Here is the web page for Dr. Raymond S. Bradley who is listed as:
University Distinguished Professor in the Department of Geosciences and Director of the Climate System Research Center (http://www.paleoclimate.org).
Readers may also recognize Dr. Bradley from his co-authorship with Dr. Michael Mann in the famous MBH98 paper which produced the embattled “hockey stick” graph.
Dr. Bradley has also gained some recent notoriety with his accusations of plagiarism regarding the Wegman report to congress, by Dr. Edward Wegman of George Mason University, which was critical of MBH98’s statistical methods.
Here’s Dr. Bradley’s photo from his UMass web page:
Notice anything interesting? Here are some hints:
His graph for CO2 data titled “Greenhouse Gas Record from the Vostok Ice Core” shows a value around 360 ppm for CO2 at the “zero date” of the present history. The photo must be old, since the current value in the atmosphere from Mauna Loa is said to be around 390ppm currently.
So, it’s an old photo, what’s the problem you say?
For readers not familiar with the CO2 data from the Vostok Ice Core, you can find the official data set here from NOAA’s FTP servers:
CDIAC (Carbon Dioxide Information and Analysis Center)
ftp://cdiac.ornl.gov/pub/trends/co2/vostok.icecore.co2
NCDC (National Climatic Data Center)
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/icecore/antarctica/vostok/co2nat.txt
NASA Goddard also offers access to the official Vostok data here:
http://gcmd.nasa.gov/records/GCMD_CDIAC_CO2_VOSTOK_ICECORE.html
…and they offer this helpful graph, which is time reversed from Dr. Bradley’s graph, with the present day on the left:
That’s odd, the Vostok CO2 data for the present is around 280ppm, way lower than the 360ppm shown on Dr. Bradley’s graph. Strange, but that NASA web page on Vostok Ice Core data shows the most recent update at:
So it must be current, right?
So let’s look at some other sources, maybe they are closer to Dr. Bradley’s value, surely there must be some update somewhere to this Vostok data that I’ve missed.
Let’s check Wikipedia, which always seems to be updated. Even though William Connelly doesn’t edit there anymore surely it’s been updated with this new data in the past year or so? Here’s the Wikipedia graph:
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vostok_Petit_data.svg
That’s odd, the CO2 data there shows just over 280ppm of CO2 in the Vostok record. But they reference Petit, et al 1999 on that page. Hmmm, I went to find that paper, and was able to locate a PDF copy of it here: http://www.daycreek.com/dc/images/1999.pdf and I saved a local copy here Vostok_nature_1999 to prevent overloading that website with downloads. Here’s the title of that 1999 paper from Nature:
Climate and atmospheric history of the past 420,000 years from the Vostok ice core, Antarctica
J. R. Petit*, J. Jouzel†, D. Raynaud*, N. I. Barkov‡, J.-M. Barnola*, I. Basile*,M. Bender§, J. Chappellaz*,M. Davisk, G. Delaygue†, M. Delmotte*, V. M. Kotlyakov¶, M. Legrand*, V. Y. Lipenkov‡, C. Lorius*, L. Pe´ pin*, C. Ritz*, E. Saltzmank & M. Stievenard†
Oh, OK, that explains it, the CO2 levels in 1999 must have been 360ppm and that’s where that value on Dr. Bradley’s graph comes from. Let’s check the Mauna Loa record for 1999 here: ftp://ftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/ccg/co2/trends/co2_mm_mlo.txt
The values for 1999 are:
1999 3 1999.208 369.46 369.46 367.90 26 1999 4 1999.292 370.77 370.77 368.19 30 1999 5 1999.375 370.66 370.66 367.84 29 1999 6 1999.458 370.10 370.10 367.87 30 1999 7 1999.542 369.10 369.10 368.42 30 1999 8 1999.625 366.70 366.70 368.21 30 1999 9 1999.708 364.61 364.61 367.95 29 1999 10 1999.792 365.17 365.17 368.41 31 1999 11 1999.875 366.51 366.51 368.58 29 1999 12 1999.958 367.85 367.85 368.58 29
Well that explains it then right? The value of the CO2 atmosphere in 1999 was around 360 ppm, so that’s what Dr. Bradley was showing in that old photo. And the 1999 Nature paper from Petit et al must show the same value, right? Here it is:
Huh, that’s strange, it only shows around 280ppm of CO2 at the “present” of 1999 when this graph was published.
Well OK, the archived NOAA data on the FTP server must be updated and have ~360ppm somewhere in the dataset, right? So I looked through it to be sure. Here’s the most recent data from: ftp://cdiac.ornl.gov/pub/trends/co2/vostok.icecore.co2
Hmmm, the most recent data is from 2342 yr BP (years before present) and shows 284.7. That can’t be right, because the distinguished Dr. Bradley shows the data at around 360ppm. Yet, the header shows the co-author names from the 1999 Nature paper on the Vostok ice core data analysis. Surely there must be an update to it?
Maybe the other NOAA data set from NCDC is what he used? at: ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/icecore/antarctica/vostok/co2nat.txt
Well, it agrees with the CDIAC data, but there’s still no ~360ppm of CO2 listed in the data for the most recent readings.
Well gosh, how can this be?
The answer is seems, is that there is no new data from the Vostok Ice core. It ended, and the official repositories of that data have no new data. The last CO2 value for the Vostok Ice Core dataset is listed as being 284.7ppm.
So how does Dr. Bradley get ~360ppm? Easy, I think he uses the same technique he and his co-authors learned when writing the famous MBH98 paper that made the hockey stick -splice the instrumental record onto the paleo record:
Graph above from Fred Pearce’s Feb 2010 article in the Guardian shows the instrumental record attached to the ice core record.
And here’s a later version from 2003 showing the same instrumental record splice along with paleo data (Figure 1. from Mann et al. EOS Forum 2003):
Source: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/pubs/mann2003b/mann2003b.html
So it seems rather apparent that Dr. Bradley (or whoever made the graph) simply took the Vostok Ice Core CO2 paleo data and “spliced” it with the instrumental record on the end. Or, as Joe Romm likes to say “make stuff up”.
The only problem is, as he presents it with the title of his graph: Greenhouse Gas Record from the Vostok Ice Core as shown below…
…it’s patently false in my opinion. Ditto for the red Methane line, but that’s another story.
Now here’s the problem. If you took surface temperature data from Antarctica, and spliced it with surface temperature data from Hawaii, and then presented it as the entire historical record from Antarctica, our friends would have a veritable “cow”.
Or, if you took stock performance data from poorly performing Company “A” and spliced on better performing stock data from Company “B”, and then made a new graph and used that graph to sell investors on Company “A”, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) would have a veritable “cow” when they found out, wouldn’t they? People go to jail for such things.
But hey, this is Climate Science.
big h/t to WUWT reader Brian M. who sent the tip in via email.
Addendum: I should add that I have no evidence that this graph has been used in any scientific publications or professional presentations by Dr. Bradley, I’m only pointing out that for this photo, which appears to be staged, what is presented doesn’t match the actual Vostok data. Readers should not extrapolate anything beyond this scope until new examples are presented. – Anthony
Nice catch! : )
Comparing ice core data to modern instrumental data is like comparing apples to oranges.
You don’t get it. We don’t have a cause to advance. We are only holding scientifically accountable those people who do espouse a cause on the basis of a faith in pseudo-scientific and mythic rhetoric.
Paul K2 says:
“Readers of this blog, should read this definitive statement by kuhnkat, then look on the mis-interpretation of this data as being “proxy data” by the post’s author…”
It’s only part proxy data, Paul. The rest has been spliced onto it by Mr Bradley. Next, you say:
“This information makes this post a candidate for the most mis-leading post ever on this site. Even though I had low expectations for logic, knowledge, and understanding amongst the regular commentators here, but these comments hit a new low.”
Thanks for your content-free rant, typical of the alarmist contingent. Maybe you prefer RealClimate instead.
.
Ed in Madison says:
“Not personally a skeptic… I visit here to try to gather what all sides are saying. And I’m sorry, guys, but if this is the best you can do, it isn’t much.”
More content-free comment. But since you’re from the Peoples’ Socialist Soviet of Madison, you get a pass. You probably can’t help yourself.
Not Bradley, however. He’s a charlatan who ignores the scientific method. But he would make a pretty good Scientologist, IMHO.
Smokey: My comment tried to direct you to read Dr. Bradley’s response, which you still clearly don’t understand; so you are missing the content of my comment completely.
Here is a partial list of the errors in your comment, mostly because you are building on the mistakes in Mr. Watts’ original post.
1. Mr. Bradley is actually Dr. Bradley.
2. Dr. Bradley didn’t produce the graph of the data that Mr. Watts claims has been spliced. Dr. Bradley gave the link to the original paper, and identified the source of the display that Mr. Watts is criticizing. Claiming that Dr. Bradley is responsible for manipulating this data, would be like taking a photo of the Pope in New York with Trade Center in the background, and claiming the Pope was part of the 911 attack. Mr. Watts, for whatever reason, decided to smear Dr. Bradley with the attack on the graph of data. And a lot of comments here have made the same mistake, like Ron Cram, who say Dr. Bradley created the graph being criticized.
3. None of the data in the graph is proxy data. You seem to believe that the CO2 level is calculated from a proxy, but this is incorrect. The data show CO2 directly measured in air extracted from boreholes in the Antarctic, so no proxy was involved. Mr. Watts has already admitted that is a mistake, earlier in these comments, so you may want to backtrack and read those comments.
4. You seem to have bought into Mr. Watts’ claims that surface air readings or Mauna Loa data was spliced onto the graph. There is no good reason to believe that, and this conjecture by Mr. Watts is likely incorrect. I come to a very different conclusion. The exact data collected can’t be determined from the photo, but Dr. Bradley and others have give clues to source of the graph, and Ferdinand Engelbeen gives links to some sites where the data likely came from. It appears the air that tested at the higher and more recent readings came from boreholes, but from the layers of firn in the first 80 meters or so of the boreholes, but using a double seal collection apparatus. Much of this data was apparently collected in Antarctica from boreholes at Law Dome using methods developed at Siple Dome boreholes. The Law Dome air from the firn at a depth less than 30 meters was already exceeding 350 ppm CO2 according to data reported in Etheridge in 1996. Any recent measurements on those layers of firn would show readings exceeding 360 ppm CO2 as displayed in the graph. For Mr. Watts to pretend that there aren’t any CO2 measurements from Antarctic boreholes approaching these CO2 levels is disingenuous.
5. My comment on the lack of logic, knowledge, and understanding by the people posting on this site, has just been confirmed by your error-ridden comment; so adds yet another error in your comments to this list. Clearly my comment was accurate, as you so readily proved.
Mr Watts: Until this moment, sir, I think I never gauged your cruelty or your recklessness… Let us not assassinate this scientist further, sir. You’ve done enough. … Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”
(with full credit and my admiration for Joseph Nye Welch in responding to Senator McCarthy)
REPLY: Mr. K. Dr. Bradley is aware of this thread, responded via email, and didn’t dispute (complain about) the “smearing” you raise, nor complained of “cruelty” or unfair treatment. Thus, your argument fails. The question remains; is it OK to splice data from two different sets, then present them as a single data set under a single title for one data set with no delineation or caveat? My opinion, and the majority of opinion is that it is not. Dr. Bradley gave implicit approval of such techniques by allowing himself to be photographed in front of one such graph, as well as presenting the photograph on his personal web page. Thus, the criticism of that photograph’s graph and his approval of it is valid.
Perhaps in your zeal, you fail to understand that criticism of a public figure’s work or presentation is fair game. There’s nothing “cruel” about hypothesizing and conjecturing how a misleading graph was created and presented. I note your double standards; obviously you consider your smears posted elsewhere about me and this site (yes I read them) from the comfort of anonymity as being above such sort of criticism. So here’s the deal. If you wish to impugn my character here, have the integrity yourself put your full name on it like I do. If you feel that your opinion is so right, so important, I would think you would be proud to stand behind it by putting your full name to it. If not, and you feel that smearing me from anonymity is OK, please don’t post here again. – Anthony Watts
This thread is awesome. Really.
Once again, the AGW defenders have failed to read the post, and jumped off in several directions. Or worse, read the post but not accurately.
Here’s a summary, try to follow:
1. the picture behind Dr. Bradley is something he either chose or approved.
2. the Vostok core does not include present day. Whether or not present day examination of ice exists is not the issue.
3. in spite of the Vostok core not including “today”, the chart which allegedly shows the Vostok core DOES include “today”.
4. Conclusion: the chart is in error.
5. Dr. Bradley is fine with having an erroneous chart as the background for his image.
As a side issue, most of us don’t believe that multi-thousand year ice accurately represents the actual CO2 content from its era, or at the very least it is not calibrated properly.
Yes the graph is bunk. I can’t help thinking about the guy’s mug, though. I’m thinking I just took my car in for an oil change and he’s the technician, telling me there are some serious problems which will cost a lot to fix, but better now than letting it go till later. When asked what the problems are, he begins spewing cartalk jargon while looking very serious and grim.
Ron Cram says:
November 25, 2010 at 5:51 pm
My comment must have been poorly written as you have misunderstood me. I understand the time delay issue of Vostok ice cores. My comment did not relate to the ice cores but to CO2 measurements of the atmosphere in the Vostok region similar to the atmospheric measurements taken at Mauna Loa. I do not think you will find a direct correlation. It is certainly unscientific for Bradley (or whoever was responsible for the graphic) to splice data measuring atmospheric CO2 in Hawaii with CO2 trapped in ice cores in Russia.
Sorry, English is not my native language, thus it happens that there are misunderstandings both ways…
But be aware that Vostok indeed is the name of several places in Russia (mostly quite hot in summer, very cold in winter) but also a permanent manned station on Antarctica above a few km of ice. That is were the ice core was drilled some decade ago:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vostok_Station
The local atmospheric CO2 levels at Vostok are practically identical to the levels continuously measured at the South Pole (since 1958, but discontinuously with bi-weekly flask samples in some years), as also the CO2 levels measured at coastal stations of Antarctica show. The SH CO2 levels lag the NH levels with some 14 months, that is because most of the human emissions are in the NH and the ITCZ slows the exchange of air masses (including CO2) between the hemispheres. Seasonal variability is less in the SH (less vegetation) and opposite the NH seasonal variation:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/month_2002_2004_4s.jpg
But that has little influence on the trends in the ice cores, as even the best resolution ice cores (Law Dome, 2 out of 3 ice cores) average the CO2 levels over 8 years. The yearly averages of CO2 levels in 95% of the atmosphere don’t differ with more than 5 ppmv, where most of the difference is because of the lag between the NH and SH levels:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/co2_trends.jpg
Thus one can say that the CO2 levels in the ice cores are identical to the South Pole measurements (there is an overlap of some 20 years with the Law Dome ice cores), but lagged in the ice core (some 7 years) and more lagged compared to the Mauna Loa data and smoothed over 8 years (Law Dome) up to some 600 years (Vostok, Dome C).
The large smoothing of the Vostok and Dome C ice cores is not a problem either: the transition between a glacial and an interglacial needs some 5,000 years for a 100 ppmv change.
If an undergraduate produced a graph like this (taking an indirect measurement for most of the period, then tacked on the direct measurement for the last few years / decades) they’d be told:
1) Ideally, you shouldn’t make such comparisons – it is almost certain that it is a false comparison because there will be a bias between the datasets
2) If you do, at the absolute minimum you have to mark where the transition between the datasets is on your graph.
It amazes me that some Professors seem to have forgotten the exact same stuff they teach in the first few weeks of an undergraduate (at least geology) course…
We had a cat called Bomber back in the 70’s. Good cat! Liked our bunny Trueman.
By standing in front of an image, Bradley gave approval. It therefore follows that those protesting the BP oil spill gave, by being photographed on oily beaches, their approval to oil spills.
kuhnkat says:
November 25, 2010 at 10:10 am
R. Gates,
You are delusional if you think the CO2 levels shown on that chart have anything to do with reality.
______
Hmm…I do think the chart is probably fairly close to what CO2 levels were in the past and up to the present. The only issue with the chart is the label– whether the whole data set came from Vostok and representing it as such. There have been so-called “skeptics” who even doubted (and still do) modern readings of CO2 levels, so it goes to prove that certain skeptics simply want to doubt science in general.
Ferdinand Engelbeen:
Thanks for the link on pCO2 – I’ll have a look at it when I get the chance (busy weekend ahead). But you’re right – there was a lengthy debate on the issues quite recently and it doesn’t need to be started up again here.
On the sealing of ice and the measurements from the firn/transition. I look upon this with some suspicion. There is an undefined convolution of the “signal” going on in the firn/transition. The outcome of that process is what is being laid onto the top layers of the sealed ice. There can be no suggestion that the ice contains a record of atmospheric conditions – at best it is a “convolved” signal (and possibly not a stationary convolution either).
That just goes to support Anthony’s point – splicing is not acceptable.
It’s nothing like at the level of a “lab notebook” issue, like using one multimeter one day and another the next. It is more like stitching an unfiltered signal onto the end of its own moving average and then declaring – “look here, something odd has happened!”.
Ferdinand Engelbeen November 25, 2010 at 5:08 pm :”I know, Lucy (hi Lucy) still believes Jaworowski. I don’t. [… ] the work of Etheridge of 1996 […] unfortunately behind a paywall. […] Here my opinion about Jaworowski:[…]”
I am not in a position to accept or reject what you say, not being familiar with this quite technical field, not having access behind paywalls, and not having time to read everything anyway. I will restrict myself to a few specific comments, and the general observation that, to me, Jaworowski makes too much sense to be dismissed especially since there is so much uncertainty about just about every facet of this topic.
1.Lucy Skywalker has been through your analysis, and concludes “I felt that all Engelbeen’s subsequent points were well answered in Jaworowski’s text”. I do not regard either of you as being more reliable than the other – ie. I am not accepting one’s statements and not the other’s – but there is clearly room for disagreement.
2.Jaworowski’s paper cites Slocum (1955) as showing selection bias by Callander (1938, 1940, 1958). I note that in your document when you dismiss claims of selection bias, you do not address Slocum or Callander, but only Neftel.
3.You quote Luthi in support of Neftel elininating an outlier: “This artefact can be explained by the fact that this ice is from an ice-core section drilled towards the end of the season 2002–2003, when an ethanol–water mixture had to be added at the bottom of the borehole to allow further drilling. This caused partial melting at the outside of the core and subsequent refreezing when hoisting the core through colder sections of the bore hole”, Jaworowski repeatedly draws attention to problems like this [Pearman found “post-coring melting”, Etheridge said core used by Neftel was “exposed to melting”, most cores “were exposed to ambient atmospheres and physical and chemical changes during drilling and storage”, etc, etc], yet you do not address them in your rebuttal.
4.You say that “Jaworowski mainly refers to works written by… Jaworowski”. I thought this was a rather curious claim, and I didn’t notice it when I read the Jaworowski paper. I don’t think the facts support your assertion. In the first (bit less than) half of Jaworowski’s text I found the following references: Callendar (2) , Arrhenius, Fonselius, Slocum (2), Stanhill, Keeling, Jaworowski (3), Wigley, Neftel (23), Berner (2), Broecker, Brolin, IPCC (2), Oeschger (3), Raynaud and Barnola (6), Friedli (3), Segalstad and Jaworowski (2), Coachman (2), Matsuo and Miyake (2), Hemmingsen, Scholander (2), Reynaud and Delmas (2), Hodgman, Weast, Stauffer (4), Stauffer and Oeschger (2), Ng and Patterson (2), Pearman (6), Etheridge (6), Alley and Bentley, Enns, Siegenthaler, Takenouchi and Kennedy, Miller, Barnola (3), De Angelis (2), Petit (2), Boutron (3), Kudryashov (3), Korotkevich, Gow and Williamson, Gow (7), Legrand (2), Zotikov (2), Barkov, Hobbs, Jones and Johari. I stopped there (taking too long) but noted that there were only a further 3 references to Jaworowski. If there is anyone that Jaworowski shows paper-selection-bias to, then surely it is Neftel…
Paul K2 says:
Since your other claims have been taken care of by the comments following yours, I’ll just answer your first point, which contrary to your belief was not a mistake.
I deliberately used “Mr” instead of “Dr” because I regard Bradley as a scientific charlatan, for reasons I have given many times before. “Dr” is a term of respect, and I have none for any scientist who refuses to follow the scientific method because to do so would threaten his grant income.
If Bradley gives a convincing reason why he refuses to cooperate with others who wish to replicate his data and methodologies, we can discuss it. But stonewalling requests from other scientists for 12 years means only one thing to me: MB&H are hiding information that would promptly falsify the basis for their hockey stick chart, and they know it. The fact that Bradley poses in front of his bogus chart shows that his agenda is CAGW propaganda rather than the honest science the public pays for and expects.
The work of MB&H is funded by taxpayers, and they must answer to the public. Instead they hide out, and pretend that “Trust us” is a satisfactory response. It is not. It is the response of scientific charlatans covering up their pseudo-science.
If I’m wrong, I will apologize – just as soon as MB&H provides to Steve McIntyre and others all the information they have been requesting for over twelve years.
Smokey,
I would agree, and can hardly see anyone who doesn’t allow others to replicate his work to be a member of the scientific community, even if he would start to follow the scientific method from now on.
Gererally speaking about scientific misconduct, I would suggest to establish a principal witness protection, which would include job security.
Ferdinand Engelbeen (November 26, 2010 at 2:52 am) : “The SH CO2 levels lag the NH levels with some 14 months, that is because most of the human emissions are in the NH and the ITCZ slows the exchange of air masses (including CO2) between the hemispheres.”
That’s a nice theory F.E., and I’m sorry to have to keep disagreeing with you, but here is a graph of the 12-month CO2 changes at Barrow (far N), Mauna Loa (Mid) and S Pole (far S!):
http://members.westnet.com.au/jonas1/CO2ChangesAt3Stations.JPG
You can see that the S Pole and Mauna Loa tend to change at similar times, with the S Pole sometimes getting (or losing) the CO2 first and sometimes Mauna Loa. It is Barrow in the far north that more often lags significantly.
Mike Jonas says:
November 26, 2010 at 11:23 am
Jaworowski’s paper cites Slocum (1955) as showing selection bias by Callander (1938, 1940, 1958). I note that in your document when you dismiss claims of selection bias, you do not address Slocum or Callander, but only Neftel.
Callendar was not about ice cores but about selecting historical (wet chemical) CO2 measurements based on several a priori criteria. Some of his criteria have merit: like no measurements used for agriculture (huge local variation over and under leaves), within 10% of the bulk of measurements at several places, etc. I agree that the criteria were biased by his own idea of what should be the right levels, but anyway it is better to have a priori criteria than no criteria at all and accept all historical data as equally valid, even the wildest values measured over land.
The remarkable point is that the levels +/- 10% were conformed some 40 years later by measuring the CO2 levels in ice cores, which fit in that band. Thus his criteria were not that bad. And it was confirmed that measuring over land near vegetation is completely unreliable for “background” CO2 levels.
Neftel was about ice cores, where in some parts a very wide range of values were found, that was where also drilling fluid was found. That means that there were cracks in the ice. What Jaworowski suggests is that one should have accepted the higher values (confirmation bias?), while these were clearly contaminated. I should have discarded all measurements of that part of the ice core, but Neftel used the lowest values in further publications, as he was sure that these were the right ones (confirmation bias?). Anyway the lower values were confirmed by later drillings in other places for the same time frame. Thus the confirmation bias of Neftel was the good one, not the one of Jaworowski.
Jaworowski repeatedly draws attention to problems like this [Pearman found “post-coring melting”, Etheridge said core used by Neftel was “exposed to melting”, most cores “were exposed to ambient atmospheres and physical and chemical changes during drilling and storage”, etc, etc], yet you do not address them in your rebuttal.
Most of the objections of Jaworowski are about the first drilled ice cores (as already said, before 1991), where a lot of errors were made in drilling, handling, transport, etc… But they have learned of these errors, while Jaworowski seems to have ended his knowledge in 1991. The 1996 paper by Etheridge was a quite direct response to a lot of allegations by Jaworowski.
Currently, the ice core parts are immediately packed in PE foil and kept (mostly on site) at -20°C for up to a year for relaxation. That means that the volume increases, the inner pressure goes down and most clathrates decompose again.
There are few chemical reactions that affect CO2 levels. That is no problem as long as not too much active dust is included (as is the case for Greenland ice cores, thanks to Icelandic volcanoes). After cold storage and transport, at the laboratories the outer parts are removed and only the inner parts of the ice core are used for measurements. Mostly grating techniques under vacuum are used (which further destroys any clathrates left), but for checks and for mass spectrometry of isotope ratio’s the full sample is sublimated, then cryogenically separated in the different components and measured…
You say that “Jaworowski mainly refers to works written by… Jaworowski”
That is what I have read in several of his works, but indeed that is not the case for what was written by him on Warwick Huges’ pages. I will change that.
Nevertheless, the citations he makes to other’s work don’t support Jaworowski. Take e.g. his quote that even at -73°C there is liquid water in ice. But his reference is about a study of sulpfuric acid at grain boundaries in Antarctic ice, not about water, and the inclusions were away from the air bubbles.
I have a chemistry background, that means that I have at least some notions about diffusion. What he writes is that the lower levels of CO2 found in ice cores are caused by cracks in the ice, thus CO2 escaping (preferentially more than N2/O2) to the outside world, where the CO2 levels are some 100-200 ppmv higher. Either he doesn’t have the slightest clue about diffusion (which goes from high to low), or…
That was already enough for me to take all what he says with a grain of salt. But for me the door closed with his complete false accusation of the “arbitrarely” shift of the Siple ice core CO2 measurements to match the Mauna Loa measurements. In that case, he simply did use the wrong column in the table of measurements: he used the ice age instead of the gas age, while these are adjacent columns in the same table. Either he has not the slightest clue that there is a difference in age between the ice layers and that of the enclosed bubbles, which is unbelievable for an ice core specialist, or…
I have send a message to him about these two points… no answer.
You may fill in your own “or”, but my “or” is that I don’t believe one word of what Jaworowski says.
Mike Jonas says:
November 26, 2010 at 2:52 pm
That’s a nice theory F.E., and I’m sorry to have to keep disagreeing with you, but here is a graph of the 12-month CO2 changes at Barrow (far N), Mauna Loa (Mid) and S Pole (far S!):
http://members.westnet.com.au/jonas1/CO2ChangesAt3Stations.JPG
You can see that the S Pole and Mauna Loa tend to change at similar times, with the S Pole sometimes getting (or losing) the CO2 first and sometimes Mauna Loa. It is Barrow in the far north that more often lags significantly.
You are looking at the rate of change of the CO2 levels, which are heavily influenced by temperature changes, but that are not the CO2 levels themselves. Here a view of the yearly increase of CO2 at the same stations (+ Samoa, at 15S) for the period 1995-2004:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/co2_trends_1995_2004.jpg
The South Pole CO2 levels lag Mauna Loa with about 14 months, Samoa lags MLO with about 10 months, but Mauna Loa (at 3,400 m) also lags Barrow (at sealevel) with about 8 months… It takes time to level off the differences over altitudes and latitudes, but as there are continuous (increasing) emissions, the lags even increase over time.
Ferdinand Engelbeen (November 26, 2010 at 2:56 pm, November 26, 2010 at 3:28 pm) : Your arguments against Professor Jaworowski look very convincing, but I would prefer to see his reply (if one is ever forthcoming) before accepting what you say. A while ago, a very well-known physicist (not you!) posting on WUWT made a very convincing-sounding criticism of another physicist’s work. I emailed the criticised physicist, and received a full and, to me, even more convincing explanation. Unfortunately it came long after the relevant WUWT dialogue had passed into history so I didn’t post it on WUWT (and I hadn’t obtained the 2nd physicist’s permission to do so).
Regarding CO2 levels: you say “The South Pole CO2 levels lag Mauna Loa with about 14 months, Samoa lags MLO with about 10 months, but Mauna Loa (at 3,400 m) also lags Barrow (at sealevel) with about 8 months… It takes time to level off the differences over altitudes and latitudes, but as there are continuous (increasing) emissions, the lags even increase over time.“.
Given the noise level, it isn’t easy to verify your statement from the data. But if what you say is correct (Barrow gets the CO2 first, then Mauna Loa, then S Pole, and the lags are increasing over time) then Barrow should show the greatest change over time, followed by Mauna Loa, S Pole.
But the overall change at Mauna Loa is the largest in both absolute (ppm difference) and relative (ppm ratio) terms. I base this on downloaded data from 1974/2 to 2007/12 (the full common period that I have downloaded) and the linear trend (MS Excel TREND() function) over that period for each station.
(Mauna Loa 328.1ppm to 382.0: +53.9ppm, +16.4%. Barrow 329.8ppm to 383.1: +53.3ppm, +16.2%. S Pole326.5ppm to 379.0: +52.6ppm, +16.1%. Figures each rounded to 1 dec pl.)
It seems to me that CO2 sloshes around the planet in ways that are not fully understood, and that findings concerning CO2 in ice cores and atmosphere may not be fully reliable.
Smokey,
You keep complaining about people hiding data, so:
Go read Appendix 7 of the Muir Russell report. http://www.ccereview.org/pdf/FINAL%20REPORT.pdf
Now I guess you probably do not like the whole report, so I am not asking you to believe it, but Appendix 7 is purely factual and describes how they (the report authors) downloaded all the raw data, and how they analyzed it.
They say the following:
1. Any independent researcher may freely obtain the primary station data. It is
impossible for any group to withhold data.
2. It is impossible for any group to tamper improperly with data unless they have
done so to the GHCN and NCAR (and presumably the NMO) sources
themselves.
3. The steps needed to create a temperature trend are straightforward to
implement.
4. The computer code necessary is straightforward to write from scratch and
could easily be done by any competent programmer.
5. The shape obtained in all cases is very similar: in other words if one does the
same thing with the same data one gets very similar results.
6. The result does not depend significantly on the exact list of stations.
7. Adjustments make little difference.
OK, so you think Mann et.al. fiddled the data – go get the raw data and do it yourself. Apparently it took the Muir Russell committee 2 days.
jimmi, please. Stonewalling is a characteristic of the alarmist clique.
Here, I’ll help you get up to speed on Muir Russell’s shenanigans: click
jimmi,
Here’s more pertinent info on the devious Muir Russell: click
And yes, Mann absolutely ‘fiddled the data.’ How else can you explain this?
Maybe some day the scales will fall from your eyes, and you will realize how much you have been lied to by Mann et al.
Ferdinand probably knows about this, but Hans Oeschger dealt with many of the same points in 1995 in Environ Sci. & Pollut. Res. 2 (1) 1995, pp. 60-61. Some may have heard of Oeschger as in Dansgaard-Oeschger events.
Smokey says:
November 26, 2010 at 7:16 pm
jimmi, please. Stonewalling is a characteristic of the alarmist clique.
Smokey all you ever do is lie and stonewall, oh and insult other posters such as Dr Bradley .
Smokey
I am not a member of an alarmist clique -I am properly skeptical in the sense that I know that skepticism works in both directions. I do not believe everything the ‘warmists’ say, but neither do I believe everything said here. I am not asking you to believe all of the Muir Russell report so your links are pointless. I asked you to read Appendix 7 where it says that no data is hidden and anyone can analyze it themselves. A proper skeptic would do so.
Looks like Bradley is one of these alleged scientists that just like to make stuff up to fit a funding and political agenda. No thanks. Americans and now even Europeans are on to the scam.