No joy in Mudville – mighty Gavin has struck out

The original poem (reproduced here), is awesome…..
The outlook wasn’t brilliant for the Mudville Nine that day;
The score stood four to two, with but one inning more to play,
And then when Cooney died at first, and Barrows did the same,
A sickly silence fell upon the patrons of the game.
A straggling few got up to go in deep despair. The rest
Clung to that hope which springs eternal in the human breast;
They thought, if only Casey could get but a whack at that –
They’d put up even money, now, with Casey at the bat.
But Flynn preceded Casey, as did also Jimmy Blake,
And the former was a pudding and the latter was a fake;
So upon that stricken multitude grim melancholy sat,
For there seemed but little chance of Casey’s getting to the bat.
But Flynn let drive a single, to the wonderment of all,
And Blake, the much despised, tore the cover off the ball;
And when the dust had lifted, and they saw what had occurred,
There was Jimmy safe at second and Flynn a-hugging third.
Then from 5,000 throats and more there rose a lusty yell;
It rumbled through the valley, it rattled in the dell;
It knocked upon the mountain and recoiled upon the flat,
For Casey, mighty Casey, was advancing to the bat.
There was ease in Casey’s manner as he stepped into his place;
There was pride in Casey’s bearing and a smile on Casey’s face.
And when, responding to the cheers, he lightly doffed his hat,
No stranger in the crowd could doubt ’twas Casey at the bat.
Ten thousand eyes were on him as he rubbed his hands with dirt;
Five thousand tongues applauded when he wiped them on his shirt.
Then while the writhing pitcher ground the ball into his hip,
Defiance gleamed in Casey’s eye, a sneer curled Casey’s lip.
And now the leather-covered sphere came hurtling through the air,
And Casey stood a-watching it in haughty grandeur there.
Close by the sturdy batsman the ball unheeded sped-
“That ain’t my style,” said Casey. “Strike one,” the umpire said.
From the benches, black with people, there went up a muffled roar,
Like the beating of the storm-waves on a stern and distant shore.
“Kill him! Kill the umpire!” shouted someone on the stand;
And it’s likely they’d a-killed him had not Casey raised his hand.
With a smile of Christian charity great Casey’s visage shone;
He stilled the rising tumult; he bade the game go on;
He signaled to the pitcher, and once more the spheroid flew;
But Casey still ignored it, and the umpire said, “Strike two.”
“Fraud!” cried the maddened thousands, and echo answered fraud;
But one scornful look from Casey and the audience was awed.
They saw his face grow stern and cold, they saw his muscles strain,
And they knew that Casey wouldn’t let that ball go by again.
The sneer is gone from Casey’s lip, his teeth are clenched in hate;
He pounds with cruel violence his bat upon the plate.
And now the pitcher holds the ball, and now he lets it go,
And now the air is shattered by the force of Casey’s blow.
Oh, somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright;
The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light,
And somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout;
But there is no joy in Mudville — mighty Casey has struck out.

This is very cleaver. I we were talking about science, sadly pathetic. Since we are talking about “true belief” what one would expect.

Thanks News Staff, John West. Great! 😉

In Clima-ball, the Consensus gets an unlimited number of strikes, in hopes of getting a squibber which will justify all. So far, no luck.

I started looking at the CO2 – climate scare about when I retired about10 years ago because the whole Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming paradigm seemed extremely unlikely for a few basic reasons. My approach to science is very empirical – in the oil business your ideas will soon be tested by the expenditure of sometimes hundreds of millions of dollars – hard data is everything.
First – Anthropogenic -CO2 provides 0.12% of the greenhouse gas effect.
Check http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html
for details. Suppose CO2 doubled – right off it seems most unlikely that such a little tail would wag so big a dog as earths climate. – particularly when the evidence of solar control via orbital and solar changes ( eg Milankovich Cycles) is very clear in the geological record.
Even the alarmists -eg Hansen and co are willing to concede that a doubling of CO2 by itself would only increaae temperatures by about 1degree therefore they have to say that increases beyond that are driven by positive feedbacks – most notably by an increase in humidity. A system with positive feedbacks always runs away to disaster . If feedbacks were in fact positive – since CO2 levels have been much higher in the past – up to several thousand ppm – we wouldn’t be here to talk about it . For a good discussion of this based on data check the following. http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02148/RSL-HouseOfCommons_2148505a.pdf
The climate wars have been carried on to a large extent in the blogosphere . I have posted to various threads on various websites from time to time . Here is a post which briefly outlines my basic views.
” Climate Metric – and current trends.
There is currently a difference in approach to climate science between the sceptical Baconian – empirical appraoch solidly based on data and the Platonic IPCC approach – based on theoretical assumptions built into climate models. The question arises from the recent Muller – BEST furore -What is the best metric for a global measure of and for discussion of global warming or cooling. For some years I have suggested in various web comments that the Hadley Sea Surface Temperature data is the best metric for the following reasons . (Anyone can check this data for themselves – Google Hadley Cru — scroll down to SST GL and check the annual numbers.)
1. Oceans cover about 70% of the surface.
2. Because of the thermal inertia of water – short term noise is smoothed out.
3. All the questions re UHI, changes in land use local topographic effects etc are simply sidestepped.
4. Perhaps most importantly – what we really need to measure is the enthalpy of the system – the land measurements do not capture this aspect because the relative humidity at the time of temperature measurement is ignored. In water the temperature changes are a good measure of relative enthalpy changes.
5. It is very clear that the most direct means to short term and decadal length predictions is through the study of the interactions of the atmospheric sytems ,ocean currents and temperature regimes – PDO ,ENSO. SOI AMO AO etc etc. and the SST is a major measure of these systems. Certainly the SST data has its own problems but these are much less than those of the land data.
What does the SST data show? The 5 year moving SST temperature average shows that the warming trend peaked in 2003 and a simple regression analysis shows an nine year global SST cooling trend since then .The data shows warming from 1900 – 1940 ,cooling from 1940 to about 1975 and warming from 1975 – 2003. CO2 levels rose monotonically during this entire period .There has been no net warming since 1997 – 15 years with CO2 up 7.9% and no net warming. Anthropogenic CO2 has some effect but our knowledge of the natural drivers is still so poor that we cannot accurately estimate what the anthropogenic CO2 contribution is. Since 2003 CO2 has risen further and yet the global temperature trend is negative. This is obviously a short term on which to base predictions but all statistical analyses of particular time series must be interpreted in conjunction with other ongoing events and in the context of declining solar magnetic field strength and activity – to the extent of a possible Dalton or Maunder minimum and the negative phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillationa global 20 – 30 year cooling spell is more likely than a warming trend.
It is clear that the IPCC models , on which AL Gore based his entire anti CO2 scare campaign ,have been wrongly framed. and their predictions have failed completely. This paradigm was never well founded ,but ,in recent years, the entire basis for the Climate and Temperature trends and predictions of dangerous warming in the 2007 IPCC Ar4 Summary for Policy Makers has been destroyed. First – this Summary is inconsistent with the AR4 WG1 Science section. It should be noted that the Summary was published before the WG1 report and the editors of the Summary , incredibly ,asked the authors of the Science report to make their reports conform to the Summary rather than the other way around. When this was not done the Science section was simply ignored..
.Most of the predicted disasters are based on climate models. Even the Modelers themselves say that they do not make predictions . The models produce projections or scenarios which are no more accurate than the assumptions ,algorithms and data , often of poor quality,which were put into them. In reality they are no more than expensive drafting tools to produce power point slides to illustrate the ideas and prejudices of their creators. The IPCC science section AR4 WG1 section 8.6.4 deals with the reliability of the climate models .This IPCC science section on models itself concludes:
“Moreover it is not yet clear which tests are critical for constraining the future projections,consequently a set of model metrics that might be used to narrow the range of plausible climate change feedbacks and climate sensitivity has yet to be developed”
What could be clearer. The IPCC itself says that we don’t even know what metrics to put into the models to test their reliability.- i.e. we don’t know what future temperatures will be and we can’t yet calculate the climate sensitivity to anthropogenic CO2.This also begs a further question of what mere assumptions went into the “plausible” models to be tested anyway. Nevertheless this statement was ignored by the editors who produced the Summary. Here predictions of disaster were illegitimately given “with high confidence.” in complete contradiction to several sections of the WG1 science section where uncertainties and error bars were discussed.
A key part of the AGW paradigm is that recent warming is unprecedented and can only be explained by anthropogenic CO2. This is the basic message of the iconic “hockey stick ” However hundreds of published papers show that the Medieval warming period and the Roman climatic optimum were warmer than the present. The infamous “hide the decline ” quote from the Climategate Emails is so important. not so much because of its effect on one graph but because it shows that the entire basis if dendrothermometry is highly suspect. A complete referenced discussion of the issues involved can be found in “The Hockey Stick Illusion – Climategate and the Corruption of science ” by AW Montford.
Temperature reconstructions based on tree ring proxies are a total waste of time and money and cannot be relied on.
There is no evident empirical correlation between CO2 levels and temperature, In all cases CO2 changes follow temperature changes not vice versa.It has always been clear that the sun is the main climate driver. One new paper ” Empirical Evidence for a Celestial origin of the Climate Oscillations and its implications “by Scafetta from Duke University casts new light on this. http://www.fel.duke.edu/~scafetta/pdf/scafetta-JSTP2.pdf Humidity, and natural CO2 levels are solar feedback effects not prime drivers. Recent experiments at CERN have shown the possible powerful influence of cosmic rays on clouds and climate.
Solar Cycle 24 will peak in a year or two thus masking the cooling to some extent, but from 2014 on, the cooling trend will become so obvious that the IPCC will be unable to continue ignoring the real world – even now Hansen and Trenberth are desperately seeking ad hoc fixes to locate the missing heat.
I’ ve dumped a number of posts on my website at http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com/
There is a lot of repetition because the same points needed to be made again and again.
Obviously all this has political implications – but the science has to come first- I confess I am embarrassed to find myself on the same side as Limbaugh ,Santorium etc – but probably by chance they have got the science right. Personally I would describe myself as a rational Libertarian not quite a la Paul – but any philosophy carried to extremes -self detructs.
Check my website for my views on Waxman Markey if you’re interested.
As an afterthoug re melting Arctic ice — check http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/observation_images/ssmi1_ice_area.png
to see the actual current situation.
Today all the basic data re climate is there on the web in real time – while the details of climate change mechanisms are horrendously complex – if you stand back – .the gross picture is reasonably clear -cooling is more likely than warming for the next thirty years and beyond that we really can’t say much at this time. Cooling would be more dangerous than warming – for possible problems see . http://www.iwp.edu/docLib/20120312_FourHorsemenPart2.pdf

Foul Ball. Misdirection doesn’t answer the question. SLR is one of the claimed major impacts of AGW and often presented as evidence for GW.
The link below shows 879 (at last count) the number of things presumably caused by global warming. How many of these have not happened as well in addition to no SLR?
http://www.hootervillegazette.com/causedby.html

@ hagendl
Yep “picture” should have been pitcher!
Brain f:;t. LOL
How come stuff like that doesn’t jump out until after you hit the button?

Why would you bring a hockey stick to a baseball game?

Only in government programs do we have this notion that everybody plays and everybody wins. Regardless if you stink at the game. I should know. No one cares if my students are showing progress (and they are, significantly). What matters is governmental red tape, aka the filling out of useless forms that have no bearing on outcome.
These “researchers” just keep generating pages and pages of blather on my dime and yet they still get to play the game.

“You need a greater than a decade non-trend that is significantly different from projections. [0.2 – 0.3 deg/decade]”
And it’s a miss! A decade +1 of essentially no trend (slight cooling):
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/wti/from:2001/plot/wti/from:2001/trend

Did you just not notice the word “statistically”? Or did you not understand what it meant?
Suspecting that the rest of this post would be similarly nonsensical, I did not read on.

Schmidt swings again:
”that the stratosphere is not cooling as expected (this is a cleaner test than the surface temperatures because there are less extraneous factors)”
One problem with this statement is that the stratospheric temperature has a lot of extraneous factors that affect it – Ozone, which is affected by volcanic eruptions and CFC’s, and overturning in the Brewer Dobson circulation, as well as the variation in upwelling long wave radiation.
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2008JCLI2482.1

Eric Adler says:
“It is not really a miss, only close to a miss. The 95% confidence interval as 0.20, so a zero trend is not significantly different from projections.”
So, then, the corollary would be that the projected global warming that we’re going to change the entire power infrastructure of the world and create a global governing elite among other niceties to avoid is not significantly different from no warming at all.

Looking back at the link, Gavin’s actual reply to Hendrickson emphasized the spectrum of outgoing radiation, and was not exclusively about stratospheric cooling, as the excerpt indicated:
“[Response: The evidence that CO2 specifically is having an impact on climate comes from radiation measurements and in particular temperature trends in the stratosphere (which are cooling in contradiction of almost all other drivers). Combine that with expected changes predicted decades ago that have actually happened, you end up with a strong case that CO2 (along with the other GHGs and aerosols) are having an impact, and that will increase in decades to come. If you want to falsify this, you’d have to show that spectral data on CO2 absorption is wrong, that the stratosphere is not cooling as expected (this is a cleaner test than the surface temperatures because there are less extraneous factors), or improve the satellite measurements by an order of magnitude and have the fluxes not look like what is expected. Tall order, but conceivable. – gavin]”
Clearly the spectral changes outgoing radiation have been occurring:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/empirical-evidence-for-co2-enhanced-greenhouse-effect-advanced.htm

Eric Adler says:
“Gavin’s actual reply to Hendrickson emphasized the spectrum of outgoing radiation, and was not exclusively about stratospheric cooling, as the excerpt indicated”
In English “or” means “either”. The excerpt indicated that Gavin expressed that a lack of stratospheric cooling would be a condition that if not met would raise doubts. The link was provided for full context which as anyone who understands English can see he gives three separate conditions; one of which is lack of stratospheric cooling.
In industry we have the “80:20 rule” or what’s commonly called low hanging fruit, in economics it’s the Law of Diminishing Marginal Returns; these concepts describe the nature of a logarithmic relationship like the one CO2 has to warming. If you consider how much warming you get from an amount of CO2, the amount of CO2 must be increased exponentially in order get the same increment of warming. All indications including stratospheric cooling hiatus, global warming pause, and ocean heat content leveling suggest that CO2 has warmed the system about has much as it is going to without adding a whole lot more; in other words we’ve reached (and possibly even been past for awhile) the point of diminishing marginal returns such that our inputs of CO2 has very little warming effect.

What this poor old chap needs is a cricket bat and a sticky wicket.

Isn’t tha face smarmy. Looks like he is sucking a lemon.

@Donald L. Klipstein
I confess, I actually went “phishing” at RC for information on this: (Note: I used my ID.)
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/11/two-year-old-turkey/comment-page-7/#comments
Ray Ladbury gave me an opportunity to slip in:

Actually, stratospheric cooling stopped around ’93. Somehow, ~-0.1 W/m2 forcing is counteracting it (since 2000 ~-0.2 prior). Aerosol climatic cooling has the opposite fingerprint as GHG climatic warming, btw.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/temp-and-precip/msu/
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/333/6044/866.abstract
Here’s the problem: CO2 in 2000=~365 and 2010=~390, so, 5.35 x ln(390/365) = ~0.35 W/m2. How does ~-0.1 counter ~0.35?
Hint: 1) ozone depletion is estimated to be negative though there’s both + and – factors(another net ~-0.15 W/m2), 2) I use “~” for approximately so the values aren’t exacts, 3) there’s a myriad of other forcings both + and -, 4) lags in the system (thermal inertia), and 5) internal variability. (There might be more reasons, I’m not a climatologist.)

I listed every excuse I could think of as to why the stratosphere is not cooling (and everything else is not warming) other than the one that those @ RC are not likely to consider; that CO2 has done about all it can (peak AGW). Gavin responded; note he didn’t counter my math or elaborate much on any other of those “myriad” of forcings to explain how the +0.35 CO2 forcing was countered between 2000 and 2010. Perhaps he felt my explanation was sufficient; I don’t, they’re just excuses IMO.)
“[Response: MSU-4 (TLS) is dominated by trends in ozone, not CO2. CO2 effects are much more clearly seen higher up (in the stratospheric sounding unit (SSU) or radiosonde data). See papers by Bill Randall on this topic. With stabilisation of strat ozone levels, MSU4 should be expect to flatten out and with ozone recovery, will start to rise again. There are also volcanic and solar effects of course. – gavin]”
And that is why I added the link showing the upper stratosphere:
http://www.acd.ucar.edu/Research/Highlight/stratosphere.shtml
So, yes, there has been stratospheric cooling but it stopped around 1995 while CO2 continued to climb. Correlation does not prove causation, but de-correlation disproves causation.

“AGW is based on the radiative impact of CO2 and other atmospheric constituents – none of those things depend on sea level rise.”

That’s interesting. So if sea levels rise, it’s evidence of AGW, but if they don’t, it’s not evidence against. Cool trick, huh?

Julian Flood says:
April 1, 2012 at 1:37 am
“But look at the graph carefully and ponder what it tells: from 1910 to 1945 there was a rise very similar to the one from 1975 to 2000.”
Yep, though I usually compare 1910-1940 to 1970-2000. That pretty much nails it: this is a recurring cycle. The global average temperature metric is set to decline modestly until roughly 2030, then rise again for another 30 years. All perfectly naturally. This, of course, is why the CG1 emails showed them trying so hard to get rid of the mid-century warming peak.

VJ asks:
”Did you just not notice the word “statistically”? Or did you not understand what it meant?”
Could you point out between which two words the word “statistically” is used? Never mind, I’ll concede that when Gavin says significant he means statistically significant. Remember this statement was made in 2007. He states in the same response: ”All trends starting before 1996 are unambiguously positive and significant. But so is starting from 1999 or 2000 – 0.31+/-0.22 and 0.34+/-0.29 (95% confidence). Therefore the only significant trends you can find are spot on projections. Even the non-sig trends are still positive and with uncertainties that encompass the predictions.” So, do you really want to hang by a fingernail of “statistical” significance? In 2007 Gavin goes back to pre-1996 for “unambiguously positive and significant” trends and he describes the trends from 1999 and 2000 as “spot on projections”, now that it’s 2012 can we go back to 2001 and say the trend is “unambiguously positive and significant” and is the trend from 2004 and 2005 “spot on projections”? I think not. Can we say that even the “non-sig trends are still positive”? Nope.
Again: If no warming at all is not significantly different from the projections then why are the projections inciting so much concern? Will the next scare be global temperature stagnation and the required policy action be to stop burning fossil fuels? (Note: 1970’s cooling was opined as being caused by burning fossil fuels, then global warming came along with the opposite effect but the same cure.)
Suspecting that the rest of this post would be similarly nonsensical, I did not read on.
Imagine my disappointment.

Anthony, I love your blog and your supporters. As a simple RN, I don’t understand much of the material at times but enjoy the laughs, writing and comments.

Brian H – you’re quite right – my brain runs ahead of my fingers and spell check is boring.However, unlike some people, I’m not in the forgery business – being idiosyncratically weird in style is not therefore a great problem.

“Could you point out between which two words the word “statistically” is used?”
I mistyped, and meant to say “significantly”.
“Again: If no warming at all is not significantly different from the projections then why are the projections inciting so much concern?”
The projections are very significantly different from no warming. Perhaps you meant “observations”. Perhaps you’re not even aware of the absurdity of your position, that you had to move the goalposts from 1998 to 2001 to find a trend statistically identical to the expected warming but that you prefer the meaningless slope of. In a few years time you will be spouting the same nonsense but shifted forward another few years. Eventually as global temperatures soar you will no doubt be saying “but there has been no warming since 2028!”. As a simple exercise, I would like you to calculate the global average temperature anomaly for 2001-2010, 1991-2000, 1981-1990 and 1971-1980. What do you find?
“(Note: 1970’s cooling was opined as being caused by burning fossil fuels, then global warming came along with the opposite effect but the same cure.)”
Opined by whom?

VJ says:
“As a simple exercise, I would like you to calculate the global average temperature anomaly for 2001-2010, 1991-2000, 1981-1990 and 1971-1980.
I’ll put the kidding around aside for a moment. I’ve been researching this issue since 1994 as a professional responsibility. For the weight of evidence to favor acceptance of CAGW one has to ignore evidence from geology, archeology, history, satellites, etc. One basically has to ignore “when we live”, the end of an interglacial. Yes, I’m a skeptic, but what that really means is that I’m not saying they’re wrong, just that there’s insufficient evidence to reasonably conclude they’re right. Of course, they’re right about many things; and have a list of facts that support their position. So do the “Ban DHMO” folks. The CAGW paradigm is Zohnerism in my opinion. So, yes, those time periods you suggest looking at will show what you want, but how about looking at some truly significant time frames in relation to the Earth’s age. Look at the entire Holocene; see anything unusual in recent climate? I implore you, look at ALL the facts, not just the facts proponents of a position present, and then decide pro/con/inconclusive.

@VJ
Obviously you missed the irony of the entire situation over the last +decade:
Warmist in 2000: It’s warming and CO2 is climbing.
Skeptic in 2000: True but that’s a short term correlation. Let’s look at something significant like the Holocene, and viola the temperature graph looks pretty normal.
Skeptic in 2010: It’s not warming even as CO2 rises – de-correlation.
Warmist in 2010: True but that’s a short term trend. Let’s look at the longer term trend.
Skeptic reply in 2010: Sure let’s go back to the entire Holocene.
Warmist reply in 2010: Oh no, not THAT long of a term! We have to look at just the portion where CO2 and temperature rise together, nothing else.
Skeptic knows that spells Zohnerism.