading
http://klimazwiebel.blogspot.com/2010/08/mcshane-and-wyner-on-climate.html
… even if it might be bad manners for a reviewer to mention his own “recent paper” where it comes to conclusions.
@Deech56,
I cannot see where anyone could possibly disagree with that conclusion. Perhaps they should have consulted scientists. That is a fair critique although the argument could be made that they were just crunching numbers that were already there. But one cannot state that climate scientists are disingenuous by not including statisticians and at the same time not acknowledge that these guys failed to do the same the other way. But whether this is a “bad” paper as a result I think remains to be seen. Time will tell.
As for the last sentence, amen and lets hope that this is what happens moving forward.
BPW
Cheese Grater says:
August 18, 2010 at 8:29 pm
Interesting how the CO2 levels and multiproxy temp series are a neat fit.
An example of such a “neat fit” (not) between proxy temperature and CO2 conc. can be found at:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/10/study-climate-460-mya-was-like-today-but-thought-to-have-co2-levels-20-times-as-high/#comments
This graphic alone totally falsifies CAGW. Deep time is not an escape from this falsification. Nor is a dim sun, nor is volcanism, nor is continental drift. Over deep time there is a HUGE signal of CO2 conc. variation. If CO2 was even a weak driver of global temp then a correlation with global air temperature would be visible. There is none.
Mr. Watts, a smart fellow like you ought to be able to figure out that Moranic is an adjective pertaining to Morano, that is to say a diminutive of Limbaughoid, Conservapedian or Coulteresque
REPLY: I was considering the urban dictionary definition.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=moran
Either way, your intent was to insult, and it reflects poorly upon you and MIT when you write such things. – Anthony
As five minutes is the canonical duration of weather events in New England , we naturally take umbrage at attempts to stretch the word into the realm of decadal climate oscillations.
Readers of my earlier comment should note that , though disinterested, the American Meteorological Society has occupied the same headquarters on Beacon Street in Boston for the last century, and so may be prejudiced in this matter.
Excellent post! By the way, realclimate.org is sinking like Titanic, their last post is from August 7th while wattsupwiththat.com has several posts a day and hundred thousands UNIQUE (!!) visits per day !
The pseudoscience from realclimate.org , IPCC, NASA GISS, NOAA ,CRU, UN, etc, is sinking. Such a beautiful sight. God! How much I love the see the OLD ACADEMIA, so easily corrupted by politics, being replaced by the NEW ACADEMIA created by SUPERB blogs like wattsupwiththat.com!
Keep on your SUPERB work! It is so beatiful to see finally TRUTH and REAL SCIENCE!!
barry says:
August 19, 2010 at 9:08 am
Maybe the “hocky stick” is not at the forfront in the political debate, and maybe governments in power don’t mention it anymore but the impact is still there.
Take Bob Brown, the leader of the “Greens” in Australia, eg, stated at the Australian Press club 2/3 days ago in his rant on “climate change”, “2010 is hotter than 2009, and in fact 2009 was the hottest year in a thousand years”. Clearly, that statement was based not on the instrumental record but what Bob Brown remembers about the shape of the “hocky stick”. Following on in his rant, he stated “we must remove all the “carbon” from the atmosphere or (blah, blah, blah)”. I turned the TV off.
Bob Browns “Greens” will hold the balance of power in the next Australian Government, no matter which party wins on the 21st August, and with rat bags in control, God knows where Australia is heading.
So, Barry, I don’t think we are. ” I think we’re beating a dead horse.”
We must debunk this scam at every turn of the course, and if we have to kill the “hocky stick” 20 times, then do it, until the message gets through to the Australian Greens, and the EPA in the USA, etc., and then, maybe we can get back to doing some “living”.
Dear Fat Lady,
I think that you misspelled a word in your statement. But if you didn’t, I want to know what costumes you wear in your performances for your customers?
I would think that the proxies like treerings always would be result of multiple factors.
One factor which is especially important instead of temperature is the CO2 concentration. It is well known and mainstream knowledge the higher levels of CO2 correlate with the plant faster growing, because the CO2 is the most important plant nutrient thus the correlation is well known expression of the causal relationship, while the relationship between the plant growing speed and temperature is correlated by far not so well (and there is not a linear causality) like in the case of the relationship of CO2 concentration->speed of the growing, and it is not correlating well, because i.e. there is the interfering factor of moisture especially rainfall and evapotranspiration which is also largely crucial for plant growing, having intriguos relationship with the temperature.
So I would think what the biologically dependent proxies as treerings could be much more suitable to be used for is deriving of the the CO2 concentrations signal rather than the ones of the temperature.
This objective biology-physics relations facts made me always wonder about the one-sided interpretation of the hockey stick graph, because even if ploted well by Mann et all it in fact can’t be straightforwardly interpreted like a temperature proxy and instead it is essentially much more a proxy of the CO2 concentration -which partially can be noissed by the factors of temperature and moisture and partially with the also very well known more or less linerar causal relationship of temperature->CO2 concentration due to the strong dependence of the CO2 sulubility in water on the temperature and its huge reservois in the oceans (while the opposite causal vector in CO2 concentration->temperature relationship due to greenhouse effect is orders of magnitude more weaker, because of its inherently logarithmic nature).
Sorry if the following comment has been made in this 800+ comment thread, but as significant as McS-W’s criticism of MBH98 might be, I think it diverts attention from the real problem(s): the poor proxies and wholly unjustified way they are constructed. Thorough evaluation of the base data is likely to be a more powerful way of showing MBH98 to be sheer nonsense than showing their stats are bad.
Phil. says:
August 19, 2010 at 10:54 am
James Sexton says:
August 19, 2010 at 9:45 am
barry says:
THEN,
Phil. says:
August 19, 2010 at 12:40 pm
James Sexton says:
August 19, 2010 at 9:10 am
Phil. says:
August 19, 2010 at 8:51 am
James Sexton says:
August 17, 2010 at 7:56 pm
latitude says:
August 17, 2010 at 5:17 pm
To culminate to ,
“What’s so difficult to see, the ‘raw data AD 1902-1998′ is clearly shown as a red line whereas ‘reconstruction AD 1000-1980′ and ‘reconstruction 40 yr smoothed’ are clearly shown as a thin grey line and thick purple line respectively? It’s explicitly stated on the figure legend, it couldn’t be clearer. Anyone ‘misunderstanding’ that can’t have been trying very hard!
It’s in Figure 3a here:
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/pubs/millennium-camera.pdf”
Phil, thank you for showing the world the thinking process of an alarmist. You actually spliced two separate conversations I was having into one. All the while making it look seamless! That is an act of beauty!
Phil, you may be correct, while I was having the two different conversations, I may have lost track of which incarnation of the Mann hockey-stick graph I was referring to, dependent upon which conversation you are referring to. Please note, the last comment I made really wasn’t relevant to Mann’s trick, but rather the scaling of the graph, but again, I may have lost track. Thanks for interjecting, in the appropriate times, to splice my two separate conversations into one. Even though the subject matter were entirely separate, you trudged on. Even though your point was not relevant to my last comment,(other than responding to your comments towards me) you may have struck upon some minutia in which you can hang your hat.
Phil, stop. If you really want the title of “CAPTAIN OF IRRELEVANT MINUTIA”, I’ll lobby Anthony for you to have the title! I’m not sure how much sway I have though, so we may have to start a grass roots campaign before you can claim it.
Phil, wtf? I’m having two separate conversations, attempting to be relevant to this thread and you’re going to interject and tie them both together to show I was wrong about one of the several representations of a picture in which it isn’t clear about which picture? My bust. I thought we were here to discuss things of relevance. Again, thank you for showing the world the mindset of an alarmist.
JP Miller says:
August 19, 2010 at 7:28 pm
“Sorry if the following comment has been made in this 800+ comment thread, but as significant as McS-W’s criticism of MBH98 might be, I think it diverts attention from the real problem(s): the poor proxies and wholly unjustified way they are constructed.”
Yeh, sorry if some of the discussion has varied there, but MBH98 wasn’t the topic of the study.
From the paper, “we work entirely with the data from Mann et al. (2008)”
The entire point of the paper is exactly for the reasons you stated(they said as much), and their conclusions bare that point.
Richard,
thanks for being specific.
You musn’t be reading my posts too well. I’ve already stated that PCA analysis was one of the principals criticisms against MBH.
And this is the analysis that you believe is common to all the studies in the paper I cited.
Actually, the term ‘hockey team’ is not self-adopted, but was initiated by critics of paleoclimatologists – Stephen McIntyre was the first, I believe.
So now we can cross reference the papers to see whether Mannian PCA analysis was adopted by all of them.
Going from the list you cited:
Jones et al 1998 was published months earlier than M98.
Huang et al 2001 is a study of 616 bore holes. There is no principal component analysis, and their methodology is based on their previous (1996) work, and that of thermally induced temperature reconstructions from studies earlier in the 20th century. No PCA
Briffa et al (2001) use an age banding method (differently from M98) and explain their PC analysis in great detail. It is distinct from MBH 1998 in all respects.
Esper et al (2002) employ Regional Curve Standardization (no PCA). They use this technique as an independent test of MBH 1999. They do not reference M98.
Moberg (2006) calibrates from variance and not PCA. Their methodology is quite distinct from M98.
Osborn and Briffa (2006) methodology avoids calibrating against 20th century temperatures, and instead attempts to resolve the proxy records themselves. No Mannian PCA.
These are not the only distinguishing features of the various reconstructions. Amongst most of them, but not all, there is some overlap of proxies, but they are treated differently. The PCA of MBH 98/99 are particular to those studies, and do not form the basis or bias of other millennial reconstructions.
The paper I cited which assesses the relative merits of these approaches, itself discards Mannian PCA, the controversial US tree ring proxies, and the contentious Yamal series, and still corroborates the general story told by independent papers.
You have asked me to refocus on the paper to hand. While agreeing that it contends there is far more uncertainty in the early millennial record, I point out that their own estimates tend to comport with the IPCC result that late 2oth century temps are anomalously warm. They also maintain that the rate of warming during the 20th century appears to unprecedented in the last 1000 years.
This is not an attempt to resurrect MBH 98/99. Rather, I think it is important to separate broad misconceptions from more nuanced results. We cannot discuss the issue properly if we labour under false impressions.
It’s worth noting that M&M’s later papers reconstructed temperatures from 1400, and their corrections resulted in 15th century temps that were slightly lower than those of the late 20th century. They found lower 15th century temps (lower by 0.2K) after correcting problems with their 2003 study.
If we completely discard Mann’s work, there are other, independent methodologies, that agree with the IPCC findings. The 2001 IPCC report, for example, examined a number of reconstructions, and made conclusions that were less assertive than MBH 1999 as a result of combining the understanding. IPCC 2007 drew on later work and reached similar conclusions.
Tsk, sorry for the formatting error.
Jan Zeman says:
August 19, 2010 at 6:10 pm
“I would think that the proxies like treerings always would be result of multiple factors………”
Yes they are. Obviously, tree rings measure the growth of the specific trees. From the growth rate(rings), we can ascertain atmospheric CO2 and humidity and soil nutrient content and rainfall. From that “knowledge”, it is an easy jump to “know”the temperatures on a yearly, (decadal?) basis. No way that can’t be truth!
Well, only “scientists” know how to do that, it is way beyond “common” people to be able to follow such insight and knowledge.
Re: JP Miller says:
August 19, 2010 at 7:28 pm
“… Thorough evaluation of the base data is likely to be a more powerful way of showing MBH98 to be sheer nonsense than showing their stats are bad.”
Yes but this is sort of like jailing Al Capone for tax evasion 😉
Cheers
Michael
Chris,
Bob Brown’s pronouncement is not supported. That the rate of warming in the 20th century seems to be unprecedented in the last 1000 years is, as is the estimate that late 20th century temps seem to be warmer than any in the last 1000 years, including by the paper introduced at the top of this thread criticising MBH. When Mann is dead, there is still Huang, Jukes, Rahmstorf, Moberg, Briffa, Crowley, Jones, Esper, Oerlemans, Hegel and others to deal with.
But even if you outright “killed the hockey stick,” that would have little to no impact on the rest of AGW – global warming theory, radiation budget, stratospheric cooling, observed sea level rise, increasing CO2, species migration, early flowering, instrumental record, diminishing Arctic sea ice, projections – none of these are impacted by the hockey stick controversy. There are 29 000 independent observations (one of them is the instrumental temperature record) that tell uis the globe is warming, and basic physics tells us that CO2 will cause temps to rise. Millennial reconstructions, as noted by McShane and Wyner in the paper that kicked this thread off, don’t really make much of an impact here.
Still waiting for a response at DeepClimate. Did they have to regroup and get yet another set of talking points?
barry says:
August 19, 2010 at 9:04 pm
A lot!
Barry, you’re almost there!!!
Kinda reminds me of the (we thought) debunked “cold mother syndrome” once considered to be the cause of autism. It didn’t die, it just migrated as a cause to other childhood difficulties.
barry says:
August 19, 2010 at 9:04 pm
barry, one of the tenets of CAGW is that what we are seeing is unprecedented. Be it warming or melt or sea levels, or what ever. It is always unprecedented. Not to you or me, but to the populace. Many of the expressed concerns of the alarmist crowd isn’t really a concern but a welcomed event. But you know that. Moreover, most, if not all of the alarmism is over events that have happened many times already.
I know, and I know you know, there are many things occurring on this earth that are alarming, that have the potential to be catastrophic, that need our attention, but a bit of warming……….???!!??!!??! Tell me again why we need to address the imagined difficulties of the future while we can’t solve the real difficulties of the world today?
This has got to be the ultimate “do like I say……”
I submit we are sacrificing our humanity today to save ourselves from an imaginary harm tomorrow.
Humanity has always thrived better in warmer climates. The ice melt has happened in our father’s lifetimes. You know ice melt won’t cause sea rise flooding. Why? Because it didn’t happen already. Plants blooming early? Oh, the horror!!!! Budgets? Well that’s the crux of the contention, isn’t it? I know we can’t create matter. I know the water budget is fixed.(for the most part). Given H2O is the most well known and the overwhelming major element of the earth, we know that H2O will act in the correcting manner it always has.
I find it incredible that people are still prepared to defend the hockey stick, icon or not, in its various permutations. Briffa is a cheery-picker and obscurantist full stop. Mann is something else again. His first farrago used PCA, and his second CPS and EIV; the techniques are academic because obfuscation is the order of the day; in his second paper [08] Mann discarded proxies if they were inconsistent with hemispheric or GMST – the regional effect and information was discarded! -; LTP was not even considered and by emphasising the instrument record as a calibration [ie the data was calibrated down to the proxies, whereas M&W calibrated up from the regional proxies] he preferred an infilled instrument record using RegEm on non-stationary [because the infilled instrument record could be anywhere in the world and time] data to the gauntlet run proxies. Basically, Mann 2 compared proxies of proxies with an ‘instrument’ temp record which was infilled according to which location and time best matched the proxies!
As for Mann1 Jolliffe said it all: “given that the data appear to be non-stationary, it’s arguable whether you should be using any type of PCA.” You shouldn’t be using PCA with either dendroclimatic or temperature data because both are non-stationary; temperature inherently so because it has a unit root element and dendros because they are regionally different, something which Mann ignores.
The hockey stick, icon or not, is junk.
That, of course should be Briffa is a “Cherry picker”; he may be ‘cheery’ as well; I don’t know or care.
Barry, August 19, 2010 at 9:08 am, you say of the HS that
“The graph does not appear in An Inconvenient Truth.”
This is completely wrong. Al Gore claimed it was Thompson’s, but he was wrong, as Tim Lambert points out at
http://climateaudit.org/2007/11/09/al-gore-and-dr-thompsons-thermometer/
And Thompson refuses to correct the public record:
http://climateaudit.org/2008/01/13/sticking-thermometers-in-places-they-dont-belong/
Anyone see this it totally redefines “Moranic”
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2010/03/29/could-turning-the-oceans-into-a-giant-bubble-bath-cool-the-planet/
How can anyone possibly propose something so totally impractical as this and then expect to be ever taken seriously?
Those who can do. Those who can’t teach.
Russell teaches?!
Barry says:
basic physics tells us that CO2 will cause temps to rise
Henry says
Barry, I could not find that evidence. All I can find is stories and assumptions. We had an argument about that here. Dave Springer gave up. I assume his silence means that he agrees that he can not prove to me conclusively that CO2 is a green house gas
e.g. look here
http://letterdash.com/HenryP/more-carbon-dioxide-is-ok-ok
In case you missed, here are my questions
Dear Prof. Shillington (Barry!)
I heard you on the radio this afternoon and it seemed to me that you are also getting to a point where you are starting to get doubts about the influence of CO2 on global warming. Please bear with me to hear my story, and see if you can perhaps provide an answer to the questions that I have.
A few months before Climategate broke, I started my own investigations to see if my carbon footprint (CO2) really causes global warming, as claimed. To start off with, I found Svante Arrhenius’ formula completely wrong and since then I could not find any correctly conducted experiments (tests & measurements) that would somehow prove to me that the warming properties of CO2 (by trapping earth’s radiation between the wavelengths 14-15 um) are greater than its cooling properties (by deflecting sunlight at various wavelengths between 0 – 5 um). Even more disconcerting to me was finding that pupils at school and college are shown experiments with 100% carbon dioxide (representing earth’s atmosphere of only 0.04% or 380 ppms CO2!) and a light bulb as an energy source (representing the sun!). Obviously such crude experimentation can only lead to incorrect results and completely incorrect conclusions…e.g. what about the IR and near IR absorptions of CO2 and the UV absorptions of CO2 that have only been discovered recently and that also deflect sunlight?
I also found untruths in Al Gore’s story (An Inconvenient Truth). A lot of CO2 is dissolved in cold water and comes out when the oceans get warmer. Any chemistry student knows that the first smoke from the (warmed) water in a kettle is the CO2 being released. So, quite a number of scientists have reported that the increases of CO2 in the atmosphere in the past lagged the warming periods by quite a few hundred years… Cause and effect, get it? Smoking causes cancer but cancer does not cause smoking. But Al made it look from the past that our CO2 output must be the cause of global warming.
Just to put the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere into the right perspective: it has increased by about 0.01% in the past 50 years from ca. 0.03% to 0.04%. This compares with an average of about 1 % for water vapor in the air. Note that most scientists agree that water vapor is a very strong green house gas, and a much stronger green house gas than carbon dioxide… (if indeed carbon dioxide is a green house gas, which, like I said before, has yet to be proven to me). It is also logical for me to suspect that as a result of human activities relating to burning, bathing, cooking, boiling, countless cooling processes (including that for nuclear energy), erection of dams and shallow pools, etc. a lot more water vapor than carbon dioxide is put up in the air.
The paper that confirmed to me that CO2 is (also) cooling the atmosphere by re-radiating sunshine is this one:
http://www.iop.org/EJ/article/0004-637X/644/1/551/64090.web.pdf?request-id=76e1a830-4451-4c80-aa58-4728c1d646ec
they measured this radiation as it bounced back to earth from the moon. So the direction of the radiation was:sun-earth-moon-earth. Follow the green line in fig. 6, bottom. Note that it already starts at 1.2 um, then one peak at 1.4 um, then various peaks at 1.6 um and 3 big peaks at 2 um.
This paper here shows that there is absorption of CO2 at between 0.21 and 0.19 um (close to 202 nm):
http://www.nat.vu.nl/en/sec/atom/Publications/pdf/DUV-CO2.pdf
There are other papers that I can look for again that will show that there are also absorptions of CO2 at between 0.18 and 0.135 um and between 0.125 and 0.12 um.
We already know from the normal IR spectra that CO2 has big absorption between 4 and 5 um.
So, to sum it up, we know that CO2 has absorption in the 14-15 um range causing some warming (by re-radiating earthshine) but as shown and proved above it also has a number of absorptions in the 0-5 um range causing cooling (by re-radiating sunshine). This cooling happens at all levels where the sunshine hits on the carbon dioxide same as the earthshine. The way from the bottom to the top is the same as from top to the bottom. So, my question is: how much cooling and how much warming is caused by the CO2? How was the experiment done to determine this and where are the test results? (I am afraid that simple heat retention testing might not work here, we have to use real sunshine and real earthshine to determine the effect in W/m3 [0.03%- 0.06%]CO2/m2/24hours). I am also doubtful of just doing analysis (determining surface areas) of the spectral data, as some of the UV absorptions of CO2 have only been discovered recently and I also think the actual heat caused by the sun’s IR at 4-5 may be underestimated, e.g. the amount of radiation of the sun between 4 and 5 maybe small but how many Watts does it cause? Here in Africa you can not stand in the sun for longer that 10 minutes, just because of the heat of the sun on your skin.
Anyway, with so much at stake, surely, someone actually has to come up with some empirical testing?
If this research has not been done, why don’t we just sue the oil companies to do this?? It is their product afterall.
I am going to state it here quite categorically again that if no one has got these results, then how do we know for sure that CO2 is a greenhouse gas? Maybe the cooling properties are equal to the warming properties?
I have also been thinking of the ozone concentration in the air: Assuming that its cooling properties are higher than its warming properties (did anyone test that?), then lower concentrations, as in the past, before CFC’s were banned, can be a cause for global warming; increasing levels, as noted in the past 10 years can be a cause of global cooling?
So the net effect of the increases in CO2 and ozone is close to zero or even cooling?
(I have no financial interest in any of this, I just started my investigations because I felt a bit guilty about driving my car)
James,
Depends what you’re talking about and in what context. In the world of soundbytes, there is much to complain about on both sides of the debate.
Best estimates give that:
The current rate of warming is unprecedented.
The current rate of CO2 rise is unprecedented.
The current atmospheric concentration of CO2 is unprecedented in the Quaternary period (where land formations and solar output has remained constant)*.
Arctic sea ice coverage averaged over the past decade is the lowest in the last century. There are no historical records of an ice free Arctic.
Temperatures have been higher in the past (certainly in the geological record). CO2 levels have been much higher in the past. The current rate of change doesn’t appear of have precedent, and where the climate has changed rapidly and profoundly, it is accompanied by great stress on the biosphere and species die-off (not that I am suggesting AGW poses a mortal threat to the continuation of our species).
If you want to complain that the popular press and politicians have exaggerated or been inaccurate on the issue, I will completely agree with you – but that applies to both sides of this debate. On the actual science, slogans and soundbytes are irrelevant. The science must be understood first, then we can accurately assess the validity of various rhetoric. In terms of my personal understanding and decision-making, I see the issue as one of risk management, nothing more.
* (Previous epochs are very different to the current configuration of the biosphere, making one-for-one comparisons useless. For example, where CO2 levels have been higher in the pasty but not temperatures, tectonic configuration is vastly different, bringing increased albedo to offset greenhouse warming, or solar output has been significantly less – the sun has become hotter over millions of years, and will continue to do so in the long-distant future)
A counter argument is out for this paper :-
http://deepclimate.org/2010/08/19/mcshane-and-wyner-2010/
I see the old its not peer reviewed is trotted out again, shameless really.
Henry Pool,
good questions for which I don’t have deeply considered answers. I have read here and there that radiation budgets for the greenhouse effect do include backscatter and reflection from atmospheric gases (eg, Ramanathan 1978), and that reflection is considered to be a very negligible factor.
Also, it doesn’t take much to consider that, even if reflection were a non-negligible influence, only half the planet is affected at any one time, while greenhouse properties are in effect all over the sphere. A key indicator to consider here is that warming has been greater for nighttime than daytime temps over the last century.
It would be interesting to pursue this, but we should do that in a more appropriate thread.
latitude says:
August 19, 2010 at 7:42 am
RR Kampen says:
August 19, 2010 at 6:18 am
There are no apparent other mechanisms
====================================
Of course there is RR.
The most obvious is the climate changes.
So the mechanism explaining recent climate change is: climate change?
Do you think there is magic involved in climate change? You know – changes without causes?
It’s been warmer in the past, CO2 has been higher, extremely high levels of CO2 did not insulate the planet or prevent an ice age, the oceans hold and release CO2 according to temps, and on and on………
There are more causes of climate change. Momentarily the increase of a strong greenhouse gas is just the most important one.
A long time ago, CO2 was much higher. It went down into coal and oil, so went global temperature. Now were digging up historical hot epochs…
The whole AGW theory could not be any shakier or weaker if you look at it.
What I see is that you are projecting your ignorance of the subject on the professionals studying it.
Richard S Courtney says:
August 19, 2010 at 7:46 am
Thank you for your elaborate response. I will pick out two lines:
The hypothesis predicts most warming of the air relative to the surface at altitude in the tropics.
In reality the hypothesis predicts most warming at high latitudes, particularly northern high latitudes. The hypothesis does so now and it did so when I studied climatology in an era the IPCC still had to be set up. The observations are conform hypothesis.
That’s 40 years of cooling and 28 years of warming. Global temperature is now similar to that of 1990.
Reality: the past decade was warmest; decade 1990’s second warmest, decade 1980’s third warmest and the difference between the nineties and tens is bigger than between the eighties and nineties. In other words: warming is accelerating.
Also, we are almost on par with 1998, not 1990 – without a superNiño and during deep solar minimum: http://www.weerwoord.be/uploads/14820101561.png . Some ice is melting, too.
AGW cannot be debunked because it is the reality.
By denying it, you are giving Al Gore and the carbon tax terrorists total right of way.
And you don’t seem to see it. Yet.
There are some advantages to warming. Emphasize THEM.
Barry:
At August 19, 2010 at 8:43 pm you assert:
“If we completely discard Mann’s work, there are other, independent methodologies, that agree with the IPCC findings. The 2001 IPCC report, for example, examined a number of reconstructions, and made conclusions that were less assertive than MBH 1999 as a result of combining the understanding. IPCC 2007 drew on later work and reached similar conclusions.”
OK. Let us not take my word for it but see what the ‘hockey team’ have to say about it in their own words in the leaked emails which you can read at
http://www.eastangliaemails.com/index.php
Mann:
“..The key thing is making sure the series are vertically aligned in a reasonable way. I had been using the entire 20th century, but in the case of Keith’s, we need to align the first half of the 20th century w/ the corresponding mean values of the other series, due to the late 20th century decline.”
“Keith” is Briffa . And Briffa wrote:
“.. For the record, I do believe that the proxy data do show unusually warm conditions in recent decades. I am not sure that this unusual warming is so clear in the summer responsive data. I believe that the recent warmth was probably matched about 1000 years ago. I do not believe that global mean annual temperatures have simply cooled progressively over thousands of years as Mike appears to..”
But Briffa also used the skewing of the calibration that Mann adopted but for a diffrent choice of calibratio period (as Mann suggested; see above in this post).
THE SKEWING – NOT THE USE OF PCA – IS THE FLAWED METHODOLOGY INTRODUCED BY THE ‘TEAM’.
All the analyses that used this erroneous distortion of PCA, including Briffa’s, are disproved by the McS&M.
Richard
“Supplementary Info now available: All data and code used in this paper are available at the Annals of Applied Statistics supplementary materials website:
http://www.imstat.org/aoas/supplements/default.htm ”
Has it been removed? Maybe I’m blind but I can’t find it. Can someone provide a fully resolved link?
James Sexton says:
August 19, 2010 at 8:48 pm
Jan Zeman says:
August 19, 2010 at 6:10 pm
““I would think that the proxies like treerings always would be result of multiple factors………”
Yes they are. Obviously, tree rings measure the growth of the specific trees. From the growth rate(rings), we can ascertain atmospheric CO2 and humidity and soil nutrient content and rainfall. From that “knowledge”, it is an easy jump to “know”the temperatures on a yearly, (decadal?) basis. No way that can’t be truth!”
Not to mention the genetic makeup of individual trees which can affect growth… but we won’t mention that ;o)
No one has noticed but this must have been Google’s smartest ever way of avoiding this getting out there. Type “hockey stick climate”and you will get one link dealing with this. They have gotten around it by making the authors names + paper title prominent but of course the general population would never use this to find info about hockey stick…..
The silence from RC is deafening.. not one post, or as I see, any comment, allowed. This of course is a godsend as it confirms their worst fears….
The paper describing the work Discover refers to is still in peer review- James Sexton is at liberty to read it when it appears. too bad he missed the more edifying news item in Science-
If Discover is all he can handle , here’s item 81 from their 2003 Top 100 Discoveries of 2002 issue
81. Rare-Jade Riddle Cracked
The Kunz Axe, a 3,000-year-old Olmec blue-jade sculpture, features a snarling creature that is part human, part jaguar.
Courtesy of The American Museum of Natural History, New York.
In 1804 naturalist Alexander von Humboldt returned to France from the Americas with jade artifacts crafted by the Olmecs. This pre-Mayan, pre-Columbian culture had left behind statues and axes made of a translucent blue-green jade found almost nowhere else in the world. Today archaeologists know the Olmecs had stopped using the stone by about 500 B.C. Later cultures favored other shades of jade, and the blue-green version became known as Olmec blue. But the geological source of the jade had never been found. Geophysicist Russell Seitz, field director of a study of Mesoamerican jade for Harvard’s Peabody Museum, had spent years looking for the elusive transparent blue-green stone. By 1999, when he took his fiancée to Guatemala for a vacation, he had given up hope of finding the mother lode. Then, by chance, he stumbled upon half a dozen shops selling small items crafted from the blue-green gem: “It had become an ornamental cottage heritage industry.” It took him nine months to track down the jade miners, who finally agreed to lead him up into the mountains. There, at an elevation of 5,700 feet, he found “a giant, economy-size jade vein.” Seitz returned several times before discovering the biggest boulders last January. Most of the jade he found is worthless. But one 300-ton monolith does contain three tons of the prized translucent blue-green mineral.
The find puts to rest one mystery but leaves many questions for archaeologists and pre-Columbian scholars, including: Why did the Olmecs stop carving jade? Perhaps their culture disappeared, or maybe the seams of jade that the Olmecs were mining, and the Olmec carvers themselves, were destroyed by volcanoes. “The deposits,” says Seitz, “have been Pompeiied several times.”
— Michael Abrams
here for comparison is the peer reviewed version:
http://research.amnh.org/users/gharlow/Jade_in_Middle_AmericaDIST2.pdf
Barry: “Best estimates give that:
The current rate of warming is unprecedented.
The current rate of CO2 rise is unprecedented”
Gawd almighty; “best estimates”; I bet. Warming unprecedented; rubbish:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/data/hadcrut3vgl/from:1976/to:1998/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1910/to:1940/trend
Barry says:
I don’t have deeply considered answers. I have read here and there that radiation budgets for the greenhouse effect do include backscatter and reflection from atmospheric gases (eg, Ramanathan 1978), and that reflection is considered to be a very negligible factor.
Also, it doesn’t take much to consider that, even if reflection were a non-negligible influence, only half the planet is affected at any one time, while greenhouse properties are in effect all over the sphere. A key indicator to consider here is that warming has been greater for nighttime than daytime temps over the last century.
It would be interesting to pursue this, but we should do that in a more appropriate thread.
Henry says.
1)Ramanathan 1978: I was not able to open the file
2) Note that my last dimension that I want to see is per 24 hours – your observation is correct. Nevertheless, remember that the difference between the radiation measured between the top of the atmosphere and at sea level is ca. 30%. This is on a cloudless day. So, if it were not for the oxygen-ozone/ water vapor & carbondioxide, mostly, an aditional 30% radition would be slammed on top of us. This is not to be neglected….
# Don’t worry about straying a bit. God has blessed us with Wattsupwiththat. You really have to be very bad, very bad, before they throw you off here!!!
Reply: Barry is correct. We would appreciate you finding a more appropriate thread. On topic comments are preferred. ~ ctm
Henry Pool says:
August 19, 2010 at 11:46 pm
Barry says:
basic physics tells us that CO2 will cause temps to rise
Henry you are correct when you say that NO definitive study has ever been done which proves beyond doubt that CO² warms the planet and by how much.
There is a great deal of physics that defines the absorption of IR by CO² but not how that then affects the rest of the planet. Engineering quality is what we are looking for. So all you warmers, get to it.
I take it back Russell, you’re alright; have you sold the movie rights?
Re barry says: August 20, 2010 at 12:11 am
This may be confusing correlation and causation again. The HS is ‘iconic’ because it purports to prove the 1st claim. The second claim then provides causation and supports the nascent carbon trading industry.
If the current rate of warming is not unprecedented or anomalous, then the causation becomes less plausible. Hence why, 12 years after MBH98 which initially described uncertainties in climate reconstructions is stll being argued over. It is important to put current climate change into context with prior climate changes and attempt to understand *all* the factors involved.
As discussed previously, proxies and observations show many different climate cycles operating in our climate system providing the natural variability. That natural variability may well be more significant than any AGW effects and observations seem to be showing that assumed postive feedbacks for CAGW simply don’t exist.
hi folks,
i think the authors did not care about climatologie.
There are serveral errors in the paper, see zorita et al.
No use to hold it longer on the front page!
Gunnar:
Is Zorita God or are we entitled to question Zorita’s opinion??
So why should anybody take any note of an opinion of Zorita et al.?
What arguments do Zorita et al. provide?
Are those arguments worthy of consideration and – if so – why?
Richard
Stephen Richards says:
“Henry you are correct when you say that NO definitive study has ever been done which proves beyond doubt that CO² warms the planet and by how much”.
that’s my point exactly. I have been saying this as well. WE NEED TO GET A BALANCE SHEET. Of all the gases in the atmosphere. By how much they cool and by how much they warm up. In W/m3(%CHG relevant range)/m2/24hours
I was mocking you all here earlier by giving a simple reason for the MWP:
In those days, 1000 years ago, earth was overpopulated by animals and they produced a lot of methane. Apparently methane is a strong GHG. (how strong?)
So it became warmer. Then man came and killed the animals. And then it became ice cold..
Obviously, without any test results from actual experiments, the above statement is just as untrue as to claim that CO2 causes modern warming.
But if anyone claims that CO2 is warming the planet , he must prove this to me and to the rest of the world. I am waiting for you.
http://letterdash.com/HenryP/more-carbon-dioxide-is-ok-ok
Gunnar says:
“There are serveral errors in the paper, see zorita et al.”
As far as I can tell, Zorita made two main observations. Firstly, M&W made references to so called Mann techniques which Mann never actually used in his paper, and seem to have little understanding of what Mann et al had actually done. Secondly, they took Mann’s data and applied correct statistical techniques which led to the conclusion that the proxy data was of no use as a temperature proxy.
The first point led Zorita to claim that “We have seen climate scientists write papers without the help of statisticians, and now we are seeing the reverse”. The second point however, is enough on its own to dismiss the proxy data. And in the end, isn’t that all that really matters?
Common guys, go for the thousand comments!
*putting more popcorn in microwave*
ping!
The various studies use different methodologies. You’ve retreated from PCA calibration to some ambiguous ‘skewing’.
Richard, you’re grasping at straws. The chief M&M criticism is about the PC analysis used in MBH 1998. The other papers don’t use that methodology.
If you can reference the common methodology from the body of each of the papers I just listed (the links are there to make it easy for you) then I’ll pay attention. Otherwise, it’s seems clear to me you’re talking out of your hat.
Gunnar says:
August 20, 2010 at 5:20 am
hi folks,
i think the authors did not care about climatologie.
There are serveral errors in the paper, see zorita et al.
No use to hold it longer on the front page!
This stupidity has been answered on every blog in the blogosphere and here. They did not do science. Zorito is a clown throwing straws at the paper. These are STATISTICIANS, they did statistics. Get It!? They used the team’s data NOT their methods. They did not need a paleo, they did not need Zorito et al. Now read it carefully and you will see their conclusions and don’t forget to read the scales on the XY axes.
Atomic Hairdryer
You are confused. MBH 1999 says nothing about the comparative rates of warming. Rather they say the resolution is not robust enough to say more than they do, which is about the relative temperature levels.
No one ever used the MBH 1999 paper (or the controversial HS graph) to talk about rates of warming.
Other papers do attempt to assess the rate of warming, and the results are generally as I said.
cohenite,
I am referring to the 20th century temperature rise, not 30-year blocks within it (which have some similarities – but then we need to talk about attribution – not here, though)
re: Gunnar says:
August 20, 2010 at 5:20 am
Dr. Zorita has a Phd in solid state physics, he switched to “paleoclimatology” because that is were the funding is.
He is as much a “climatologist” as McShane, he has just worked in the branch and knows about the “research”.
I suspect, though, that his statistics skills are better than Mann’s.
Climatology IS NOT a branch of science, it is simply a common interest in showing everybody that CO2 is bad.
We don’t need “climatology”.
Hal
Bwana Watts:
Thanks for the dictionary link defining ‘moran’ urbanely as someone you disagree with.
I stand corrected- all those tall Kenyan fellows who insist _they_ are moran only get away with it because their spear rattling deters disagreement.
Come to think of it, Marc really is kind of like that .
Jambo.
REPLY: Do you treat all members of the public with such a condescending attitude? And academics wonder why the public does not take them seriously when they try to communicate AGW ideas. You are exhibiting the same sort of attitude as Phil Jones and the team. – Anthony
stephen richrds,
Firstly, there is no such thing as a definitive paper. Were Einstein’s relativity papers ‘definitive?’
Lab tests performed thousands of times in high schools and universities definitively show that increasing CO2 in a volume of atmosphere will result in more infrared absorption leading to the heating of the volume.
That is the empirical basis of greenhouse theory. That part isn’t controversial. The mechanism is substantiated.
For the atmosphere, we have line calculations of the absoprtive properties CO2 and the other gases, observed increase of CO2 in the atmosphere (35% greater than its pre-industrial levels)c, orroboration by observed blocking of upwelling infrared radiation over time (by satellites), observed cooling of the stratosphere, the temperature record and attribution studies (to name a few).
The empirical (successfully tested and observed each time) fact of greenhouse warming in the lab leads to the theory that this will play out in the atmosphere. Hundreds of thousands of observations of various components bear this out.
No one has been able to video a particle of smoke causing disease in human beings. but we accept that smoking increases the risk of disease because of thousands of correlative studies. We can’t video the progress of photons through the atmosphere either, but we can observe the darkening radiance over time in the bands strongly absorbed by CO2 using satellites, we can shoot radiation through a chamber of air being filled with CO2 and clearly observe the effects. AGW is a combination of empirical tests, observations and calculations, same as most other theories we bet our lives on.
Tens of thousands of studies examine this, too. It would be nice to have a nearby planet composed much like ours is and dump enormous quantities of CO2 into its atmosphere to test the results. Instead, we’ve found ourselves running the experiment with the planet we live on, before we were even aware we were doing it.
@richard S
The introduction already contains a terrible and unnecessary paragraph, full of errors:
For example, Antarctic ice cores contain ancient bubbles of air which can be dated quite accurately. The temperature of that air can be approximated by measuring the ratio of ions and isotopes of oxygen and hydrogen.
Well, past temperatures are reconstructed from the isotope ratio of water molecules in the ice, and not from air in the air bubbles. The air bubbles themselves cannot be dated accurately, since air can flow freely in the upper 50 or meters of firn, and the bubbles are only sealed when ice is finally formed
http://klimazwiebel.blogspot.com/2010/08/mcshane-and-wyner-on-climate.html
and so on
Wijnand says:
August 20, 2010 at 7:29 am
“Common guys, go for the thousand comments!
*putting more popcorn in microwave*
ping!”
lol, I’ll try, but this is getting tedious!
Deep climate did finally respond to me.
“I’ll answer a couple of your points.
1. “The fact that 2 separate time block preformed well and all other didn’t doesn’t validate anything.”
The point is those *same* blocks did not perform well in M&W. In fact, the proxies performed worse there than most of the interpolated blocks. At most, this suggests that first/last block is a “harder” validation test to pass. As well, it was misleading of M&W to imply that good early and late block performance was somehow related to the choice of first and last block, conveniently omitting that the effect was for interpolated blocks only, *not* the first and last blocks actually used by paleoclimatologists.
But in any event it’s clear their validation methodology does not apply to real paleoclimatology studies (Lasso overfitting/suboptimal screening, shorter validation window etc.)
2. Collaboration
Of course there are many statisticians working with climate scientists. Off the top of my head – Doug Nychka, PeterBloomfield, Richard Smith … This is the best way for statisticians to contribute – when statisticians try to do it on their own, the result is inevitably flawed.
3. Further, you state they rely on gray literature
I clearly stated that it was the background section that did so. Why should that be permissable?”
The response in point one is an obvious point of contention. M&W seemed to say the climatologists were doing it wrong. I’m not in a position to make a judgment on whether they are correct or not. We’ll have to wait and learn before we can come to an informed judgment. But, I know that one doesn’t use the various statistical methodologies to fit the theory, but rather to validate the theory. Their point 2 is funny and related to point 1. The statement “when statisticians try to do it on their own, the result is inevitably flawed.” seems to be saying they don’t like the conclusions, so they must be flawed. It further implied that temp numbers (and their proxies) are special kind of number in which statisticians aren’t capable of processing alone. It is a laughable argument. Point 3 is even funnier. The critique of M&W at deep climate dedicated a large part of the critique to point out the paper mentioned “grey material” in their background statements. For some reason, Deep Climate doesn’t think this should be permissible. The fact that M&W didn’t use any of the gray material in the study itself is apparently lost on them. The gray material didn’t alter or change the study in any manner and was used only in side comments. And only once in the conclusions, so the paper’s statement “While the literature is large, there has been very little collaboration with university level, professional statisticians.” (citing Wegman) Seems to be cause to invalidate the paper!
As mentioned before, this is getting rather tedious, so I’ll try to close with a thought. This study is a study to determine if temp proxies are reliable or not. It is easy to get moving to tangents from there. Having followed this discussion from just about start to finish, I find the only relevant criticism of the paper being whether they used the proper methodologies or not. Obviously, the people that prefer to believe climate alarmism contend they didn’t. But usually, when making this argument the reasoning is because they didn’t get the answers the alamists prefer.(and visa versa) I have yet to see here or anywhere else anything cited as to why M&W’s paper is incorrectly applying statistical methods other than opinion. No accepted papers, no math or statistical laws or axioms or corollaries, ect. Neither has anyone found and error in the calculations. Just, “I don’t agree, so they did it wrong.” The paper itself goes into great detail as to why they choose their methods and why other methods are problematic. Further, they even went as far as to use other methods to see if the conclusions would change.(local vs. global) Apparently, the results were the same. The paper is an easy read even if the maths are difficult. It is a refreshingly straight forward paper that one doesn’t loose themselves in nuanced jargon as so many seem to do, lately. I greatly look forward to the back and forth the statisticians (and hopefully climatologists) will have discussing the paper after it is published. Guys and gals, temps and their proxies are are represented by numbers. They aren’t magical numbers in which only certified climatologists can interpret or process. It is long past due that the general public understands this and we remove the mystical veil of climatology. We can only get to truth when we understand we are all the guardians of truth and not a select few.
This has been a hoot! Anthony, congrats on the length of this thread. Set any records?
Barry says
“Lab tests performed thousands of times in high schools and universities definitively show that increasing CO2 in a volume of atmosphere will result in more infrared absorption leading to the heating of the volume”.
Henry says:
1) The experiments were performed incorrectly.
2) the correlation is the other way around: heat causes more CO2 in the air.
e.g.
http://letterdash.com/HenryP/more-carbon-dioxide-is-ok-ok
3)by how much
The current AGW theory is a bit like this: let us have a planet, let us increase the CO2 a bit, let us see if the temp. goes up, it id, so that must be it.
So I say:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/17/breaking-new-paper-makes-a-hockey-sticky-wicket-of-mann-et-al-99/#comment-462042
@gunnar
OK – you didn’t like the introduction to the new paper. That is your privilege.
But exactly which bit of the substance of the paper i.e. the statistical bit, do you object to?
It is dumb to reject a present just because you don’t like the colour of the wrapping paper. If you have no other objections, I will take it that you agree with their substantive conclusions??
Stephan says:
August 20, 2010 at 2:53 am
“No one has noticed but this must have been Google’s smartest ever way of avoiding this getting out there. Type “hockey stick climate”and you will get one link dealing with this. They have gotten around it by making the authors names + paper title prominent but of course the general population would never use this to find info about hockey stick…..”
I don’t know if anyone has responded to that, but I wonder why it is that I find a substantially larger number of entries in the search-return list by google (more than 300,000).
Still, using bing.com for the same search produces an ostensible 4.3 million entries in the search return list for the same keywords.
I found that to be true for other comparisons of search results, especially if they fall into the “politically incorrect” category. A good reason for not using google.com for searches.
RR Kampen:
Thankyou for your responses to my comments that you post at August 20, 2010 at 1:07 am.
You dispute two of my statements but your disputes are mistaken.
I wrote concerning the AGW hypothesis:
“The hypothesis predicts most warming of the air relative to the surface at altitude in the tropics.”
But you reply:
“In reality the hypothesis predicts most warming at high latitudes, particularly northern high latitudes. The hypothesis does so now and it did so when I studied climatology in an era the IPCC still had to be set up. The observations are conform hypothesis.”
Sorry, but the IPCC AR4 agrees with me and not you.
The matter is explained in Chapter 9 of the AR4 and you can read it at
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-chapter9.pdf
Figure 9.1 (on page 675) summarises the expected responses to various forcings from 1880 to 1999. Figure 9.1(c) shows the expectation from GHG increase and Figure 9.1(f) the sum of all forcings.
Figure 9.1(c) is the only diagram of the set of individual forcings that provides the pattern of warming I described.
And both Figures 9.1 (c) and (f) display the pattern I described because the AGW prediction is that the effect of the increased GHGs is to overwhelm the effects of the other forcings.
That warming at altitude in the tropics has not happened according to radiosonde (i.e. balloon) measurements taken over the last 50 years and has not happened according to MSU (i.e. satelire) measurements taken since 1979.
Indeed, the data indicates slight cooling at altitude in the tropics (i.e. the opposite of the expected effect of GHGs).
And I said:
“That’s 40 years of cooling and 28 years of warming. Global temperature is now similar to that of 1990.”
But you have replied saying:
”Reality: the past decade was warmest; decade 1990′s second warmest, decade 1980′s third warmest and the difference between the nineties and tens is bigger than between the eighties and nineties. In other words: warming is accelerating.
Also, we are almost on par with 1998, not 1990 – without a superNiño and during deep solar minimum: http://www.weerwoord.be/uploads/14820101561.png . Some ice is melting, too.”
Sorry, but even Phil Jones agrees that there has been no statistically significant warming for the last 15 years (i.e. since 1995). And the period from 1940 to 1970 showed similar decline.
Furthermore, if there has been no warming since 1995, within the error estimates then I am correct to say that “Global temperature is now similar to that of 1990”.
So, my statements are correct according to the HadCRUT3 data set.
And your assertion that “warming is accelerating” is plain fantasy. Indeed, warming stopped from its rapid rate from ~1970 to ~2000 some 10 years ago. A rational discussion would be as to if and when similar rapid warming will resume.
You conclude by asserting:
“AGW cannot be debunked because it is the reality.”
A truthful statement is that
AGW has been debunked by reality.
Richard
Henry,
Oh, nonsense. You were present at thousands of lab tests? You ever done one?
Both are true.
CO2 absorbing radiance in a volume of atmosphere is bog standard science. There are a variety of examples on youtube even. This one is the clearest I know of.
Did you actually read the paper this post is about?
Barry,
Even IF those classroom results are valid, it is and incredibly huge stretch to then declare that all us humans have to do is is control the level of .03% of the atmosphere to set the temperature of the earth (as though CO2 were some magical thermostat). There are so many known and unknown (and please don’t be foolish enough to ask me to prove we don’t know something) factors and interactions in the earth’s climate, that it is beyond foolhardy to pin everything on TRYING to control the reletavie level of CO2 in the earth’s atmosphere (unless, of course, you personally are going to make money from others doing so).
One only has to point to China where they say they believe in AGW (to get all that income from selling carbon credits), but then are adding hundreds of coal fired power plants to their electrical grid to show just why there are so many pushing this stupid idea.
It even makes me wonder if you are making money throught the promotion of this concept or potentially could make a lot of money through its acceptance.
Finally, the GCMs have yet to accurately predict the earth’s climate. Until they do, I, for one, will not accept the “magic” of CO2
from Barry:
“Lab tests performed thousands of times in high schools and universities definitively show that increasing CO2 in a volume of atmosphere will result in more infrared absorption leading to the heating of the volume.”
Yes, this is where the misconception starts, as the other part of this lab test is missing. Namely that since CO2 is an IR active gas, it also cools an atmospheric volume quicker as the relative volume of CO2 increases.
The other part of the lab test is to take a volume of gas with CO2 at a temperature greater than ambient and observe its rate of cooling. More CO2 = more cooling.
The relevance to the climate in this simple model, is the net effect that the 0.038% of CO2 in the atmosphere has between its small daytime heating effect and the small night-time cooling effect.
Oh, and the schools should also point out that CO2 is about 25 times less prevalent that H2O, which is a more IR active gas.
I’ve read all the comments so far. Good inputs, very informative as usual.
Some unbelievably smug MIT physicist made me quite nauseous though. Surreal.
For Barry and all those debating with him. Please read my presentation of a statistical model, http://www.kidswincom.net/CO2OLR.pdf and see where it fits in your debate over physics and model validity.
Henry@barry
If you had understood all my postings here on this thread you would have figured out that I think the basic science is completely wrong – i.e. unsubstantiated by any real experiments and testing. No correct formulae. What the IPPC did is put the horse behind the carriage. They assumed they knew what the cause was of global warming i.e. GHG’s – and CO2 specifically. Then by weighting the concentrations (back to 1750) they made their assumptions and theories. This is the worst mistake a scientist can make: assuming you know the cause of a problem and then trying to work your way back to find a solution for the problem. I know this! ! But now it is slowly dawning on all of them that CO2 might not be the problem.
As for me: I have come to a point where I am doubting that we really have a problem.
It seems to me earth has its own cooling system.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/24/willis-publishes-his-thermostat-hypothesis-paper/
have a nice weekend you all! enjoy lobal warming while we can~!! take a dip!!@!
What was that story of 3 persons :
EVERYBODY thought that SOMEBODY would do it (the experiments, the tests, the measurements ) and in the end NOBODY did it.
I tried posting the following at Deep Climate this Friday afternoon:
“R.S.Brown | August 20, 2010 at 1:33 pm | Reply Your comment is awaiting moderation.
Since Mann et alia have yet to release their early statistical methodologies in a coherant
format, even with the Mann et al (2004) Corrigendum to MBH98, it’s tough to have
much faith in their follow up statistical work(s).”
It will be my first time posting a comment there.
@duckster
‘Since when has it been science to accept a paper as scientifically valid without its findings being independently repeated?’
I was under the impression that this is the norm for climatological work. Since data and methods are rarely published in enough detail, independent repeats are, by definition, impossible.
orkneygal says:
August 17, 2010 at 6:14 pm
“For example, it might have been hotter in 1066.”
Yes, I think Magnus Barefoot would agree.Even though he was a bit later.
Isnt it funny that he was “King of Mann and the Isles” ? (Is it a typo?)
Here;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnus_III_of_Norway
barry says:
August 20, 2010 at 8:30 am
stephen richrds,
Barry says:
basic physics tells us that CO2 will cause temps to rise
Henry you are correct when you say that NO definitive study has ever been done which proves beyond doubt that CO² warms the planet
Firstly, there is no such thing as a definitive paper. Were Einstein’s relativity papers ‘definitive?’
Wrong as usual. Physics models are always defined within the limits at which they match reality. When eistein proposed both his theory of relativity and his special theory of relativity he proposed them from a theoretical point of view and provided the equations on which his proposition was based. Much of significance of his theories have only recently been understood (galaxy lensing) but the fundamentals were shown to be valid by the construction of the atomic weapons of WWII and the nuclear piles before that. Einsteins theories WERE DEFINITIVE in every way but were shown not to describe some molecular features at the limit after further research. Hence the development of Quantum mechanics (so called because Einstein and his colleagues decided it wasn’t true Physics. Now we have other theories such as string because the quantum model has been shown not to describe all the features of the atomic world as exposed by higher and higher energy colliders.
So I repeat, let’s see your CO² model equations working with reality at the molecular and atmospheric level. I have seen this excuse too much from you Climate cowboys. It’s time you lot understood what REAL SCIENCE is.
Basic physics tells us that the CO² molecule absorbs IR at very specific and narrow bands. Some of those bands absorb at energies re-radiated by the planet. It also says that all excited atoms always want to be at their ground state and will try to get their as soon as possible. Probability functions for determining the mean time to rest are available from all good basic physics books. I suggest you read one.
Stephen Richards BSc MSC Solid State Physics and Material Physics.
Latimer Alder says:
August 20, 2010 at 12:25 pm
@duckster
‘Since when has it been science to accept a paper as scientifically valid without its findings being independently repeated?’
I was under the impression that this is the norm for climatological work. Since data and methods are rarely published in enough detail, independent repeats are, by definition, impossible.
Duckster. Foot, Mouth swallowed comes to mind.
Those stupid school test drive me to distraction. I have threatened to sue my granddaughters school if they do it.
Let me explain. Glass bowl filled with wet air. Light bulb close by. Heats glass which transfers energy both by radiation from the bulb (energy unknown) and kinetic from the glass. Gas is trapped convection occurs for a few seconds or minutes until some sort of equilibrium arrives. Temp appears higher in one glass than the other. Relation to planet Earth ZERO, NONE, AUCUNE, DE NADA.
barry,
your discussion of experiments with CO2 in glass tubes is something of a strawman. Sceptics accept that the gas absorbs ir, but the real question is what is the aggregate effect in the real world climate with all the hydrological and convection cycles. Even these flask experiments lead to a very limited temperature sensitivity to co2 – about 1.2c per doubling. Some are arguing for a net negative feedback and some for positive. Those who say we do not know the answers to these questions are correct, and those who say otherwise are charlatans.
barry wrote:
“Lab tests performed thousands of times in high schools and universities definitively show that increasing CO2 in a volume of atmosphere will result in more infrared absorption leading to the heating of the volume.”
Not quite. CO2 alone is not enough to alone achieve the rise in global temperature predicted by the IPCC. A positive feedback between CO2 and water vapour is assumed in the GCM simulation models. In reality, not only the magnitude but also the sign [positive or negative] of such a hypothesized feedback mechanism is unknown.
Note that water vapour, by far the most common greenhouse gas and the one responsible for making our planet inhabitable, is only treated as a secondary effect. Also the role of clouds, especially their role in feedback mechanism, is ignored.
Seitz is so saucy;
Barry’s been into the lab.
Show me the real world.
==============
Anonymous blogger “Deep Climate” weighs in with what he/she calls a “deeply flawed study” here:
http://deepclimate.org/2010/08/19/mcshane-and-wyner-2010/
Romm of course republishes it, since he’s not competent to “eviscerate” it himself.
Still nothing from Real Climate.
“”” barry says:
August 20, 2010 at 8:30 am
stephen richrds
Barry says:
basic physics tells us that CO2 will cause temps to rise
Henry you are correct when you say that NO definitive study has ever been done which proves beyond doubt that CO² warms the planet
Firstly, there is no such thing as a definitive paper. Were Einstein’s relativity papers ‘definitive?’
Lab tests performed thousands of times in high schools and universities definitively show that increasing CO2 in a volume of atmosphere will result in more infrared absorption leading to the heating of the volume. “”””
Not sure who said what up there particularly this:- “””””
Lab tests performed thousands of times in high schools and universities definitively show that increasing CO2 in a volume of atmosphere will result in more infrared absorption leading to the heating of the volume. “””””
Now that is patent nonsense; well about the experiment being performed thousands of times in schools and universities. I’d be very surprised if Barry; whoever Barry is can cite just ONE specific instance in which that experiment was performed.
Shall I explain? Well of course. The postulate is that CO2 in the atmosphere captures LWIR Radiation emitted from the surface and “heats” the atmosphere; and that experiment has been performed thousands of times in schools and universities.
Well no it actually hasn’t. What has been done in schools and universities and even on TV shows like myth busters and the like is to take two samples of air; one with more CO2 than the other; but likely neither one having the same trace amount of CO2 that exists in the real atmosphere; and the other say double that; and then those two totally phony air samples; both of which have probably been shorn of any water vapor; unlike the real atmosphere; and then instead of irradiating these two phony air samples with LWIR radiation corresponding to that typically emitted by the average earth surface which would approximate a Black body radiator at about 288 Kelvins or +15 deg C or so and having a spectrum from about 5 microns to 80 microns, which includes the active 15 micorn CO2 band; they choose to use a very high temperature “heat lamp” or even a hotter light bulb that could be 2700 Kelvins or so, and which emits radiation in the visible and near IR region; none of which is emitted from a 288 K black body in any measureable amount.
So to actually perform the demonstrative experiment; you need one sample of air with say 390 ppm of CO2 and the other say 780 ppm of CO2; and I’ll even accept the total exclusion of any H2O from both samples.
And then you need to place some sort of brick or other dark object that is at a temperature of about 15 deg C (59 deg F) in front of the samples to emit the necessary thermal radiation spectrum to match what actually happens in the real atmosphere; except of course the real atmosphere is NEVER devoid of more H2O vapor than it has CO2.
so NO Barry, the experiment has not been performed thousands of times in schools and laboratories; possibly not even once.
And for the legal disclaimer; I fully accept the fact that trace amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere DO intercept some of the LWIR radiation emitted from the earth’s surface, and warms the atmosphere; but the effect has seldom if ever been tested in a laboratory setting.
Barry says:
August 20, 2010 at 8:30 am
stephen richrds,
Barry says:
basic physics tells us that CO2 will cause temps to rise
Henry you are correct when you say that NO definitive study has ever been done which proves beyond doubt that CO² warms the planet
Firstly, there is no such thing as a definitive paper. Were Einstein’s relativity papers ‘definitive?’
Lab tests performed thousands of times in high schools and universities definitively show that increasing CO2 in a volume of atmosphere will result in more infrared absorption leading to the heating of the volume. “”””
I couldn’t get past the horrible grammar in the first paragraph of the Eduardo Zorita paper to care.
REPLY: English is not his native language, cut some slack. – Anthony
Anthony Watts says:
August 20, 2010 at 2:24 pm
“Anonymous blogger “Deep Climate” weighs in with what he/she calls a “deeply flawed study” here:……”
DC spends a considerable amount of time, (about half of the response) taking issue on the background of the paper. None of the background has anything to do with the validity of the study. DC does take time to take issue with the methodologies used in sect 3 of the paper, but it comes down to “the paper is wrong because I don’t agree with the results and they should have done x to get the results I would like to see.”
Eviscerate seems to be an extreme description of the critique. It may have been more believable if DC hadn’t try to make a points playing to their crowd, “Similarly, the review of the “scientific literature” relies inordinately on grey literature such as Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick’s two Environment and Energy articles and the (non peer-reviewed) Wegman report.”
I asked how they thought that might be relevant, but it seems they just don’t believe mention M&M or the Wegman report should be allowed. “Why should that be permissable?” <———- quote from DC. Finally, after pressing, DC states this, “There is a difference between describing or assessing the grey litarature and *relying* on it. On every issue M&W side with M&M and Wegman.
The statistical analysis is flawed because it does not implement robust methodologies.”
Bold emphasis is mine.
Huh? I read the background section as a chronicle of studies and the subsequent discussions. And I suppose the chronology could be a bit off as DC states, but “siding with M&M and Wegman during the background invalidates the study? Since when? The study doesn’t rely on M&M nor Wegman. In fact, one could take all references to both and the study would remain the same. After that statement, I saw no reason to continue dialogue there.
I’m a bit underwhelmed with the critique. But it could be my emotional response to the word “robust”.
I’ve had enough talk. It is now 9AM here on the East coast of Australia, and I am off to vote in our elections. Hopefully, this evening, we will have a new government and I remember Tony Abbot saying, “Climate change is crap”.
I hadn’t entertained the possibility that deepclimate be a ‘she’.
Barry
Your post at August 20, 2010 at 7:34 am is not acceptable.
You quote me at August 20, 2010 at 2:14 am stressing:
“THE SKEWING – NOT THE USE OF PCA – IS THE FLAWED METHODOLOGY INTRODUCED BY THE ‘TEAM’.”
and respond with
“The various studies use different methodologies. You’ve retreated from PCA calibration to some ambiguous ‘skewing’.”.
NO!
That is NOT a retreat. It is a stressing of my point at August 19, 2010 at 1:20 pm
that you tried to ignore.
I had then said (in full);
“Barry:
At August 19, 2010 at 9:25 am you ask me:
“Please name the the “flawed statistical analysis method” common to the studies listed. Acronyms or short-hand will do.”
Sorry, I assumed you knew since you have displayed such confidence in it (above).
The “flawed statistical analysis method” is to use Principle Component Analysis (or PCA) that applies principal components in a ”skew”-centered fashion such that they are centered by the mean of the proxy data over the instrumental period.
This method was novel to Mann et al. in MBH98. Standard PCA analysis centers by the mean of the entire data record.
But the self-termed ‘hockey team’ are dedicated followers of fashion so they all adopted Mann’s novel method.
And the Mann-’skew’ induces PCA to generate ‘hockey sticks’.
Richard”
So, my saying,
“THE SKEWING – NOT THE USE OF PCA – IS THE FLAWED METHODOLOGY INTRODUCED BY THE ‘TEAM’.”
is NOT “a retreat” from my having said,
“And the Mann-’skew’ induces PCA to generate ‘hockey sticks’ ”.
It is a shouting of the same statement.
If you do not like a fact then that is no reason for you to pretend that I did not state the fact and – on the basis of that pretence – to falsely assert that I have “retreated” from stating that fact.
Richard
REPLY: Do you treat all members of the public with such a condescending attitude? And academics wonder why the public does not take them seriously when they try to communicate AGW ideas. You are exhibiting the same sort of attitude as Phil Jones and the team. – Anthony
One tries to be equitable, but when one side actually does science day in and day out and the other divides its time between riding a one stick pony and trolling the literature for dead horses to beat , the comedy of manners of some scientists behaving badly some of the time cannot long prevail over the hilarity of seeing bad science obtusely discussed
You distort. We deride.
REPLY: Ah, well Mr. Sietz, I daresay, there will come a day, when that holier than thou viewpoint of yours will have a shift in equity. In the meantime you might consider doing some science to contribute to this thread, you are even welcome to run a guest post on your “tiny bubbles” theory. Since you are foaming here, it seems only appropriate that you follow up to our first coverage of it. Let me know if you’d like to do a guest post. – Anthony Watts
The authors have done a really excellent job in showing what the data really contain. But unfortunately I still have to do some nitpicking. 1998 of all years is not a year to base statistics on: it is an outlier, the year of the super El Nino that does not even belong to the ENSO system that dominates temperature history. Secondly, I think it is simply stupid to change scale when you are trying to compare curves. The scale of the second graph is reduced by a factor of two from first one. The difference would be much more dramatic if you used the same vertical scale for both curves. And my personal feeling is that putting an uncertainty estimate on the graph as they all do is simply an annoyance and does not contribute any real information. That is because neighboring points are strongly correlated and the statistics used clearly fail to take this into account.
M&M and M&W were not able to reproduce Mann’s results.
Has anyone tried to jiggle with it to try and get the same results that Mann did?
“..consider the irony of the critics embracing a paper that contains the line “our model gives a 80% chance that [the last decade] was the warmest in the past thousand years”….”-Real Climate
After a week of being “preoccupied” Real Climate finally breaks radio silence here:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/08/doing-it-yourselves/
It appears to be a prelude to a dismissal with a “wave of the hand”.
Carry your “after” graph out to 2010, and you STILL have a hockey Stick.
barry says:
“1. barry says:
August 20, 2010 at 8:12 am
cohenite,
I am referring to the 20th century temperature rise, not 30-year blocks within it (which have some similarities – but then we need to talk about attribution – not here, though)
1. barry says:
August 20, 2010 at 8:30 am
Lab tests performed thousands of times in high schools and universities definitively show that increasing CO2 in a volume of atmosphere will result in more infrared absorption leading to the heating of the volume.
It would be nice to have a nearby planet composed much like ours is and dump enormous quantities of CO2 into its atmosphere to test the results.”
All of this in way or other is wrong. The first part is wrong for this reason: since 1850, when by general consensus the LIA finished and there was a slight increases in TSI, there have been 3 warm periods correlating with PDO phase changes:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1976/to:1998/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1910/to:1940/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1850/to:1880/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1998/trend
The first warm period, or “blocks” as barry calls them, was ~ from 1850-1880 and the rate of increase in temp then was 0.00525384 per year. In the 2nd warm period from ~1910-1940, the rate of increase was 0.0152788 per year, nearly 3 times the preceding warm period; during 1910-1940 the increase in CO2 was slight; the 3rd warm period was from ~1976-1998 and the rate of increase was 0.0146429 per year, less than the preceding warm period; from 1998 onwards the rate of increase has been 0.00230116 per year, much less than from 1976-1998 and that increase is entirely due to the El Nino conditions at the beginning of 2010.
The inescapable conclusion is that temp movement during the 20thC, indeed since 1850, have been closely correlated with TSI:
http://www.rocketscientistsjournal.com/2010/03/sgw.html
This is entirely to the point of the hockey stick and the current critique of it by M&W; there is no exceptional rate of temp increase during the alleged period of maximum AGW.
As for the 2nd comment by Barry about increases in CO2 inevitably leading to warming; this is contradicted by the lack of increase in optical depth over the last 60 years; this is the [in]famous Tau of Miskolczi which even Roy Spencer concedes. The simple fact of CO2 is that its greenhouse properties are defined by Beer-Lambert, decreasing, asymptotic, effect and dwarfed by water as Ramanathan shows:
http://scienceofdoom.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/ramanathan-coakley-1978-role-of-co2.png
the respective greenhouse properties of H2O and CO2 show that H2O has 2.5 times the greenhouse effect of CO2; on this basis, ignoring the TSI effect, any temp movement over the 20thC, about 0.7C, should have attribution between H2O and CO2 done on the basis of a 5:2 ratio.
Finally, your wish to have a planet nearby with large amounts of CO2 present; we have 2; Venus and Mars, which have 96% and 95% atmospheric concentrations of CO2; the difference in atmospheric temps between those 2 planets is due to atmospheric pressure not the radiative properties of the concentrations of CO2.
Russel “we deride”,
For someone who spent a good amount of time indulging in rancorous google-o-matic sputterings about Lord Monckton in the service of AGW, your imagination does run wild. About the science and stuff.
Vince,
If you’ve been reading the comments here, you’ll see that there is quite a lot of resistance to the notion (see mt reply to George below, for example). However, I agree that prominent skeptics in the literature agree with this empirical fact (Lindzen, Pielke Sr, Spencer, Christy etc). Roy Spencer attempted to set the story straight at his blog, but many skeptical lay people didn’t buy it.
Aye, that is the next step.
It’s not the right thread to discuss that, but it wouldn’t matter if a thousand studies on the greenhouse effect were cited here. Skeptics will simply announce they are all ‘wrong’, or not ‘definitive’, having read not a one.
George,
I provided a youtube link to such an experiment.
Here’s a paper by John Tyndal that documents probably the first ever test done in a lab on this in the mid-1800s. And if you click HERE, you can see the diagram of equipment for his experiments.
This is a typical high school document outlining a testing method. This is a primer document, also typical of schools. Here is another.
Here is a simple experiment description and a photo of the set up. Here is another…..
It’s really not controversial.
We’re straying further away from the topic here as new people come in and dismiss basic science. On to a new thread. Thanks for the conversations.
Zorita in his latest paper with Frank doesn’t even have MMs in his references…
This is even bigger than this story
“Prof. Mann was quoted in the British media as saying he believed that his little graph had gained undue attention.” Is he caving in? LOL
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2010/07/25/michael-hockey-stick-mann-hides-atop-the-climate-change-ivory-tower/#ixzz0xClA6OGN
“Chris in OZ says:
August 20, 2010 at 3:54 pm
I’ve had enough talk. It is now 9AM here on the East coast of Australia, and I am off to vote in our elections. Hopefully, this evening, we will have a new government and I remember Tony Abbot saying, “Climate change is crap”.”
Lets hope so aye? Unfortunately, watching ABC 24hr News channel here in Australia and the election coverage, there has been roughly 40 minutes in the last hour devoted to “climate change”, CPRS and ETS systems etc etc, lots of econimists commenting however. Mr Abbott won’t be the next PM of Australia as Austrlians believe that reducing the ~1%-2% of Australian CO2 contributions to the total, global, CO2 emissions volume by 20% is going to, somehow, save the planet (Which is only in danger from it’s own star).
@cohenite
‘The first warm period, or “blocks” as barry calls them, was ~ from 1850-1880 and the rate of increase in temp then was 0.00525384 per year. In the 2nd warm period from ~1910-1940, the rate of increase was 0.0152788 per year, nearly 3 times the preceding warm period; during 1910-1940 the increase in CO2 was slight; the 3rd warm period was from ~1976-1998 and the rate of increase was 0.0146429 per year, less than the preceding warm period; from 1998 onwards the rate of increase has been 0.00230116 per year, much less than from 1976-1998 and that increase is entirely due to the El Nino conditions at the beginning of 2010.’
I wonder how you can quote the rates to six significant figures. You must be very very very clever…and have totally misunderstood what you are doing. Or you haven;t studied the ‘how to use a calculator’ bit of basic sums (‘math’ in the US).
Since the article under discussion is all about the magnitude of uncertainties in statistical processes, I didn’t bother to read the rest of your contribution.
@Latimer Alder says:
Duckster: ‘Since when has it been science to accept a paper as scientifically valid without its findings being independently repeated?’
Latimer Alder: I was under the impression that this is the norm for climatological work. Since data and methods are rarely published in enough detail, independent repeats are, by definition, impossible.
I have to admit to the use of the wrong term above. I should have said reproducibility, not repeatability. Scientific reproducibility refers to other scientists replicating experiments done by one scientists, while repeatability refers to the same scientists repeating their own results (possibly under different circumstances).
So I had a quick check through Google scholar to look at studies on reproducibility in climate science – not just counting the number of hits, but looking at what the studies briefly tried to do – and lo! Who’d a thought it. There are tons of studies which work on reproducibility of climate science.
@stephen richards
Duckster. Foot, Mouth swallowed comes to mind.
Thanks for this intelligent addition to the discussion. I am completely floored by this. Obviously.
Henry@barry
Surely you must realize that we been all through that? Svante Arrhenius’s formula was wrong. If it had been right earth would have been lot warmer by now. I even told you what he (and everyone else after him ) did wrong. He forgot about the cooling caused by GHG’s. Looking carefully at the incoming and outgoing radiation graphs I estimate that it could be pretty much evens between the warming and cooling of CO2.
But based on your science, what is the correct formula? That is my challenge to you and everyone who believes that CO2 is bad. The IPPC’s forcings are based on weighting, i.e. calculations based on observed global warming and observed increases in GHG’s. Not actual testing
I hope you watched the you tube video about the man wanting to prove global warming for $36. It came after your video. It is 4 minutes. I laughed. And laughed.
Arno Arrak says:
August 20, 2010 at 4:56 pm
“And my personal feeling is that putting an uncertainty estimate on the graph as they all do is simply an annoyance and does not contribute any real information.”
Arno, I think the whole point of the paper was to demonstrate uncertainty. True, they could have simply stated the levels of uncertainty, but many that have come here to debate the points of the paper only look at the pictures and they’d have never understood the levels of uncertainty.
Latimer Alder says:
August 20, 2010 at 10:31 pm
“I wonder how you can quote the rates to six significant figures. You must be very very very clever…and have totally misunderstood what you are doing. Or you haven;t studied the ‘how to use a calculator’ bit of basic sums (‘math’ in the US).”
Are you nuts; the graphs are from WFT which includes the raw data and, in the case of OLS, the numerical slopes; look at the site and patronise someone else, or at least think before shooting yourself in the foot.
” I didn’t bother to read the rest of your contribution”
I’m not surprised since you didn’t have a clue about what you did read.
“After a week of being “preoccupied” Real Climate finally breaks radio silence here:”
I would much rather wait a little and see a carefully considered analysis of the paper (from all sides of the debate), than to have it lauded and cheered immediately by people who have neither read nor understood it, but do so because its conclusions seem to agree with their prejudices.
Henry Pool says:
August 20, 2010 at 11:30 pm
“I hope you watched the you tube video about the man wanting to prove global warming for $36. It came after your video. It is 4 minutes. I laughed. And laughed.”
I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. I need to get a picture of Mr. Sietz to make sure that wasn’t him out there doing his science.
Barry, I’m not sure your u-tube video was much better. That silly little test doesn’t show anything but demonstrate a well know property of CO2. It almost inspires me to video an apple falling to the ground to prove gravity.
You guys have a pleasant…….well, it’s 2:30 A.M. here.
Er, well, Einstein’s relativity papers actually are definitive, as are others such as Newton’s Principia. Those two examples alone falsify your statement.
I can agree, however, that not all advances is science are marked by “definitive papers”. On the other hand, it is a reasonable question to ask “what are the 10 most significant papers which establish the AGW theory?” (if you think 10 ain’t the right number, can you suggest an alternative which is better?)
Anthony:
In your excellent reply to Russell Seitz that you append to his post at August 20, 2010 at 4:25 pm you suggest to him:
“ In the meantime you might consider doing some science to contribute to this thread …”
sarc on/
Your suggestion is clearly mistaken.
Every academic involved in using public money to study AGW knows that
(a) the world outside of academia is real
so
(b) is not of interest,
but
(c) virtual worlds can be constructed in computer models,
and
(d) AGW can be observed, measured and ‘projected’ by an appropriately devised computer model,
so
(e) appropriate computer models are useful tools to generate additonal research funds,
and
(f) the only function of the real world is to provide the research funds.
Therefore,
(g) any comments from the real world are irrelevant noise to be ignored or silenced
because
(h) academics have wives and families they need to house and feed
and
(i) income from the research funds fulfils this need.
Sarc off/
Anyway, observations support the above sarcastic argument more than observations support the AGW hypothesis.
Richard
@duckster
‘I have to admit to the use of the wrong term above. I should have said reproducibility, not repeatability. Scientific reproducibility refers to other scientists replicating experiments done by one scientists, while repeatability refers to the same scientists repeating their own results (possibly under different circumstances)’
Thanks for the correction. I am glad that we agree that the standards of disclosure within climatology have been so low that independent repeatability of past work is in fact impossible.
We are forced to rely on self-certification that the authors have done their work correctly, since they have not published their methods or data in any detail. And we also know that the ‘peer-review’ process has never been robust in attempting to demonstrate repeatability. P Jones remarked…’they never asked’ when questionned about how many times a peer-reviewer had asked to see his data and methods in a 30-year career. We must just take the correctness of the papers on this criterion as an act of faith, rather than by any independent verification.
So repeatability is effectively off the menu in this field.
The debate moves to ‘reproducibility’.
Since there are no actual experiments in climatology, the only thing left to attempt to reproduce is the statistical manipulation of previously collected data. And this is what the M&W paper attempts to do for previous work.
Using exactly the same data (as far as can be ascertained) as Mann used, they arrive at very different conclusions from him. They attempt to reproduce his work and fail to do so.
Their interpretation is that his claims to have found a robust temperature signal among the noisy data are not supported if the statistical manipulation is done using industry-standard techniques, rather than by novel and Mann-unique methods.
And they lay out their methods and data in plain sight for all to see and criticise.
So, like you I believe strongly in both repeatability and reproducibility as being essential to scientific progress.
We have seen that repeatability is only possible if the ‘scientists’ publish their data and methods. Now we have a paper looking at the reproducibility of non-repeatable work. And showing that the results are not reproducible either.
What scientific validity remains for any work when both your tests are spectacularly failed?
@Gunter
‘I would much rather wait a little and see a carefully considered analysis of the paper (from all sides of the debate), than to have it lauded and cheered immediately by people who have neither read nor understood it, but do so because its conclusions seem to agree with their prejudices.’
So you’ll be ignoring any remarks from RC then? A website explicitly set up by a communications corporation (Environmental Media Services) to defend AGW and the Hockey Stick. And EMS was set up as an activist organisation by multi-millionaire David Fenton (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Fenton) to promote his political views.
Real Climate is noted for its ruthless policy of not accepting any comments that do not adhere to their approved predictions of imminent climate change catastrophe.
So I am sure you will not be looking there for a ‘carefully considered analysis of the paper (from both sides)’.
@cohenite
Thank you for your reply. I did indeed understand exactly what I was reading…. a piece from somebody who has no experience of processing experimental data or basic statistics.
And who attempts to show how clever the work is by using a level of apparent certainty way in advance of their ability to understand these simple concepts.
By making such a basic error, [snip…play nice ~ ctm].
Hi ctm
Thanks for your snip. I posted and regretted that last bit immediately. Cheers
Is that an MIT professor repeating an experiment that has been repeated “1000’s” of times?
Whats next out of the illustory halls of MIT? Watching an apple drop and yelling “gravity!”
Just as a note: There is a reason most of us do not take the science seriously….It is because of stunts like that…If you were taking the time to seriously test theories posted here instead of saying “you are wrong, we are right”, you might be taken more seriously…You perform those stunts without reading what is actually being said.
From a “I don’t care, its 4:30am and I was out with friends not drinking while they were”…I can say this: I think the points about not testing possible feedbacks of CO2 whether they are positive or negative from a physics point of view is why most people are not taking you seriously on this thread. The standard response of GCM’s prove this is utter rubbish because those are using statistics and data modeling/mining to come to a conclusion when all along we have questioned these models and for years have fought for the actual code to reproduce this ourselves.
If the code is correct, there is no reason to not post every single piece of the puzzle. Make it so a non-expert can reproduce your code. Is that too difficult? If it is, then explain to me why. Until that is the case, I trust professional statisticians over you any day of the week.
Zorita and others here fail to understand that M&W are not doing science in thier paper. No more than a proof reader is writing the book, they are proofing the stats.
@cohenite
I’m sorry that I suggested that you couldn’t use a pocket calculator and interpret the results correctly. Having studied the WFT website, I now see that you didn’t need the calculator. Because the site does all the sums for you. Its so much easier that way – saves having any need to understand the data and therefore what you are actually working with. But it doesn’t aid your insight.
But you have still reported the results to a mathematical precision far greater than the underlying data will permit. And have failed to even consider uncertainties.
To use a simple example, the mathematical answer to (1/2)*(1/2)*(1/2)*(1/2) is 0.0625. This does not mean that the answer to a real world problem of ‘about a half of about a half of about a half of about a half’ is exactly 0.0625, and not 0.060 or 0.065. Or even 0.1. or 0.02 – depending on how close the ‘abouts’ were above. We express this by using uncertainties. eg. 0.06 +/- 0.1. This tells us how good an estimate to the real world we think our sums have been.
Climatology takes temperature data that is pretty coarse..=/- 0.1 degrees at best. The ‘about’ is quite large. If I report 11.1 C, I actually mean 11.1 +/- 0.05C.
Using data of this precision it is ridiculous to express trends as ‘0.00525384 per year’ as you have. 0.005 +/- 0.001 might be a sound estimate from the underlying data. What you have described is not. The end 25384 are mathematical artefcats and add nothing….
If the website doesn’t help you to understand this then
a. it b…y well should,
b. they probably don’t understand it themselves (no big surprise there the are climatologists and there is no such thing as uncertainty) and
c. you need to use a new website…..or a calculator.
c. is best..it will help you to understand the data.
Latimer; you are reading something into my post which I did not intend and which is not the point; the point is that the recent warming [assuming one can trust the data and really the satellites are the only sources which are reliable with GISS and NOAA beyond the pale] is not exceptional; the extent of the trend figures I quoted from WFT are superflous because the broad trend is sufficient to make that conclusion in the periods I referred to.
Almost 1000 comments !
Well
Zorita already called it a “deeply flawed” study – he was only too polite to say so. However, seeing how there is nothing substancial left standing of the paper after his review, it is fair to sum it up that way. – And now you have a second guy taking it to the cleaners. I think it is safe to take the news item off the pole position now, it seems it is not all that you had hoped for.
hmmm. Early in the comment section over at RC, one of the posters wrote, “In fact, one might wonder if they didn’t search for a method that wouldn’t beat some noise models (i.e. lasso) for the data at hand …” First of all, you must select your statistical method before you do the study. So if the authors here searched, they searched before hand. Second, a “robust” conclusion is exactly one that demonstrates the same conclusion no matter WHAT method you use. These efforts to find a statistical method that would challenge conclusions, should be welcomed endeavors by scientists, lest we lead the scientific community, let alone the world community, down a primrose path. That the hockey stick does not stand up against the statistical methods chosen by the authors, more than likely means the hockey stick, in its present popular version, is not robust.
Phlogiston, I liked your comment so much I drew this…
http://www.cartoonsbyjosh.com/Blades4Uscr.jpg
Josh,
Wonderful stuff.
Please try a cartoon of yourself . . . . or is the hockey salesman in your above cartoon a self-portrait? Ever put your self-portrait in one of your cartoons?
John
Matt,
“Zorita already called it a “deeply flawed” study.”
In what way is the study deeply flawed? Zorita has attacked M&W’s discourses on proxy data gathering, but when you get to the bottom of the arguments, it is all smoke and mirrors.
Why does M&W’s ignorance of CO2 in ice cores impact the statistical findings of their paper? M&W are guilty of naivette – by venturing to discuss the background to climate proxies – they have allowed their paper to fall victim to the argumentium strawmanium. So far, I have not seen – and Zorita does not provide – any critique of their statistical methods.
Matt, read what Pamela posted until you get it.
Three methods, three different results, is not robust.
Matt says:
August 21, 2010 at 6:32 am
“Well
Zorita already called it a “deeply flawed” study – he was only too polite to say so. However, seeing how there is nothing substancial left standing of the paper after his review, it is fair to sum it up that way. – And now you have a second guy taking it to the cleaners. I think it is safe to take the news item off the pole position now, it seems it is not all that you had hoped for.”
Matt, read the critiques again, but before you do, read the title of the paper.”A STATISTICAL ANALYSIS OF MULTIPLE TEMPERATURE
PROXIES: ARE RECONSTRUCTIONS OF SURFACE
TEMPERATURES OVER THE LAST 1000 YEARS RELIABLE?” In either DC or Zorita, it seems lost that this is the question the authors are trying to answer. In fact, while rambling Zorita actually confirms that the proxies are not reliable. Zorita states, “The authors unfortunately do not go into a deeper analysis. Questions of proxy selection, underestimation of past variability (the failure of their method to reproduce the trend in the last 30 years could be perfectly due to this problem as well), the role of non-climate noise in the proxies, and finally the tendency of almost all methods to produce spurious hockey sticks, all of them are related to some degree. For instance, the presence of noise in the proxy records alone could, regardless of the statistical method used, lead to underestimation of past variations.” Later he states, Well, this result may be interesting and probably correct, but I doubt it is useful, since I am not aware of any reconstruction using this statistical regression model.” This is the crux of the argument. In all of the critiques of the M&W paper I’ve seen it is ‘we don’t like the method, so it’s probably wrong’.(while never really presenting a valid reason why the methods are incorrect) Or as in Zorita’s case, he states its probably correct, but it doesn’t count because others haven’t done it before. But then later states it isn’t novel. “This is the part I most agree with, but their conclusions are hardly revolutionary. Already the NRC assessment on millennial reconstructions and other later papers indicate that the uncertainties are much larger than those included in the hockey stick and that the underestimation of past variability is ubiquitous. Already the NRC assessment on millennial reconstructions and other later papers indicate that the uncertainties are much larger than those included in the hockey stick and that the underestimation of past variability is ubiquitous. “ THIS IS THE ENTIRE STATED PURPOSE OF THE PAPER!!! I guess Zorita is stating the authors were correct, but for the wrong reasons.
Zorita seems to take them to task about not addressing the validity of the proxies chosen even though the paper clearly states that isn’t the purpose of the paper. Zorita even takes some time to do a bit of self-promotion and talks of a paper he wrote regarding proxy selection. Nice. Given that the authors M&W stated they would stipulate even though there were questions about that in itself which is why they used Mann’s later study because it used the most comprehensive sets of proxies.
At this point, I feel I must apologize to the many that I’ve taken to task for not reading the paper. Apparently, throughout the world, it is even too much of a difficulty to even understand stated purpose of the paper apparent in the title. Obviously, my expectations were a bit high for even professionals, much less laymen.
While Zorita’s critique is a bit more than DC’s, it still spends and inordinate amount of time on the background that doesn’t really have a darn thing to do with the actual study. As I stated on DC’s blog, who cares what the impetus was for them to write the study? They could have stated aliens told them to write it, that in itself doesn’t invalidate the methodologies nor the analysis used in the study.
Pamela Gray says:
August 21, 2010 at 7:16 am
Hammer hitting the nail on the head!!! For the life of me, I can’t understand why this is such a difficulty to understand. I thought we all learned this in grade school by looking at the different views of a cylinder and understanding we have to give it various dimensional views to conclude it is indeed a cylinder. Apparently, once again we see that temps and their proxies are so special that fundamental and rudimentary rules and concepts don’t apply to these magical numbers and only a selected few are trained well enough to be guardians of the truth.<—— Yet another tell tale sign of pseudo-science, bordering on cult like behavior.
@cohenite
‘Latimer; you are reading something into my post which I did not intend and which is not the point;’
Well, I suggest that next time you decide to comment on a thread that is all about uncertainty, you refrain from quoting trends to a completely unjustified 6 significant figures. And when asked to explain why, you could consider understanding the question rather than trashing the intellectual abilities of the questionner. RC tactics are not appropriate on WUWT.
And you should also remember that readers do not see what you meant…they see what you wrote. If these are different things, then the problem lies with you to correct, not with them to second guess your intention.
Josh says:
August 21, 2010 at 7:52 am
Brilliant cartoon, wow, I’m lost for words
Soon to be a thousand comments…… and some of the replies are apparently still defending the glorious hockey stick despite being up against an army of logic and common sense.
Does anybody really think that boring holes into old trees and then measuring the tree rings is a good way of knowing past mean temperatures 600 years ago with a certainty of +- 1.5 degrees??? What if birds ate half of the leaves at random intervals? =)
REPLY: I discuss the reliability of “treemometers” here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/09/28/a-look-at-treemometers-and-tree-ring-growth/
-Anthony
Operative word here would be lectures (in the strictest sense).
.
What’s up with Mr. Watts claim of ” original “coverage of my forthcoming work ? One so deeply shocked over grey literature sources in IPCC reports must be in high dudgeon that a climate blog would stoop to a third hand account of an embargoed paper still under peer review. As guests should not beat their hosts, I must decline Mr. Watts kind offer to post on his behalf, as his original failure to contact me to confirm merits a journalistic thrashing.
His ” original” coverage link was one hacks take on a second journalist’s account of an interview with a _Science _ news reporter who hadn’t read the paper in question for the simple reason that I hadn’t finished writing it- he instead attended a conference where I gave a talk on the work in question.
The paper must speak for itself when it appears, but readers wishing to to get a grip on its context might profitably read Paul Crutzen’s piece in _Climate Change_ dealing with the policy ramifications of the inverse problem– solar radiation management by aerosol scattering. If that’s too technical try Victor Davis article-( and my reply) in _Foreign Affairs_. If even that seems too abstruse, there’s always the lucid _Economist_.
But if no matter how far down the chain of popularization and decaying signal-to-noise ratio you descend, you still can’t make head or tail of the science itself, just stay on this page. Mr. Watt’s is entitled to his lawful prey.
REPLY: Ah, well thanks for confirming that even when someone tries to engage you nicely, offering a guest post for you to explain further, you write condescendingly. Oh well, you had your chance to engage the public in meaningful way, instead you chose the “let them eat cake” route. Remember, people that live in greenhouses shouldn’t throw stones.
As for the word “original” coverage no such word was used, you inserted it. Thus you err in your interpretation.
I wrote “our first coverage of it”, meaning “the first time on WUWT”. Certainly there will be a follow up to that one when your paper is published. I do find it funny though that you can lecture on a paper “not yet finished” and then lambaste somebody for writing about it. The simplest solution to your dilemma is to not say anything if you don’t want anyone to take notice.
But given the press coverage so far, it appears that in fact you are seeking attention for it, so your protestations about press coverage are ridiculous. BTW can you confirm for me that all authors of the linked stories above contacted you first? I want to know who will be doing the journalistic thrashing of me.
And finally I’m curious, this story, is that you? Are you a jade hunter? – Anthony
He always finds these
Hockey Sticks, through the ruckus.
Accident or not?
==========
Sneers are, it appears,
property of the fearful.
Arch higher, and hiss.
============
Let us assume that the global temperature rises one or two degrees. So what?
Let us further assume that the sea level rises a couple feet. So what? Not unusual in the Earth’s long history.
The climate establishment states that this will lead to doomsday – 30% of the world’s species will become extinct. The temperature increased several degrees after the last ice age; moreover, sea levels rose by 120 meters. And no animals became extinct. Some died indirectly because they migrated but not due to climate change!
I think we have to adapt to perfectly normal fluctuations in temperature and sea level due to climate change – we are unable to stop it!
Look Prof, we’ve long known
It’s all about albedo.
Cloud’s quiet message.
============
SamG: August 14, 2010 at 5:56 pm
What’s a truck?
REPLY: A Lorry.
It’s also the round ball atop a flagpole.
*koff*
Only two more to go for a thousand comments…
I’ve heard that if it gets to 1000 comments then MBH have to release their code.
Only one to go and we’ll know.
Well done WUWT et al. for your wonderful site.
“Are we there, yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?”
A: “If I have to stop this blog and turn around…”
@Invariant at 11.47 am. “The temperature increased several degrees after the last ice age; moreover, sea levels rose by 120 meters. And no animals became extinct.”
Surely animals are always becoming extinct? That is the nature of evolution.
SamG: August 14, 2010 at 5:56 pm
What’s a truck?
“The Truck” was, maybe still is, a famous large vehicle parked in a car park near Tokyo’s Narita airport which contained a bar. In my day, predominantly Anglo-Saxon aircrew used to meet there for a few beers.
Since this post is about bringing professional statisticians into the climate science methods/processes, I thought you might enjoy a post to RC that had the life expectancy of a tsetse fly. It didn’t make it nearly that long, like zero life.
NOTE: Honestly, I am not trying (perhaps just a little bit) to be the 1000th commenter : )
John
Does Mann use a loud speaker and microphone when he has a class with 2 students? If the stats are bad, you have to offset them with zeal.
“What’s a truck?”
Back in England we passed this enigmatic first post to Dr.Spooner.
“What’s a trick?” he mused.
“Something to do with a ficking truck – it’s that new sort of science but we don’t yet do it at Oxford.”
Mike Post says:
@Invariant at 11.47 am. “The temperature increased several degrees after the last ice age; moreover, sea levels rose by 120 meters. And no animals became extinct.”
Surely animals are always becoming extinct? That is the nature of evolution.
Sure, I’ve read all the books of Richard Dawkins.
Which animals became extinct when the temperature increased several degrees after the last ice age and the sea levels rose by 120 meters?
Do you know?
@ Invariant at 2.25 pm: ‘Which animals became extinct when the temperature increased several degrees after the last ice age and the sea levels rose by 120 meters?
Do you know?’
No idea. But I would imagine that it would have been the species that failed to adapt.
Mike Post says:
August 21, 2010 at 2:38 pm
@ Invariant at 2.25 pm: ‘Which animals became extinct when the temperature increased several degrees after the last ice age and the sea levels rose by 120 meters?
Do you know?’
No idea. But I would imagine that it would have been the species that failed to adapt.
Sure. I can imagine too. But I have not seen experimental evidence!
That’s what this thread is about!
Since Dr. Seitz wants to practice wordplay here, I thought it worth revisiting what Willis Eschenbach thought of his bubbles in the ocean geoengineering idea that we covered on WUWT. Care to respond Dr. Seitz?
Willis Eschenbach says:
March 28, 2010 at 12:22 am
Having worked as a commercial fisherman and done sailboat deliveries, I know that the ocean is … well … huge beyond belief. So, let’s do some back of the envelope calculations …
Boat going 10 m/sec = 20 knots.
Spreads bubbles in a swath 10 metres wide.
We’ll say we have one hundred bubble boats.
That’s 10,000 square metres bubbleized per second.
Area of the world’s oceans is 360,000,000,000,000 square metres.
Time to bubbleize say half of the oceans is 17,892,270,924 seconds, or
298,204,515 minutes, or
4,970,075 hours, or
207,086 days, or only
5,874 years.
So a fleet of only a hundred thousand boats could get the job done in five point nine years. Of course, the bubbles will all disperse in say a month (probably more like a week or even a day, but I’m a generous man), so we’ll need 140 times that many boats to maintain the bubbles.
So all we need is 14 million boats. And a thousand windmills. Oh, and the fuel for the boats. Let’s see, a boat going 20 knots might burn five gallons of fuel per hour, 14 million boats, that’s 70 million gallons of fuel an hour at a cost of three bucks a gallon, that’s a constant running cost of $210,000,000 per hour forever, or
$5 billion dollars per day, or
$1.8 trillion dollars per year in perpetuity.
Ooops, forgot the crew’s wages, say four crewpersons per boat, that’s a work force of 52 million men and women. Say they’re each getting $40k per year because of the long hours and the time away from home. That’s another $2 trillion dollars per year. And not counting the cost of the boats. And not counting the maintenance on the boats and the machinery.
Now we just need the grant money …
Russell Seitz says:
August 21, 2010 at 11:23 am
Mr. Seitz, after witnessing your back and forth with Mr. Watts for some time now, I’m curious as to your purpose. Do you want people to interpret your paper through proxies or not? Mr. Watts provides you a platform and you lambaste him for being the provider. He even offers an opportunity to submit an article in your own words to be published here at the most traveled science website. And still you insist on snide comments. Do you have a thought you wish to convey? Are you usually this inept at social discourse and civility? Or is it only when you are at a keyboard? I know several “keyboard commandos”, I find them void of value. It is my sincerest wish you are not a “jade hunting”, “keyboard commando”, but your discourse and demeanor is leaving that impression. If you have something to contribute to this discussion, I’d be more than happy to read it. If not, would you be so kind as to not waste our time with your blatherings? It’s very tedious.
Real(ly wrong) Climate waited a week to say ANYTHING about this paper, after several counter-points were already “out there”.
Conclusion: The guys at RC aren’t smart enough to come up with their own analysis and wait for someone smarter to figure it out. If Gavin knew what he was doing, the first deconstruction of the paper would have been there at RC, a few hours after it appeared.
BTW Anthony, is this the first entry to get 1000+ comments?
Mattn no the annoncement I made of the CRU emails had well over 1500 IIRC
Has this thread yet outrun the original Climategate thread for length? No, I see that thread reaches 1600-odd. Still, at 5/8 of that thread, this is going well. Though so much here is ding-dongs involving Barry who, it seems, is not to be stopped by proof, from the indefatigable Richard Courtney, of having written rubbish. Errrrrr… sounds like the Mann himself.
It freaks me, how some people can argue and argue that black is white.
It freaks me even more, when people team up to do so.
It freaks me even more, when the Team gets the backing of the whole of official science.
We wait with bated breath… will this new pair of outsiders, statisticians beneath Team notice, manage to deliver the world from the madness of the Hockey Team scientists – where earlier statisticians’ reviews, and years of continuous statistical sniping, have failed so far to exorcise the madness that has usurped Climate Science? We know that public unrest has been growing, worsened by reports that whitewash the Team and their science. Will the new pair finally puncture the global fantasies, and return Science to us? Will we see “experts” trailing in, saying sorry, I was hoodwinked / put under the Imperius curse…
MattN says: August 21, 2010 at 6:48 pm
“BTW Anthony, is this the first entry to get 1000+ comments?”
“1,616 Responses to Breaking News Story: CRU has apparently been hacked – hundreds of files released”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/19/breaking-news-story-hadley-cru-has-apparently-been-hacked-hundreds-of-files-released/
We’re all wrong. The Mad Dhog has spoken on RC. Acccording to Him McShane and Wyner are a couple of “b-school profs”.
Let us all stand corrected.
Jimmy Haigh says:
August 21, 2010 at 11:18 pm
We’re all wrong. The Mad Dhog has spoken on RC. Acccording to Him McShane and Wyner are a couple of “b-school profs”.
Let us all stand corrected.
lol, the minions are way behind. I’m having a bit of fun with them. Gavin pointed out the 80% part of the study. I basically told him he was reading it wrong. Surprisingly, after an interminable amount of time, they posted it with a not so surprising response. I really can’t understand why anyone would willingly subject themselves to such a poor mannered egomaniac. The drip was wrong, I politely suggested he could be reading it wrong and I get an admonishment to “think”. I shouldn’t try to correct them over there, but is fun pointing out their idol doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
Lucy Skywalker says:
August 21, 2010 at 6:59 pm
“Will the new pair finally puncture the global fantasies, and return Science to us? ”
Given the out of hand dismissal by some of the alarmists, I don’t think we’re going to see that. From what I’ve seen so far, is the argument will go something like this……..”They are just statisticians. They don’t know science. Their methodologies are wrong because they don’t understand the intricacies of climatology.”
Or it could be the response I got from DC. “On every issue M&W side with M&M and Wegman.” Honestly, that was one of the reasons DC thought the paper should be invalidated. When I run into things like that, I get disheartened. How in the world does one speak to people like that? People say we need more dialogue between alarmists and skeptics. I don’t want to or rather can’t dialogue with people with that sort of reasoning.
On a lighter note I have personally found that since 1995 the winters to be warmer overall, the skies to be bluer, the summers to be extremely hot for 1 month but generally pleasantly warmer in truth the weather has been wonderful. The seas appear to be pleasantly warmer than when I was a child. Climate change? No.
I moved from England to Brisbane Australia. Everyone please keep up the good work, we in sunny Australia look like having a hung parliament for the first time since WW2 and the Greens now have a seat at the table. Regards, an AussiePom
I searched for Seitz in Foreign Affairs magazine and found this letter to the editor
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/65159/russell-seitz/the-next-top-model
I may be wrong but the letter seems to indicate an opinion about GCMs that would not be out of place on a very skeptical blog site
DL,
Thanks for linking to Russell Seitz’ letter to the editor, which certainly did not appear to be in jest.
In his letter, Seitz says, “Fire in the hands of Neolithic man had already transformed the ecology — and the albedo — of Australia and the Americas eons before.”
In geological terms an eon is a billion years. Russell needs to get a grip.
“Mattn no the annoncement I made of the CRU emails had well over 1500 IIRC”
Ah, yes. My mistake.
Richard says:
August 22, 2010 at 4:47 am
O/T but, Good on yah Richard, paradise found !
I have just moved back to Hervey Bay in retirement, and I can tell you all, the sea level here hasn’t changed since 1944, I still collect bait and go fishing off the same rocks as I did when I was a kid back then.
Keep up the great work Anthony. Sorry I missed you while you were in Australia, bit far for me to drive to Emerald or Brisbane these days ! But I do check in here every day.
.
In his Foreign Affiars letter, Setiz wrote
=========
This breathtaking string of global systems modeling fiascos leaves some analysts asking why climate models are deemed sacrosanct when variables as critical as the sensitivity of the climate to the doubling of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have failed to converge on uncontroversial values.
======
This does seem to describe a very sceptical opinion. It is not one that RealClimate would espouse.
I wonder what happened to DaveSpringer and barry and others who were still going to prove from tests that the warming properties of CO2 are greater than the cooling properties. (In the right dimensions of course, i.e. W/m3 rel.% GHG/m2/24hr or mnth or year)
Are we all settled now on the observation in the paper that modern warming is or might well be due to natural causes ?
Anthony Watts says:
August 21, 2010 at 7:09 pm
> Mattn no the announcement I made of the CRU emails had well over 1500 IIRC
And that broke my web scraping code that picked up comment counts – I was using a number converter that doen’t like commas in the middle of numbers. Final count for the Climategate kickoff post is 1,616.
FWIW, here are all the posts with more than 500 comments. This post is only in 3rd place, but not for long, I suspect. Date, comments, title:
2009-11-19 1616 Breaking News Story: CRU has apparently been hacked – hundreds of files released
2009-12-19 1061 Obama returns from the Copenhagen global warming conference
2010-08-17 1017 New paper makes a hockey sticky wicket of Mann et al 98/99/08
2009-12-08 909 The Smoking Gun At Darwin Zero
2009-03-21 806 The Sun: double blankety blank quiet
2010-02-25 789 Judith, I love ya, but you’re way wrong …
2009-01-31 701 Ocean Acidification and Corals
2009-01-27 659 James Hansen’s Former NASA Supervisor Declares Himself a Skeptic – Says Hansen ‘Embarrassed NASA’, ‘Was Never Muzzled’, & Models ‘Useless’
2009-09-10 638 Svensmark: “global warming stopped and a cooling is beginning” – “enjoy global warming while it lasts”
2010-07-23 627 Explaining misconceptions on “The Greenhouse Effect”
2009-12-27 622 The Unbearable Complexity of Climate
2010-02-24 617 On the Credibility of Climate Research, Part II: Towards Rebuilding Trust
2010-08-05 603 Why the CO2 increase is man made (part 1)
2010-02-09 596 Climategate: Plausibility and the blogosphere in the post-normal age.
2010-03-16 579 Another Look at Climate Sensitivity
2008-11-14 552 Questions on the evolution of the GISS temperature product
2010-04-08 546 NSIDC’s Walt Meier responds to Willis
2009-04-22 543 WUWT Poll: What should we call the current solar minimum?
2009-08-06 538 Long debate ended over cause, demise of ice ages – solar and earth wobble – CO2 not main driver
2009-02-25 530 A short primer: The Greenhouse Effect Explained
2010-02-22 529 The most slimy essay ever from the Guardian and Columbia University
2009-01-13 525 Voting is closed
2008-12-21 512 Jim Hansen’s AGU presentation: “He’s ‘nailed’ climate forcing for 2x CO2″
2009-01-30 509 CO2, Temperatures, and Ice Ages
Chris in OZ says:
August 22, 2010 at 6:26 am
===========================
Same here Chris.
We’ve lived on this same rock in the Caribbean since 1952.
Same dock, no difference.
Only now I’m a lot older. I could use a good foot or two of sea level rise getting out of the boat at low tide.
Lucy Skywalker says:
August 21, 2010 at 6:59 pm
Lucy, I couldn’t agree more. And in that vein I post below W. Briggs comment concerning the M&W figure 16. Notice, everyone, how he stays on topic of the stated purpose of the paper. He even offers a mild criticism to M&W about smoothing data before inputing to the model (links removed, but are available at his his, original link at the top of te story).
The jaggy red line is their prediction, over which they lay bands of uncertainty due to various factors. Just look at that envelope of possible temperatures!—the dull gray window. The straight yellow line is mine: notice how it slides right through the envelope, never poking out through it at any point. This suggests that a flat-line, i.e. unchanging, temperature fits just as well as the boys’ sophisticated model. At least, the unchanging “null” model cannot be rejected with any great certainty.
This is just as beautiful as a shorthanded goal. It means we cannot tell—using these data and this model—with any reasonable certainty if temperatures have changed plus or minus 1C over the last thousand years.
McShane and Wyner don’t skate off the ice error free. They suggest, but only half-heartedly, that “the proxy signal can be enhanced by smoothing various time series before modeling.” Smoothing data before using it as input to a model is a capital no-no.
___________
Apparently, for some of us ‘black IS black’ and ‘white IS white’. For me, a non-scientist, it is frustrating reading posts (i.e.Barry et al) that continue the CAGW meme regardless of well-grounded evidence to the contrary. I have to go with James Sexton on this one:
“…the response I got from DC. “On every issue M&W side with M&M and Wegman.” Honestly, that was one of the reasons DC thought the paper should be invalidated. When I run into things like that, I get disheartened. How in the world does one speak to people like that? People say we need more dialogue between alarmists and skeptics. I don’t want to or rather can’t dialogue with people with that sort of reasoning.”
Smokey says:
>In his letter, Seitz says, “Fire in the hands of Neolithic man had already transformed >the ecology — and the albedo — of Australia and the Americas eons before.”
>
>In geological terms an eon is a billion years. Russell needs to get a grip.
An eon is also a thousand years in other fields. It’s only recently that it has been appropriated by geologists. The even older meaning is an indeterminate very long period of time.
JDN,
The only definition I found states that an eon is a billion years.
No mention of a thousand years [that is a millennium] in google’s on-line dictionary search. Where did you see eon = 1,000? I want to learn more — but if I listen to Russell Seitz, I might learn what isn’t factual.☺
Smokey- I think we’ve found a complete failure of wikipedia + google. It’s a short word and everyone uses it, so there are lots of hits, many of which aren’t relevant.
The eon (or aeon) means many things. It shows up in speculative Biblical interpretation and therefore in poetic uses in European romantic poetry. For an example of speculative theology, see http://books.google.com/books?id=lIux0-eQOhAC&lpg=PA313&dq=%22aeon%22%20%20thousand&pg=PA126#v=snippet&q=a%20thousand%20years%20eon&f=false . It doesn’t have a strict “thousand year” usage, but, can be used for such time periods. It can also mean, simply, “an age”, which also lets Seitz off the hook; the paleolithic & neothithic periods are ages.
I’m running by a research library today. I’ll see what I can turn up as far as origin of usage of the thousand year eon.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eon_(normal_meaning)
A variety of manings ro ‘eon”. This includes 1000 years
JDN & DL,
Thank you for linking to the religious and mythological meanings for eon. Correct me if I’m wrong, but Russell Seitz purports to use it within the framework of its scientific definition. [Or maybe not, since CAGW is based upon religious belief.]
My on-line dictionary widget says: eon |ˈēən; ˈēˌän| ( chiefly Brit. also aeon). Noun. Astronomy & geology; a unit of time equal to 1,000,000,000 years.
But Russell is a Harvard guy. Who am I to argue with such an exalted Authority, if the Authority says humans were around 1,000,000,000 years ago?☺
Mike Roddy (August 14, 2010 at 7:13 PM) says: “Similarly, climate scientists are getting bored with arguments from untrained individuals that the ‘trace gas’ CO2 does not play the major role in the recent and rapid temperature increases. This role was proven in a laboratory in the 19th century by Arrhenius, and has not been seriously disputed.”
Contrary to Roddy’s assertion, Arrhenius did not prove there was a major role for CO2. What he did was to construct a hypothesis. In a reversal of the burden that lies upon a scientist to provide evidence that his hypothesis is not wrong, Arrhenius declared that his hypothesis was right until proven wrong. Arrhenius’s hypothesis and reversal of the burden of proof became known as “the greenhouse effect.”
The existence of Arrhenius’s greenhouse effect is a foundation stone of modern climatology. The reversal of the burden of proof and scientific pretensions of climatology identify climatology as a pseudoscience.
It is easy to falsify the existence of Arrhenius’s “greenhouse effect.” An “effect” partners with a “cause” in a “cause and effect relationship.” The existence of such a relationship implies: a) the event of the cause preceeds the event of the cause and b) given the event of the cause, the event of the effect occurs with a probability of 1.
In the case of Arrhenius’s “greenhouse effect,” the “cause” is a rise in the atmospheric concentration of CO2. The purported “effect” is a rise in the average of the temperatures at Earth’s surface. That there is a cause and effect relationship is refuted by the numerous observations in which, following a rise in the atmospheric CO2 concentration, the average of the temperatures at Earth’s surface fell.
Smokey-
This discussion could be fascinating on another blog. This word aeon (or eon) comes directly from past and present religions. In many parts of the English speaking world, it is *the* definition. Let’s not hang Mr. Seitz for having a classical education.
I thought he wrote a good letter, and, I’m sure that, if he had wanted a geological eon, he would have said so.
Before this back and forth tennis match can be measured in eons, aeons, ions, or freons, can we let this thread move on down the road?
James Sexton said
“…the response I got from DC. “On every issue M&W side with M&M and Wegman.” Honestly, that was one of the reasons DC thought the paper should be invalidated. When I run into things like that, I get disheartened. How in the world does one speak to people like that? People say we need more dialogue between alarmists and skeptics. I don’t want to or rather can’t dialogue with people with that sort of reasoning.”
I would like to see a survey which finds out the top 10 (or 20, 50, 100) reasons why warmists feel they can disagree with us without even listening to us. Then we can strategise better. Personally, I suspect a key deep reason is the ongoing existence of “answers” to
skeptics’ issuesstrawmen that all the major science bodies have done, that have not been refuted one-on-one, as complete statements, by us. Or the Skeptical Science 119 issues.…oooh heck, I’m once again talking myself into writing the piece I know is needed…
From reading around the ‘traps’ the main criticism of M&W is referred to by DCA engineer and summarised by eli as detailed at my comment Aug 19, 6.59am; eli says:
“It looks like the basic error on this one is that by calibrating against the hemispheric average, rather than smaller grid cells, they loose information and kill the signal to noise. Averaging out the local signal means that noise looks better than signal and in their words, noise provides a better fit than the proxys.”
As I argued above this is not true but it does need elaboration; Mann had calibrated his proxies ‘locally’ by matching and discarding them which other similar proxies seperated by both space and time; that is, a proxy could be matched with another on the other side of the world or further in the past/future! But Mann went further and this seems to have been overlooked in M&W; Mann changed some of the proxy data from down to up, the scale of measurement of the proxy data was flipped from up to down, reversing the true meaning of the data. So when Tiljander did the study on the varves, they were interpreted as :-
.
Thin varve = warm temperatures
Thick varve = cold temperatures
.
When Mann used the Tiljander data, he changed the scale so it became:-
.
Thin varves = cold temperatures
Thick varves = warm temperatures
The local meaning of the proxies was therefore corrupted from the beginning. This data was then calibrated with instrument data which had been infilled using some sort of RegEM; RegEM is a method of EM infilling where the number of parameters to be estimated may be larger than the available amount of real information in the data; basically Mann has used a variety of RegEM because the temp data he wanted to use was sparse and he used more assumptions/paramenters to shape the form of the infilled data to make a sequence which was then used to calibrate with the pseudo-proxies as described above. For those who are interested McIntyre has done many posts on the dubious RegEM methodology of Mann.
The point here is that Mann and his associates have used esoteric, novel and untested methodology which seem to have been designed to do 2 things; firstly, obfuscate and prevent replications of his experiments [sic]; and secondly achieve a preordained or assumed result; namely that todays temperature and climate is exceptional. Mann’s egregious efforts have really undermined science generally and subverted the debate on AGW.
What M&W have done is bypass this arcane approach by Mann, assume Mann’s data is acceptable [which it isn’t] and applied replicable and transparent statistical metehodology to that data; when they have done that Mann fails.
The specific complaint by eli is addressed here:
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2010/08/18/mw10-some-thoughts/#comments
From comment 21 onwards; M&W were entirely aware of this problem, which Mann had done [how ironic!], and dealt with as they describe; it is evident that this ‘fault’ with the paper could only have been found by someone who has not read the paper or who has not understood it.
I found figure 4 on page 9 of the paper to be astonishing. What it’s saying is, the apparent correlation between two random walks can be spurriously high.
I wanted to check this out for myself, so first I generated 5 runs of 25 Heads and Tails by flipping a coin, and got 5 series going
HTTTH TTHTH—- etc for 25 in each series, and 5 series.
I first converted H to 1, T to 0 and got 5 runs of 25 going
10001 00101
Then changed them to a non-stationary run, counting H as +1, T as -1, and got
1 0 -1 -2 -1 -2 -3 -2 -3 -2 …… etc for each of the runs and series.
I then went to the Vassar site
http://statpages.org/#Regression
clicked on linear correlation and regression, punched in 25, the number in
each run, and got
http://faculty.vassar.edu/lowry/corr_stats.html
I then did correlations between pairs of runs from the 5 series.
When I ran pairs of stationary runs, I got correlations of 0.107, 0.221, etc
and got 2 tailed p tests of 0.1724 and 0.6274, meaning that I would get chance runs that close or better 17.24% of the time or 62.74 % of the time respectively-to be expected in coin flip data.
I then applied the non-stationary random walk series to check the correlation of
1 0 -1 -2 -1 etc with another random walk run, and got figures like
correlation of -0.617 and a 2 tailed p test 0f 0.1% for the same data!!
Keep the non-stationary effect of those temperature anomalies next time you
read about the “incredibly small probability” of one of those runs happening by
chance alone.
Interesting comments from the R community on the McShane and Wyner paper:
http://probabilitynotes.wordpress.com/2010/08/22/global-temperature-proxy-reconstructions-bayesian-extrapolation-of-warming-w-rjags/
ok..on the topic of responces to a story:
“Why conservatives shouldn’t believe in man made climate change”
By James Delingpole Politics Last updated: August 17th, 2010
1584 Comments Comment on this article
.
the numbers on this one blew me away
Alan; M&W say this:
“We further make the assumptions of linearity and stationarity of the relationship between temperature and proxies, an assumption employed throughout the climate science literature (NRC, 2006) noting that ”the stationarity of the relationship does not require stationarity of the series themselves” (NRC, 2006).”
In other words they gave the Mann data every opportunity to replicate his results. If the data had been treated as having a full or partial unit root the hockeystick would have had even less chance of occurring.
cohenite says:
August 22, 2010 at 5:36 pm
Of course, you could have pointed out to Eli that they did indeed consider the local vs. hemispheric average. From the paper:
3.6. Proxies and Local Temperatures. We performed an additional test which
accounts for the fact that proxies are local in nature (e.g., tree rings in Montana)
and therefore might be better predictors of local temperatures than global temperatures.
You’ll find that most of the criticism is in the same manner. People actually believe climatology has special numbers with magical properties that even statisticians can’t come to understand and that accepted mathematical and statistical practices don’t apply to climate science.
Most of the responses that don’t simply dismiss out of hand the paper, when all of the whining trimming is cut away from the critique, that that the methods are wrong because we do it different in climatology, which is funny all by itself, because many of us thought that since Mann98.
Does anyone have an ETA for the publishing?
Lucy Skywalker says:
August 22, 2010 at 4:11 pm
“I would like to see a survey which finds out the top 10 (or 20, 50, 100) reasons why warmists feel they can disagree with us without even listening to us. Then we can strategise better. Personally, I suspect a key deep reason is the ongoing existence of “answers” to skeptics’ issues strawmen that all the major science bodies have done, that have not been refuted one-on-one, as complete statements, by us. Or the Skeptical Science 119 issues.
…oooh heck, I’m once again talking myself into writing the piece I know is needed…”
I look forward to reading the piece with great anticipation! 🙂
Mr. Watts,
This is quite confusing…are we experiencing GW now or not?
Is the warming we are seeing dangerous or not?
What do you think is causing it and when do you think it will stop?
If it does not stop shortly how much hotter do you think it can get before the entire world starts experiencing extreme events like we have seen this year so far on approximately a yearly basis?
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Climate-Portals/139434822741700?ref=ts
Terry Oldberg says:
Contrary to Roddy’s assertion, Arrhenius did not prove there was a major role for CO2. What he did was to construct a hypothesis. In a reversal of the burden that lies upon a scientist to provide evidence that his hypothesis is not wrong, Arrhenius declared that his hypothesis was right until proven wrong. Arrhenius’s hypothesis and reversal of the burden of proof became known as “the greenhouse effect.”
Terry, what Arrhenius (and everyone after him) forgot is that CHG’s also perform cooling functions in the atmosphere, by re-radiating sunshine. You cannot measure the amount of this cooling in a laboratory. I can feel it happening here, standing in the African sun, that the heat from the sun on my skin becomes less if during the day the humidity increases. The so-called climate experts keep on telling me that you can ignore this cooling (because it is smaller than the warming) but in the case of ozone and CO2, I am not at all so sure. Looking carefully at the incoming and outgoing radiation I think/estimate that ozone is cooling more than warming and I think it is pretty much evens between the warming and cooling of CO2. So the net effect of the increase of both these substances during the last 10 years could be cooling rather than warming.
Extreme heat?
Its August in Britain – and pouring down! Extreme heat my a***!
What extreme heat? It’s 45°C, which isn’t bad for this part of Iraq — I won’t even need a sweater by noontime…
Lucy said;
“I would like to see a survey which finds out the top 10 (or 20, 50, 100) reasons why warmists feel they can disagree with us without even listening to us. Then we can strategise better. Personally, I suspect a key deep reason is the ongoing existence of “answers” to skeptics’ issues strawmen that all the major science bodies have done, that have not been refuted one-on-one, as complete statements, by us. Or the Skeptical Science 119 issues.”
Climate change has been primarily a British led issue for many years, whether by the original setting up of Hadley, the financial and intellectual endorsement of the IPCC, Tony Blair rasing it to a key issue when he was Prime minister and leader of the G8, and ourselves being the first (only?) nation to incorporate carbon reduction into our laws.
I firmly believe there are two complementary forces at work here;
Firstly, the ‘We know best’ syndrome deeply embedded amongst the leaders of Britain and nowhere better observed than in our MP’s, political appointees, mmedia and such as Phil Jones.
Second has been the incestous nature of the ‘we know best’ brigade who peer review (endorse) each others work whether at a political, social or scientific level.
The democratisation and rapid speeding up of the scientific process via Blogs such as this one has completely flat footed the scientific establishment and they try to re-assert their ‘we know best’ mentailty by such absurd non objective enquiries we witnessed over Climate Gate, the Iraq war etc.
I think there are other things going on as well, in as much people don’t seem to think as much for themselves these days (automatic response to a query is to defer to Wikipedia) and have a poor knowledge of history and precedence.
If we collectively continue to shine a light into the deeper recesses of the ‘science’ sooner or later those in the wider world are going to start realising that not everything is as black or white as they believe. I feel you are still seeking to put together a ‘skepticpedia’ which would undoubtedly be one useful strand in the limited armoury we currently have. Another would be a humorous but scientifcally accurate ‘Climate change for dummies’ type book.
We have to be careful not to portray ourselves as being anti green (i.e ‘anti-progressive’) though.
I think Hubert Lamb summed it up beautifully in one of the last things he ever wrote- a revised preface to his great book’ Climate History and the Modern World.’
“The idea of climate change has at last taken on with the public after generations which assumed that climate could be taken as constant. But it is easy to notice the common assumption that mans science and modern industry and technology are now so powerful that any change of climate or the environnment must be due to us. It is good for us to be more alert and responsible in our treatment of the environment, but not to have a distorted view of our own importance. Above all, we need more knowledge, education and understanding in these matters.”
Hubert Lamb December 1994
Tonyb
Richard S Courtney says:
August 20, 2010 at 9:48 am
RR Kampen:
Thankyou for your responses to my comments that you post at August 20, 2010 at 1:07 am.
You dispute two of my statements but your disputes are mistaken.
I wrote concerning the AGW hypothesis:
“The hypothesis predicts most warming of the air relative to the surface at altitude in the tropics.”
But you reply:
“In reality the hypothesis predicts most warming at high latitudes, particularly northern high latitudes. The hypothesis does so now and it did so when I studied climatology in an era the IPCC still had to be set up. The observations are conform hypothesis.”
Sorry, but the IPCC AR4 agrees with me and not you.
I took a look at the figures again and we can both see most warming at lower levels is in the Arctic, as expected (e.g. when I was student meteorology/oceangraphy around 1998-1992). In the figures this is de lower left corner. Red. I cannot make anything else of those figures. What am I overlooking?
Paulm says:
August 22, 2010 at 10:15 pm
“Mr. Watts,
This is quite confusing…are we experiencing GW now or not?
Is the warming we are seeing dangerous or not?”
Paulm, I’m not Mr. Watts, and I don’t speak for him. That said, can you name me a year in history that we didn’t have an extreme event some where on earth? Fact is, this has been a fairly quite year. Floods and droughts have been with us always. BTW, have you checked the hurricane count this year? If a bit of warmth causes all these “extreme events”, where are the hurricanes?
Flooding in Pakistan? Check their history, it isn’t an unusual occurrence. Bad things happening in Russia? It’s happened before. Paul, all of the things you are seeing today has happened already. Floods, heat, cold, storms, droughts, tornadoes, hurricanes, they been with mankind since the beginning. It is nothing new, and as far as I can tell, no one can quantitate any increase in frequency. Reporting is increasing in frequency. Attaching some vague meaning is increasing in frequency. Well, that’s not entirely true. People used to think extreme events were a sign of God’s or gods’ displeasure. Come to think of it, that hasn’t changed either, only Gaia get’s invoked more often.
You want to know what causing the minuscule bump in temp patterns? IDK, probably the same things that caused similar bumps in the past. Why would you believe warming could be dangerous? History tells us mankind thrives quite well in warmer climates. Colder climates? Not so much.
Dude, that facebook page is something else. Paul, if you surround yourself with that stuff, it is the only thing you’ll see. Don’t get me wrong, I think all should study the climate, given the laws our politicians are considering, we should endeavor to be well informed. But being well informed means to be informed of the many sides of an issue and not looking at the issues through a prism. You should peruse some of the other articles here, they may interest you.
Paulm says:
August 22, 2010 at 10:15 pm
Mr. Watts,
This is quite confusing…are we experiencing GW now or not?
Is the warming we are seeing dangerous or not?
What do you think is causing it and when do you think it will stop?
If it does not stop shortly how much hotter do you think it can get before the entire world starts experiencing extreme events like we have seen this year so far on approximately a yearly basis?”
What extreme events? Where I live you can brush aside glacial till and pick out some nice crinoid fossils. Now that indicates extreme events. You’re just worrying about weather.
Consult with Otzi The Ice Man. He’ll settle you down.
“Bill Tuttle says:
August 21, 2010 at 12:20 pm
SamG: August 14, 2010 at 5:56 pm
What’s a truck?
REPLY: A Lorry.
It’s also the round ball atop a flagpole.”
It was also the tokens issued by employers that could only be spent in the “Company Store” in lieu of real wages. The practice arose in the 15th Century and was made illegal in most trades in england by the 1831 Truck Act. When someone says they will have “no truck” i.e won’t put up with something, this is where the phrase derives from.
Now fake papers selling overvalued goods, what could that possibly have to do with CAGW…..:-)
The “main truck” has a reference in this pirate song by the late, great Stan Rogers. A truck also referred to the small wheeled carriage that carried a ship’s cannon.
Russel Seitz,
as a graduate of Beijing Science and Technology I find it very difficult to understand your reasoning, you project a mindset that is definitely not that of a inquisitive academic, but more of a arrogant freshman. I hope those that engage you for advice receive a better impression than you portray here.
Zebur
RR Kampen:
You ask me:
“I took a look at the figures again and we can both see most warming at lower levels is in the Arctic, as expected (e.g. when I was student meteorology/oceangraphy around 1998-1992). In the figures this is de lower left corner. Red. I cannot make anything else of those figures. What am I overlooking?”
Answer:
the bl**dy great blob of red at altitude in the tropics.
Richard
tonyb says:
August 23, 2010 at 1:12 am
I firmly believe there are two complementary forces at work here;
Firstly, the ‘We know best’ syndrome deeply embedded amongst the leaders of Britain and nowhere better observed than in our MP’s, political appointees, mmedia and such as Phil Jones.
Second has been the incestous nature of the ‘we know best’ brigade who peer review (endorse) each others work whether at a political, social or scientific level.
At the risk of seeming elitist, I have to add a third and mainly the main reason: too many graduate students and degrees. It starts with professors who need graduate students to get tenure, and the standards for accepting students have fallen with the rate that new universities and professorial positions have appeared.
Too many graduates with politically and centrally controlled finance further dilute the quality of the level of the student body. Sociological factors enter, like: who has the gift of gab, who has connections and protexia. These existed in the academy fragmented and thus of limited influence. When the financing of the academy is centrally controlled the ball can be lost on the scientific level of decisions which is what has happened with the climate community. The Lysenko effect is the result.
Henry@terry Oldberg (&Mike Roddy)
Did you get this?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/17/breaking-new-paper-makes-a-hockey-sticky-wicket-of-mann-et-al-99/#comment-463985
LOL! Yeah I was always amazed at how cool 32°C could feel in Baghdad on a summer night after a day hovering around 50°C with almost 100% humidity. Made me want to break out the jacket! A North Carolina summer is quite cool by comparison.
It seems the only statistician who chimed in was Briggs and he agreed with the new papaer. The others, out of their depth, picked around at peripherals in an impotent and derisory fashion.
Anthony Watts says:
August 21, 2010 at 3:53 pm
“Since Dr. Seitz wants to practice wordplay here, I thought it worth revisiting what Willis Eschenbach thought of his bubbles…”
Aha. So this Dr. Seitz is the character with the bubbles? No wonder he seems so aggrevated after being debunked by Willis’ simple calculations.
Talk about RC dismissing things, this is a Gavin reply to a question on why the GISS ‘adjusts’ old temperatures down to correct for UHI instead of adjusting the modern readings. It’s nice to know that incorrectly modified data has absolutely no effects:
blockquote cite=”One more question; in your GISS-USA-temp-anom-adjusted-for-UHI data set, why do you adjust the early part of the century down and the latter portion up? If you are correcting for UHI shouldn’t it be the other way around? Why cool the 1930s when cities were smaller, wouldn’t it have been even warmer if the cities were larger yet you adjust down? Makes no sense.
[Response: These are anomalies. It makes no difference whatsoever. Please at least try and address issues in the post. – gavin]”
Lucy,
You’re looking for the reason people can abandon reason when it comes to climate. I attribute it to misantrhopy. Misanthropy has a long tradition, never isolated to just one group, and can paradoxically be made to serve as a uniting principle for a group. You know the examples, I’m sure. It’s a constant part of the human condition, with individuals being misanthropic to varying degrees.
So, let’s ask where it exists in the world today. AGW is a perfect fit for misanthropists. (People suck and they’re messing up a perfectly stable planet.) It doesn’t matter whether there is a conspiracy to commit fraud using AGW, it’s appeal is that it gives voice to what would otherwise be indefensible. Ironically, the anti-AGW positions are also good for misanthropy, because such a large portion of the human race has bought into foolishness. (Should such fools not be left to rot in their stupidity? 🙂
I’ve been agitating for years to have a university level philosophy class dedicated to misanthropy, specifically because of the AGW stuff. It would be a very popular course by the title alone and would shine a light on what is normally dismissed as distasteful to think about.
“1,616 Responses to Breaking News Story: CRU has apparently been hacked – hundreds of files released”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/19/breaking-news-story-hadley-cru-has-apparently-been-hacked-hundreds-of-files-released/
I think I’ll reread this (and the comments) on Nov. 19th
I think I have a couple of early comments.
Then I’ll hit Anthony’s tip jar.
BTW, have they caught that Russian hacker yet? :]
After a couple of hours and over one thousand posts I have come to the conclusion that statistical analysis avoidance by Mann/Briffa/Jones/Hansen and the IPCC was purposeful and intentional. They knew that it would expose the lie that is AGW along with discredit their political agenda.
McIntyre and company reverse engineered the mess and exposed the lie. Now others are doing the same. While this is specific to Mann et al papers, it also hits the CRU/MET, NASA/GISS data and its short comings. Maybe now we can get real scientific discussion.
The thing about statistical evaluational is no matter how you skew the numbers the method can be revealed with only 1/2 the data and the answers. The attempt at hiding the method and destroying the data was an attempt to make it impossible to determine and replicate the outcome. it was meant to kill the scientific process.. and that to me is unconscionable…
Kudos Anthony….. keep putting it into the light…
Wallowa County had a bit o’frost on the non-existent pumpkins and we had to start a fire in the wood stove to ward off the chill! Several outlying ranches attempting to get a 3rd cutting of hay were sadly mistaken this morning and flowers everywhere were growing limp as the Sun warmed the frosty air. The air is unbelievably dry, even uncomfortably dry. Dare I say, we will experience a bit of extreme weather up here in the non-existent clouds this winter. When your sewer pipes freeze, everything from tender stems to tree trunk size flora is frozen solid, furry winter animals are succumbing to the chill, and there is no precip on the ground whatsoever (no rain, no frozen dew, no snow, no sleet or hail – just frozen Earth), you know you have experienced a bit of Antarctica up here near the 45th parallel. I wonder….
Terry Oldberg:
“In a reversal of the burden that lies upon a scientist to provide evidence that his hypothesis is not wrong, Arrhenius declared that his hypothesis was right until proven wrong.”
&
“An “effect” partners with a “cause” in a “cause and effect relationship.” The existence of such a relationship implies: a) the event of the cause preceeds the event of the cause and b) given the event of the cause, the event of the effect occurs with a probability of 1.”
Terry, your first paragraph is absolutely the reverse of what is fact; and by the logic of your second paragraph, if I were to say “Sunrise tomorrow is at 0617” and tomorrow happens to be a cloudy day, then sunrise has not occurred. You really seem to be struggling with some very basic intellectual skills here.
Richard S Courtney says:
August 23, 2010 at 8:28 am
Answer:
the bl**dy great blob of red at altitude in the tropics.
Sorry. I was talking sea level.
Vince Whirlwind says:
“Terry, your first paragraph is absolutely the reverse of what is fact; and by the logic of your second paragraph, if I were to say “Sunrise tomorrow is at 0617″ and tomorrow happens to be a cloudy day, then sunrise has not occurred. You really seem to be struggling with some very basic intellectual skills here.”
Vince, I am not sure if you understand the arguments
1) Arrhenius formula was wrong
2) nobody after him, including the IPCC, has understood why he was wrong
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/17/breaking-new-paper-makes-a-hockey-sticky-wicket-of-mann-et-al-99/#comment-463985
JDN says:
August 23, 2010 at 7:33 pm
Norman Cohn, Pursuit of the Millennium, and Charles Mackay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions (esp the chapter on the genesis of the Crusades movement) have interesting things to say IMHO that relate to the rise of the AGW delusion. I’ve been reading a book on “the New Age” that is basically supportive but also talks about aspects he dislikes: an endemic appearance of groups who see the New Age (or the “millennium” of Cohn) in terms of awful things about to happen, that we have caused, and/or that we need to act over, to cleanse us from our “sin” in order to usher in the new age / millennium.
Also, never attribute to malice what can be attributed to stupidity.
RR Kampen:
At August 24, 2010 at 2:25 am you quote my pointing out that you were wrong and I answered your question as to what you were missing by saying August 23, 2010 at 8:28 am
“Answer:
the bl**dy great blob of red at altitude in the tropics.”
To which your reply says;
“Sorry. I was talking sea level.”
SAY WHAT!?
This was about your dispute of my saying at August 19, 2010 at 7:46 am
“5.
The pattern of atmospheric warming predicted by the AGW hypothesis is absent.
The hypothesis predicts most warming of the air relative to the surface at altitude in the tropics. Measurements from weather balloons and from satellites both show slight cooling relative to the surface at altitude in the tropics.”
Tyical warmer. You were proved wrong so you pretend the discussion was about something else.
Richard
No Richard, I missed the word altitude. I am stupid, not malevolent. And you? I think you already suggested it (look in a mirror).
Not interested in altitude warming anyway. Predictions of temperature change with altitude pertaining to AGW differ wildly according to model.
And, Richard, we were discussing this part of the debate:
Richard S Courtney says:
August 19, 2010 at 7:46 am
Thank you for your elaborate response. I will pick out two lines:
The hypothesis predicts most warming of the air relative to the surface at altitude in the tropics.
In reality the hypothesis predicts most warming at high latitudes, particularly northern high latitudes. The hypothesis does so now and it did so when I studied climatology in an era the IPCC still had to be set up. The observations are conform hypothesis.
Who slipped in ‘altitude’?
Lucy Skywalker says:
August 24, 2010 at 4:04 am
[snip]
Also, never attribute to malice what can be attributed to stupidity.
I can’t tell if you’re agreeing with me or not. My point is that misanthropy is it’s own category and is part of the human condition. It is poorly studied (AFAIK) and has not been advanced as a source of doomsday hysterias.
Lucy Skywalker: August 24, 2010 at 4:04 am
Also, never attribute to malice what can be attributed to stupidity.
It’s more properly, “Never attribute to malice that which can be *adequately* explained by stupidity.”
Which makes some of the more hubristic pontifications over at RC even funnier…
PaulM
What a sad individual you are. I would have thought life difficult enough without exaggerating the problems. You need to get out a bit man. Read some interesting books, enjoy a sherbert or two.
‘On the one hand, we conclude unequivocally that the evidence for a ”long-handled” hockey stick (where the shaft of the hockey stick extends to the year 1000 AD) is lacking in the data.
‘Nevertheless, the temperatures of the last few decades have been relatively warm compared to many of the thousand year temperature curves sampled from the posterior distribution of our model.’
_McShane&Wyner
WoW…..You guys need to go back and read the paper!
Henry@David Walters
You have to be kidding me.
Please go through all 1000 odd comments here and tell me you still believe in man made global warming?
Tom in Texas says:
August 23, 2010 at 8:05 pm
“1,616 Responses to Breaking News Story: CRU has apparently been hacked – hundreds of files released”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/19/breaking-news-story-hadley-cru-has-apparently-been-hacked-hundreds-of-files-released/
Tom, your post made me go back and start reading the postings again. That’s unfair!
I simply cannot let me be sucked in again…..the whole evening will be gone before I’m finished!
David W. Walters: August 24, 2010 at 7:39 am
‘Nevertheless, the temperatures of the last few decades have been relatively warm compared to many of the thousand year temperature curves sampled from the posterior distribution of our model.’
_McShane&Wyner
WoW…..You guys need to go back and read the paper!
And you need to relax. If the temperatures of the last few decades were relatively warm compared to many of their thousand year temperature curves, then by inference the temperatures of the last few decades were also relatively *cool* compared to many of their thousand year temperature curves, and were probably the *same* as some of their thousand year temperature curves.
The data they plugged in resulted in a lot of *different* thousand year temperature curves.
Wow, Wikipedia has hit mr connolley with a hockey stick LOL
William M. Connolley banned
3.1) User:William M. Connolley is banned from the English Wikipedia for six months for long-term violations of WP:OWN, WP:CIVIL, and WP:BLP.
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Comment:
(Please note that some of the remedy proposals here are alternatives.) Newyorkbrad (talk) 05:57, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
William M. Connolley topic-banned (Climate Change)
3.2) User:William M. Connolley is banned from all Climate Change articles, broadly construed, for one year. He may edit their talk pages. This editing restriction specifically includes modification of talk page edits made by any other user, on any talk page; in the case of posts to William M. Connolley’s user talk page, he is free to remove posts without response.
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William M. Connolley topic-banned (BLP)
4) User:William M. Connolley is banned from editing any article that is substantially the biography of a living person, where the person’s notability or the subject of the edit relates to the topic area of global warming or climate change.
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William M. Connolley restricted
5) User:William M. Connolley is subject to an editing restriction for one year. Should he make any edits which are judged by an uninvolved administrator to be uncivil remarks, personal attacks, assumptions of bad faith, or violations of WP:BLP, he may be briefly blocked, up to a week in the event of repeated violations. After 3 blocks, the maximum block shall increase to one month. This editing restriction specifically includes modification of talk page edits made by any other user, on any talk page; in the case of posts to William M. Connolley’s user talk page, he is free to remove posts without response.
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REPLY: provide a source link URL please! – Anthony
re previous conolley
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Climate_change/Proposed_decision
maybe just link?
“Tom in Texas says:
August 23, 2010 at 8:05 pm
“1,616 Responses to Breaking News Story: CRU has apparently been hacked – hundreds of files released”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/19/breaking-news-story-hadley-cru-has-apparently-been-hacked-hundreds-of-files-released/
I think I’ll reread this (and the comments) on Nov. 19th
I think I have a couple of early comments.
Then I’ll hit Anthony’s tip jar.
BTW, have they caught that Russian hacker yet? :]”
Nyet. They will never catch me, for they are slugheads. I am INVINCIBLE!!!
Anthony: re Conolley story. Credit is due to BISHOP HILL good luck!
Conolley again read the WHOLE page its very interesting it looks like he’s finished (with climate anyway) LOL
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Climate_change/Proposed_decision
Re: Connelly – don’t the administrators still have to vote? I do want him silenced likes he silences those on RC, but I’ve never trusted Wikipedia.
I’ve come across this argument on another blog. Anyone care to have a go at it?
“It comes down to an energy budget calculation. Here’s a walkthrough, if you’re interested:”
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/08/the-co2-problem-in-6-easy-steps/
JDN says:
August 24, 2010 at 6:42 am
Those books show how people get millennarial visions of “Repent! the End of the World is Nigh! Only the Chosen Few shall be Saved!” which I think is more relevant to the CAGW delusion than misanthropy, similar but not the same thing. imho.
DCA engineerr
This link will be of some interest to Henry Pool .
Henry has been making the valid point that CO2 has a cooling effect which must be taken account of,( but he can explain better than I).
Do you mean, ALSO “has a cooling effect”? You know how one can be miss-quoted. I do remembering him commenting on something like that.
Thanks for the heads-up.
For the record, from the paper, page 37:
For example, 1998 is generally considered to be the warmest year on record in the Northern Hemisphere. Using our model, we calculate that there is a 36% posterior probability that 1998 was the warmest year over the past thousand. If we consider rolling decades, 1997-2006 is the warmest on record; our model gives an 80% chance that it was the warmest in the past thousand years. Finally, if we look at rolling thirty-year blocks, the posterior probability that the last thirty years (again, the warmest on record) were the warmest over the past thousand is 38%.
Looking at the figure on that page, currently we are comparable to the Medieval Warm Period. Draw your own conclusions.
RR Kampen:
Your post at August 24, 2010 at 6:16 am is a simple lie and I OBJECT.
It asserts this
“And, Richard, we were discussing this part of the debate:
Richard S Courtney says:
August 19, 2010 at 7:46 am
Thank you for your elaborate response. I will pick out two lines:
“The hypothesis predicts most warming of the air relative to the surface at altitude in the tropics.
In reality the hypothesis predicts most warming at high latitudes, particularly northern high latitudes. The hypothesis does so now and it did so when I studied climatology in an era the IPCC still had to be set up. The observations are conform hypothesis.”
NO! You cannot claim I said what you had asserted merely because I quoted your assertion in order to refute it.
I specifically refuted your assertion.
The debate then centred on your disputing two points I made in the list I provided to refute your assertion. And the discussion of the pattern of expected warming was my point 5 which you specifically quoted but I justified by reference to IPCC AR4.
To save others finding it, I quote my entire post from August 19, 2010 at 7:46 am below. It includes my point 5 that we were discussing but IT DOES NOT SAY WHAT YOU CLAIM IT DOES.
Richard
Richard S Courtney says:
August 19, 2010 at 7:46 am
RRKampen:
At August 19, 2010 at 6:18 am you assert:
“CO2 very likely played a role, it being a greenhouse gas whose concentration is rising very strongly. There are no apparent other mechanisms that do the two things necessary to deny AGW: 1) ensure that CO2 has NO effect and 2) the mechanism DOES create the effect. It is the burden of AGW-skeptics to prove their point; meantime AGW-theory is simply the best theory explaining recent quick warming.”
Sorry, but No! The AGW hypothesis is denied by observations.
The absence of the tropospheric ‘hot spot’ is direct evidence that the positive feedbacks required for CAGW are NOT happening.
In fact, nothing the AGW hypothesis predicts has been observed and the opposite of some of its predictions is observed.
1.
The anthropogenic emissions and global temperature do not correlate.
2.
Change to atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration follows change to global temperature at all time scales.
3.
Recent rise in global temperature has not been induced by rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations.
Global temperature fell from ~1940 to ~1970, rose to 1998, and has fallen since. That’s 40 years of cooling and 28 years of warming. Global temperature is now similar to that of 1990. But atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration has increased at a near constant rate and by more than 30% since 1940. It has increased by 8% since 1990.
4.
Rise in global temperature has not been induced by anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide.
Over 80% of the emissions have been since 1940 and the emissions have been increasing at a compound rate. But since 1940 there have been 40 years of cooling with only 28 years of warming. There’s been no significant warming since 1995, and global temperature has fallen since the high it had 10 years ago.
5.
The pattern of atmospheric warming predicted by the AGW hypothesis is absent.
The hypothesis predicts most warming of the air relative to the surface at altitude in the tropics. Measurements from weather balloons and from satellites both show slight cooling relative to the surface at altitude in the tropics.
Simply, the AGW hypothesis is denied by observations. It is not a “theory”: it is junk.
Richard
KBK says:
August 24, 2010 at 5:22 pm
“For the record, from the paper, page 37:
For example, 1998 is generally considered to be the warmest year on record in the Northern Hemisphere. Using our model, we calculate that there is a 36% posterior probability that 1998 was the warmest year over the past thousand.”
But then they go later to state the proxies used in the study were not reliable enough to make such assertions. That is simply the answers the model gave them which they don’t give much credence.
Henry@DCA engineer/Brian/bryan/Terry
The link with 6 steps quoted make the same mistake as Arrhenius and everyone after him. Note that they always speak about calculations. No measurements. e.g. (Step 2)
“The earliest calculations (reviewed by Ramanathan and Coakley, 1979) give very similar results to more modern calculations (Clough and Iacono, 1995), and demonstrate that removing the effect of CO2 reduces the net LW absorbed by ~14%, or around 30 W/m2. ”
Then they (always) forget to tell you how much cooling is caused by the GHG’s?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/17/breaking-new-paper-makes-a-hockey-sticky-wicket-of-mann-et-al-99/#comment-459525
From Oxford English Dictionary;
aeon, eon
1. a. An age of the universe, an immeasurable period of time; the whole duration
of the world, or of the universe; eternity.
(Ref: 1647 H. MORE Song of Soul Notes 136/1 For such is the nature of Æon or Eternity.)
2. The personification of an age. In Platonic Philos., A power existing from
eternity; an emanation, generation, or phase of the supreme deity, taking part
in the creation and government of the universe.
(Ref: 1647 H. MORE Song of Soul Notes 138/1 But Intellect or Æon hath in
himself proper Intellectuall life.)
3. Geol. Usu. eon. The largest division of geological time, composed of several eras.
(Ref: 1933 SCHUCHERT & DUNBAR Textbk. Geol. (ed. 3) v. 70)
4. Geol. and Astr. One thousand million years.
(Ref: 1968 R. A. LYTTLETON Mysteries Solar Syst. i. 5 We are now fairly certain that the planets have existed for something like 4 to 5 thousand million years, four
to five aeons (to use a modern unit of time, the aeon, which avoids the confusion associated with the word billion).
DRAFT ADDITIONS DECEMBER 2009
aeon, n.
* Used poet. and hyperbolically of personal impressions, memories, etc.: an indefinitely long time; a good while. Also (esp. humorously): too long. Usu. pl.
1880 I. D. HARDY Friend & Lover II. viii. 227
I see there has been a recent article in the Washington Examiner:
Hip-checking Michael Mann
By Barbara Hollingsworth, Local Opinion Editor:
(08/18/10 4:10 PM EDT) “An academic paper soon to be published in the Annals of Applied Statistics by Northwestern statistician Blakeley McShane and the University of Pennsylvania’s Abraham Wyner completely demolishes Penn State climatologist Michael Mann’s infamous hockey stick graph, cited by environmental activists as “scientific proof” of man-made global warming.”
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/hip-checking-michael-mann-101008999.html
Just for reference, it appears that the Washington Examiner is a free, advertiser supported, conservative tabloid format publication that is distributed in the Washington D.C. metropolitan area.
Henry Pool,
We appreciate your response.
Do you see what the problem is? They always talk about the “radiation budget”.
Then they forget that oxygen-ozone & water vapor & CO2, mostly, cuts away 25-30% of the incoming radiation. (“cooling”). And that is not counting the clouds!
What is clearly missing is a balance sheet of the warming and cooling properties of each of the GHG’s.
Maybe there is also something wrong with the definition of a GHG. I think they also call ozone a GHG. But if you look carefully at the incoming radiation, then ozone on its own cuts away almost 15-20% of the sun’s radiation. That what ozone cuts away from earth’s radiation compares to not much with that 15-20%. So I am sure ozone is cooling more than it is warming. But they still call it a GHG?
Even without having any real test results (on that balance sheet), I would estimate that the net result of the increase of Co2 and ozone (when taken together) of the past 10 years is cooling rather than warming.
RR Kampen says:
August 20, 2010 at 1:07 am
You might find measurements in the real world interesting;
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2010/05/strong-negative-feedback-from-the-latest-ceres-radiation-budget-measurements-over-the-global-oceans/
Also Dr Spencer, which is, I believe much more into control loops than many other scientists (Forgive me for being blunt, but do you know a lot about control loops?), has some very convincing ideas on how climat change happens;
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2010/06/millennial-climate-cycles-driven-by-random-cloud-variations/#comment-134
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2010/04/simple-climate-model-release-version-1-0/
So, I think it is time to let all those CO2 ideas go. They are so not cool anymore. Just let them go, move on to something new. That is my advice.
Thanks again Henry,
They came back with this:
“If Co2 levels are at their highest in the last 800,000 years, why isn’t the globe hotter than it has been over the last 800,000 years?”
Henry@DCA engineer
There is an inverse relationship. I thank AlGore for noticing that. A lot of CO2 is dissolved in cold water. The higher the temp. of earth, the more CO2 is released. Any first year chemistry student knows that the initial first smoke from a kettle is the CO2 being released from the water. 70% of earth is water. So, that explanation for the hihger CO2 is simple.
If like I suspect and speculated before (without having any proof from tests), that the warming of CO2 is more or less equal than the cooling, then increases in CO2 in the atmosphere do not matter much. It won’t affect the radiation budget that much.
http://letterdash.com/HenryP/more-carbon-dioxide-is-ok-ok
Well RR Kampen,
what is your answer??
Seppie.
Henry@DCA engineer
*(There is an inverse relationship).
Obvious, that is quite apart from the fact that burning fossil fuels by man also add CO2 to the atmosphere.
Henry,
Does this in any way relate to what Miskolczi has said?
RE: Henry Pool: (August 25, 2010 at 8:03 am) “Even without having any real test results (on that balance sheet), I would estimate that the net result of the increase of Co2 and ozone (when taken together) of the past 10 years is cooling rather than warming.”
According to the MODTRAN online infra-red atmospheric radiation calculator tool, the net effect of the CO2 increase from 371.51 to 390.09 ppm over the last ten years is to increase the raw temperature required to maintain a thermal outflow of 292.993 W/sqr mtr, (a standard reference that I use) from 301.01 to 301.16 deg K, a difference so small (0.15 deg C or 0.27 deg F) as to be less than the random noise to be expected in any single practical measurement. I use the default MODTRAN tool settings in clear tropical air, thus, I believe, no feedback or compensation effects should apply.
Sorry, don’t know M.
RR Kampen says:
August 18, 2010 at 1:29 am
“… question is whether the 30% extra CO2 compared to 1900 (and before) wouldn’t have helped 1998 to become so warm as it was. …”
One of the profound problems with using percentages is that a percentage can often impress as being larger than it is. Since the change actually compose about 9.5*10^-6 ppm of the atmosphere, rather than tossing scary sounding percentages, the question might be better cast as “… whether a change of 0.0000095 ppm compared to 1900 (and before) wouldn’t have helped 1998 to become as warm as it was? …” Do you really think so?
RE: Spector:
(August 25, 2010 at 12:04 pm) “…from 301.01 to 301.16 deg K, a difference so small (0.15 deg C or 0.27 deg F)”
Correction: The above should read “from 301.10 to 301.16 deg K, a difference so small (0.06 deg C or 0.108 deg F)”
Vince Whirlwind (August 23, 2010 at 9:36 PM):
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to clarify my post (August 22,2010 at 12:23 PM).
Regarding Arrhenius and the burden of proof, Arrhenius says this in his 1906 paper “”Die vermutliche Ursache der Klimaschwankungen”:”The opinion that a decrease of carbonic acid in the air can explain ice-age temperatures is not proved wrong until it is shown that the total disappearance of carbonic acid from the atmosphere would not be sufficient to cause a lowering of temperatures about four to five degrees.” “Carbonic acid” is Arrhenius’s term for CO2.
The geologist who blogs at (http://hothouse.geologist-1011.net/) offers the following analysis of the above referenced quote from Arrhenius: “It is unscientific to say that an idea is true until such time as it is proven wrong and to suggest an unmeetable condition for falsification of a scientific idea is extreme sophistry. The onus of proof rests firmly upon the proposer of a hypothesis, not with it’s refutation. Every scientist understands this, and arguing as Arrhenius did in the above quotation, without the repeated confirmation of the idea (as opposed to its underlying principles) constitutes not just fallacy or sophistry, but scientific dishonesty. Moreover, the conditions Arrhenius has set for the refutation of his idea are scientifically impossible to achieve, unless by some dark art it is possible to remove all atmospheric carbon dioxide from the planet. Arrhenius, by imposing an impossible condition for falsification has tacitly admitted that his “Greenhouse Effect” is not falsifiable. We may take this statement of Arrhenius (1906a) as a clear indication that the “Greenhouse Effect” is simply not science. In fact, this is the first clear evidence that the “Greenhouse Effect” is a hoax.”
Regarding your argument that “…by the logic of your second paragraph, if I were to say ‘Sunrise tomorrow is at 0617’ and tomorrow happens to be a cloudy day, then sunrise has not occurred,” your argument is of the form of a strawman argument that achieves its end of falsifying the opposing argument by interpreting words or phrases of the latter argument in unusual ways. As words and phrases of my paragraph 2 usually are interpreted, a “cause” is a state of nature such as “cloudy.” An “effect” is a state of nature such as “rain in the next 24 hours.” If the event of “cloudy” is not followed by the event of “rain in the next 24 hours” then the cause and effect relation “given cloudy, rain in the next 24 hours” is falsified by the empirical evidence. This argument is perfectly logical.
Regarding your statement that “You seem to be struggling with some very basic intellectual skills” this statement is an example of an ad hominem argument. As such, it is logically fallacious.
@ stephen richards
“These are STATISTICIANS, they did statistics. Get It!?”
Interestingly, you are willing to believe that statisticians are experts in statistics and hence should be trusted. But you AREN’T willing to believe that climate scientists are experts in climate science and hence should be trusted.
This is a general problem with BOTH sides. We are (subconsciously or openly) biased toward the experts who’s results agree with our expectations. The debate here should go a long way toward the helping to reach a better understanding — where ideas arE vetted and discussed to find the strongest points on both sides of hte argument. The challenge is to allow ourselves to listen when the “other side” makes a good point.
@tim folkerts
‘Interestingly, you are willing to believe that statisticians are experts in statistics and hence should be trusted. But you AREN’T willing to believe that climate scientists are experts in climate science and hence should be trusted.
This argument would have more credence with me if you could show that there is indeed some special ‘science’ unique to climatology, and that can only be practiced by those who have trained in that particular field.
If there is such a science, different from the traditional subjects of statistics, maths, chemistry, physics etc..and where the standard techniques used in those disciplines do not apply, then please let me know.
Because as far as I can tell (I have a Chemistry degree), ‘climate science’ just takes a bit of some of those and mixes them all together … and then somehow comes up with what they claim to be ‘climate unique’ answers.
An easy way to show me that I am wrong would be to publicise a degree level (undergraduate or a masters) syllabus fro a ‘climate science’ degree, and to highlight for me the bits that are different.
In the case under discussion here, the authors have explicitly used the data collected and ‘adjusted’ by climate scientists, and then used standard statistics to draw their conclusions. If it is your case that there are some special ‘climate-related’ ways of doing statistics that invalidate their conclusions, then I suggest that you need to provide some greater intellectual basis for this than from a self-taught, self-certified climate scientist such as Mann simply declaring it to be so.
Because, frankly, I do not believe this assertion. Any more than i would believe it if Mann declared that there was a special ‘climate chemistry’ only accessible to ‘climate chemists’ and different from that practiced by thousands of conventional chemists daily.
We used to have a word for that sort of belief…it was called Alchemy.
This is off-topic a bit from the original blog post (which I don’t see as a “smoking gun” but as an interesting step toward more and better research and discussions).
Anyway — comments from Richard S Courtney August 20, 2010 at 9:48 am made me dig a little on my own. He specifically mentioned the HadCRUT3 data set, so I downloaded it ….
Here are some claims, some counter-claims, and a little analysis of my own …
”Reality: the past decade was warmest; decade 1990′s second warmest, decade 1980′s third warmest and the difference between the nineties and tens is bigger than between the eighties and nineties. In other words: warming is accelerating.
Also, we are almost on par with 1998, not 1990 – without a superNiño and during deep solar minimum: http://www.weerwoord.be/uploads/14820101561.png . Some ice is melting, too.” ”
Sorry, but even Phil Jones agrees that there has been no statistically significant warming for the last 15 years (i.e. since 1995). And the period from 1940 to 1970 showed similar decline.
Both are correct to some extent, but Richard seems farther off.
The decadal average temperatures were
1859
-0.37
1869
-0.36
1879
-0.27
1889
-0.3
1899
-0.39
1909
-0.44
1919
-0.43
1929
-0.3
1939
-0.13
1949
-0.07
1959
-0.16
1969
-0.11
1979
-0.09
1989
0.08
1999
0.24
2009
0.41
Clearly the top 3 decades were 2000-2009, 1990-1999 and 1980-1989 respectively.
As to the “no statistically significant warming for the last 15 years”, that does seem to be true as well! For the years 1995-2009, the regression equation is C14 = 0.307 + 0.0109 YEAR (Where “YEAR” is the year since 1995)
The p-value for the slope is 0.088. The generally accepted value for “statistically significant” is 0.05 or smaller ie the odds of getting such an extreme result “by accident” are 1 in 20 (or less). So it does fail that test. On the other hand, this p value suggests that the odds of such an extreme slope “by accident” are only 1 in 12. Not definitely, but certainly suggestive.
Furthermore, if there has been no warming since 1995, within the error estimates then I am correct to say that “Global temperature is now similar to that of 1990″.
This one could go either way, depending on how you want to define “now” and “similar”.
For 1995-2009 The period that had been under discussion), the global average temperate anomaly from the data set you quoted was 0.3835, with a standard deviation of 0.1066. 1990 was 1.2 standard deviations below the mean, so it is noticeably cooler, bit not statistically significantly cooler (which is typically taken as 2 standard deviations from the mean). On the other hand, 1990 IS significantly cooler than “now” if “now” means the period 2007-2009. Or 2006-2009. Or 2005-2009. Or and period back to 1998 – 2009.
So if “now” means the years since 1997 (or earlier) to now, then 1990 is NOT “significantly” cooler. But if “now” means the years since 1998 (or later), then 1990 IS significantly cooler. (And 1990 was a relatively warm year. 1989 or 1991 was even MORE significantly cooler.)
And your assertion that “warming is accelerating” is plain fantasy. Indeed, warming stopped from its rapid rate from ~1970 to ~2000 some 10 years ago. A rational discussion would be as to if and when similar rapid warming will resume.
This one I give to Richard. I took “rate of global warming” to be the slope of the global temperatures for the previous decade. The rate was unusually high from 1998 to 2005, but for the last several years the rate of warming is almost zero. So while these years are still exceptionally warm, there has been little ADDITIONAL warming for the past 5 years.
In fact, perhaps the most unprecedented warming occurred from around 1915 to 1945. (Although that period was also followed by the biggest spell of global cooling in the record. It will be quite interesting to see in a decade if we again get a big cooling spell, or if we continue to have warming (or at least steady) temperatures.)
You conclude by asserting:
“AGW cannot be debunked because it is the reality.”
A truthful statement is that
AGW has been debunked by reality.
Based just on what I say here, I’d have to say the jury is still out on AGW. I think both sides need to refine their arguments. 🙂
Tim
P.S. I wish there was a “preview” feature so I could check the html tags.
Tim Folkerts says:
August 25, 2010 at 7:58 pm
“Interestingly, you are willing to believe that statisticians are experts in statistics and hence should be trusted. But you AREN’T willing to believe that climate scientists are experts in climate science and hence should be trusted.”
=================================
Tim, you have to be joking !
Did you read the emails released from the UEA/CRU ?
There are plenty of reasons out there NOT to trust climate scientists.
Until the statisticians stuff up like the climate scientists did, I would trust the statisticians well before I would trust the climate scientists especially the ones pushing AGW.
Duster says:
August 25, 2010 at 12:13 pm
One of the profound problems with using percentages is that a percentage can often impress as being larger than it is. Since the change actually compose about 9.5*10^-6 ppm of the atmosphere, rather than tossing scary sounding percentages, the question might be better cast as “… whether a change of 0.0000095 ppm compared to 1900 (and before) wouldn’t have helped 1998 to become as warm as it was? …” Do you really think so?
Having a mathematics background, I am insensitive to ‘impression’. Whether you take absolute numbers or percentages, the concentration of an important greenhouse gas has risen considerably (much more than your “0.00000095 ppm”, which I take to be a sort of typo). This MUST have consequences; which is under discussion. I really think it causes global warming, yes.
Don’t get put off by low concentrations. A very small amount of cyanide kills. Concentrations of ozone in the ozonelayer are at most 1/400th of that of CO2 in the lower troposphere, and because stratospheric air is so much thinner, absolute quantity of ozone is really negligable. Except: without it, you and I would not live.
Unfortunately this is not just about the data. Scientists, palaeontologists, archaeologists and other people from every walk of ‘scientific’ life will, having spent a good number of years working on a particular subject, believe that what they have produced is fact, irrespective of whether there are inconsistencies or questionable ‘shortcuts’ with their work.
They will also do everything to ensure that anyone questioning their work or suggesting new ideas is shouted down or made to look like an idiot as their reputation (and ego) is at stake.
These days, funding is of major importance and as climate change (AGW) is the new religion worth billions, scientists will sell their souls for a slice of the action.
Remember, deniable deceit is just as important as the data.
It has been almost a week since the google news count for “global warming” fell below 7000. I’ve not checked to see whether this could be due to less online news generally, but given the mediocre news stories on this subject it seems pretty obvious that the fire has gone out of this story and all we are left with is a few smoking embers from die hard global warming believing journalists who’ll keep on printing the world is warming even if we were all freezing from an iceage.
It also indicates that the academics no longer view “global warming” as a nice tag on which to hang their latest research finding – so there isn’t the academic push fanning the fire.
So, with yet another clear rebuttal of Mann I can’t realistically see this whole thing flaring up. OK, there’ll be a google news peak when they manufacture the “hottest year ever”, by sending a lot of colder sensors off for calibration and removing their data from the data set, but seriously who will really care if it is a 1/10 of a degree warmer than last?
Tim Folkerts:
Thank you for your comparison of my and KK Hempen’s comments based on consideration of HadCRUT3 data that you provide at August 25, 2010 at 9:30 pm.
It is very helpful and clearly not one-sided so others can evaluate it for themselves (but I think most will not agree with your assertion that “Richard seems farther off” because you do not state any clear error in my statements).
Importantly, you conclude by saying:
“Based just on what I say here, I’d have to say the jury is still out on AGW. I think both sides need to refine their arguments.”
Indeed, based only on what you say then the “jury” would “still be out”. But your conclusion is based solely on the HadCRUT3 data and ignores the missing hot spot. Please note that this ‘hot spot’ evidence is the most important which is why I stated it twice in my post at August 19, 2010 at 7:46 am. KK Hampen recognised this so tried – and failed – to pretend it does not exist.
In my post at August 19, 2010 at 7:46 am I wrote:
“The absence of the tropospheric ‘hot spot’ is direct evidence that the positive feedbacks required for CAGW are NOT happening.”
and
“5.
The pattern of atmospheric warming predicted by the AGW hypothesis is absent.
The hypothesis predicts most warming of the air relative to the surface at altitude in the tropics. Measurements from weather balloons and from satellites both show slight cooling relative to the surface at altitude in the tropics.”
In response to KK Hampen disputing those statements, I wrote to him at August 20, 2010 at 9:48 am saying:
“I wrote concerning the AGW hypothesis:
“The hypothesis predicts most warming of the air relative to the surface at altitude in the tropics.”
But you reply:
“In reality the hypothesis predicts most warming at high latitudes, particularly northern high latitudes. The hypothesis does so now and it did so when I studied climatology in an era the IPCC still had to be set up. The observations are conform hypothesis.”
Sorry, but the IPCC AR4 agrees with me and not you.
The matter is explained in Chapter 9 of the AR4 and you can read it at
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-chapter9.pdf
Figure 9.1 (on page 675) summarises the expected responses to various forcings from 1880 to 1999. Figure 9.1(c) shows the expectation from GHG increase and Figure 9.1(f) the sum of all forcings.
Figure 9.1(c) is the only diagram of the set of individual forcings that provides the pattern of warming I described.
And both Figures 9.1 (c) and (f) display the pattern I described because the AGW prediction is that the effect of the increased GHGs is to overwhelm the effects of the other forcings.
That warming at altitude in the tropics has not happened according to radiosonde (i.e. balloon) measurements taken over the last 50 years and has not happened according to MSU (i.e. satelire) measurements taken since 1979.
Indeed, the data indicates slight cooling at altitude in the tropics (i.e. the opposite of the expected effect of GHGs).”
In science it is not permissible to ignore the primary evidence then declare:
“The jury is still out”.
Richard
This “decade” thing is very silly. We have given sentient qualities to the Earth’s oceanic, topographic, and atmospheric entities? Does it think, “New decade, so I must get warmer (or colder – take your pick).” No. So if you don’t mind, let’s stop with the decade thing. It is meaningless and is simply a way to impress your opinion (on either side of the fence) onto less intellectually agile minds.
During La Nina months, global temperatures demonstrated [insert whatever the trend is]. During El Nino months, global temperatures demonstrated [insert whatever the trend is]. During ENSO neutral months, global temperatures demonstrated [insert whatever the trend is]. Do the same for AMO, PDO, etc. That is a more meaningful discussion of trends than arbitrary decades, years, or months.
A couple of days ago, I tried for the third time to post the following comment to the Realclimate discussion about the Hockey stick. “The reports of McIntyre, Wegman, and McShane all conclude that Mann’s method produces the hockey stick from random data. Therefore the hockey stick has no statistical significance.” Three times the comment has been blocked. If you go through their discussions looking for the word “random” you find no mention of the effect of red-noise (random data) upon Mann’s method. Maybe they just have a thing against me personally. Perhaps someone else could try it and see if their effort is blocked.
“This MUST have consequences; which is under discussion. I really think it causes global warming, yes. ”
This is contrary your own quote “Having a mathematics background, I am insensitive to ‘impression’. ” Can you elaborate?
“A very small amount of cyanide kills.”
This kind of sound bytes makes the AGW theory untrustworthy and even silly.
Richard, can you point me to the posts by KK Hempen and KK Hampen? The moderator may have snipped them?
Also a question: have you at one time misread ‘latitude’ for ‘altitude’? It would explain our misunderstanding.
Henry@RR kampen
It seems nobody here including yourself has yet been able to prove to me that CO2 is a greenhouse gas.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/17/breaking-new-paper-makes-a-hockey-sticky-wicket-of-mann-et-al-99/#comment-466077
http://letterdash.com/HenryP/more-carbon-dioxide-is-ok-ok
I do agree that O3 could have been destroyed by CFC’s in the past leading to global warming. We fixed that problem, did we not?
A prewiew of what to expect from IPCC `s AR5!
The lead author of chapter 1 Deliang Chang made the following statement. Mr Chang is professor in meterologial physics at the University of Gothemburg.
“Tittar man på de senaste 10, 30, 50 årens meteorologiska data så inte bara tror vi utan VET att extremhändelserna blivit vanligare och ökat i intensitet och att det har med klimatförändringar att göra.”
Translation: “If you analyze the last 10,30.50 year of metereological data we not only belive but KNOW that extreme events has become more frequent with increased intensity and it is related to climate change”.
Well there are many things that makes me proud of Sweden…this is not one of them!
Source http://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=3345&artikel=3946821
No the ozone hole did disappear but grew back again. It is quite evidently a natural phenomenon. As usual scientists popping their heads into a middle of a cycle and doing straight line extrapolations.
@Tim Folkerts
“Interestingly, you are willing to believe that statisticians are experts in statistics and hence should be trusted. But you AREN’T willing to believe that climate scientists are experts in climate science and hence should be trusted.”
It has been a recurring problem over many years, particularly in the social sciences I must say, but also found in biological or physical sciences, that some domain researchers failed to either get a good intellectual grounding in statistics, or consult a good statistician, and consequently produce flawed or meaningless results in their papers. When I worked in biomedical research, the guys with medical or biology PhDs would always make sure and consult with epidemiologists and statisticians to make sure they weren’t making errors of that sort.
It is precisely this scenario that is half of the question about Mann’s results. So it is very appropriate for statisticians to examine the statistical techniques used. (The other questions about Mann involve mismanaged or poorly chosen data.)
Climate scientists in recent years seem to be uncommonly prone to both bad data and bad statistics.
Now I’m totally confused about ozone and the ozone hole. In the past year, I’ve read articles that cite:
– closing the ozone hole could contribute to global warming.
– no real data exists for ozone hole before 1970.
– the chemical reaction originally used to link CFC’s and ozone depletion were erroneous.
– the size of the ozone hole has been relatively static despite the ban on CFC’s and reduction in HCFC’s.
Anyone care to enlighten me?
One item I have not seen discussed is the frequency of calibration and accuracy of the various temperature recording devices used in the last 30 to 150 years and various stations that most of the AGW argument is based on, and what the methodology of recording and reporting data has been.
I would imagine temperature devices early in this data collection were lucky to be accurate to a degree given they were likely your old run of the mill mercury thermometers with probably very shaky quality control in production.
Another issue is in the days before digital readouts, which were not all that long ago, what was the standard method of reporting? Round up? Round down? Was is consistent year over year or did the procedure change a number of times? We’ve seen the temperature rise a fraction of a degree since 1970 or so, a simple change in rounding procedure could explain the entire issue.
Any one have any insights?
Tim Folkerts says:
August 25, 2010 at 7:58 pm
“Interestingly, you are willing to believe that statisticians are experts in statistics and hence should be trusted. But you AREN’T willing to believe that climate scientists are experts in climate science and hence should be trusted.”
=========================================
Tim, All statisticians are trained in statistics.
No climate scientists are trained in computer programing or statistics.
But climate science has morphed into programing computer games and statistics
Pull my finger
I wrote on that very subject in my article here;
Article: History and reliability of global temperature records. Author: Tony Brown
This article (part 1 of a series of three) examines the period around 1850/80 when Global temperatures commence, and looks at the long history of reliable observations and records prior to the development of instrumental readings.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/14/little-ice-age-thermometers-%e2%80%93-history-and-reliability/
tonyb
RR Kampen: August 26, 2010 at 1:30 am
Don’t get put off by low concentrations. A very small amount of cyanide kills.
Cyanide is a poison — it’s been empirically proven that it *will* kill in lethal doses.
There is no empirical evidence that increasing carbon dioxide concentrations in free convection has any effect on the temperature — if anything, the evidence shows that carbon dioxide *lags* temperature by about 800 years.
Thanks Tony B, interesting stuff.
RR Kampen:
Re your post at August 26, 2010 at 7:09 am ,
I sincerely apologise for mistyping your name and for having done it repeatedly.
I have no excuse but – in mediation of my error – I point out that that in each case I copied and pasted the time stamp so those who checked my quotations of you would have seen that they were quotations of your words.
But, my error was wrong. So, I offer no excuse and provide an abject apology for it.
Also, in the same post where you point out the error (for which I have here apologised) you ask me:
“Also a question: have you at one time misread ‘latitude’ for ‘altitude’? It would explain our misunderstanding.”
No! I stated “at altitude in the tropics” and you later talked about “latitude”. If there was any misreading then it was not by me.
The ‘hot spot’ is missing and this indicates that the postulated feedbacks required to convert any AGW into a discernible effect do not exist. Live with it, and rejoice at it because it is good news.
Richard
Is it true that cyanide only kills if it comes into contact with an acid (stomach acid for instance)?
Also, apple seeds have cyanide in them, but if you eat a couple apples, seeds and all, you won’t die. However, if you eat a cupful of apple seeds, it will likely be fatal. In that case, the dose makes the poison. Of course, if you have cyanide gas, one whiff can send you into a coma. I’m sure that’s far more concentrated and lethal administration than apple seeds.
Latitude said:
“No climate scientists are trained in computer programing or statistics.”
What an extraordinary claim.
Bill Tuttle
Not only that but I heard Litzen in an amicable conversation with a consensus Professor and they both agreed that in a forest walk you will have a CO2 level at 4 times the present average value with no problems for health.
“bemused says:
August 26, 2010 at 2:04 pm
Latitude said:
“No climate scientists are trained in computer programing or statistics.”
What an extraordinary claim.”
Here’s a link to Mann’s 1998 “Nature” paper.
http://www.meteor.iastate.edu/classes/ge415/papers/Mann_et_al_Nature1998.pdf
Note the equation in the Methods section, on pg numbered 785.
It refers to the RE statistic, there’s a slight misprint, it should read
b = 1 – ((Yref – Ypredicted)^2/(Yref)^2)
The printer left out that divided by sign.
The last paragraph on the page reads:
“b is a quite rigorous measure of the similarity between two variables,
measuring their correspondence not only in terms of the relative departures
from mean values (as does the correlation coefficient r) but also in terms of the
means and absolute variance of the two series. For comparison, correlation (r)
and squared-correlation (r2) statistics are also determined. The expectation
value for two random series is b = -1. Negative values of b may in fact be
statistically significant for sufficient temporal degrees of freedom. Nonetheless,
the threshold b ¼ 0 defines the simple ‘climatological’ model in which a series
is assigned its long-term mean…”
That’s a real faux pas.
Here’s a reference to RE2 from a statistical perspective rather than a climate
perspective.
http://www.graphpad.com/curvefit/goodness_of_fit.htm
“Tip: Don’t make the mistake of using R2 as your main criterion for whether a fit is reasonable. A high R2 tells you that the curve came very close to the points. That doesn’t mean the fit is “good” in other ways. The best-fit values of the parameters may have values that make no sense (for example, negative rate constants) or the confidence intervals may be very wide….”
“Note that R2 is not really the square of anything. If SSreg is larger than SStot, R2 will be negative. While it is surprising to see something called “squared” have a negative value, it is not impossible (since R2 is not actually the square of R). R2 will be negative when the best-fit curve fits the data worse than a horizontal line at the mean Y value. This could happen if you pick an inappropriate model, or fix a parameter to an inappropriate constant value (for example, if you fix the Hill slope of a dose-response curve to 1.0 when the curve goes downhill). ”
Mann was confusing RE2 with r^2. r^2, the correlation, CAN be significant either positive or negative. RE2 is normally positive. If you just guess the AVERAGE for y, you’ll get an RE2 of zero. If you get a NEGATIVE value, it means your prediction is
worse than just taking the average for all observed y. An example of that
happening is where the actual graph is linear, and my model predicts exponential
growth in the near future. The reviewers didn’t catch the fact that negative RE2
is significant only in the sense that your model is demonstrably crap. Given that
nobody commented on this obvious faux pas until Steven McIntyre commented on it, the statement that climatologists who read Mann’s NATURE article didn’t know statistics was correct.
Deep climate made the same mistake as Mann in confusing RE2 with
r^2
http://deepclimate.org/2010/08/19/mcshane-and-wyner-2010/
“At almost 0.9, the RE score is well above the 95% significance level, which is only 0.4 for the “null” proxies. Recall the definition of RE (courtesy of the NRC):
where is the mean squared error of using the sample average temperature over the calibration period (a constant, ) to predict temperatures during the period
of interest ”
http://deepclimate.org/2010/08/19/mcshane-and-wyner-2010/
Note that you can get a high RE2 by overfitting.
DEEPCLIMATE linked to this paper without going on to read page 95
http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11676&page=93
On page 95:
“Reconstructions that have poor validation statistics (i.e., low CE) will have correspondingly wide uncertainty bounds, and so can be seen to be unreliable in an objective way. Moreover, a CE statistic close to zero or negative suggests that the reconstruction is no better than the mean, and so its skill for time averages shorter than the validation period will be low. Some recent results reported in Table 1S of Wahl and Ammann (in press) indicate that their reconstruction, which uses the same procedure and full set of proxies used by Mann et al. (1999), gives CE values ranging from 0.103 to –0.215, depending on how far back in time the reconstruction is carried. ”
A high RE2 and a low correlation, as with Amman and Wahl, indicates
Overfitting your model. For more on that, google “RE2 overfitting”.
Djozar: Now I’m totally confused about ozone and the ozone hole
No need to be confused !
On its own, ozone cuts away about 15-20% of the sun’s radiation. A few decades ago CFC’s were linked to the destruction of ozone, thereby increasing the ozone hole, allowing more UV radiation in….
This could be one of the (real) causes for modern warming. Last I looked, I saw ozone is increasing again. I have listed this as one of the reasons to expect (global )cooling.
http://letterdash.com/HenryP/more-carbon-dioxide-is-ok-ok
Henry@Bryan, Bill etc.
The safe working level of CO2 in factories, greenhouses, etc. is 9000 mg/m3.
That is 0,75%. However, it won’t kill until 20 or 30%, and then only because of a lack of oxygen. CO2 in the air has increased from 0,03 to 0.04 % during the last 50 years. So it is is still save here for a long time to come!!!!
Henry Pool says:
August 26, 2010 at 7:13 am
RR kampen
It seems nobody here including yourself has yet been able to prove to me that CO2 is a greenhouse gas.
I hope the problem is not proving it to you. Anyway, you can do John Tyndall’s experiments (around 1860) in your own yard.
Here is another experiment: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeYfl45X1wo .
Beware. I could not prove to most people that the ratio of circumference and diameter of a circle is not a rational number. They don’t know the math.
Henry pool, Djozar
Sure, ozone is another Greenhouse Gas. But its level fluctuates and the fluctuations seem to correlate to solar fluctuations enough to allow the possibility that the fluctuations could all be natural. Ozone’s absorption of unwanted UV is what heats the stratosphere.
Anthony
This terrific post has run a long time now, is there a reason you still want it “guarding the gates”, seeing that comment strength has diminished?
I look forward to more of your Surface Stations material.
It was a tricky dicky, cherry picky, cocky crocky hockey sticky ……..
(anyone care to finish)
Henry@Lucy (abt the ozone)
I have not seen that correlation and doubt its existence. I think ozone’s depletion in the past and consequent warming of the planet (due to the lack of ozone’s cooling) is the one thing I think could be attributed to man.
If the net effect of a substance in the air is cooling (by re-radiating sunshine) rather than warming (by trapping earth-shine) , would you still call it a greenhouse gas?
I think I would call ozone an anti-greenhouse gas. (look carefully at the incoming and outgoing radiation graphs)
Bill Tuttle says:
August 26, 2010 at 12:23 pm
RR Kampen: August 26, 2010 at 1:30 am
Cyanide is a poison — it’s been empirically proven that it *will* kill in lethal doses.
There is no empirical evidence that increasing carbon dioxide concentrations in free convection has any effect on the temperature — if anything, the evidence shows that carbon dioxide *lags* temperature by about 800 years.
My point is that very low concentrations can have big effects. For greenhouse gases and ozone (a poison almost as potent as HCN!) this is evident.
The empirical evidence can be witnessed today.
…the evidence shows that carbon dioxide *lags* temperature by about 800 years.
You are referring to the process of end ice age, start interglacial. Couple of remarks:
– This process happens temperaturewise and CO2-wise much slower than the climate- and greenhouse changes we are witnessing today.
– There are more causes for climate change even if CO2 is today the most important one.
– Climate change by e.g. Milankovitch cycles gives rise to changes in land and sea vegetation. This and warming of the sea releases CO2 after the warming. 800 years is the mixing time of the oceans.
Of course, this CO2 adds to further warming immediately. From about one third to one half of the warming trajectory to interglacial, this CO2 becomes the main driver of further warming. In the well-known graphs comparing historical temp and CO2 you will see temp and CO2 go up together at this stage, no lag of 800 years anymore. In fact temp goes up a couple years after the CO2 in this case – which is to small a time difference to distinguish.
Richard S Courtney, I am overwhelmed by your apology 🙂 Accepted, of course.
Thanks Lucy & Henry
Henry@RR kampen August 27 4:28 AM
You have to be kidding me?
CO2 is a weak greenhouse gas, if it is one. You have not proven that CO2 is a greenhouse gas.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/17/breaking-new-paper-makes-a-hockey-sticky-wicket-of-mann-et-al-99/#comment-467122
“It was a tricky dicky, cherry picky, cocky crocky hockey sticky ……..
(anyone care to finish)”
‘…that Mann swore showed the worst climb today’
@Henry Pool
http://letterdash.com/HenryP/more-carbon-dioxide-is-ok-ok
“To start off with, I found Svante Arrhenius’ formula completely wrong and since then I could not find any correctly conducted experiments (tests & measurements) that would somehow prove to me that the warming properties of CO2 (by trapping earth’s radiation between the wavelengths 14-15 um) are greater than its cooling properties (by deflecting sunlight at various wavelengths between 0 – 5 um).”
———-
I have always wondered why no experiments of this sort seem to have been conducted to measure at least the basic effect of different CO2 concentrations in air. Some say it is impossible because you cannot reproduce the entire atmosphere in lab conditions and so on. But is this really needed? What insurmountable difficulties can there be in using for example open-top columns of air in which CO2 concentrations can be altered at will, over which you apply full spectrum light from he top, with a bottom that absorbs heat and re-emits IR radiation, or something roughly along those lines to determine the thermal effects near the surface of different concentrations of this gas? If these kinds of experiments exist, they are certainly not widely mentioned. Sometimes you hear that the basic effect is very well understood, easy to calculate, and easily observable in laboratory experiments, but specific references to any such experiments seem to shine by their absence. As far as I can tell, the effect is always calculated theoretically, often with much disagreement among experts, and some insisting it doesn’t even exist. The apparently complete lack of empirical corroboration on this crucial issue is a source of great puzzlement to me. Particle physicists have been able to devise extremely ingenious experiments to test and corroborate their theories. But somehow, measuring (however crudely) the magnitude of CO2’s greenhouse effect is beyond the capabilities of science. Has anyone found any concrete references to such experiments?
Henry at RR Kampen
the video proves warming. But you have to prove that CO2 warms more than it cools. Better read my previous posts (to which I have made reference)
I do recommend my video:
I laughed. And laughed.
RR Kampen: August 27, 2010 at 4:28 am
My point is that very low concentrations can have big effects. For greenhouse gases and ozone (a poison almost as potent as HCN!) this is evident.
My point — which you ignored — is that no one has ever proven that *any* increase in CO2 in free convection has an effect on the temperature.
The empirical evidence can be witnessed today.
Correlation is not causality. Kindly cite the empirical evidence — not the conjecture — that *proves* an increase in free atmospheric CO2 causes an increase in temperature.
You are referring to the process of end ice age, start interglacial.
Actually, I was referring to the beginning of several ice ages, when CO2 continued to increase as the temperatures continued to fall.
Couple of remarks:
– This process happens temperaturewise and CO2-wise much slower than the climate- and greenhouse changes we are witnessing today.
Not necessarily. According to the folks who analyze ice cores, temperature changed *rapidly* while CO2 lagged: “A more detailed ice core analysis shows an occasional abrupt change of climate during the last interglacial (the Eemian, at 120 kBP), changing by as much as 10K during only 10 -30 years.”
http://www-das.uwyo.edu/~geerts/cwx/notes/chap01/icecore.html
– There are more causes for climate change even if CO2 is today the most important one.
If CO2 wasn’t the most important one in the past, why is it suddenly the most important one today?
– Climate change by e.g. Milankovitch cycles gives rise to changes in land and sea vegetation. This and warming of the sea releases CO2 after the warming. 800 years is the mixing time of the oceans.
That’s my point: that CO2 increases follow a rising temperature, and do not cause it. If rising CO2 levels *caused* an increase in temperatures, you would not see temperatures falling as CO2 levels continued to rise for an additional 800 years.
Of course, this CO2 adds to further warming immediately. From about one third to one half of the warming trajectory to interglacial, this CO2 becomes the main driver of further warming.
Again, that is conjecture — it hasn’t been *proven* — and if CO2 were the main driver, there would have been no temperature *decreases* during periods of increasing CO2.
In the well-known graphs comparing historical temp and CO2 you will see temp and CO2 go up together at this stage, no lag of 800 years anymore. In fact temp goes up a couple years after the CO2 in this case – which is to small a time difference to distinguish.
In the well-known USHCN V2 temperature/CO2 comparison graph from 1895 to the present, I see a cooling trend from 1933 until 1979, while CO2 rose from 308ppm to 337ppm. It is followed by a rise in temperature until 1999, then a slight cooling trend, all the while CO2 is continuing to rise. If CO2 were the main driver, the temperatures would have shown *no* cooling trends during that time.
@ Stu: August 27, 2010 at 5:36 am
*groan*
Now I have a Brian Hyland earworm…
Its a wonder that this news is not making more of an impact.
From the New Scientist
…”IT IS time to start asking the hard questions. Countless people in flood-stricken Pakistan have lost families and livelihoods. Who can they hold responsible and turn to for reparations?
Less than a decade ago, these questions would have been dismissed outright. “Many scientists at the time said that you can never blame an individual weather event on climate change,” says Myles Allen of the University of Oxford. But a small meeting of scientists in Colorado last week – organised by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the UK Met Office’s Hadley Centre, among others – suggests the tide is turning.
The aim of the Attribution of Climate-Related Events workshop was to discuss what information is needed to determine the extent to which human-induced climate change can be blamed for extreme weather events – possibly even straight after they have happened.”………..
It seems to me that what they are proposing is that from now on if there is a tragedy like a Tsunami or Pakistani type flooding the DEFAULT POSITION will be that it can all be blamed on climate change.
Sceptics will have to prove that it wasn’t!
The burden of proof has now shifted from proving a hypothesis to prove the hypothesis wrong (Terry Oldberg please note.)
And what is the presence of the Government body “UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office ” doing at what purports to be a meeting of scientists.
Very sinister!
Henry@Francisco
I agree with everything you say. We need a balance sheet of the cooling and warming properties of each component in the air. In W/m3 @GHG relevant % range/m2/24hr.
I am sure if I had been in charge I would have come up with some general testing procedure. But for that testing you also need money. That is why I said: why don’t we get the oil companies to fund this research? CO2 is their product, after all.
Bill Tuttle says:
August 27, 2010 at 6:43 am
..
If CO2 wasn’t the most important one in the past, why is it suddenly the most important one today?
Because it is the greenhouse gas whose concentration is rising extremely rapidly. It is doing ‘suddenly’ so. At the same time, other important drivers voor recent warming cannot be identified.
That’s my point: that CO2 increases follow a rising temperature, and do not cause it.
Both happens.
If rising CO2 levels *caused* an increase in temperatures, you would not see temperatures falling as CO2 levels continued to rise for an additional 800 years.
We wouldn’t, and: we don’t.
Wiglaf says: August 26, 2010 at 1:40 pm
I was told by my botanist father cherry pits have cyanide as well. I have found it interesting that cyanide supposedly smells like almonds, and that the taste of cherries and almonds is actually very similar in my experience.
RR Kampen: August 27, 2010 at 7:28 am
Because it is the greenhouse gas whose concentration is rising extremely rapidly. It is doing ‘suddenly’ so. At the same time, other important drivers voor recent warming cannot be identified.
So, your position is that rising CO2 was not the primary cause of warming in the past, but because it is rising *now*, it miraculously *is* the primary cause.
Both happens.
In that case, explain why temperatures have been cooling since 1999. It can’t possibly be happening if CO2 is the main driver for temperature, as is your position.
We wouldn’t, and: we don’t.
We have seen it many times in the past and we’re seeing it now.
Henry at Bryan
Unfortunately, what many of us here suspect, is that the global warming party is over.
e.g..(featuring now)
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/27/pre-empting-on-the-solar-curve-fit/
What is happening now in Pakistan could be due to the change in the 2nd variable of global warming/cooling given below
http://letterdash.com/HenryP/more-carbon-dioxide-is-ok-ok
don’t forget:
http://letterdash.com/HenryP/the-term-climate-change-is-hiding-the-fact-that-global-warming-has-stalled
Steve Keohane: August 27, 2010 at 8:03 am
I was told by my botanist father cherry pits have cyanide as well. I have found it interesting that cyanide supposedly smells like almonds, and that the taste of cherries and almonds is actually very similar in my experience.
There are a surprising number of cyanogenetic foods, too — soy, cassava (tapioca, anyone?), lima beans, spinach, bamboo shoots, and (big surprise) almonds. People who eat a *lot* of cassava say they prefer the types that concentrate more cyanide in them — they’re more flavorful.
@ Henry Pool
Thank you again for your earlier replies. Here is some information on Dr. Miskolczi.
http://miskolczi.webs.com/
This Dr. Spencer’s take on it.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2010/08/comments-on-miskolczi%e2%80%99s-2010-controversial-greenhouse-theory/
I want to thank you in advance and look forward to your reply.
http://met.hu/doc/idojaras/vol111001_01.pdf
Henry
@DCA engineer/Francisco/etc
I had a quick look through at what M. and RS say, and I would strongly recommend that you go through all of my postings here to understand where we differ.
I agree with RS – I doubt the work of M (too much mathematics, very few real measurements e.g. no physics&chemistry related to an indiviual components’ characteristics).
I also say that water vapor is the greatest greenhouse gas (average abt 1% in air) but even water vapor causes cooling when the sun shines…..
I am not even sure if CO2 is a greenhouse gas – i.e that its net effect is warming rather than cooling; if it is one it must be very weak one, much weaker than water vapor.
So the increase of 0,01% in CO2 concentration of the past 50 years compares to almost nothing with that of water.
On the other side of the spectrum, Ozone is a big anti greenhouse gas, i.e. it probably cools more than it warms.
If we want to know what is good and what is bad for us, we need to see a balance sheet of the cooling and warming properties of each GHG & other air components.
I favor a simple testing system as proposed by Francisco. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/17/breaking-new-paper-makes-a-hockey-sticky-wicket-of-mann-et-al-99/#comment-467920
You must be able to fluctuate your concentration of GHG (balanced with nitrogen) where the other air components stay completely constant. Then you must be able to apply the energy and measure the cooling and warming rates in
W/ M3 %GHG (relevant range) / m2/ 24 hours.
That is probably easier said than done. I have not yet thought much about how to apply the whole spectrum of wavelength energy, but knowing the spectra of the components might help us a lot to chose and apply the correct radiation.
good luck
Henry Pool
Possibly it’s time for another top story now Anthony:
McShane and Wyner has shown that current global warming may possibly not be unprecedented. Spencer and Braswell points out that “It is clear that the accurate diagnosis of short‐term feedbacks (let alone long‐term climate sensitivity) from observations of natural fluctuations in the climate system is far from a solved problem.”
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/Spencer-Braswell-JGR-2010.pdf
Is it possible to predict our climate without knowledge?
Those who have knowledge, don’t predict. Those who predict, don’t have knowledge.
– Lao Tzu, Chinese poet, 500 BC.
Invariant @ 2:41 PM.
Nice. I predict global cooling for twenty years based on the concatenation of the cooling phases of the oceanic oscillations and for a century based on the coming dearth of sunspots, the Eddy Minimum. But I confess that I have no certain knowledge of the effect of the oscillations, of CO2, and of the sun.
=================
@ Henry Pool
The CO2 concentration was about 315ppm 50 year ago and is about 385ppm today. How do you work that out to be a 0.01% increase?
I don’t know where the rest of you guys and gals live, but I have spent 43 summers in South Carolina, 22 of those as a farm hand. It is always “hotter than hell” here, and a few degrees in either direction is not going to make any difference to me.
I don’t think any scientific argument is going to convince warmers of future climate trends. Anyone who disagrees with them should start thinking of ways to advance the food and water supply. The Western and IPCC governments are not going to plan for cooler temperatures. It is up to people outside of the powers that be to do this planning. Advocates and ideas are needed.
pax says:
August 27, 2010 at 4:58 pm
I would assume he calculated it as:
~300 ppm = 0.03%
~400 ppm = 0.04%
Difference = 0.01%
Not how I would have calculated it…..
-Scott
Brian (August 27, 2010 at 7:26 am) senses a move among climatologists to attribute the cause of tragic events, such as the recent floods in Pakistan, to man-made emissions of CO2 unless this attribution can be proved false. The existence of such a movement is implied by the existence, in the IPCC’s 2007 report, of extensive coverage ( http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch9.html ) of the topic of “attribution” and non-existent coverage ( http://icecap.us/images/uploads/SPINNING_THE_CLIMATE08.pdf ) of the topic of “statistical validation.” By the evidence referenced above, attribution has replaced statistical validation in the methodology of the IPCC’s investigation into the allegation of man-made global warming.
Attribution makes the argument which, in logic, is called “Argumentum ad Ignorantiam.”
Let P designate a hypothesis. This argument is of one of the two forms:
P is unproved; therefore not P is true and
Not P is unproved; therefore, P is true.
Though P is unproved, P may nonetheless be true. Conversely, though not P is unproved, not P may nonetheless be true, Thus, Argumentum ad Ignorantiam poses a false dichotomy.
In the methodology of science, empirical testing of P plays a role that is similar to but different from the one that is played by Argumentum ad Ignorantiam for IPCC climatology. In the methodology of science if, in repeated testing, P is not found false then P gains a degree of “statistical significance.” Under no circumstance is P found true.
A methodology that replaces empirical testing by Argumentum ad Ignorantium is not a scientific methodology. Nonetheless, in its 2007 report the IPCC implies ( http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch1s1-2.html ) that its methodology is scientific in nature. By implying that its methodology is scientific when it isn’t, the IPCC errs.
Scott says:
I would assume he calculated it as:
~300 ppm = 0.03%
~400 ppm = 0.04%
Difference = 0.01%
Not how I would have calculated it…..
-Scott
Correct calculation. Why not do it like that?Nobody says that the water vapor in the atmosphere is about 12000 ppm. They say it is 1%.
Comparing apples with apples?
Anthony’s reply to duckster: You really can’t argue on the basis of noise, or annual values. The mean line is the message. – Anthony
Thankyou Anthony, a cogent reply. Applying the same logic to GISS, HadCrut or satellite data clearly shows the trend in global temperature remains upward (apologies for being OT).
Henry Pool, you obviously don’t understand percentages. You said that the *increase* in *concentration* was 0.01%, it is not, the increase in concentration is more than 20%.
According to your logic I didn’t receive a pay-raise of 15% a couple of months ago, no, I got a pay-raise of 0.000000000000000000000000000001% because I have to take the amount relative to all the monies in the world. I think I’ll take this up with my employer and see if he agrees with my reasoning 🙂
You ask: Why not do it like that? Well, maybe because nobody does it like that.
pax says:
August 28, 2010 at 4:44 am
“Henry Pool, you obviously don’t understand percentages. You said that the *increase* in *concentration* was 0.01%, it is not, the increase in concentration is more than 20%.”
================
That’s true, pax, but it is no less true that the change involved only 0.01 percent of the atmosphere by volume, or, if you prefer, one ten thousandth of it, or 0.0001 of it, which went from being something else to being CO2, while 99.99 percent of it has remained stubbornly unchanged. The marvels attributed to this minuscule change are understandably met with a lot of incredulity and head scratching, especially because they seem to be 100% based on a high pile of theories and hypothesis precariously stacked upon one another (and subject to wild disagreements), and 0% based on any empirical evidence. If a similarly minuscule part of the money spent on feeding highly expensive computer models with theoretical assumptions, and promoting apocalypse at all costs, were spent in conducting some physical experiments in controlled conditions in order to get a more palpable idea of the actual effects of such a tiny change, then I would expect that the results of such experiments, if corroborating the theories, would do a lot more to convince the doubting Thomases than all the billions spent on promoting fantasy an vitriol.
There are different units of concentration you can use. In this case I used the unit of concentration that also contains % as unit, i.e. % m/m (but the m/m or w/w is usually not mentioned)
The wording I used is therefore correct, but I agree that if you have not studied a bit of chemistry you might misunderstand.
RR Kampen,
“Beware. I could not prove to most people that the ratio of circumference and diameter of a circle is not a rational number. They don’t know the math.”
I get it. Most people are too dumb to understand your “proof” of CAGW. Nice argument!
Henry@RR Kampen
Summary of AGW &CAGW test results and theory
Let us have a planet. Let us add some CO2. Let us see if the temperature went up.
It did!!\ So that must be it!!
Are you willing to place your bets?
RR Kampen: August 27, 2010 at 12:22 am
Beware. I could not prove to most people that the ratio of circumference and diameter of a circle is not a rational number. They don’t know the math.
So, how would that stop you from explaining it in simpler terms? I’ve explained how a helicopter manages to land safely after its engine quits to schoolchildren who don’t know aerodynamics.
RR Kampen says:
August 27, 2010 at 12:22 am
Henry Pool says:
August 26, 2010 at 7:13 am
RR kampen
“….I hope the problem is not proving it to you. Anyway, you can do John Tyndall’s experiments (around 1860) in your own yard.”
Do you have a link to a description of that experiment?
“Here is another experiment: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeYfl45X1wo ….”
RR Kampen, compared to what you know about it, I am just a babe in the woods with respect to the science of CO2-caused global warming or the lack of it. Please be so good and shed some light on the concerns the youtube experiment you pointed to raised in my mind.
Although the youtube experiment proves that CO2 absorbs visible light (notwithstanding that the narrator asserts that the visible radiation is IR), it is not clear to me what it proves with respect to the extent of the presence or absence of global warming.
I don’t think that anyone here objects to the fact that CO2 absorbs IR and re-radiates it in random directions. I believe that proof was provided in related discussion threads that CO2 absorbs visible light and re-radiates it into random directions as IR. The discussion revolves around the question of how much CO2 in the atmosphere it takes to cause a specific amount of warming of the global surface.
The youtube experiment shows that a large (unspecified) amount of atmospheric CO2 prevents a large (unspecified) amount of visible light from reaching the global surface.
The experiment does not illustrate what happens to the visible light that has been absorbed (although the narrator asserts that it warms the “atmosphere”). Specifically, it does not illustrate whether the absorbed visible light is re-radiated in the form of IR and how much of the IR reaches the global surface, how much of the IR is being radiated to space, and whether there is a global net-gain of energy.
Moreover, it is not clear that the experiment adequately demonstrates CO2’s opacity to IR and the absorption and re-radiation of IR.
Therefore the youtube experiment you linked to provides no insight as to the subject of the discussion, but it is a nice illustration of the opacity of CO2 to visible light.
The CO2 increase compared to the total atmosphere is indeed very small, and it is fun to educate uninformed people to this fact because it isn’t exactly the impression you get from the MSM. But other than a smart talking point it is in fact a non-argument since it is the physical and chemical properties that are interesting and not what your gut feeling tells you is a minuscule change — if 1/10000 of my body changed to plutonium I wouldn’t be in good shape for long. Even Monckton agrees that the CO2 gives about 1K warming per century (assuming zero feedback), so even the tiny amount does have a surprisingly big influence.
pax: August 28, 2010 at 10:30 am
But other than a smart talking point it is in fact a non-argument since it is the physical and chemical properties that are interesting and not what your gut feeling tells you is a minuscule change — if 1/10000 of my body changed to plutonium I wouldn’t be in good shape for long.
Depends on which isotope of plutonium and which 1/10,000 of your body mass changed.
If it was Pu-233, within 20 minutes you’d have to worry more about lead poisoning than cancer.
Henry @ Walter Schneider
Thanks for that observation. I missed that. The experiment shows that CO2 also absorbs visible light. Never too old to learn something new. Thus, the experiment proves that CO2 is cooling the atmosphere. Like I have been telling here before when I saw that CO2 radiation coming back from the moon!
Henry @ Pax
Even if Monckton agrees that the CO2 gives about 1K warming per century he would still have to prove this (to me, to us, at any rate). We need to see actual tests & experiments that prove that the net effect of CO2 is warming rather than cooling and the experiment’s results must also give us a clear correlation as to quantities as well, i.e. that an increase of 0,02% w/w in the concentration of CO2 would cause an increase of 1K/100yrs.
The way I understood Monckton, is that he always said: Even if, …etc… it would not be worth spending the money trying to prevent it…. etc. etc. But maybe I am wrong?
Blessings,
ool
Comparisons with the effect of certain chemicals on organisms are not apt, if only because all those things can be empirically observed before they are theoretically explained (if and when they can be explained). There are thousands of experiments documenting the effect of different CO2 concentrations on different organisms, but none documenting its warming effect on the planet. Some things that are very well understood can be reliably calculated. Many other things can’t. If a pharmaceutical company insisted on selling untested drugs, advancing the argument that their effects on our organism had been theoretically calculated by their in-house chemists, and therefore testing was unnecessary or unpractical, I doubt you would be too comfortable with those kinds of arguments. As I have been saying, I know of no empirical tests trying to document the warming effect of an increase in atmospheric CO2 that so far amounts to 0.0001 of the atmosphere. You might think that devising and carrying out such experiments would be considered worthwhile, given the enormous importance this issue has acquired. And yet, we seem to be forever mired in endless theoretical arguments whose results range from concluding there is a negligible effect per doubling of CO2, to as much as 7 deg C per doubling, depending on how the calculating melody is arranged.
Such wild discrepancy of results does not inspire much confidence in our ability to calculate this effect theoretically. If, for example, a group of drunken surveyors told you they calculated the height of a tree by trigonometry, and found it to be anywhere between 30 and 180 meters, it might be more practical to stop listening to them and, instead, send someone up the tree with a measuring tape (someone sober, that is), unpractical though the climbing it may be.
And let’s not even get into the topic of trying to calculate the effect on temperature that we may expect from establishing certain schemes such as carbon trading and Kyoto-like accords. That’s too bizarre to get into.
The CAGW doctrine and its solutions are without doubt one of the biggest mass delusions ever dreamed up by humans. Things such as the tulip craze, the weirdest theological arguments of the past, phrenology, the lobotomy fashion, etc., are a picnic in the park by comparison.
Henry Pool says:
August 28, 2010 at 12:38 pm
“Henry @ Walter Schneider
Thanks for that observation. I missed that. The experiment shows that CO2 also absorbs visible light. Never too old to learn something new. Thus, the experiment proves that CO2 is cooling the atmosphere. Like I have been telling here before when I saw that CO2 radiation coming back from the moon!”
Henry, that is not quite what I saw in the experiment or what I described.
The experiment proves very little, if anything. At best (provided one believes all of the unsupported assertions by the narrator), the experiment proves that CO2 filters out visible light and causes the global surface to get darker. (I don’t believe that the image produced by the camera is an IR image. The colour scale is too similar to what the video camera shows for the candle flame.)
The narrator asserts that the absorbed visible light heats the atmosphere, for which he shows absolutely no evidence, while his experiment shows that there is less visible light impacting on the global surface. Still, that conclusion would be valid even if the image produced on the LCD screen is a correct representation of the candle’s IR image, and if one were to substitute IR for visible light. In that case the global surface would become substantially cooler, not just darker.
My impression is that the narrator is wrong about what he is talking about. He claims that he “proves” that CO2 cools the global surface and that the missing energy gets stuck in the atmosphere. It would logically follow that the more light is absorbed by CO2, the more the atmosphere heats up…and then we will all die!
When I went to school, a Grade VI student would have been able to point out the errors of the narrator’s ways. The narrator might have said, “Look! You can feel the plexi-glass tube is heating up, which proves the atmosphere is getting hotter,” while the student would have said, “You are right about the heat, but if I can feel the heat on the outside of the tube, then that means that it is escaping from the atmosphere. Is it not going into space?” Upon which the narrator might have left the classroom to find some help.
In the youtube experiment, the narrator has no one who performs that sort of quality control on his work. He just makes unsubstantiated assertions that go unchecked, which is, as far as I can see as of now, true of the assertions that promote the CAGW hype and hysteria. Lack of quality control is a killer; and peer review is a poor substitute.
@Walter Shneider
“The experiment proves very little, if anything. At best (provided one believes all of the unsupported assertions by the narrator), the experiment proves that CO2 filters out visible light and causes the global surface to get darker. (I don’t believe that the image produced by the camera is an IR image. The colour scale is too similar to what the video camera shows for the candle flame.)”
I agree that the experiment proves very little, but you are quite wrong when you infer that the CO2 is filtering out visible light. It is an IR camera as stated in the video with the tonality set for best dramatic effect. CO2 is transparent to the visible light wavebands.
Henry @ Walter/ Paul
I checked again just to make double sure. There are indeed no absorptions of CO2 in the visible light area (from 0.4 to 0.7 um). There are absorptions in the infra red area namely 1.4 -1.5 um, 1,6 um (2 peaks), and at ca. 2 um (3 large peaks). There are also a few absorptions noted in the UV area, namely
there is absorption of CO2 at between 0.21 and 0.19 um (close to 202 nm):
and at between 0.18 and 0.135 um and between 0.125 and 0.12 um.
We already know from the normal IR spectra that CO2 has (very)big absorption between 4 and 5 um. Ths sun is shining between 0 and 5 um, 12 hours per day.
So you have to weigh the above cooling against the warming by trapping earthshine at between 14-15 um (24 hours per day)
Anyone care to place bets?
Paul_K says:
August 28, 2010 at 8:52 pm
@Walter Shneider
“I agree that the experiment proves very little, but you are quite wrong when you infer that the CO2 is filtering out visible light. It is an IR camera as stated in the video with the tonality set for best dramatic effect. CO2 is transparent to the visible light wavebands.”
Thanks, but then the conclusion drawn by the narrator is still wrong or quite misleading, even though only IR is involved. According to the experiment, the global surface would be cooling, and the conclusion states that all of the heat energy is trapped in the atmosphere.
Aw gawd, not Mann. Cue the Climatists with their NASA, Government and “experts” cut and pastes.
Did everybody miss this? http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/162506/How-carbon-gases-have-saved-us-from-a-new-ice-age-
In a talk at London’s Science Museum (March 10 2010) Dr Lovelock said the balance of nature was in charge of the environment.
He said: “We’re just fiddling around. It is worth thinking that what we are doing in creating all these carbon emissions, far from being something frightful, is stopping the onset of a new ice age. “If we hadn’t appeared on the earth, it would be due to go through another ice age and we can look at our part as holding that up. “I hate all this business about feeling guilty about what we’re doing. “We’re not guilty, we never intended to pump CO2 into the atmosphere, it’s just something we did.”
Paul_K: August 28, 2010 at 8:52 pm
I agree that the experiment proves very little, but you are quite wrong when you infer that the CO2 is filtering out visible light. It is an IR camera as stated in the video with the tonality set for best dramatic effect. CO2 is transparent to the visible light wavebands.
The glass end caps would have to be made with some material which is transparent to IR — given the reddish tint, I’d guess gallium arsenide — but since the candle is being filmed through a closed tube while the CO2 is being introduced, the experiment is actually demonstrating the *cooling* effect of the expanding CO2 as it’s entering the tube.
Francisco says:
“You might think that devising and carrying out such experiments would be considered worthwhile, given the enormous importance this issue has acquired”.
Henry@Francisco
Truly amazing yes!!
ANYBODY thought that EVERYBODY could do it. EVERYBODY thought that SOMEBODY would do it. In the end, NOBODY did it!!
When I asked Shell for the results, I got the answer that they decided to go mainstream i.e. that the “science” was settled. They sent me some stuff from Weart. (an historian, who has no scientific knowledge whatsoever)
Nobody has done any real research. It all just stories, incorrect formulae and “calculations.” No actual measurements.
In the meantime, perhaps the the CO2 is cooling more than it is warming? We could be heading for global cooling/Who knows what we find out one day.
What I don’t understand: why doesn’t anyone just sue the oil companies for the (correct) results, i.e.
how much warming and how much cooling is caused by the CO2 in W/M3 0.03-0.06%/m2/24 hours?
BillTuttle says:….which is transparent to IR — given the reddish tint, I’d guess gallium arsenide — but since the candle is being filmed through a closed tube while the CO2 is being introduced, the experiment is actually demonstrating the *cooling* effect of the expanding CO2 as it’s entering the tube.
Amazing, the talent we have here!!!
Henry Pool: August 29, 2010 at 5:40 am
Amazing, the talent we have here!!!
Well, thank you, but it’s not talent, just a few years’ experience with — ummmmmm — helicopter “target acquisition and engagement” systems.
AntonyIndia says:
August 29, 2010 at 1:34 am
“Did everybody miss this? http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/162506/How-carbon-gases-have-saved-us-from-a-new-ice-age-”
–
Thanks AntonyIndia . I am so impressed with Dr. Lovelock’s recent turnaround. Now that shows a true scientist that can realize the data and consensus is not supporting his views, becomes skeptical of himself, and change.
Some recent quotes of Dr. Lovelock:
“We’re just fiddling around. It is worth thinking that what we are doing in creating all these carbon emissions, far from being something frightful, is stopping the onset of a new ice age.
“If we hadn’t appeared on the earth, it would be due to go through another ice age and we can look at our part as holding that up.”
“I hate all this business about feeling guilty about what we’re doing.”
“We’re not guilty, we never intended to pump CO2 into the atmosphere, it’s just something we did.”
He compared the recent controversy to the “wildly inaccurate” early work on aerosol gases and their alleged role in depletion of the ozone layer.
“Quite often, observations done by hand are accurate but all the theoretical stuff in between tends to be very dodgy and I think they are seeing this with climate change. We haven’t learned the lessons of the ozone-hole debate. It’s important to know just how much you have got to be careful.”
Read the story above and research his recent turnaround. I’m impressed with you Dr. Lovelock. There is a scientist.
Hi Bill,
“The glass end caps would have to be made with some material which is transparent to IR — given the reddish tint, I’d guess gallium arsenide — but since the candle is being filmed through a closed tube while the CO2 is being introduced, the experiment is actually demonstrating the *cooling* effect of the expanding CO2 as it’s entering the tube.”
For a moment there I thought you were smoking the same stuff as Henry, but then I realised you were talking about a possible Joule-Thomson effect. Instead of trying to overanalyse or fix it, why don’t we all just agree that the whole experiment is completely irrelevant in terms of empirical proof of AGW?
Hi Henry (Pool),
Henry, some of your comments are so bad, they are not even wrong. You are in danger of giving scepticism a bad name. I have not seen so many junk science assertions since the last time I visited RC. You really do need to bone up on some basic science, man. Try the Science of Doom site for a non-fanatical review of basic physics. I am not going to engage you on the various assertions you have made in this thread since (1) they are way O/T and (2) I don’t know how much longer I have to live. Put some effort into understanding what has been tested and then question what hasn’t!
Here is more of Lovelock on that same day in March 2010: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article7061020.ece
“I think you have to accept that the sceptics have kept us sane — some of them, anyway,” he said. “They have been a breath of fresh air. They have kept us from regarding the science of climate change as a religion. It had gone too far that way. There is a role for sceptics in science. They shouldn’t be brushed aside. It is clear that the angel side wasn’t without sin.”
Lovelock places great emphasis on proof. The climate change projections by the Meteorological Office’s Hadley Centre — a key contributor to the IPCC consensus — should be taken seriously, he said. But he is concerned that the projections are relying on computer models based primarily on atmospheric physics, because models of that kind have let us down before. Similar models, for example, failed to detect the hole in the ozone layer;
How should we be spending our money to prevent possible disaster? In Britain, says Lovelock, we need sea walls and more nuclear power.
“What would you bet will happen this century?” a mathematician asked him. Lovelock predicted a temperature rise in the middle range of current projections — about 1C-2C — which we could live with. Ah, but hadn’t he also said there was a chance that temperature rises could threaten human civilisation within the lifetime of our grandchildren? He had. In the end, his message was that we should have more respect for uncertainties and learn to live with possibilities rather than striving for the 95% probabilities that climate scientists have been trying to provide. We don’t know what’s going to happen and we don’t know if we can avert disaster — although we should try. His sage advice: enjoy life while you can.
Antony India, thanx for the Lovelock piece. Absolutely brilliant!
Real Climate comments on this are an absolute hoot. The general theme is, “We haven’t really had a chance to go through this — indeed, most of us don’t understand it in the slightest — but let us shrug it off as irrelevant and/or cast espersions on it nonetheless.”
Who says they aren’t about predictability and replication over there?
Some there are already in full smear mode, too: One frequently commenting True Believer going by the name of dhogaza dismisses McShane and Wyner as “some b-school profs,” a post to which an editor there going b y “Jim” responds beginning with, “Thank you.”
duckster said:
Many thanks for providing the follow-up links on reactions to McShane and Wyner. William Briggs’ observation is particularly stunning: Considering all of the uncertainties in a Bayesian model of predicted temperatures, one can draw a big, fat, yellow line from year 1000 to 2000 — an absolute flatline in temps! — that fits within the model and range of uncertainties as well as Mann and the gang’s super-tricked-out attempt.
Or as Briggs puts it: “This is just as beautiful as a shorthanded goal. It means we cannot tell—using these data and this model—with any reasonable certainty if temperatures have changed plus or minus 1 degree C over the last thousand years.”
That some are attempting to spin this by focusing on its possible ramifications for the MWP … well, they’d already confirmed a long time ago that they have no shortage of chutzpah.
Paul_K says:
August 29, 2010 at 2:51 pm
……”Hi Henry (Pool),
Henry, some of your comments are so bad, they are not even wrong.”……
Paul instead of pointing to lets say the worst of Henry’s so called “wrong comments” you simply attack the person.
You sound like a visitor from Deltoid.
Exchanges here at WUWT have been characteristically informative and good natured.
Henry’s main point as I understand it is to question the balance of CO2 cooling particularly above the troposphere with any heating in the lower troposphere.
He asked for “experimental evidence” rather than “calculations “, whats so wrong in that?
By the way Science of Doom are not too hot on experimental evidence!
Lovelock: “There is a role for sceptics in science.”
The actual point is: if the Scientific Method is properly employed, scepticism is already built into science as a most obviously integral feature of science itself. That’s the whole point of the requirement that the “materials and methods” involved in a study be made easily available for anyone who so desires to look at and try to critique.
So there simply is not any doubt at all about the necessity of scepticisim in science. Moreover, at an even earlier stage of doing science, the authors of a study should have already been trying to find fault with their own study.
Thanks, Bryan
You say: “Henry’s main point as I understand it is to question the balance of CO2 cooling particularly above the troposphere with any heating in the lower troposphere.”
True. But why do you think the cooling is more happening on top and the warming more below? The radiation (from the sun or from earth) hits on the molecule whereever it is in the way, gets absorbed and is then re-radiated. Because of the random position 50% of this re-radiation is send back in the direction where it came from causing said cooling or warming effect. Is the way from the bottom to the top (for earthshine) not the same as from the top the bottom (for sunshine)?
(I hope this is not a stupid question – but I do need to get some clarity on this)
Henry Pool
….” But why do you think the cooling is more happening on top and the warming more below? ”
I would not claim to have come to a hard and fast conclusion on the matter but simply looking at the spectra of CO2 these points seem to stick out:
CO2 should mop up any incident IR in bands 2 to 3um and 4.3um from the inward solar radiation above the troposphere.(Net cooling effect)
From the outward Earthshine the CO2 and H2O will remove IR in region 14 to 16um in the troposphere.
How much is due to which molecule is a matter to be settled.(small heating effect)
This results in thermalisation in the case of CO2 and is local and of small magnitude.
There is a much reduced chance of re radiating the 15um because of the low temperature of the atmosphere .
Maxwell Boltzmann statistics predicts 5 emissions for every 100 absorptions at 15um.
So I am in the same position as yourself and looking for further information before taking a settled view in this area.
This is just one of a number of unknowns in the are of climate science.
This thread however is on the statistical underpinning of the “hockey stick” and I do not want to stray too far from central arguments of the thread
Paul_K: August 29, 2010 at 2:24 pm
Instead of trying to overanalyse or fix it, why don’t we all just agree that the whole experiment is completely irrelevant in terms of empirical proof of AGW?
It’s not *completely* irrelevant. It’ll serve quite well as an example of why everyone should know some basic science…
Henry Pool says:
August 30, 2010 at 2:10 am
“……… The radiation (from the sun or from earth) hits on the molecule whereever it is in the way, gets absorbed and is then re-radiated. Because of the random position 50% of this re-radiation is send back in the direction where it came from causing said cooling or warming effect. Is the way from the bottom to the top (for earthshine) not the same as from the top the bottom (for sunshine)?
(I hope this is not a stupid question – but I do need to get some clarity on this)”
Well, see, that’s the problem. Obviously, we’re witnessing a phenomena that is currently unexplained. All of the CO2 molecules are on their bellies! And are only re-radiating heat back towards the earth! All we need to do is flip the little buggers and all will be fine. /sarc off.
Sorry Henry, I just couldn’t resist. You raise a valid discussion topic. I think the alarmists frame the question differently.
Henry Pool said at 2:10 am
The radiation (from the sun or from earth) hits on the molecule whereever it is in the way, gets absorbed and is then re-radiated. Because of the random position 50% of this re-radiation is send back in the direction where it came from causing said cooling or warming effect.
In a two dimensional system (as shown on typical global radiation diagrams) that would be correct. But in the real three dimensional (for this situation) world, re-radiation (actually, kinetic energy transfer) occurs in an infinite number of direction. For practical purposes we could use: 360x360x360 – 46,656,000+ directions. That said, it’s NOT a directional issue. It’s an energy input, retention (timing & amount) and yes, “back radiation” of the right wave length, which in order for the whole system to work (according to the models) is 62.5%. For one study see: http://www.atmo.arizona.edu/students/courselinks/spring04/atmo451b/pdf/RadiationBudget.pdf
Note the possible variances, admitted unknowns, estimates and assumptions. While it is from 1997, not much has been improved because we simply do not know that much more and it is often referenced in other newer and current presentations.
Alan McIntire says:
Latitude: “No climate scientists are trained in computer programing or statistics.”
Bemused: “What an extraordinary claim.”
Alan McIntire: Here’s a link to Mann’s 1998 “Nature” paper….
Alan, so are you seriously saying that you don’t believe there are any climate scientists with training in statistics or computer programming?
Thanks Barry. Just checking if I understand you correctly.
You think that when the sun’s radiation is through a certain portion of the atmosphere (top), it will already have filtered out all or most of the incoming where CO2 absorbs? So you think there is no cooling effect of CO2 on the bottom. But if you look carefully at the sun’s incoming solar radiation graph, the one that shows the difference between the top of the atmosphere and at sea level, and taking the 2um absorption of CO2 as an example, then you would note that the CO2 makes a little dent in the sun’s radiation at 2um. But there is there is still a more of that 2um radiation left from the sun reaching the bottom. So, I think that the CO2 in the air is not enough to block everything. Therefore the actual cooling carries on, from the top to the bottom….?
I have observed this effect when you stand in the sun (here in Africa). If during the day the humidity increases, you can feel that the actual heat on your skin from the sun become less. This is also the reason why it is always a few degrees cooler on the coast compared with a bit more inland.The humidity cools the sun’s radiation.(you may “feel” warmer and more sweaty when the humidity increases, but that has nothing to do with this observation – the thermometer actually can show this apparent biological contradiction, i.e that it becomes cooler, yet you are feeling warmer.)
Sorry Bryan. I got your name confused with Barry.
Henry Pool: August 30, 2010 at 10:45 am
This is also the reason why it is always a few degrees cooler on the coast compared with a bit more inland. The humidity cools the sun’s radiation.
It’s a bit simpler than that, Henry. Land will absorb heat faster than water, and the combination of insolation and conduction warms the air. It rises, and in oceanic coastal areas, cooler air will flow in to replace it. The air itself is cooler, it’s moist(er), and it’s moving, and that combination will definitely make you feel more comfortable.
Problem is, when the temperature of the water is almost as warm as that of the land, you get very warm, very moist air moving inshore, and it can get pretty oppressive. Temperatures in northern Iraq in the summer can hit 54ºC and higher, but the dew point is usually -2ºC, so sweating is effective for evaporative cooling. In the southern tip, temperatures also hit 54º to 57ºC, but the area is marshy, and close to the Persian Gulf. The dew point may be just one or two degrees below the temperature, and you feel like you’re working in a steam bath.
Henry@Bill
I said: “I have observed this effect when you stand in the sun (here in Africa). If during the day the humidity increases, you can feel that the actual heat on your skin from the sun become less”.
I live inland (Pretoria, South Africa). I made an assumption about (noticing) coastal temps. usually being lower related to this. You explained that this might not be the case. I accept that. It does not change my observation that water vapor in the air cools by re-radiating sunshine.
I believe that the primary way CO2 or any other trace ‘greenhouse’ gas can cool the planet is by emitting a photon that escapes to outer space.
It is true that these gases may prevent some solar energy from reaching the surface, but that energy will still heat the upper atmosphere and that heat will eventually need to be re-emitted in the ‘earthshine’ far infrared band. As CO2, H2O, and other ‘greenhouse’ gases are continually colliding with other molecules in the atmosphere, these gases are also continually emitting their characteristic photons as a result of these collisions. The energy from any photon that these gas molecules may absorb is also quickly shared during these collisions.
As CO2 is the best absorber of its own photons, I think CO2 cannot have a net cooling effect until it is high enough so that its outward directed photons have a good chance of escaping to outer space without an encounter with another CO2 molecule.
I believe this happens at the tropopause because that is the altitude where convection stops and radiation remains as the only ticket out. Other than by direct radiation from the surface, or multiple radiation-absorption-radiation cycles, convection is the only other way to quickly remove heat from the surface. It also has the added benefit of inducing the formation of clouds which can reflect solar energy directly back into outer space without causing any additional terrestrial heating.
Henry@Spector
You say:It is true that these gases may prevent some solar energy from reaching the surface, but that energy will still heat the upper atmosphere and that heat will eventually need to be re-emitted in the ‘earthshine’ far infrared band.
That is exactly not what is happening. The paper that confirmed to me that CO2 is (also) cooling the atmosphere by re-radiating sunshine is this one:
http://www.iop.org/EJ/article/0004-637X/644/1/551/64090.web.pdf?request-id=76e1a830-4451-4c80-aa58-4728c1d646ec
they measured this radiation as it bounced back to earth from the moon. So the direction of the radiation was:sun-earth-moon-earth. Follow the green line in fig. 6, bottom. Note that it already starts at 1.2 um, then one peak at 1.4 um, then various peaks at 1.6 um and 3 big peaks at 2 um. You can find these peaks back in fig 6 top.
Milwaukee Bob SAYS:
In a two dimensional system (as shown on typical global radiation diagrams) that would be correct. But in the real three dimensional (for this situation) world, re-radiation (actually, kinetic energy transfer) occurs in an infinite number of direction. For practical purposes we could use: 360x360x360 – 46,656,000+ directions. That said, it’s NOT a directional issue. It’s an energy input, retention (timing & amount) and yes, “back radiation” of the right wave length, which in order for the whole system to work (according to the models) is 62.5%. For one study see: http://www.atmo.arizona.edu/students/courselinks/spring04/atmo451b/pdf/RadiationBudget.pdf
Note the possible variances, admitted unknowns, estimates and assumptions. While it is from 1997, not much has been improved because we simply do not know that much more and it is often referenced in other newer and current presentations.
ThanksBob
I will accept the 62.5 % instead of the 50% if you say so.
The study you refer to, fails where Svante Arrhenius and everyone else failed as well/
it does not tell me how much of the reflected solar radiation (107 w/m2) is due to water vapor and how much is due to CO2. Unless I am missing something?
RE: Henry Pool says: (August 31, 2010 at 11:22 am)
“That is exactly not what is happening. The paper that confirmed to me that CO2 is (also) cooling the atmosphere by re-radiating sunshine …”
I will grant that CO2 may re-emit solar excitation photons in the thin air of the upper stratosphere, and above, where the mean time between collisions is longer than the CO2 solar excited state lifetimes. Otherwise, I believe this energy will be used to give an extra hard knock on the next O2, N2, or other molecule encountered. I also will grant that these lifetimes may be proportionally shorter (I do not know) than those of the longer wavelength vibration modes.
Henry@Spector
Surely, you must understand the properties of light.
If the light hits a mirror (because of absorption in the molecule) it is going to be reflected. Watch the sun come up when it is moist outside. There is little or no energy exchange. Light does not stand still. It has to keep moving….
Henry Pool says:
September 2, 2010 at 12:03 pm
Henry@Spector
Surely, you must understand the properties of light.
If the light hits a mirror (because of absorption in the molecule) it is going to be reflected.
There is no ‘mirror’ Henry, the photon is either absorbed by the molecule or not.
Phil. thanks, but can you explain to me how the radiation identified as being from the CO2 can be measured coming back from the moon?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/30/breaking-new-paper-makes-a-hockey-sticky-wicket-of-mann-et-al-99/#comment-471330
unless it was
deflected,
reflected,
re-radiated,
back-radiated,
mirrored (my idea)
or watts ever term you would prefer to use?
Surely it boils down to the same thing? Once filled with photons, the molecule is not transparent anymore. The light is still coming and has to keep moving?
Henry Pool says:
September 2, 2010 at 10:24 pm
Surely it boils down to the same thing? Once filled with photons, the molecule is not transparent anymore. The light is still coming and has to keep moving?
It is this concept that is flawed. You can think of the energy levels of an absorber like CO2 like a ladder. Once the molecule absorbs a photon of the right size the energy goes up a rung. There are then a few possibilities, collisions with other molecules can remove the energy and the molecules energy drops down to the bottom rung (the predominant fate in the lower troposphere). Also the molecule can emit a photon and drop down to the first rung (the predominant fate in the higher stratosphere). Should a photon with the right energy arrive while the molecule is in the first excited state (1st rung) there’s no problem it will just be promoted to the next level (2nd rung). There is no reflection.
Henry @ Phil.
The theory that you have does not describe what I see is happening. What is the term that you prefer? ‘”No reflection” does not explain it.
Did you figure out what fig 6 means of the radiation coming back from the moon?
Henry Pool says:
September 7, 2010 at 7:55 am
Henry @ Phil.
The theory that you have does not describe what I see is happening. What is the term that you prefer? ‘”No reflection” does not explain it.
Perhaps you should rethink your explanation because your idea about ‘reflection’ is wrong.
Did you figure out what fig 6 means of the radiation coming back from the moon?
Yes, it shows the absorption by gases in the Earth’s atmosphere as the light passes through the atmosphere on its way to space.
Henry@Phil.
What I see is happening, is the same as when I put a mirror up here,
catch the sunlight and send it to the moon, and then measure it coming back from the moon (where it was again mirrorred back from the moon’s surface)
BASICCALLY WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE?
I am sure some absorption does take place in the molecule, but what happens when the molecule is filled? It seems to me that it starts acting like a mirror.
It reflects or deflects or re-radiates. BTW “re-radiation” is the term used in the definition of the greenhouse effect.
Henry Pool says:
September 9, 2010 at 12:01 am
Henry@Phil.
What I see is happening, is the same as when I put a mirror up here,
catch the sunlight and send it to the moon, and then measure it coming back from the moon (where it was again mirrorred back from the moon’s surface)
BASICCALLY WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE?
I am sure some absorption does take place in the molecule, but what happens when the molecule is filled? It seems to me that it starts acting like a mirror.
It reflects or deflects or re-radiates. BTW “re-radiation” is the term used in the definition of the greenhouse effect.
The molecule doesn’t ‘get filled’, it does not ‘start acting like a mirror’!
Henry@Phil
So let me hear what is your definition of the greenhouse effect?