From Steve McIntyre: Left- Briffa reconstruction from Oct 5, 1999 Climategate email. Matches Briffa et al 2001 Plate 3 version up to 1960. Post-1960 values deleted in 2001 version shown in red; right – emulation of IPCC AR3 figure without trick. Briffa shown here in purple for emphasis.
Dr. Richard Muller calls out the “hide the decline” aka “Mike’s Nature Trick” on this YouTube video of a presentation he gave.
For some strong background, see Steve McIntyre’s Heartland 2010 presentation here (PDF)
jcrabb,
Give it up. If that’s the best you’ve got, then you got nothin’.
I recall when President Jimmy Carter [who was used to speaking in front of large audiences] was praising the best known U.S. Senator of the day, Sen Hubert Humphrey. Carter called Humphrey “Senator Hubert Horatio Hornblower.” Carter went on speaking, not realizing what he had said. Carter was a nuclear engineer, but you’d probably give him a pass because he’s deep down the same kind of character as Mann and Jones.
The most shocking part of Muller’s presentation was the before/after graphs showing that the huge warming spike was a complete fabrication. I roll my eyes when I read some folks’ apology for that devious altering of reality by people who certainly knew exactly what they were doing and why. Do their apologists really expect us to believe there is a legitimate excuse for their deliberate fraud?
Nuke
March 19, 2011 10:06 am
Trust the scientists. They’re the experts and they are here to help.
BTW: That’s sarcasm.
Peter Miller
March 19, 2011 10:09 am
The reality is the one group who know more about paleo-climates than anyone else are geologists.
Geologists – government employees excepted – are the most sceptical group around and therefore are ignored as heretics by the AGW cult. The concept of natural climate cycles remains the greatest heresy perceived by the AGW cult’s high priests.
The concept of using tree rings as a proxy for past temperatures – other than for dating extreme events like volcanic eruptions – is just goofy, as there are so many other factors than temperature which affect tree ring growth. Somehow ‘a science’ has grown out of the study of tree rings and like most other things treated as gospel by the Team and the other purveyors of bad science, should simply be treated as nothing more than data manipulated junk.
I for one am glad not to be living in ‘the Little Ice Age’. I also totally reject the concept of trying to regulate (i.e. stabilise) climate, as there is absolutely nothing significant mankind can do to alter our planet’s temperature, short of creating a ‘nuclear winter’ after an atomic war.
Theo Goodwin
March 19, 2011 10:17 am
Mosher writes:
“So, part of Jones’ defense is correct. CRU, specifically, Briffa had displayed this divergence clearly in prior publications. And the underlying literature does discuss the problem in detail.”
You really have no concept of lying and the harm that it can do. If I tell Jones a lie and because of that lie he kills himself, the fact that I told Smith the truth does not lessen the harm, the evil, or the blameworthiness.
The hockey stick was presented to the public. It was the star of Al Gore’s academy award winning movie, for God’s sake. You must apply the standards of truth that are relevant to the general public. Al Gore used the hockey stick to tell a lie and I do not believe that Mann, Jones, or any Climategater PUBLICLY dissented from that lie. The fact that additional information was published in scientific journals is irrelevant to the audience for the hockey stick, the general public.
Please stop equivocating on the words ‘lie’, ‘truth’, ‘is’, and ‘a’.
rbateman
March 19, 2011 10:23 am
Move over, Piltdown Man, meet the new fossils on display: AGW Man.
GeneDoc
March 19, 2011 10:52 am
“We now have a list of people whose papers I’m not going to read anymore.”
Data falsification is the term we in science use to describe this behavior. This includes suppression adverse data (the decline), as well as incompletely describing the data sources (mixing tree ring and temp data). Lack of scientific integrity can result in a variety of punitive outcomes. Journals can decide to withdraw (retract) papers, institutions can elect to terminate employment, granting agencies can withhold funds. In the case of using falsified or fabricated data in support of grant applications, criminal charges can be filed (fraud). Honest errors and even one-time offenses by those who are early in their careers and inadequately educated are often forgiven. Ongoing and repeated offenses can easily result in expulsion from science and even fines and imprisonment. It’s always ugly and affects students, colleagues and competitors.
Dr. Muller’s decision to “shun” this group of authors is a perfectly reasonable response. He’s stating that he no longer trusts their studies–they are no longer to be believed as honest reporters of data and conclusions. Among scientists, that is a very very harsh determination and punishment.
Anton Eagle
March 19, 2011 10:57 am
jcrabb,
Just who, exactly, do you think “Climate Scientists” are?
When you get right down to it… they are just physicists, chemists, etc. that happen to be studying the climate instead of some other physical or chemical system.
The idea that physicists and chemists somehow cannot understand the intricacies and nuance of the climate science debate is offensive and absurd. That is exactly the kind of argument you would expect from some kind of quasi-religious group, rather than fellow scientists.
The truth is, a well educated physicist, or chemist (or engineer, etc) can understand and even obtain some expertise in just about any scientific endeavor in which they become interested. All it takes is a little time and work to get up to speed on the specific lingo and previous findings of that sub-field.
Physics is physics… and chemistry is chemistry… and these are essentially universal. Unless, you want to argue that climate science somehow does not follow the normal laws of physics and chemistry?
Come to think of it, since pretty much all your “science” is done in a computer model, and not the real world… perhaps your physical laws ARE different after all. Hmmm… I guess that’s really the main problem with “climate science”, and I guess that explains why all those predictions aren’t working out so well. Maybe a little basic physics and chemistry is exactly what you guys need?
Theo Goodwin
March 19, 2011 11:09 am
Mosher writes:
“So, part of Jones’ defense is correct. CRU, specifically, Briffa had displayed this divergence clearly in prior publications. And the underlying literature does discuss the problem in detail.”
Not one of the Climategaters ever asked themselves whether the evidence of forty years, evidence that they had collected, showed that tree ring data is not useful as a proxy for temperature. The useful scientific result from all of Briffa’s research was that tree ring data should be called into question. Yet that fact, that divergence, is exactly “the decline” that they conspired to hide on the hockey stick. Briffa’s articles ask no questions of scientific methodology. He never asks his colleagues to question tree ring data. Not one of the Climategater conspiracy ever blinked on tree ring data and they do not today. You overlook the fact that they defend their older work even today. You cannot deny that the tragic flaw in each and every member of the Climategate conspiracy is an inability to be critical of their own work and a failing to appreciate scientific method.
Theo Goodwin
March 19, 2011 11:13 am
jcrabb says:
March 19, 2011 at 4:43 am
“What is it about retired Professors to talk about subjects they have no idea about, he is a Physicist not a Climatologist, would anybody listen to a Chemist talkking about Physics?”
Ok, moderators, ok. I give. I will never again ask that you ban a troll, if you will just please ban jcrabb.
MikeN
March 19, 2011 11:15 am
There is no WMO Magazine.
Werner Brozek
March 19, 2011 11:16 am
“jcrabb says:
March 19, 2011 at 8:40 am
Bernie:
Another issue that makes me wonder about Dr Muller’s expertise is that he states there has been no warming over the last ten years,”
I do not have graphs for the last 10 years, but check out the green bar graphs at the following. It shows that on the 5 data sets, the average for last 5 years was lower than for the last 10 years. So if graphs were to be drawn for the last 10 years, I cannot see how they would rise very much. http://www.climate4you.com/GlobalTemperatures.htm#Comparing%20global%20temperature%20estimates
Theo Goodwin
March 19, 2011 11:19 am
Phil Clarke says:
March 19, 2011 at 2:59 am
“Instead of being impressed by a prediction made based on scientific reasoning and then being validated by events, he implies that scientists shouldn’t be making predictions at all.”
Sir, Warmista cannot make predictions. They cannot because they do not have a set of physical hyptheses that enables them to explain and predict a rise in Earth’s temperatures. They have only simulations running on computers and such simulations cannot be used for prediction or explanation. When Muller says that “they” should not be predicting, he means that they should not be pretending to do something that they cannot do, namely, predict without the benefit of physical hypotheses.
Richard G
March 19, 2011 3:12 pm
The Harry_Read_Me.txt documents the data falsification and fabrication that corrupts the entire CRU database, the supposed clearinghouse of global climate data used everywhere in climate science. The fools gold standard of climate science. It leaves a smoldering crater where credibility used to be.
TBear
March 19, 2011 5:36 pm
Ok, I said Briffa when I should have said Mueller.
But, still no straight answer to my questions?
If climate `scientists’ are (I assume) very small percentage of all the world’s qualified natural scientists, it does seem very, very odd that, if the AGW-Catastrophe-thesis is obvious horsecrap that the existing professional academies are not calling it and that there is (apart from some notable exceptions) no sense of a general push-back from the scientific community at large.
So, the all-powerful AGW crowd have got everyone that scared and intimidated?
Doesn’t add up …
mike g
March 19, 2011 5:41 pm
Has it been shown that the trees diverged from the temperature or that the temperature diverged from the reported temperature. I’m still not clear on that. I know for a fact that it was miserably hot sleeping outside in August in south Alabama in the 70’s although NOAA says the average August low was in the 60’s. So, I’m calling BS on their historical record.
Gregory Ludvigsen
March 19, 2011 5:52 pm
Artificial intelligence is no substitute for natural stupidity
Julian in Wales
March 19, 2011 6:24 pm
laughed until the tears came, so clear. Thanks you so much
jcrabb
March 19, 2011 7:14 pm
Apologies to Theo, Anton and JamesS, I retract saying Dr Muller is not a Climate Scientist and not qualified to comment, a regretable moment of ignorance and stupidity on my behalf.
Theo Goodwin
March 19, 2011 7:52 pm
mike g says:
March 19, 2011 at 5:41 pm
“Has it been shown that the trees diverged from the temperature or that the temperature diverged from the reported temperature.”
The trees diverged from what Briffa was reading on his thermometer (or interpolating from some exotic temperature grid known only to Warmista). The trees showed signs of a declining temperature over a period of about forty years, if you assume that the observed changes in the trees are a good proxy for temperature, as Briffa did. Briffa’s thermometer showed a rising temperature. Thus, what Briffa saw or discovered was a divergence between his tree ring data (declining temperature) and his thermometer data (rising temperature). This divergence is an important scientific discovery. Indeed, it undermines all tree ring data of the kind Briffa studied. It should have been in the title of a major peer-reviewed article in a major journal. However, being a Warmista, Briffa and The Team chose to “Hide The Decline” (divergence). Not only did Briffa lie, along with the others, but he betrayed his own scientific work to support the Global Warming Narrative.
Theo Goodwin
March 19, 2011 8:23 pm
jcrabb says:
March 19, 2011 at 7:14 pm
All is forgiven and forgotten.
Old Grump
March 19, 2011 11:04 pm
jcrabb says:
March 19, 2011 at 5:31 am
He states that Coral reef bleaching is not increasing, which is totally wrong , it only started to occur since the 70′s, seems he should just stick to Physics.
[Reply – perhaps what you mean is ‘science only started reporting it to occur in the 70s’, which is not the same thing ~ jove, mod]
Have you ever considered the onset of coral reef bleaching in relation to sport diving? I remember reading Jacque Costeau’s narrative of his early days developing the aqualung. Since I read it 40 or more years ago and have read many hundreds of other books since, the name does not come immediately to mind. (Small matter. In today’s world, a quick electronic search can find nearly everything.) Although perhaps not in that volume, I distinctly remember Costeau mentioning that merely placing a hand on or rubbing a coral surface can cause damage to the coral organisms. In that light, what effect do any of you think that divers visiting these reefs might have? Boats shedding exhaust and oil into the water. Probably throwing food scraps over the side. Sewage dumping. Suntan lotions. Sunblock. Deodorants. Perfumes and colognes. Soap and detergent residues.
Not saying that’s what’s causing problems. I just like to bring to light possibilities. I’m not that dogmatic about things. I consider myself intelligent enough to at least have a glimmer of how much I will never know.
@PhD student: I hope that you can stand graduate school, if that is what you still want. I couldn’t stand the lies and corruption and fraud that I saw. I decided I would rather hang with a higher quality crowd.
And, for the possible attackers, I didn’t flunk out. I had passed my oral prelim and had good research results. I walked away. I’m a chemist and a good one. I’m also a good scientist who follows where the data leads not to someplace I want the data to go.
jcrabb
March 20, 2011 1:08 am
Old grump,
From http://www.fws.gov/coralreef/proceedings/Day%202%20PDF/5-Athline%20Clark.pdf
“•The bleaching response of corals in Hawaiian waters is complex but highly predictable.
•The bleaching threshold in corals is controlled primarily by temperature, irradiance and duration of exposure. This pattern is further modified by water motion, sedimentation and other factors as described by Jokiel (in press).
Results of extensive research on thermal tolerance of Hawaiian corals conducted in the 1970s and identification of a warming trend in Hawaiian waters led Jokiel and Coles (1990) to predict that mass bleaching would soon occur in the Hawaiian Archipelago if the trend continued.”
Sure enough major bleaching occured in 1996 and 2002, so it seems that these guys have nailled it.
Phil Clarke
March 20, 2011 9:44 am
Theo, are you saying the reduced sensitivity of recent tree-growth to temperature should have been the subject of a peer reviewed paper?
Hard to argue that the ‘divergence problem’ was concealed when it has its own wiki entry ….. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divergence_problem
In other news, Muller’s temperature series project is the subject of a mail from Ken Caldeira to Joe Romm…
“Their preliminary results sit right within the results of NOAA, NASA, and HadCRU, confirming that prior analyses were correct in every way that matters. Their results confirm the reality of global warming and support in all essential respects the historical temperature analyses of the NOAA, NASA, and HadCRU.”
So it seems we will soon have 4 surface based and two satellite estimates of global mean temperature trends all painting the same picture. REPLY: PHIL FAIL – The “divergence problem” Wiki didn’t appear until AFTER Climategate. It was well concealed prior to that. From the Wiki Talk page: Thanks for starting this, guys. I’ll contribute a bit as time permits. Cheers, Pete Tillman (talk) 19:50, 18 December 2009 (UTC)
And if you believe Joe Romm and his spin venom, you’ll believe most anything. I pity your lack of cognizant BS filtering ability. – Anthony
Phil Clarke
March 20, 2011 11:33 am
Well, if you want pre-climategate references, the ‘heavily-concealed’ Divergence problem was discussed ….
> In the literature. Eg.D’Arrigo et al., 2004, Cook et al. (2004), Briffa et al (Nature, 391, 678-682) and many others.
> In the IPCC AR4 report
> On climate-related blogs, including extensively at Climate Audit
I am not sure that Steve McIntyre would agree that publishing on his blog equals concealment!
By contrast prior to Nov 2009 there seems to be not a single mention of the cover art for the WMO pamphlet that Muller uses in his talk and which was the subject of the ‘hide the decline’ faux scandal. Does anybody know of one? REPLY: the only real scandal here in this pointless discussion of yours (besides the actual real hide the decline issue) is Romm’s lie, which he’ll soon be called out for. Yes, I used the word “lie”. But you’ll believe anything I suppose. I’m sure you’ll rush to defend him when the rug gets pulled out from under him. – Anthony
Phil Clarke
March 20, 2011 12:25 pm
Erm, the text quoted is from Ken Caldiera to JR. I guess we wait for the final paper to appear, it promises to be interesting.
TTFN.
jcrabb,
Give it up. If that’s the best you’ve got, then you got nothin’.
I recall when President Jimmy Carter [who was used to speaking in front of large audiences] was praising the best known U.S. Senator of the day, Sen Hubert Humphrey. Carter called Humphrey “Senator Hubert Horatio Hornblower.” Carter went on speaking, not realizing what he had said. Carter was a nuclear engineer, but you’d probably give him a pass because he’s deep down the same kind of character as Mann and Jones.
The most shocking part of Muller’s presentation was the before/after graphs showing that the huge warming spike was a complete fabrication. I roll my eyes when I read some folks’ apology for that devious altering of reality by people who certainly knew exactly what they were doing and why. Do their apologists really expect us to believe there is a legitimate excuse for their deliberate fraud?
Trust the scientists. They’re the experts and they are here to help.
BTW: That’s sarcasm.
The reality is the one group who know more about paleo-climates than anyone else are geologists.
Geologists – government employees excepted – are the most sceptical group around and therefore are ignored as heretics by the AGW cult. The concept of natural climate cycles remains the greatest heresy perceived by the AGW cult’s high priests.
The concept of using tree rings as a proxy for past temperatures – other than for dating extreme events like volcanic eruptions – is just goofy, as there are so many other factors than temperature which affect tree ring growth. Somehow ‘a science’ has grown out of the study of tree rings and like most other things treated as gospel by the Team and the other purveyors of bad science, should simply be treated as nothing more than data manipulated junk.
I for one am glad not to be living in ‘the Little Ice Age’. I also totally reject the concept of trying to regulate (i.e. stabilise) climate, as there is absolutely nothing significant mankind can do to alter our planet’s temperature, short of creating a ‘nuclear winter’ after an atomic war.
Mosher writes:
“So, part of Jones’ defense is correct. CRU, specifically, Briffa had displayed this divergence clearly in prior publications. And the underlying literature does discuss the problem in detail.”
You really have no concept of lying and the harm that it can do. If I tell Jones a lie and because of that lie he kills himself, the fact that I told Smith the truth does not lessen the harm, the evil, or the blameworthiness.
The hockey stick was presented to the public. It was the star of Al Gore’s academy award winning movie, for God’s sake. You must apply the standards of truth that are relevant to the general public. Al Gore used the hockey stick to tell a lie and I do not believe that Mann, Jones, or any Climategater PUBLICLY dissented from that lie. The fact that additional information was published in scientific journals is irrelevant to the audience for the hockey stick, the general public.
Please stop equivocating on the words ‘lie’, ‘truth’, ‘is’, and ‘a’.
Move over, Piltdown Man, meet the new fossils on display: AGW Man.
“We now have a list of people whose papers I’m not going to read anymore.”
Data falsification is the term we in science use to describe this behavior. This includes suppression adverse data (the decline), as well as incompletely describing the data sources (mixing tree ring and temp data). Lack of scientific integrity can result in a variety of punitive outcomes. Journals can decide to withdraw (retract) papers, institutions can elect to terminate employment, granting agencies can withhold funds. In the case of using falsified or fabricated data in support of grant applications, criminal charges can be filed (fraud). Honest errors and even one-time offenses by those who are early in their careers and inadequately educated are often forgiven. Ongoing and repeated offenses can easily result in expulsion from science and even fines and imprisonment. It’s always ugly and affects students, colleagues and competitors.
Dr. Muller’s decision to “shun” this group of authors is a perfectly reasonable response. He’s stating that he no longer trusts their studies–they are no longer to be believed as honest reporters of data and conclusions. Among scientists, that is a very very harsh determination and punishment.
jcrabb,
Just who, exactly, do you think “Climate Scientists” are?
When you get right down to it… they are just physicists, chemists, etc. that happen to be studying the climate instead of some other physical or chemical system.
The idea that physicists and chemists somehow cannot understand the intricacies and nuance of the climate science debate is offensive and absurd. That is exactly the kind of argument you would expect from some kind of quasi-religious group, rather than fellow scientists.
The truth is, a well educated physicist, or chemist (or engineer, etc) can understand and even obtain some expertise in just about any scientific endeavor in which they become interested. All it takes is a little time and work to get up to speed on the specific lingo and previous findings of that sub-field.
Physics is physics… and chemistry is chemistry… and these are essentially universal. Unless, you want to argue that climate science somehow does not follow the normal laws of physics and chemistry?
Come to think of it, since pretty much all your “science” is done in a computer model, and not the real world… perhaps your physical laws ARE different after all. Hmmm… I guess that’s really the main problem with “climate science”, and I guess that explains why all those predictions aren’t working out so well. Maybe a little basic physics and chemistry is exactly what you guys need?
Mosher writes:
“So, part of Jones’ defense is correct. CRU, specifically, Briffa had displayed this divergence clearly in prior publications. And the underlying literature does discuss the problem in detail.”
Not one of the Climategaters ever asked themselves whether the evidence of forty years, evidence that they had collected, showed that tree ring data is not useful as a proxy for temperature. The useful scientific result from all of Briffa’s research was that tree ring data should be called into question. Yet that fact, that divergence, is exactly “the decline” that they conspired to hide on the hockey stick. Briffa’s articles ask no questions of scientific methodology. He never asks his colleagues to question tree ring data. Not one of the Climategater conspiracy ever blinked on tree ring data and they do not today. You overlook the fact that they defend their older work even today. You cannot deny that the tragic flaw in each and every member of the Climategate conspiracy is an inability to be critical of their own work and a failing to appreciate scientific method.
jcrabb says:
March 19, 2011 at 4:43 am
“What is it about retired Professors to talk about subjects they have no idea about, he is a Physicist not a Climatologist, would anybody listen to a Chemist talkking about Physics?”
Ok, moderators, ok. I give. I will never again ask that you ban a troll, if you will just please ban jcrabb.
There is no WMO Magazine.
“jcrabb says:
March 19, 2011 at 8:40 am
Bernie:
Another issue that makes me wonder about Dr Muller’s expertise is that he states there has been no warming over the last ten years,”
I do not have graphs for the last 10 years, but check out the green bar graphs at the following. It shows that on the 5 data sets, the average for last 5 years was lower than for the last 10 years. So if graphs were to be drawn for the last 10 years, I cannot see how they would rise very much.
http://www.climate4you.com/GlobalTemperatures.htm#Comparing%20global%20temperature%20estimates
Phil Clarke says:
March 19, 2011 at 2:59 am
“Instead of being impressed by a prediction made based on scientific reasoning and then being validated by events, he implies that scientists shouldn’t be making predictions at all.”
Sir, Warmista cannot make predictions. They cannot because they do not have a set of physical hyptheses that enables them to explain and predict a rise in Earth’s temperatures. They have only simulations running on computers and such simulations cannot be used for prediction or explanation. When Muller says that “they” should not be predicting, he means that they should not be pretending to do something that they cannot do, namely, predict without the benefit of physical hypotheses.
The Harry_Read_Me.txt documents the data falsification and fabrication that corrupts the entire CRU database, the supposed clearinghouse of global climate data used everywhere in climate science. The fools gold standard of climate science. It leaves a smoldering crater where credibility used to be.
Ok, I said Briffa when I should have said Mueller.
But, still no straight answer to my questions?
If climate `scientists’ are (I assume) very small percentage of all the world’s qualified natural scientists, it does seem very, very odd that, if the AGW-Catastrophe-thesis is obvious horsecrap that the existing professional academies are not calling it and that there is (apart from some notable exceptions) no sense of a general push-back from the scientific community at large.
So, the all-powerful AGW crowd have got everyone that scared and intimidated?
Doesn’t add up …
Has it been shown that the trees diverged from the temperature or that the temperature diverged from the reported temperature. I’m still not clear on that. I know for a fact that it was miserably hot sleeping outside in August in south Alabama in the 70’s although NOAA says the average August low was in the 60’s. So, I’m calling BS on their historical record.
Artificial intelligence is no substitute for natural stupidity
laughed until the tears came, so clear. Thanks you so much
Apologies to Theo, Anton and JamesS, I retract saying Dr Muller is not a Climate Scientist and not qualified to comment, a regretable moment of ignorance and stupidity on my behalf.
mike g says:
March 19, 2011 at 5:41 pm
“Has it been shown that the trees diverged from the temperature or that the temperature diverged from the reported temperature.”
The trees diverged from what Briffa was reading on his thermometer (or interpolating from some exotic temperature grid known only to Warmista). The trees showed signs of a declining temperature over a period of about forty years, if you assume that the observed changes in the trees are a good proxy for temperature, as Briffa did. Briffa’s thermometer showed a rising temperature. Thus, what Briffa saw or discovered was a divergence between his tree ring data (declining temperature) and his thermometer data (rising temperature). This divergence is an important scientific discovery. Indeed, it undermines all tree ring data of the kind Briffa studied. It should have been in the title of a major peer-reviewed article in a major journal. However, being a Warmista, Briffa and The Team chose to “Hide The Decline” (divergence). Not only did Briffa lie, along with the others, but he betrayed his own scientific work to support the Global Warming Narrative.
jcrabb says:
March 19, 2011 at 7:14 pm
All is forgiven and forgotten.
jcrabb says:
March 19, 2011 at 5:31 am
He states that Coral reef bleaching is not increasing, which is totally wrong , it only started to occur since the 70′s, seems he should just stick to Physics.
[Reply – perhaps what you mean is ‘science only started reporting it to occur in the 70s’, which is not the same thing ~ jove, mod]
Have you ever considered the onset of coral reef bleaching in relation to sport diving? I remember reading Jacque Costeau’s narrative of his early days developing the aqualung. Since I read it 40 or more years ago and have read many hundreds of other books since, the name does not come immediately to mind. (Small matter. In today’s world, a quick electronic search can find nearly everything.) Although perhaps not in that volume, I distinctly remember Costeau mentioning that merely placing a hand on or rubbing a coral surface can cause damage to the coral organisms. In that light, what effect do any of you think that divers visiting these reefs might have? Boats shedding exhaust and oil into the water. Probably throwing food scraps over the side. Sewage dumping. Suntan lotions. Sunblock. Deodorants. Perfumes and colognes. Soap and detergent residues.
Not saying that’s what’s causing problems. I just like to bring to light possibilities. I’m not that dogmatic about things. I consider myself intelligent enough to at least have a glimmer of how much I will never know.
@PhD student: I hope that you can stand graduate school, if that is what you still want. I couldn’t stand the lies and corruption and fraud that I saw. I decided I would rather hang with a higher quality crowd.
And, for the possible attackers, I didn’t flunk out. I had passed my oral prelim and had good research results. I walked away. I’m a chemist and a good one. I’m also a good scientist who follows where the data leads not to someplace I want the data to go.
Old grump,
From http://www.fws.gov/coralreef/proceedings/Day%202%20PDF/5-Athline%20Clark.pdf
“•The bleaching response of corals in Hawaiian waters is complex but highly predictable.
•The bleaching threshold in corals is controlled primarily by temperature, irradiance and duration of exposure. This pattern is further modified by water motion, sedimentation and other factors as described by Jokiel (in press).
Results of extensive research on thermal tolerance of Hawaiian corals conducted in the 1970s and identification of a warming trend in Hawaiian waters led Jokiel and Coles (1990) to predict that mass bleaching would soon occur in the Hawaiian Archipelago if the trend continued.”
Sure enough major bleaching occured in 1996 and 2002, so it seems that these guys have nailled it.
Theo, are you saying the reduced sensitivity of recent tree-growth to temperature should have been the subject of a peer reviewed paper?
Hard to argue that the ‘divergence problem’ was concealed when it has its own wiki entry ….. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divergence_problem
In other news, Muller’s temperature series project is the subject of a mail from Ken Caldeira to Joe Romm…
“Their preliminary results sit right within the results of NOAA, NASA, and HadCRU, confirming that prior analyses were correct in every way that matters. Their results confirm the reality of global warming and support in all essential respects the historical temperature analyses of the NOAA, NASA, and HadCRU.”
So it seems we will soon have 4 surface based and two satellite estimates of global mean temperature trends all painting the same picture.
REPLY: PHIL FAIL – The “divergence problem” Wiki didn’t appear until AFTER Climategate. It was well concealed prior to that. From the Wiki Talk page:
Thanks for starting this, guys. I’ll contribute a bit as time permits. Cheers, Pete Tillman (talk) 19:50, 18 December 2009 (UTC)
And if you believe Joe Romm and his spin venom, you’ll believe most anything. I pity your lack of cognizant BS filtering ability. – Anthony
Well, if you want pre-climategate references, the ‘heavily-concealed’ Divergence problem was discussed ….
> In the literature. Eg.D’Arrigo et al., 2004, Cook et al. (2004), Briffa et al (Nature, 391, 678-682) and many others.
> In the IPCC AR4 report
> On climate-related blogs, including extensively at Climate Audit
I am not sure that Steve McIntyre would agree that publishing on his blog equals concealment!
By contrast prior to Nov 2009 there seems to be not a single mention of the cover art for the WMO pamphlet that Muller uses in his talk and which was the subject of the ‘hide the decline’ faux scandal. Does anybody know of one?
REPLY: the only real scandal here in this pointless discussion of yours (besides the actual real hide the decline issue) is Romm’s lie, which he’ll soon be called out for. Yes, I used the word “lie”. But you’ll believe anything I suppose. I’m sure you’ll rush to defend him when the rug gets pulled out from under him. – Anthony
Erm, the text quoted is from Ken Caldiera to JR. I guess we wait for the final paper to appear, it promises to be interesting.
TTFN.