Wegman whiners: this post's for you

James Sexton,
You are aware, I am sure, that citing a source in no way prevents the allegation of plagiarism. Please read GMU’s statement on plagiarism. It is in no way an issue of citation. Wegman took Bradley’s ideas and words and presented them has his own. That is, Wegman wrote (plagiarized) the indicated text in order to make himself appear to know something about climate science. This is actually a double FAIL. Stolen ideas/text and no real knowledge of the field (as stated in Said’s own words).

I guess there can be no doubt Phil. that you have been drinking deeply of the AGW coolaid.

Phil. says:
November 23, 2010 at 8:37 pm

No you do.

Yeah, right. Just a quick comparison of cv’s sheds that notion, let alone a comparison contributions to the field. Really, I’d say I’m shocked, but I’m quite certain I have a handle on your qualifications to make such an assessment as well. Tsk. Your arrogance regarding subjects you don’t understand is monumental.

It’s not a legal issue it’s an academic misconduct investigation, and yes I do have insight into those as I have participated in several!

Wow. You’ve participated in several and thus you are able to glean that Wegman is guilty and any student would also be found guilty, all from reading blogs and… what else, ESP? Oh, that’s right, you’ve played with some dichroic mirrors and you’re now also an expert on feedback control systems. Silly me, the connection was obvious.
It is immaterial whether a legal issue or otherwise is being discussed, no ruling has been made so speculation on your part regarding likely outcomes is… speculation. First prove guilt, then speculate on punishment. I asked once before, are you aware of some ruling we are unaware of that has come to a conclusion of guilt?

The initial committee of inquiry into the Wegman Report found sufficient cause to institute an investigation which is now underway,

Did they find him guilty, or is the investigation still underway? Really, you do spin.

also Prof Wegman has had his privilege to advise graduate students revoked and certain of his and Said’s documents have been removed from the GMU website.

So. Jones stepped down from his post while he was being investigated. Not a surprise.
You’re a scientist, act like one.

That is not an ad hominem and I can’t imagine why you think it is

There’s an implication, whether you inteded it or not, that if he’s found to not have committed any wrong doing GM is not reputable, i.e., you have already determined guilt (by GOD you have sat in on a few cases – shall we bow?) and thus anybody that does not agree with you is disreputable. That’s an ad-hominem. I realize such complicated logic tasks are beyond your grasp, but please try…
Do you have any idea how silly you sound every time you declare yourself to be an authority on something that is either opinion, or clearly not within your realm of expertise? Really, do you pound your chest in front of your students as well? Seriously, “I know what I’m talking about therefore you are wrong” has got to be your most often used argument… sad. You should go over and debate the law with Nick Stokes at CA, he needs exactly the sort of “expertise” you regularly bring to the table.
Mark

cohenite says:
November 23, 2010 at 10:23 pm

“debate the law with Nick Stokes”; no, that’s no good, Nick will just throw a differential equation at you!

I actually meant “alongside Nick Stokes” given he’s taking a beating from Jim Edwards in the thread discussing this very same topic. He can throw differential equations at me all he wants, I’ll just come back with a vector space.
Mark

Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
November 23, 2010 at 1:17 pm
eadler says:
November 22, 2010 at 11:15 pm
“”His argument about fig 4.4 is that the wrong conclusions were drawn because the wrong noise model was used by Wegman et. al. to generate the data, and in fact downward and upward pointing hockey sticks are a result of using the MBH calibration procedures on this data, not the exclusively upward pointing hockey sticks that M&M would have us believe happens.”
I am not a statistician and my statistics knowledge is mostly from 40 years ago…
But I suppose that Deep Climate is wrong here. The MBH calibration method compares any (pseudo) proxy data with a period in the temperature record which is upgoing. Any statistical method will pick out these (pesudo) proxies which have an upgoing profile in the same period, even if they need to be switched upside down (as happened with the upside down use of the Tiljander sediment proxy in Mann 2008 and others). The result always will be a hockeystick with an upgoing end, no matter that many (halve) the (pseudo) proxies are going downward at the end. Mann’s method simply increased that effect by the decentralised mean, which in addition suppresses the historical variability. That was nicely demonstrated by the inclusion of the 1990 IPCC graph in Wegman figure 4.6. It simply shows that any HS shape proxy (even not related to local temperatures) will force the total reconstruction into a HS shape, whatever method is used, but especially with Mann’s decentralised method.””
I think you are confused. The argument made by M&M, and echoed by the Wegman report, rather than “independently verified”, was that if a large number of proxies were due to random noise, the temperature data extracted by the MBH procedure would be misleading because the result would be an hockey stick that pointed upward purely as a result of the calibration process.
This argument is contradicted by their own data. When this idea was tested only 1% of the time, was an upward pointing hockey stick extracted for PC1.
In addition, M&M knew that 2 PC’s were used by MBH98 to represent the data based on the non-centered procedure. M&M proceeded to use a centered procedure, used 2 PC’s and didn’t get a hockey stick. They claimed this was proof that MBH98 procedure was in error. What they didn’t know was that a hockey stick is actually recovered by the use of the first 4 PC’s, and the proper procedure for optimization of the number of PC’s to avoid overfitting.
This shows that M&M’s argument was based on a lack of understanding of what MBH 98 did, and a lack of understanding of the method of principal components, and they provided a false and misleading conclusion about what would happen if random noise were tested, since 99% of the time no hockey stick emerged from the MBH procedure used on random noise data.
http://deepclimate.org/2010/11/16/replication-and-due-diligence-wegman-style/#more-2745
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/07/the-montford-delusion/

Although the plagiarism charges are serious (even in an informal report – you put a number and say “I got this from so-and-so” – I personally don’t think a report to Congress is “informal”) – the core of Wegman’s argument (from M &M) is that you get a hockey stick from the PROCESS – not the data. But he apparently didn’t understand that the first step in the M & M process is to DISCARD 99% of the results (the one’s that don’t give you a hockey stick).
So he is correct the process gives you a hockey stick – but it is M &M’s process, not Mann’s.
And of course we now have 11 years of better papers (better than Mann’s 1999 paper) and better data that continue to show AGW is, in fact, occurring while we watch – and do nothing.

Actually Thoughtful says:
November 24, 2010 at 10:24 pm
the core of Wegman’s argument (from M &M) is that you get a hockey stick from the PROCESS – not the data. But he apparently didn’t understand that the first step in the M & M process is to DISCARD 99% of the results (the one’s that don’t give you a hockey stick).
Wegman indicated that one need the process AND the data in his response to rep. Stupak:
If the variance is artificially increased by decentering, then the principal component methods will “data mine” for those shapes. In other words, the hockey stick shape must be in the data to start with or the CFR methodology would not pick it up… Most proxies do not contain the hockeystick signal. The MBH98 methodology puts undue emphasis on those proxies that do exhibit the hockey-stick shape and this is the fundamental flaw. Indeed, it is not clear that the hockey-stick shape is even a temperature signal because all the confounding variables have not been removed.
————-
And of course we now have 11 years of better papers (better than Mann’s 1999 paper) and better data that continue to show AGW is, in fact, occurring while we watch – and do nothing.
How many of these “better” papers don’t contain the same suspect growth spurt HS shape proxies like strip bark bristlecone pines, the notorious Yamal 12, upside down Tiljander sediments or similar non-temperature related proxies?
Further, most of the papers show far more variability in the past millennium than MBH’98/’99 (bathtube like, no HS if you don’t graft the thermometers on the reconstruction), which is important for estimating the climate sensitivity for CO2: more natural variability in the past means less effect of CO2…

Actually Thoughtful says:
November 25, 2010 at 7:44 am
How do you figure? If, in the past, with no human intervention, temperature has responded to small changes in natural conditions – more sunlight, for example, with “more natural variability” – it means that climate is more sensitive to forcings than the current literature indicates – which means we will see even more dramatic response to the human caused CO2 forcing. Your conclusion does not follow from your premise.
That is the reasoning which modelers follow too. The problem is that they lump all forcings together: 1 W/m2 more solar strength has the same effect as 1 W/m2 more GHG absorption. But that is debatable. See the discussion at RC of some years ago:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/12/natural-variability-and-climate-sensitivity/
with my comment at #24 and further.
Solar has its main effect in the tropics, in the stratosphere (UV, ozone, shifts in jet stream position) and much of its energy is absorbed quite deep in the oceans. There is an inverse relationship with cloud cover, whatever the underlying mechanism.
GHGs have their main effect in the lower troposphere, more towards the poles and IR doesn’t pass the upper fraction of a mm of the sea surface, probably leading to direct reflection and/or evaporation, less to warming of the oceans. There is no clear relationship with cloud cover.
Even theoretically, it seems that climate models underestimate solar changes, at least with a factor 2, see:
http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/StottEtAl.pdf
within the restrictions of the HadCM3 model (like a fixed minimum cooling by human aerosols)
And I am not alone with my opinion: most European scientists involved in reconstructions share that opinion, see:
http://www.wsl.ch/staff/jan.esper/publications/QSR_Esper_2005.pdf
So, what would it mean, if the reconstructions indicate a larger (Esper et al., 2002; Pollack and Smerdon, 2004; Moberg et al., 2005) or smaller (Jones et al., 1998; Mann et al., 1999) temperature amplitude?
We suggest that the former situation, i.e. enhanced variability during pre-industrial times, would result in a redistribution of weight towards the role of natural factors in forcing temperature changes, thereby relatively devaluing the impact of anthropogenic emissions and affecting future predicted scenarios.
————
In 11 years the debate has moved well past the “hockey stick” and onto much finer points of contention – where is the measured heat imbalance going? The hockey stick is one, relatively minor, bit of data in a mosaic that points towards a much warmer earth, with more droughts and more floods (droughts where we go food -floods where people live). Sucks to be our children.
Well, the measured imbalance is completely gone in a few years time. There is no extra heat (of the oceans) in the pipeline anymore. There are no more droughts (the Sahel is greening), there are some more floods, because of lower solar activity, which moves the jet stream position more equatorwards (but much of the damage is because people tend to live in natural flood plains!) and the temperature didnt’t rise in the past decade, already outside the 2 sigma envelope of what the climate models “projected” a decade ago.
And as (my and most) children are or will be more wealthy than us, they will have enough money and moderner techniques to take the necessary measures to build or heighten the dikes, build dams and reserve flood plains, build floating houses, provide drinking water and water for irrigation from seawater, etc… if that would be necessary at all.

Actually Thoughtful says:
November 25, 2010 at 11:20 am
“Wow! Must be nice to live in your world. ”
Absolutely thoughtful, it is very nice to live in this world. Once you can stop being angry about “other” people who don’t share your beliefs, you’ll have a much happier time, yourself. If you’ve come here looking for a place where you can convert people to your gloomy angry perspective, where facts are inconvenient and arrogance is king, you are looking in the wrong place. Here we like facts, observations, untainted by beliefs, and are very keen on debate about them. Facts are facts, they are true, by definition. “True facts” is a tautology.
The last decade may have been the warmest in someone’s records but how long and how accurate are those records? And is it still warming? Not in most places, not for the last 10 years anyway.
No missing heat in the deep oceans, that’s not a finer point by the way, its a panic stricken hope to save the AGW theory. If there’s no “missing” heat, the theory is sunk. That’s a theory, not a fact.
Anyway, if your beliefs make you happy, or comfortable, enjoy them. Just don’t expect us to indulge you too much.

Actually Thoughtful says:
November 25, 2010 at 11:20 am
Wow! Must be nice to live in your world. I was going to do a point by point refutation (refudiation as some on your side might say) – until I got to the bit about it hasn’t warmed in the past decade. Given that the 2,000s are the warmest decade on record: we are at an impasse – I insist on true facts, and you (apparently) would like to use facts that don’t have the burden of truth. Unless you can back up your claim that (against all published data) the last decade somehow cooled or didn’t warm. I shan’t be spending any more time “debating.”
About true facts:
Greening of the Sahel:
http://lada.virtualcentre.org/eims/download.asp?pub_id=96080&app=0
Heat content of the oceans:
http://climateresearchnews.com/2009/02/pielke-sr-compares-upper-ocean-heat-content-changes-with-the-giss-model-predictions/
Temperature in last decade:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/
You can plot the 1990-2010 trend for the four main temperature series (HadCRU3, GISS, UAH and RSS). All are essentially flat after the 1998-2000 ENSO events. The same is happening now with a deep plunge into a La Niña condition after the 2008 La Niña and the 2009-2010 El Niño. See:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/11/04/rss-global-temperature-anomaly-takes-a-dive/
Thus there is no temperature increase, only natural variability around a flat trend. That this is the “decade with the highest temperature on record” may be true (but CO2 levels increased 10 ppmv), but we only have 150 years of more or less reliable records, of which the start was in a known cold period.
No model did “project” the current flat period, which resembles the 1945-1975 flat period.

Actually Thoughtful says:
November 25, 2010 at 10:33 pm
Can you spot the problem with your logic? Heck, it is Thanksgiving – I will give it to you: if temperature records are “more or less reliable records” – then we can’t start with a known cold period (unless they were reliable before they weren’t reliable? Or perhaps you think trees make good thermometers??)
Well, that depends of how (un)reliable the temperature records are. But besides the thermometers, there are lots of indications that a few centuries ago worldwide was a colder period, commonly called the “little ice age”. That can be seen in sediments, glacier advancement, historical readings of failed crops (witches burned, because it was their fault,…), the end of grape growing in my country (slowly coming back now)… Even in tree rings (not a very reliable source, I agree).
Thus in general, we can say that the temperature record is more or less reliable, not more than that, and indicates a warming since about the start of the previous century. Near all of the warming in the first halve was natural: CO2 levels hardly rised above the pre-industrial level. Only with the boom of industrialisation after 1945, we see a still increasing accelleration of emissions and levels. What happened then: despite the increase of CO2, we see a 30 years period of slight cooling (1945-1975) and a sharp rise after that until 1998, then again a flat period. The cooling period is attributed by the models to the increased emissions of human aerosols, the warming period is fully attributed to more CO2 and the current flat period is attributed to… natural variability.
The attribution to aerosols in the 1945-1975 period in my opinion was a scapegoat to fit the models to reality: even the sign of the effect of aerosols (brown/black soot vs. sulfate) is not known for sure. See my comment as #6 at RC:
http://www.realclimate.org/?comments_popup=245
The full attribution of the warming period 1975-2000 is questionable too: no model reproduces any type of natural cycle (including ENSO events, PDO, NAO, AO,…). The respective cooler/flat and warming periods coincide with the phases of the PDO, thus the warming may be as good (at least in part) a result of these natural cycles as from CO2. See Fig. S1 in:
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/suppl/2005/07/07/1112418.DC1/Barnett.SOM.pdf
Now just at the greening doesn’t make THE case against AGW, these events don’t make THE case for it. But they do make A case for it – and they are consistent with AGW predictions, and not consistent with global cooling (they are possibly consistent with global “natural variation.” – the extreme edge of natural variation).
Well, the Sahel is a typical example of natural variation: wet and dry periods come in multi-decadal cycles. So floods and droughts also follow natural cycles in other parts of the globe: more floods in southern parts (around the Mediterranean) of Europe and North Africa when solar activity is low (as now) and the jet stream position is more equatorward. More rain in England and mid-Europe (and the Mississippi delta) if solar activity is higher. See e.g.:
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2005/2005GL023787.shtml and
http://ks.water.usgs.gov/pubs/reports/paclim99.html
Thus attributing all these events to GHGs, without detailed, multidecadal (at least 60 years for one full PDO cycle) knowledge of natural variability, is a bridge too far.
The same for hurricanes: Trenberth predicted an increase in number and strength of hurricanes (which caused a clash with Chris Landsea), but the last three years show the opposite: we are back on a thirty year low of numbers and strength is not increased. Again, hurricane numbers/strength seems to come and go in 30 years waves, mostly, if not all, natural.
check out Hansen 1988 with an unjaundiced eye – his predictions are amazing, and his (small) error is easily understood as having overestimated climate sensitivity
As I said, the last decade is flat, except for natural variability. As far as I know, there is no indication that ENSO events or any other natural cycles are influenced by more CO2. It seems even the opposite (like the PDO influencing temperature). The last decade “increase” in temperature is more a matter of begin and endpoint bias: 2000 still had the influence of the 1999 La Niña, 2010 still has the influence of the 2009-2010 El Niño. Clearly natural variability. Just wait a few months (October saw the first drop in temperatures) and we may see what the current La Niña does.
The temperature trends are already outside the “projection” of most models (2010 may be at the edge, but temperatures are going down now by a strong La Niña):
http://climateaudit.org/2009/07/07/rahm-centering-enhancing-successful-prediction/
The climate scientists have told us from day one that AGW trends will show up on a 30 year scale (they may show up on a smaller scale, but they may not -and temps might even drop on shorter time frames).
Several climate scientists (have no link now) said that we are now in a natural caused flat period which may last 30 years, but that the warming will haunt us after that with a fast increase. We are now in the first decade of the 30 years period. If that holds true, the remainder of the 30 years will halve the 1975-2000 trend, which is the base for all climate models. Thus the real sensitivity for 2xCO2 is some 1.5°C not 3°C, the average of current models. Quite important for any future “projection”.
What you are proposing needs to explain away CO2 – which appears to be doing exactly what we expect it to do. It needs to find a new source for the warming, after ruling out CO2 (recall the sun has been quiescent for the 30 warming years in question).
Even if solar activity didn’t increase over the past 50 years (and currently drops fast), it was at a 8,000 years high. See:
http://cc.oulu.fi/~usoskin/personal/Sola2-PRL_published.pdf
As the effect on oceans heat content needs some 30+ years, solar activity still may have caused a part of the increase in temperature. Further, a few % change in cloud cover has the same effect as the 100 ppmv extra CO2. It is known that cloud cover changes with solar activity and with ocean events (ENSO, PDO,…) it is not even sure what is cause and effect in these cases. See e.g.:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/DelicateBalance/ and following pages. From that source, about unexpected changes in cloud cover:
“What we found was a 4-watt-per-square-meter change within the climate system that the climate models did not predict,”
The total increase by GHGs since the start of the industrial revolution absorbs some 1.7 W/m2 extra energy…