A helpful note to Dr. Eric Steig

Perhaps Dr. Steig was too busy writing snark (in response to a peer reviewed paper that is a rebuttal his own) to figure it out, but this made me laugh. Comment # 6 in this thread over at Real Climate from “mapleleaf” gets this response from Dr. Eric Steig:

And why did WUWT show an image that appears to have less warming than the one shown here by Eric? Sorry but I have to fault you both there..the figures should show for what season they are valid, or if they are for annual temperatures.

[The figure here shows O’Donnell’s et al.s reconstruction for the same time period as our Nature cover image. These are annual mean estimates. I cannot speak to WTF WUWT has done.–eric]

Always happy to help perfesser…it’s really as easy as using the right click on your mouse (unless you use a Mac, in which case I can’t help you) or clicking a link. Observe.

1. Go to the thread on WUWT here:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/12/01/skeptic-paper-accepted-on-antarctica-rebuts-steig-et-al/

2. Find the image of two Antarctic maps side by side

3. Right click on it, choose “view image info”, or if you have a Mac and can’t use right click, note the handily included phrase “Click to enlarge.” below the image. Click it, and note the URL in the browser for the enlarged image.

4. Note that the source for the image, sized and enlarged, is this URL, which is not connected to WUWT in any way. In fact it sources to The Air Vent, where Ryan ODonnell published the essay we reposted here by request:

http://noconsensus.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/image0.png

5. Note that I have no control of imagery on other peoples servers, nor of the content of those images.

6. See this helpful post on The Air Vent regarding these same questions.

So to answer the question, I’ve done nothing, and the only “WTF” needed might be in wondering why you and other RC commenters can’t figure out where the source of the image came from.

Thank you for playing “Find that image source“.

Get notified when a new post is published.
Subscribe today!
5 1 vote
Article Rating
73 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
David Phillips
December 10, 2010 6:50 am

Two points concerning your instructions on a Mac.
If you have a three button mouse on a Mac, right click works fine, and ‘View Image Info’ is there. ‘Copy Image Location’ is also available, and would let you paste the location into some other window.
On the older MacBooks, with a separate track pad & track pad button, pressing the control key while clicking the track pad button will bring up the context menu.
I’m sure there is a way on new Macs with their single track pad, but I don’t have one of those.
I hope this will help Dr. Steig see the information you are pointing out.

grzejnik
December 10, 2010 6:56 am

HEY ANTHONY, stop your ANTI Mac bias!!! LOL
You press “control” mouse button to right click on a Mac. If you have a new super duper mouse on the new iMacs, you can set it up to have from 1 to 8 buttons on it so it is quite superior. Just an FYI!
REPLY: Not a bias, I simply don’t own one and they are a mystery to me – Anthony

slp
December 10, 2010 7:15 am

I use both platforms. Macs also have multitouch track pads, on which one can tap two fingers to get a secondary click. (They also support two-finger x-y scrolling, three-finger swipes for navigation, pinch to zoom, four-finger Exposé, etc. I cannot help with that on a PC.)

benjamin p.
December 10, 2010 7:29 am

Maybe he doesn’t visit the site? Tough to know “wtf” is going on if you don’t visit, eh?
REPLY: Oh he visits, there’s a lot of people that visit that won’t admit to it. Some day I may do a Wikileaks style log release. Heh. – Anthony

PhilJourdan
December 10, 2010 8:46 am

Roger Knights says:
December 9, 2010 at 6:06 pm

Roger, while having noted the right click function of the Mac, I had never put much thought into it. Thank you for a humorous look at where it came from!

oldgifford
December 10, 2010 8:58 am

What’s a Mac?

Foley Hund
December 10, 2010 9:39 am

A Mac is a multi-speed human operated mechanical rolling device powered by fossil fuel designed primarily to move other non-powered rolling devices which otherwise would be stationary from point to point.
A PC (person car) is much less powerful, much significantly more agile. 🙂

Warmer
December 10, 2010 9:45 am

Dr. Steig’s response about his Antartica paper. Nice word smithing to hide the possibility of zero warming in Antartica, at least that’s how it looks to me.
“Of course, we made it very clear in the paper that the rate of warming was not necessarily distinct from zero at 95% confidence, so this isn’t a new result.”
————
Full quote from RC:
[Response: I doubt that quote is mine. The Guardian is not exactly a reliable outlet in my experience. But sure I’ll concede this point is probably technically correct. The CRU data give about 0.12 for S.H. as a whole so that’s roughly twice O’Donnell et al. Of course, we made it very clear in the paper that the rate of warming was not necessarily distinct from zero at 95% confidence, so this isn’t a new result.–eric]
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/12/a-brief-history-of-knowledge-about-antarctic-temperatures/

TomRude
December 10, 2010 10:46 am

Digging deep at DC, treasures abund… such as “Maple Leaf” by himself:
• MapleLeaf // January 6, 2010 at 4:54 am
John M., thanks for sharing. Perhaps I’ll be as brave and open as you when I’m 63. Right now, as a relatively young scientists, it is easy to burn bridges especially if the feds (Canadian) perceive one to be too outspoken on contentious issues such as AGW. They won’t/can’t fire you, but they can choose not hire you and or make your life a dead end in the civil service, hence the moniker ” MapleLeaf”.
You stated that “I do not understand what is going on with Springer, although I have a guess or two.”
I’m intrigued. Please do share some of your thoughts on this matter; I have they feeling that your intuition and insight might be valuable to DC.”
Sucking up to the Team and DC connections just in case…

1DandyTroll
December 10, 2010 12:07 pm

So essentially Dr Steig is very frustrated with people pointing out details that he, himself essentially, got completely and utterly wrong.
Maybe he should’ve become a real doctor then.

Wondering Aloud
December 10, 2010 12:27 pm

Problem is onion there is no evidence of any warming that needs to be explained.
While I have always thought that CO2 increase should cause some warming. The reality is, even using the GHCN numbers which we know to have been fudged and faked for at least half of the warming they show, the amount of warming in the last century or at any point in it is entirely within the normal variation observed throughout the Earth’s history.
That means the hypothesis that there is no warming at all due to CO2 is a better fit to the data by far than any of the “respected climate models”.
Your claim that ” … you’d have to rule out that recent warming was caused in large part by rising greenhouse gases. Can’t do that?” is just lousy scientific method.
We don’t have to prove a negative, the CAGW folks are supposed to prove their hypothesis. So far it is failing every experimental test despite extensive data fudging.

December 10, 2010 1:27 pm

Right Click on Mac = Control + Click (Macs conserve input keys)
[Sh-h-h! Anthony thinks Macs are the devil’s spawn. In fact, if he even knew I was saying this he would (SNIP) ~dbs]

TomRude
December 10, 2010 1:41 pm

Anthony, looks like “Maple Leaf” is pushing it too far, even for Eric Steig!!!
This is so funny:
23
MapleLeaf says:
9 décembre 2010 at 10:06 PM
Cross posted from Rabett Run:
“It is my understanding that the reconstruction methodology/technique is designed to estimate temperatures using the satellite data, so the image should be high resolution, with the temperature data having the same resolution the satellite data/pixels. The AVHRR satellite data from the NOAA satellites are fairly high resolution, although I am not sure exactly what; 1-km comes to mind.
Anyhow, the RC graph makes more sense, as the detail is consistent with the satellite data used to generate it. Smoothing the data potentially removes valuable information.
I’m confused and do not trust McI or WUWT. Does anyone have access to the graphs as they appear in the paper? I went to the AMS site and the paper was not available yet, even here:
http://journals.ametsoc.org/toc/clim/0/0
Someone really needs to clear this all up and fast.”
[Response: Enough with the conspiracy theory already. I’m using their data — which the lead author sent me — presumably they are using their own data too. Evidently we are using different plotting routines. Nobody is doing anything nefarious here. Sheesh!–eric]
24
MapleLeaf says:
9 décembre 2010 at 10:41 PM
Eric,
Thanks again for your feedback. Not to harp on this, but you seem to have misunderstood my post. I was not suggesting that you were smoothing the data or not displaying it correctly. IMHO, your reproduction (“RC” above) is the appropriate way to display the data.
I was taking issue with the fact that others are smoothing (or overly smoothing) the data, and as a result, information may be being lost. That is all.
[Response: I don’t know why I’m defending the lunatics, but no, I don’t think anything important is being lost. Spatial autocorrelation is huge in Antarctica so if you average a few pixels together it cannot possibly matter.–eric]

December 10, 2010 1:54 pm

Perhaps Dr. Steig was too busy writing snark (in response to a peer reviewed paper that is a rebuttal his own) to figure it out, but this made me laugh. Comment # 6 in this thread over at Real Climate from “mapleleaf” gets this response from Dr. Eric Steig:
Followed by this one:
“[Response: I suspect your history is quite accurate, but to be fair, these guys DID publish the paper, even though their results wound up not supporting their thesis very well. I commend them on that. Indeed, I think it speaks very well to the integrity of the authors, when it comes down to facts (as opposed to speculation).–eric]”
Is that what you call snark?

December 10, 2010 3:49 pm

Mods I would like to know why my post on this subject has been deleted, Thanks

REPLY:
I found it, and I restored it. Not sure why it ended up in the rubbish bin, may have been unintentional, I’ve been away for a couple of hours.
As to the “snark” comment, the whole RC post by Steig is snark, that’s what I’m referring to, not specific comment paragraphs – Anthony

Steve McIntyre
December 10, 2010 8:06 pm

Steig’s characterization of my position when I began looking at Steig et al is untrue and without foundation.

December 10, 2010 8:41 pm

The gauntlet has been thrown down at your feet, Steig. Answer Steve McIntyre’s charge, or be forever debunked and discredited.
The internet never forgets, Mr Steig.

Crispin in Ulaanbaatar
December 10, 2010 10:37 pm

It is difficult to have your work publicly corrected but it can hardly be a surprise for methods and findings to be refined (which is my interpretation of the two papers). The over-reaction by camp followers is of course also to be expected. I am impressed that Eric can attempt to reign in his. After the dust settles a little, let’s see if he accepts that his work can be corrected. It seems he does not claim McIntyre has made scientific errors in his rebuttal.

December 11, 2010 2:39 pm

Steve McIntyre says:
December 10, 2010 at 8:06 pm
Steig’s characterization of my position when I began looking at Steig et al is untrue and without foundation.

Yes you were your usual disingenuous self with the veiled implications of misconduct and egging on your claque at CA as usual. Several posters at your site found your comments to Steig unnecessarily abrasive at the time so you should hardly be surprised that Steig wasn’t happy. For example:
“Mark
Posted Jun 1, 2009 at 11:29 PM | Permalink | Reply
Steve, I am a longtime reader of your blog – though I have never commented before. I have a degree in English from Cambridge (though my career in finance involved a lot of time series modeling using a canonical variate analysis based method) where we spent much time analyzing tone. I must honestly say that I have long thought that your communications with other professionals were unnecessarily snarky. For instance in the email you quote above you say:
“all the material” – It would also be an excellent idea to put your source code up. Using statistical techniques that are not well understood to derive newsy applied results is a bit risky and you should err on the side of caution in making your code available to independent analysis.”
I am frankly not surprised Dr Steig was irritated. Talking about “newsy applied results” implies that he has derived these results with the intention of making news – rather than of making scientific progress. This may well be true but it is definitely not “gracious” to say so as you cannot possibly have hard evidence as to his motives.”

December 11, 2010 3:21 pm

Phil.,
As stated above, the gauntlet has been thrown down at Steig’s feet. Will Steig and his apologists [ie: you] pick it up and specifically rebut the charges of Steig’s dishonesty? Or will they continue to resort to ad-hom responses instead? Cherry-picking one disgruntled comment is no answer.
So far, ad hominem attacks against McIntyre have been the only response. That’s really lame.

TomRude
December 12, 2010 9:23 am

I don’t recall ‘MapleLeaf” posting at Climateaudit or Wattsupwiththat. This perhaps explains why…
• MapleLeaf // January 9, 2010 at 5:20 pm | Reply
Lady in red, my brief forray to try and engage people at WUWT and present an alternative view (some real science) was a fiasco, I had several posts that were either edited or removed. The mentality of followers there is cult like. I was also subjected to much vitriol and invective for having “dissenting” views.
As for CA, did you follow what they did to the Lorax at CA? Why did Lorax ultimately stop posting at CA Lady in Red? How McI manipulated the the mob mentality of his followers to deal with Lorax was dispicable.
Like others here, I too have tried to post at CA and have also found it a futile exercise; followers there tend to be rude, believe themselves to be omniscient and have a cult -like devotion to McI.
[DC: The same thing happened to Tom P on Yamal, IIRC.]
Steve will appreciate…
[REPLY – It takes considerable talent to get your post removed here. We never remove a post simply for reasons of point of view. This distinguishes WUWT. We favor free expression and exchange of conflicting ideas. There are limits, but you have to be truly outrageously OT o genuinely over the top to get sliced. CA is more strict about OT, but disagreement is allowed there, too. ~ Evan]

TomRude
December 12, 2010 9:47 am

Evan, I feel anyway his rant on DC was disingenuous at best… 😉

azcIII
December 14, 2010 1:12 pm

Better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than speak and remove all doubt, Dr. Steig.