From The Senate EPW Jim Inhofe Press Office, well worth your time to watch.
Dr. John Christy, Alabama’s State Climatologist, Professor of Atmospheric Science and Director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville testified before the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works hearing on global warming and stated:
“During the heat wave of late June and early July, high temperature extremes became newsworthy. Claims that there were thousands of records broken each day and that “this is what global warming looks like” got a lot of attention.
However, these headlines were not based on climate science. As shown in Figure 1.3 of my testimony it is scientifically more accurate to say that this is what Mother Nature looks like, since events even worse than these have happened in the past before greenhouse gases were increasing like they are today.
Now, it gives some people great comfort to offer a quick and easy answer when the weather strays from the average rather than to struggle with the real truth, which is, we don’t know enough about the climate to even predict events like this.
A climatologist looking at this heat wave would not be alarmed because the number of daily high temperature records set in the most recent decade was only about half the number set in the 1930s as shown in my written testimony. I suppose most people have forgotten that Oklahoma set a new record low temperature just last year of 31 below. And in the past two years, towns from Alaska to my home state of California established records for snowfall. The recent anomalous weather can’t be blamed on carbon dioxide.
See also his written testimony here
Australia needs a John Christy to counter alarmist shrill on this side of the Pacific.
When I used to work down the hall from Christy in the late 1980’s I still remember when the then senator Al Gore just ripped Christy up one side and down the other for the temerity of actually looking at old satellite data and processing it to get a long trend. This trend did not match the computer models of the time and he caught pure hell for it.
I bet he feels pretty good today.
Reblogged this on Climate Ponderings and commented:
WATCH THIS
This is good! This is better than I thought! 🙂
I would like to say lets get this on twitter and get it trending, but I’m too cynical to believe it would work. We are in the minority but there is enough of us to hold them to task at least (for now). Thank goodness for scientists like Christy and Spencer fighting the good fight it the true spirit of the scientific method. It can’t be easy for them. Great speech!
I found this blurb on Field and the Global Ecology program he heads up. Always good to remember he is building on Ehrlich’s Ecology work. http://news.stanford.edu/news/2004/april14/building-414.html
They are, according to Field’s own words in the blurb to right, seeking to “find a scientific foundation for a sustainable future.”
In other words, this is the future we want and we seek a rationale for imposing it. It’s not science driven. It’s not data driven. It is end result and theory driven.
Which is always when the ever useful social sciences and behavioral sciences plus federal funding plus monopoly over curricula, practices, pedagogy, etc start entering the fray. To create the desired science. To gain what Ehrlich called newmindedness. We must not forget when we are dealing with people who take a unified view of science. It may be factually wrong but it still guides their actions and influences their beliefs.
Christy, luckily, is still interested in the data of the natural sciences and reality itself. Not what will it take to alter it to get the future we desire.
Or the one grants pay to seek.
More power to Christy’s elbow – this and revelations like Anthony’s on Sunday will, hopefully, have a drip-drip effect upon people who presently support AGW but are amenable to common sense.
Thanks, Dr. Christy, for a clear summary of the state of climate science. This has provided (for me) a useful context in which to place Watts et al. It’s an important paper, it seems.
Bravo !
Undeniable facts once again..
Thank Dr. C !
What’s that unfamiliar sound? Good Lord, it must be common sense!
Eat it Barbara Boxer!
How ingracious can she be?
Kudos to Dr. Christy.
Global warming alarmism is what fear of an alien invasion looks like.
Mosher is already sand bagging,
http://climateaudit.org/2012/07/31/surface-stations/#comment-345586
“Perhaps, co author Christy should be sent a notice that the results he testified about were not fully baked.”
I am giving a friendly warning to Anthony not to get Mosher involved in any way relating to his paper. Everyone trusts McIntyre will accept whatever he finds relating to the data until the paper is published.
Great video
Thank you very much for bringing it so fast.
Am going to try and send it everywhere, saying that I got it here, and hope someone listens here in Spain, and gets us out of the anti- CO2 programs.
Poptech says:
August 1, 2012 at 7:02 pm
Apparently, Mosher thinks that he has found something that Christy overlooked. Or maybe he thinks he has found something that he needs to explain to Christy.
Who was it, just a day or so ago, who was applauding McIntyre’s website for its focused and controlled comments section?
Brilliant performance, Dr. Christy. The simplicity and directness of your exposition made your address a brilliant piece of work.
Dennis Ray Wingo says:
It turns out that Spencer and Christy’s trend was wrong, in large part because of errors in their analysis that have been corrected over time ( http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/31/senate-epw-hearing-on-global-warming-tomorrow/#comment-1049302 ), although the particular shortness of the time period of the satellite record also contributed.
It’s okay to be wrong though…Fortunately, Christy’s detractors don’t try to criminalize it in the way that the detractors of Mann have tried to for his being…well, not really wrong as far as the current thinking in the temperature reconstruction field goes.
I was just glad to see Boxer rise above petty snark. /sarc
Sen. Boxer’s pummeling of Dr. Christy for citing an unpublished, non-peer reviewed — and as we now know deeply flawed even according to its own authors — paper in his written testimony was even more stellar. You gonna post that part, Tony?
REPLY: The name’s Anthony and yes, EPW is posting more tomorrow and I’ll have them, including the liar IPPC author that Pielke Jr. took down today. Be sure to watch that. And no, it isn’t “deeply flawed” just incomplete, and will be better thanks to good people who have stepped up to help, unlike you. You seem to have no trouble whatsoever though with the Muller non peer review papers being discussed. Biased much?- Anthony
joeldshore says:
August 1, 2012 at 8:40 pm
Right or wrong, at least it was available so errors COULD be found. Good idea, eh?
Robin says:
August 1, 2012 at 5:47 pm
“To gain what Ehrlich called newmindedness.”
Hmmm….never seen that word before. Must be newspeak.
Personally I find that everything Erlich writes is full of …. wrongness.
joeldshore says:
August 1, 2012 at 8:40 pm
Fortunately, Christy’s detractors don’t try to criminalize it in the way that the detractors of Mann have tried to for his being…well, not really wrong as far as the current thinking in the temperature reconstruction field goes.
You do realize that you have just said Mann and his hockey stick have been excoriated for being *right* — and you don’t base your belief on the evidence, which proves that both are wrong, but on your opinion, which assumes the existence of a claimed, but unproven, consensus.
Joel–Christy is not testifying for, reasearching on, and ascribing to policies that will cost each of us big bucks and ensure the poverty of millions in third world countries–him being wrong doesn’t punish everyone else as Mann’s does…big difference.
Intentionally repeating myself, “warmists and skeptics thus find themselves on the mutual, chaotic climate ground where the efficacy of CO2 as a GHG had better be right.”
The “Precautionary Principle” is rather absolute on this point. The most common articulation of the precautionary principle is the Wingspread Statement on the Precautionary Principle, a consensus document drafted and adopted by a group of environmental activists and academics in January 1998. The statement defined the precautionary principle thus:
“When an activity raises threats of harm to human health or the environment, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically.”
At the half-precession old Holocene, the typical point where climate normally tips into a glacial (ice age), removing a “climate security blanket” GHG like CO2 (assuming, of course, that IR saturation is not possible with any concentration of CO2) might actually be the wrong thing to do, in terms of the Precautionary Principle.
Consider that removing the GHG CO2 from the late Holocene atmosphere might also be construed as the correct thing to do, naturally, so as not to impede the natural transition into the glacial state, thereby minimizing anthropogenic climate interference which might delay or prevent the next such ice age.
This, of course, represents a near paralyzing conundrum to the true and proper environmentalist. To be scientifically correct, CO2 above the politically correct concentration MUST be scavenged from the atmosphere so that nature may take its unimpeded course, which might just be the next glacial. But that places a true and proper environmentalist in diametric juxtaposition to the vaunted Precautionary Principle, which actually puts “human health” just a tad before “the environment” per the original wording!
What is a Homo sapiens sapiens (the wise wise one) to do? Legislate the “climate security blanket” to extinction and, regardless the cost, transition to the lowest density energy systems known (solar and wind) so that those humans with the best health can “weather” the next ice age naturally? Or would the wise wise one be able to recognize that the end extreme interglacials are ALWAYS attended by abrupt climate excursions to the tune of many to tens of meters of sea level highstands, naturally, which the heather devil gas CO2 might actually be the only “precautionary measures (which) should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically.”
???
Would you like fries with your Gordian Knot?
I have sent this to the Twitter sphere ( I have 3 thousand followers) plus I have a going into sophomore year son at Stanford. I have shared this and the Stanford project with him.
He has sent it to his Stanford roommate a chemical engineer major with a father who works as a chemical engineer at DOW –they are all against the hoax so Anthony work and Dr. Christy’s testimony is being spread.
joeldshore
As I continue reading the voluminous climate writings of Dr. Hubert H. Lamb, paying particular attention to studies covering the last 20,000 years, I don’t find any place for the simplistic CO2 driven anthropogenic global warming concept. Dr. Lamb, founder of the CRU, presents hundreds of peer-reviewed studies that establish a global, warmer Medieval Warm Period, a Little Ice Age, and a current warming period not nearly as warm as the six preceding. Unlike Mann, Dr. Lamb cites many temperature reconstruction studies, including tree rings, that refute Mann’s Hockey Stick decades before Mann tortured it from cherry picked samples. Lamb showed incontrovertibley that current warming was in no way unprecedented. In fact, since the end of the Ice Age each warming period has not reached the warmth of its predecessor. Sea level was higher 8,000 years ago, over 11,000 years prior to the Little Ice Age were warmer than the present, glaciers retreated farther during the Medieval Warm Period than now, and US temperatures were much warmer during the 1930’s. As Anthony Watts’ new study shows, current warming is primarily man-made as a result of poor thermometer siting and unwarranted temperature record adjustments. Drs. Pielke Sr. and Jr. have interesting comments concerning the inadequacy of Richard Muller’s BEST work (as does Dr. Mann), and that Anthony Watts’ study is a game changer.
Climate science finally shows signs of rationality.
Excellent testimony by John Christy – thank you John.
Dr. Christy says at 6:34 of his video presentation:
“As someone who has lived in Africa, I can say that without energy, life is brutal and short. So this is the goal of poor countries – to access energy.
So I’ll close with this unpleasant thought:
Demanding a reduction in worldwide CO2 emissions, without affordable reliable alternatives, means reducing the hope for prosperity of our fellow world citizens, who are struggling to escape their impoverished condition.”
___________________
I used to assume that the radical enviros shared my humanitarian values. I now conclude that this assumption is, in all probability, FALSE
The radical enviros are anti-human and consistently oppose moves to increase supplies of economic energy that will improve the wellbeing of humankind. This explains their apparently nonsensical opposition to oil and gas pipelines, hydraulic fracturing, the Canadian oilsands, etc. and their seemingly irrational support for inefficient, ineffective and environmentally destructive wind and solar power schemes.
The radical enviros stance is NOT primarily about the environment – that is a smokescreen – their objective is to increase energy costs, cause energy starvation and even to reduce human population on a global scale. Their seemingly nonsensical positions are all consistent with this theme and are also consistent with their following statements.
(h/t to Wayne for the following quotations)
”My three goals would be to reduce human population to about 100 million worldwide, destroy the industrial infrastructure and see wilderness, with its full complement of species, returning throughout the world.”
David Foreman,
co-founder of Earth First!
”A total population of 250-300 million people, a 95% decline from present levels, would be ideal.”
Ted Turner,
Founder of CNN and major UN donor
”The prospect of cheap fusion energy is the worst thing that could happen to the planet.”
Jeremy Rifkin,
Greenhouse Crisis Foundation
”Giving society cheap, abundant energy would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun.”
Paul Ehrlich,
Professor of Population Studies,
Author: “Population Bomb”, “Ecoscience”
”The big threat to the planet is people: there are too many, doing too well economically and burning too much oil.”
Sir James Lovelock,
BBC Interview
”We need to get some broad based support, to capture the public’s imagination… So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements and make little mention of any doubts… Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.”
Stephen Schneider,
Stanford Professor of Climatology,
Lead author of many IPCC reports
”Unless we announce disasters no one will listen.”
Sir John Houghton,
First chairman of the IPCC
”It doesn’t matter what is true, it only matters what people believe is true.”
Paul Watson,
Co-founder of Greenpeace
”Childbearing should be a punishable crime against society, unless the parents hold a government license. All potential parents should be required to use contraceptive chemicals, the government issuing antidotes to citizens chosen for childbearing.”
David Brower,
First Executive Director of the Sierra Club
”We’ve got to ride this global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic and environmental policy.”
Timothy Wirth,
President of the UN Foundation
”No matter if the science of global warming is all phony… climate change provides the greatest opportunity to bring about justice and equality in the world.”
Christine Stewart,
former Canadian Minister of the Environment
”The only way to get our society to truly change is to frighten people with the possibility of a catastrophe.”
Emeritus Professor Daniel Botkin
”Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?”
Maurice Strong,
Founder of the UN Environmental Program
”A massive campaign must be launched to de-develop the United States. De-Development means bringing our economic system into line with the realities of ecology and the world resource situation.”
Paul Ehrlich,
Professor of Population Studies,
Author: “Population Bomb”, “Ecoscience”
”If I were reincarnated I would wish to return to earth as a killer virus to lower human population levels.”
Prince Phillip, Duke of Edinburgh,
husband of Queen Elizabeth II,
Patron of the Patron of the World Wildlife Foundation
”The only hope for the world is to make sure there is not another United States. We can’t let other countries have the same number of cars, the amount of industrialization we have in the US. We have to stop these third World countries right where they are.”
Michael Oppenheimer
Environmental Defense Fund
”Global Sustainability requires the deliberate quest of poverty, reduced resource consumption and set levels of mortality control.”
Professor Maurice King
”Current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class – involving high meat intake, use of fossil fuels, appliances, air-conditioning, and suburban housing – are not sustainable.”
Maurice Strong,
Rio Earth Summit
”Complex technology of any sort is an assault on the human dignity. It would be little short of disastrous for us to discover a source of clean, cheap, abundant energy, because of what we might do with it.”
Amory Lovins,
Rocky Mountain Institute
”I suspect that eradicating small pox was wrong. it played an important part in balancing ecosystems.”
John Davis,
Editor of Earth First! Journal
**********************************
William McClenney 10:27 p.m.
re Gordian knot
Alexander solved the conundrum with a swift stroke of his sword
who will be our Alexander?
joeldshore says Total Nonsense on August 1, 2012 at 8:40 pm
Joel – you are repeating lies from warmist websites as if they were true.
Considerable political noise resulted from minor differences in the results between RSS and UAH (Christy and Spencer) analyses of the same satellite data to obtain atmospheric temperatures. Yes, these differences have largely been resolved, No they were not that material, not even at the time. It was largely political noise by the warmists to try to discredit the UAH work, and that noise was false.
Furthermore, to claim that Mann’s hockey stick is valid flies in the face of all the credible work done on it, from the initial work of Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick to the North and Wegman Commission reports.
Many of us already knew that Mann was false long before Steve McIntyre dissected Mann’s flawed mathematical analysis, because we knew that one pal-reviewed study (MBH98) does not eliminate from the historic record both the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) and the Little Ice Age (LIA).
Sallie Baliunas and Willie Soon complied the extensive technical literature supporting the existence of the MWP and LIA, and were vilified by the usual odious subjects. An unbiased reading of the literature leads to only one conclusion – the MWP and LIA were real and significant.
You are hanging out with a bad crowd Joel. Try reading more, and thinking for yourself.
Mosher is heavily invested in BEST and he counters any criticism direct or indirect with often evasive assertions and a refusal to discuss the data and methods BEST uses.
I’ve yet to see any statement of how BEST is different and better than HADCRUT and GISSTEMP. Except that it uses x thousand more stations, which is irrelevant.
“Allan MacRae says:
August 1, 2012 at 11:41 pm
Excellent testimony by John Christy – thank you John.”
How does one make the list of quotes in Allan Macrae’s post above go viral?
Allan MacRae list of quotes above are powerful, especially when strung together in a single post. I have been in agreement with the thought of the greenies anti-humanness.
Thanks for the post.
One thing in common that all global warming alarmists share: they are really bad liars. Their lies and fraudulent studies are all too easily taken apart. IPCC has outlived its failed propagandist purpose and should be put down, like a diseased cow.
Question: is Michael Mann’s canuckophobia caused by his subconscious desire to kill his own hockey stick chart? Since Canadians are really good at ice hockey–is Mann’s recent public conflicts with Canadians Steve McIntyre, Ross McKitrick, Tim Ball, and Mark Steyn simply an unconscious cry for help? Poor Mann, all that pressure and stress must be suffocating. I hope Mann really sues Steyn, so that Mann can finally be put out of his suffering.
Treeman;
Bob Carter will do. http://www.australianclimatemadness.com/2011/03/bob-carters-ten-little-facts-about-global-warming/
What you need is pols willing to listen.
@William Howard McClenney says: August 1, 2012 at 10:27 pm
The “Precautionary Principle” is rather absolute on this point. The most common articulation of the precautionary principle is the Wingspread Statement on the Precautionary Principle, a consensus document drafted and adopted by a group of environmental activists and academics in January 1998.
/////////////////////////////////
Adopted on behalf of WHOM? I don’t recall them consulting me. What authority, pray, does any groups of “environmental activists” have in the world of science? What role does an agenda have in science?
As has been shown, the cost of applying the precautionary principle in the case of CAGW is likely to be many multiples that of dealing with CAGW. Were it even happening.
I remember when record cold temperatures were set in the USA a few years back. Warmists reminded us, quite rightly, that the USA was a very small part of the world. Yet the heat wave managed to elevate the USA into an important indicator of what GLOBAL WARMING looks like. Funny that. 😉
By the same token a heatwave in the US does not mean AGW is right. Did I mention anything about the recent east European winter and excess cold weather deaths? Oh, never mind.
Dr Christy: ‘If we must legislate we should base it on observed measurements and not on models.’ BUT ‘When it comes to legislation or regulatory actions there is nothing that we can do to alter what the climate is going to do.’
Any chance that the New York Times could be talked into running Dr. Christy’s testimony as an op-ed? Doesn’t fit their agenda, I know. But they ran Muller’s self-flagellation. Fair is fair.
/Mr Lynn
Well, you could send the quotes in an email to ten people, telling each of the ten to send it to ten more, and so on, and if they don’t, Michael Mann will sue them. /sarc
/Mr Lynn
Boxer’s gratuitous rudeness and crudeness know no bounds.
Why, Oh why does none of this seem to get into the mainstream media? I have been waiting to read about Anthony’s brilliant work on surface temperature stations in the USA and of NOAA’s massaging of what was already corrupted data.
Allan Macrae (h/t to Wayne for the following quotations)
”My three goals would be to reduce human population to about 100 million worldwide, destroy the industrial infrastructure and see wilderness, with its full complement of species, returning throughout the world.”
David Foreman,
co-founder of Earth First! Etc Etc
—————-
Thanks for this devastating and incriminating series of quotes from guilty people. Can you povide us with some clues as to how to source and reference them? This could just prove a valuable wake up call for some useful idiots I know! Thanks
Please take a few minutes and blog/pass this link, and other A. Watts links, on to other blogs – “while it’s hot!”
Hopefully .. With Christie and Spencer heading up a Satelite Operation, and now Watts establishing a protocol to produce a reasonably accurate temperature metric from thermometer data, .. this whole b.s. of Global Warming histeria can be put to rest for good.
Anthony .. I sure hope that you and your collegues are planning on doing a global exercise like your recent paper. I’m sure that once you get the TOBS adjustments out of the way, along with ironing out a few other kinks, that finally, a reasonable land/sea based temp metric can be had that we can all believe in. Maybe .. after your paper is published, you and et al., should apply for a Federal Grant to complete the exercise on a global scale.
joeldshore says:
August 1, 2012 at 8:40 pm
the difference is they didn’t know they were wrong and plunge on ahead knowing full well that the work they did would cost untold damage to economies and life the world over. Mann and others had an agenda and ignored data that didn’t fit that agenda to the detriment of the world economy.
Boxer is in charge of this circus. Someone should take her apart publicly and repeatedly for her statement about 97% of climate scientists supporting her view and that of the IPCC. That figure needs to exposed for what it is; a repeated invention based upon the views of very few scientists (about 75, I seem to recall) who dared to respond to an extremely misleading question. Those 75, became the 97% of all climate scientists. The other thousands to tens of thousands knew better than to respond. Please hammer this number all of the time, not just when it appears from the mouths of naifs and babes (and I am not calling sen. Boxer a babe, but a naif).
viejecita says:
August 1, 2012 at 7:27 pm
Great video
Thank you very much for bringing it so fast.
Am going to try and send it everywhere, saying that I got it here, and hope someone listens here in Spain, and gets us out of the anti- CO2 programs.
Lo pondré en mi blog, que nadie lee, together with Allan McRae post, translated, with the envoros goals. It seems relevant to me, so many sentences drawing a unmistakable picture of totalitarism. Si quieres difundirlo… Cheers
typo above : Sallie Baliunas and Willie Soon compiled …
David Ball said:
It is, really? So, could you please give me a link to the code for the UAH analysis? The fact is that while Mann has released all of his code for his more recent PNAS paper (so much so that even McIntyre can’t find anything to complain about in that regard) and most everything for his earlier work, Spencer and Christy haven’t released any publicly. Not one little tiny piece. (They did allow RSS to see a small piece of their code, although the word in the grapevine is that it apparently took a fair bit of work on RSS’s part to get it.)
If the fundamental difference between Spencer & Christy and Mann regards access to their code, Mann wins hands-down.
Day By Day said:
That is exactly what he is doing by advocating a policy of doing nothing to mitigate our grand experiment on the Earth’s climate system (and ocean chemistry).
Allan MacRae says:
Your statements are wrong from start to finish. First of all, I am not repeating anything from anywhere. I linked to a comment of mine on a different thread here where I actually presented calculations that I did myself of what the trend is over various time periods with the current version of the UAH LT data and I compared that to the trend claimed at the time in Spencer and Christys papers. By doing this, I can not only determine how their claimed trend has changied over time but I can also say what part of that change is due to changes in their algorithm and what part is due to having a longer data record. (Why nobody else had done this is puzzling to me…It is not hard to do.)
And, contrary to what you claimed, the differences were very material. THey allowed Spencer and Christy to claim (and many others to repeat) that the satellite record showed cooling not warming in the troposphere, whereas we now know from the current UAH and RSS LT records that it shows warming at about the same rate (within uncertainties) as the surface record.
REPLY to Poptech
Exactly. Mr. Mosher knows my email, and has my telephone number, and mailing address, and so far he hasn’t been able to bring himself to communicate his concerns to me directly, but instead chooses these potshots everywhere.
The project was worked on for a year before we released, a number of people looked at it at various stages. Dr. John Christy was in fact the one who suggested we should put a note in about TOBS at the end, saying we will continue to investigate it it, because he knew it would be an important consideration. I concurred. We also knew that to do it right, the TOBS comparison couldn’t simply rely on the “trust us” data from NCDC. Christy had already been through that with his study of irrigation effects in California and had to resort to the original data on B91 forms to disentangle the issue.
What we are finding so far suggests NCDC’s TOBS times (we have the master file for all stations) don’t match what the observers actually do. That’s a discrepancy that we need to resolve before we can truly measure the effect along with siting.
Mr. Mosher would do well to note this comparison.
1. When The Team gets criticized on a technical point, they typically dismiss it with a wave of the hand, saying “it doesn’t matter”. Upside down proxies and lat/lon conflations are good examples.
2. When we get criticized on a technical point, we stop and work on it to address the issue as best we can.
Whining won’t help #2 go any faster.
– Anthony
Poptech says:
August 1, 2012 at 7:02 pm
Mosher is already sand bagging,
http://climateaudit.org/2012/07/31/surface-stations/#comment-345586
“Perhaps, co author Christy should be sent a notice that the results he testified about were not fully baked.”
I am giving a friendly warning to Anthony not to get Mosher involved in any way relating to his paper….
_____________________________
I will second that warning – Never forget the Trojan Horse strategy.
Regarding “my” above string of anti-human quotations by radical enviros:
Credit goes to “Wayne” who published these quotations (and possibly to others for compiling them).
It is not my work, and I cannot take credit for it.
I do believe the quotations are accurate – I was already familiar with many of them.
So by all means, let these quotations go viral – it is time to shed some light on the true intentions of those who have hijacked the environmental movement to further their own odious political objectives.
_____________________________
Further evidence:
Here is an excerpt written by Patrick Moore, a co-founder of Greenpeace.
Note especially the last two points.
http://www.greenspirit.com/key_issues/the_log.cfm?booknum=12&page=3
The Rise of Eco-Extremism
Two profound events triggered the split between those advocating a pragmatic or “liberal” approach to ecology and the new “zero-tolerance” attitude of the extremists. The first event, mentioned previously, was the widespread adoption of the environmental agenda by the mainstream of business and government. This left environmentalists with the choice of either being drawn into collaboration with their former “enemies” or of taking ever more extreme positions. Many environmentalists chose the latter route. They rejected the concept of “sustainable development” and took a strong “anti-development” stance.
Surprisingly enough the second event that caused the environmental movement to veer to the left was the fall of the Berlin Wall. Suddenly the international peace movement had a lot less to do. Pro-Soviet groups in the West were discredited. Many of their members moved into the environmental movement bringing with them their eco-Marxism and pro-Sandinista sentiments.
These factors have contributed to a new variant of the environmental movement that is so extreme that many people, including myself, believe its agenda is a greater threat to the global environment than that posed by mainstream society. Some of the features of eco-extremism are:
• It is anti-human. The human species is characterized as a “cancer” on the face of the earth. The extremists perpetuate the belief that all human activity is negative whereas the rest of nature is good. This results in alienation from nature and subverts the most important lesson of ecology; that we are all part of nature and interdependent with it. This aspect of environmental extremism leads to disdain and disrespect for fellow humans and the belief that it would be “good” if a disease such as AIDS were to wipe out most of the population.
• It is anti-technology and anti-science. Eco-extremists dream of returning to some kind of technologically primitive society. Horse-logging is the only kind of forestry they can fully support. All large machines are seen as inherently destructive and “unnatural’. The Sierra Club’s recent book, “Clearcut: the Tragedy of Industrial Forestry”, is an excellent example of this perspective. “Western industrial society” is rejected in its entirety as is nearly every known forestry system including shelterwood, seed tree and small group selection. The word “Nature” is capitalized every time it is used and we are encouraged to “find our place” in the world through “shamanic journeying” and “swaying with the trees”. Science is invoked only as a means of justifying the adoption of beliefs that have no basis in science to begin with.
• It is anti-organization. Environmental extremists tend to expect the whole world to adopt anarchism as the model for individual behavior. This is expressed in their dislike of national governments, multinational corporations, and large institutions of all kinds. It would seem that this critique applies to all organizations except the environmental movement itself. Corporations are criticized for taking profits made in one country and investing them in other countries, this being proof that they have no “allegiance” to local communities. Where is the international environmental movements allegiance to local communities? How much of the money raised in the name of aboriginal peoples has been distributed to them? How much is dedicated to helping loggers thrown out of work by environmental campaigns? How much to research silvicultural systems that are environmentally and economically superior?
• It is anti-trade. Eco-extremists are not only opposed to “free trade” but to international trade in general. This is based on the belief that each “bioregion” should be self-sufficient in all its material needs. If it’s too cold to grow bananas – – too bad. Certainly anyone who studies ecology comes to realize the importance of natural geographic units such as watersheds, islands, and estuaries. As foolish as it is to ignore ecosystems it is absurd to put fences around them as if they were independent of their neighbours. In its extreme version, bioregionalism is just another form of ultra-nationalism and gives rise to the same excesses of intolerance and xenophobia.
• It is anti-free enterprise. Despite the fact that communism and state socialism has failed, eco-extremists are basically anti-business. They dislike “competition” and are definitely opposed to profits. Anyone engaging in private business, particularly if they are successful, is characterized as greedy and lacking in morality. The extremists do not seem to find it necessary to put forward an alternative system of organization that would prove efficient at meeting the material needs of society. They are content to set themselves up as the critics of international free enterprise while offering nothing but idealistic platitudes in its place.
• It is anti-democratic. This is perhaps the most dangerous aspect of radical environmentalism. The very foundation of our society, liberal representative democracy, is rejected as being too “human-centered”. In the name of “speaking for the trees and other species” we are faced with a movement that would usher in an era of eco-fascism. The “planetary police” would “answer to no one but Mother Earth herself”.
• It is basically anti-civilization. In its essence, eco-extremism rejects virtually everything about modern life. We are told that nothing short of returning to primitive tribal society can save the earth from ecological collapse. No more cities, no more airplanes, no more polyester suits. It is a naive vision of a return to the Garden of Eden.
***************
I’m agnostic on the whole issue because the data is agnostic. When you have to torture the data in order to maybe derive a potential climate signal you have problems. I seriously doubt that engineers who design automobile brakes torture their safety and performance data in order to get the correct “signal” (at least I hope not). I don’t get excited about heat waves or cold snaps when concerned about climate anymore than a football coach gets excited by a 1st quarter 45 yard run by his tailback – there are stil 3 quarters remaining.
I think from a public perception, memory and habit are more at play than anything else. A 20 year old has been alive during a period of significant warming (if he lived in the US). Winters were generally mild to warm, spring and summers generally hot and uneventful. Yet, if he experienced a truly prolonged late autumn cold snap that were rather the norm in the US during the 1960s and 1970s, he would think the world was coming to an end. The inverse is probably what happened during the 1980s and 1990s when tens of millions of Baby Boomers noticed that the winters were generally getting warmer, drier and shorter. I remember quite a few Chritsmas days where the temps in the Great Lakes were in the low 40s and the ground snow-free. People Like Hansen had an easy time convincing the general public that very soon cold snowy winters would become a thing of the past.
Public perceptions and memory play a big part in the debate. Climate Alarmists over-played their winning hand. They’ve moved the goal posts so often that they do not fully understand what fools they’ve made themselves into.
Allan MacRae
The North commission basically vindicated Mann’s work. They did highlight the uncertainties involved and the strong reliance of the result on the Western North America tree rings, but this is something that Mann et al themselves had already noted in their 1998 paper. They noted that Mann’s PCA method was potentially problematic and should be avoided but that it did not adversely affect the results in this case. (Mann has attempted to address this issue in subsequent work.)
The Wegman report is not taken seriously by anyone in the field. It was commissioned by the Republican majority on the committee who gave a narrow charge to someone who they knew could be counted on to tell them what they wanted to hear. And, of course, as we now know, there were serious issues of plagiarism involved as well as questions as to the extent that Wegman et al even checked M&M’s work independently versus basically taking their results on faith. (Wegman has also been completely unforthcoming in answering basic questions about what he did, let alone releasing code and so forth, something that apparently matters to you guys in certain contexts.)
Mann’s work did not eliminate the MWP and the LIA. What it found was that the MWP in particular did not have hemispheric-wide warmth as high as the latter part of the 20th century. This is not because there were no periods of warmth in some places…even many places (and most pronounced in Europe)…but rather largely because the warmth in different places was not synchronous and hence when you look hemispherically, what you get is a broad diffuse bump in Northern hemispheric temperatures. While some other studies (like Moberg et al) have shown somewhat greater variability, most of them have also shown temperatures likely lower in the MWP than in modern times.
That paper was such a joke that its publication caused mass resignations of the editorial staff of the journal, including vonStorch, who is no friend of Michael Mann’s. And, even the publisher admitted that the editorial process had failed in that case, the disagreement between him and the editorial staff that resigned being only about whether it represented an isolated problem or more systemic problems in the editorial policies of the journal.
Loved Allan MacRae’s list of anti-human comments and I copied them to use in a future post. He gave h/t to Wayne, but would like to credit both with a link, if they are available…
Incidentally, the UN’s Agenda 21 is all about herding people into cities to leave the countryside open so it can go back to it’s wild, “natural” state. It’s called the Wildlands project, and most of the people listed by MacRae are involved at some level.
Anthony says:
Let’s take the “upside down proxies” example. In fact, the Tiljander proxies were not “upside down”…Their orientation was automatically determined by the algorithm based on its correlation with the temperature.
Now, the claim is that the modern part of those proxies may have been contaminated and that the correlation was thus spurious…and that the correlation with temperature should really go the other way. Mann et al dealt with that issue by demonstrating in their supplementary materials what results they got if they eliminated the Tiljander proxies.
So, the reason “it doesn’t matter” is that they had already addressed the issues surrounding possible contamination of the Tiljander proxies.
REPLY: Steve McIntyre will likely have a different view than yours, or he would not have made such an issue of it. My view is that if orientation of data doesn’t matter, why use it at all? YAD061 is another example of a Team dismissal, but it matters much. – Anthony
I am thoroughly disappointed with Mosher. Since he tagged with Lucia and Zeke he has completely lost the plot. He makes cryptic comments sans valeur. Criticisms without a critique. A few years back he took a break from blogging and I suspect fell in with a bad crowd. Sad really sad.
“Less is more.”
– Mies van der Rohe
“BEST is crap.”
– Allan MacRae
William McClenney says:
August 1, 2012 at 10:27 pm
Intentionally repeating myself, “warmists and skeptics thus find themselves on the mutual, chaotic climate ground where the efficacy of CO2 as a GHG had better be right.”
The “Precautionary Principle” is rather absolute on this point….
_______________________________
The “Precautionary Principle” got tossed out a DECADE ago. The discipline of Risk Assessment is now it’s replacement.
In short, the “precautionary principle” is a notion which supports taking protective action before there is complete scientific proof of a risk; that is, action should not be delayed simply because full scientific information is lacking.
The discipline of risk assessment, one of the basic obligations of the SPS Agreement, was developed to guide action in the face of incomplete knowledge about risks to health. It focuses on probabilities of hazards occurring, and the probable consequences, because complete knowledge is very rare..
Risk analysis has been recognized and validated in World Trade Organization (WTO) decision processes.
From the Internationa Food Safety Network Website
If Risk Assessment instead of the “the meaningless logic of the precautionary principle” is now used to determine what food (and drugs) are safe then the same principle of SCIENTIFIC Risk Assessment should also apply to CAGW.
So far the actual science (not incorrect models) show that:
1. CO2 is a plant food and the biosphere is blooming.
2. We are at the tail end of the Holocene with the overall temperatures trending colder graph.
3. That wind and solar power have adverse effects on the environment and energy grid and only add to certain individuals wealth.
4. What CO2 warming there might be can not be distinguished from the signal noise.
5. The surface temperature data sets are riddled with problems and citizen groups in several countries are challenging those data sets.
6. So far the implementation of CO2 mitigations strategies have starved children and created food riots in over thirty countries. They have caused the deaths of 7,800 people from fuel poverty this winter in the UK alone. They have killed endangered raptors and bats. They have caused major pollution in China turning river so toxic the water can not even be touched.
Risk Assessment would say that adaption is a heck of a lot better than the evils so far visited on earth by the CAGW pushing international corporations and their paid for politicians and scientists.
Joel – you are a waste of breath.
North, under oath, agreed with Wegman’s conclusions. The only question remaining about Mann’s hockey stick is not technical – it is the question of deliberate fraud.
Soon and Baliunas were subjected to political attacks, not technical ones. Your alleged “mass resignations” was a dishonest exercise – a political smokescreen.
Gail Combs says: August 2, 2012 at 7:37 am
Excellent post, thank you Gail.
Statement of James M. Inhofe
Hearing: Full Committee hearing entitled, “Update on the Latest Climate Change Science and Local Adaptation Measures.”
Wednesday, August 1, 2012
I must say it feels like we’re back to the good old days. It may be hard to believe, but it was in February of 2009, during the height of the global warming alarmist movement, that this committee last held a hearing on global warming science. Back then we heard promises from the Obama administration of a clean energy revolution with green jobs propped up by billions in taxpayer dollars to companies like Solyndra.
What came of all those promises? The global warming movement has completely collapsed and cap-and-trade is dead and gone.
I suspect a look back over the past three years will be a little painful for my friends on the other side. In 2009 with a Democratic President, and overwhelming Democratic majorities in the House and the Senate, global warming alarmists were on top of the world – they thought they would finally reach their goal of an international agreement that would eliminate fossil fuels. Yet the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill didn’t happen.
Of course, what drove the collapse of the global warming movement was that the science of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was finally exposed. For years I had warned that the United Nations was a political body, not a scientific body – and finally the mainstream media took notice:
New York Times editorial: “Given the stakes, the IPCC cannot allow more missteps and, at the very least, must tighten procedures and make its deliberations more transparent. The panel’s chairman…is under fire for taking consulting fees from business interests…” (February 17, 2010)
The Washington Post: “Recent revelations about flaws in that seminal IPCC report, ranging from typos in key dates to sloppy sourcing, are undermining confidence not only in the panel’s work but also in projections about climate change.
Newsweek: “Some of the IPCC’s most-quoted data and recommendations were taken straight out of unchecked activist brochures, newspaper articles…”
UK Daily Telegraph on Climategate: “The worst scientific scandal of our generation.”
Just how unpopular is the global warming movement now? The Washington Post recently published a poll revealing that Americans no longer worry about global warming and one of the reasons is because they don’t trust the scientists’ motivations.
The IPCC has even lost the trust of the left. Andrew Revkin of the New York Times recently called for IPCC chair Pachauri to make a choice between global warming activism and leading the IPCC. They are also saying similar things about global warming alarmist James Hansen. As David Roberts of Grist acknowledged, Hansen has “become so politicized that people tend to dismiss him.”
Just one look at this committee and we can see how bad things have gotten for the alarmists: today there are no federal witnesses here to testify about the grave dangers of global warming. President Obama himself never dares to mention global warming and some on the left have noticed: Bill McKibben recently criticized the President for not attending the Rio + 20 sustainability conference noting that, “Unlike George H.W. Bush, who flew in for the first conclave, Barack Obama didn’t even attend.”
It must be very hard for my friends on the left to watch the President who promised he would slow the rise of the oceans posing in front of pipelines in my home state of Oklahoma pretending to support oil and gas.
I imagine they are trying to keep quiet because they know President Obama is still moving forward with his global warming agenda – he just doesn’t want the American people to know about it.
Now what the American people don’t know: President Obama is doing through his bureaucracy what he couldn’t do legislatively. He is spending billions of taxpayer dollars on his global warming agenda. We’ve already identified $68 billion.
Today we should have a fascinating debate. I want to thank climatologist Dr. John Christy for appearing before the Committee to provide his insights. I am also looking forward to the testimony of Dr. Margo Thorning, a noted economist who will discuss the economic pain of the Obama EPA’s current regulations.
We’ve been through this now for the past 3 ½ years and the results are clear: President Obama’s green energy agenda has been a disaster. The time has come to put these tired, failed policies to rest and embrace the US energy boom so that we can put Americans back to work, turn this economy around, become totally energy independent from the Middle East, and ensure energy security for years to come.
###
Any video without the huge introduction?
Can’t share that, no one will survive the first two minutes.
I don’t have time to back-up all my statements, but here is a critical point regarding North agreeing with Wegman:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/05/18/the-question-put-to-dr-mann-at-disneyland-today/#comment-989861
Here is direct evidence of the facts: Both the Wegman and North Committees condemned the Mann et al methodology.
Excerpts – Wegman Report
http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/WegmanReport.pdf
The debate over Dr. Mann’s principal components methodology has been going on for nearly three years. When we got involved, there was no evidence that a single issue was resolved or even nearing resolution. Dr. Mann’s RealClimate.org website said that all of the Mr. McIntyre and Dr. McKitrick claims had been ‘discredited’. UCAR had issued a news release saying that all their claims were ‘unfounded’. Mr. McIntyre replied on the ClimateAudit.org website. The climate science community seemed unable to either refute McIntyre’s claims or accept them. The situation was ripe for a third-party review of the types that we and Dr. North’s NRC panel have done.
While the work of Michael Mann and colleagues presents what appears to be compelling evidence of global temperature change, the criticisms of McIntyre and McKitrick, as well as those of other authors mentioned are indeed valid.
“Where we have commonality, I believe our report and the [NAS] panel essentially agree. We believe that our discussion together with the discussion from the NRC report should take the ‘centering’ issue off the table. [Mann’s] decentred methodology is simply incorrect mathematics …. I am baffled by the claim that the incorrect method doesn’t matter because the answer is correct anyway.
Method Wrong + Answer Correct = Bad Science.
The papers of Mann et al. in themselves are written in a confusing manner, making it difficult for the reader to discern the actual methodology and what uncertainty is actually associated with these reconstructions.
It is not clear that Dr. Mann and his associates even realized that their methodology was faulty at the time of writing the [Mann] paper.
We found MBH98 and MBH99 to be somewhat obscure and incomplete and the criticisms of MM03/05a/05b to be valid and compelling.
Overall, our committee believes that Mann’s assessments that the decade of the 1990s was the hottest decade of the millennium and that 1998 was the hottest year of the millennium cannot be supported by his analysis.
[The] fact that their paper fit some policy agendas has greatly enhanced their paper’s visibility… The ‘hockey stick’ reconstruction of temperature graphic dramatically illustrated the global warming issue and was adopted by the IPCC and many governments as the poster graphic. The graphics’ prominence together with the fact that it is based on incorrect use of [principal components analysis] puts Dr. Mann and his co-authors in a difficult face-saving position.
We have been to Michael Mann’s University of Virginia website and downloaded the materials there. Unfortunately, we did not find adequate material to reproduce the MBH98 materials. We have been able to reproduce the results of McIntyre and McKitrick.
Generally speaking, the paleoclimatology community has not recognized the validity of the [McIntyre and McKitrick] papers and has tended dismiss their results as being developed by biased amateurs. The paleoclimatology community seems to be tightly coupled as indicated by our social network analysis, has rallied around the [Mann] position, and has issued an extensive series of alternative assessments most of which appear to support the conclusions of MBH98/99… Our findings from this analysis suggest that authors in the area of paleoclimate studies are closely connected and thus ‘independent studies’ may not be as independent as they might appear on the surface.
It is important to note the isolation of the paleoclimate community; even though they rely heavily on statistical methods they do not seem to be interacting with the statistical community. Additionally, we judge that the sharing of research materials, data and results was haphazardly and grudgingly done. In this case we judge that there was too much reliance on peer review, which was not necessarily independent.
Based on the literature we have reviewed, there is no overarching consensus on [Mann’s work]. As analyzed in our social network, there is a tightly knit group of individuals who passionately believe in their thesis. However, our perception is that this group has a self-reinforcing feedback mechanism and, moreover, the work has been sufficiently politicized that they can hardly reassess their public positions without losing credibility.
It is clear that many of the proxies are re-used in most of the papers. It is not surprising that the papers would obtain similar results and so cannot really claim to be independent verifications.”
Especially when massive amounts of public monies and human lives are at stake, academic work should have a more intense level of scrutiny and review. It is especially the case that authors of policy-related documents like the IPCC report, Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis, should not be the same people as those that constructed the academic papers.”
Did Wegman and North Disagree?
There’s obviously been a lot of spinning on this subject, since Wegman’s language was much more forthright than North’s. The realclimate crowd have tried to marginalize the clear statements in Wegman and more recently have tried to smear him for plagiarism, for (as I recall) one missing footnote,
At the July 19, 2006 House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee hearing, Barton asked North very precisely whether he disagreed with any Wegman’s findings and North (under oath) said no as follows:
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CHRG-109hhrg31362/html/CHRG-109hhrg31362.htm
CHAIRMAN BARTON. I understand that. It looks like my time is expired, so I want to ask one more question. Dr. North, do you dispute the conclusions or the methodology of Dr. Wegman’s report?
DR. NORTH. No, we don’t. We don’t disagree with their criticism. In fact, pretty much the same thing is said in our report. But again, just because the claims are made, doesn’t mean they are false.
CHAIRMAN BARTON. I understand that you can have the right conclusion and that it not be–
DR. NORTH. It happens all the time in science.
CHAIRMAN BARTON. Yes, and not be substantiated by what you purport to be the facts but have we established–we know that Dr. Wegman has said that Dr. Mann’s methodology is incorrect. Do you agree with that? I mean, it doesn’t mean Dr. Mann’s conclusions are wrong, but we can stipulate now that we have–and if you want to ask your statistician expert from North Carolina that Dr. Mann’s methodology cannot be documented and cannot be verified by independent review.
DR. NORTH. Do you mind if he speaks?
CHAIRMAN BARTON. Yes, if he would like to come to the microphone.
MR. BLOOMFIELD. Thank you. Yes, Peter Bloomfield. Our committee reviewed the methodology used by Dr. Mann and his coworkers and we felt that some of the choices they made were inappropriate. We had much the same misgivings about his work that was documented at much greater length by Dr. Wegman.
jup says:
August 2, 2012 at 2:54 am
One thing in common that all global warming alarmists share: they are really bad liars. Their lies and fraudulent studies are all too easily taken apart. IPCC has outlived its failed propagandist purpose and should be put down, like a diseased cow….
_______________________
Don’t malign the poor cow. I would be willing to call out the vet to help her.
The IPCC is more like a rabid wolverine.
Dr. Deanster says:
August 2, 2012 at 6:16 am
Hopefully .. With Christie and Spencer heading up a Satelite Operation, and now Watts establishing a protocol to produce a reasonably accurate temperature metric from thermometer data, .. this whole b.s. of Global Warming histeria can be put to rest for good….
___________________________________
Do not count on it. If an industry cartel wants legislation that wipes out their competition and boosts their profits, science, logic and fact get no where. Logic and facts never win against Money, Political Power and propaganda.
The only thing we have going for us is the internet and the MSMs proven bias in a few other issues where the MSM and the Congress Critters ignored public opinion and passed very unpopular laws.
Also many of the progressives/liberals/socialists are actually very caring people. If you can get past the brain washing they do wake up. Only a small minority are rabid people haters like those quoted by Allan MacRae. Unfortunately, since they are generally sheep, you have to use a one on one approach. They are not about to leave the comfort of the herd otherwise.
All the quotes Allan MacRae posted (and much, much more) appear at http://www.green-agenda.com. I discovered the site several years ago, and have mentioned it many times on sceptic blogs. It is a mine of information.
One doesn’t need to be a scientist to learn what ‘they’ are up to!
Allan MacRae says:
Okay…I see how it works for you guys now:
Michael Mann: Technical problems with method; Results verified by other methods = deliberate fraud.
John Christy: Technical problems with method; Results changed significantly by corrections = revered as “stellar”.
Thanks for setting me straight.
“A climatologist looking at this heat wave would not be alarmed because the number of daily high temperature records set in the most recent decade was only about half the number set in the 1930s.”
This should have been reworded. It varies by location, but most of our recorded weather history starts in the late 1800s. The statement ignores the fact that a high temperature would be more likely to be set in the 1930s because of the much shorter amount of history that had been recorded up to that point.
Now it’s true that even 130 years of history of measurements with a lot of small errors is probably not long enough to pick out a human influenced signal with any accuracy, but that’s a different story than what the statement above is saying.
Allan MacRae compassionately concluded: “You are hanging out with a bad crowd Joel. Try reading more, and thinking for yourself.”
There’s a difference between a youthful fling of a stressed out business man on an overseas trip and the cold calculated deception of a husband who is bedding his wife’s best friend. One is human nature. The other is raw, snide corruption. The youthful stage of the climate debate has long past and now there are no excuses for such ignorance.
Christy has just restored some of my faith in academic science, not so much for the bold content of his statement but for his dorky swagger.
In an era in which this year’s corn crop is being destroyed as a pagan sacrifice to the Earth goddess, calm old world confidence carries the day.
I found the statistical assessment of what – in terms of extreme conditions hot or cold – can be expected to be especially interesting and quite straightforward i.e. 10% of the likely 1000 years worth can be expected somewhere in the world this century and given fairly well-known climate history of the current interglacial they will be likely be as, if not more, extreme than anything we’ve seen to this point. Good to realize that given they way the Foxes are already playing the Chicken Littles.
Allan MacRae says:
It still flabbers my garst just how Joel can continue here with the same easily refuted drivel, day in and day out. “Tiljander was not upside-down” – what a joke. Mia Tiljander herself warned people NOT to use her results because they were contaminated and therefore had nothing to do with temperature, as can clearly be seen by noting their violent change in pattern which in no way corresponds to Finland’s own thermometer records of that period – just as Briffa’s Yamal treemometers are the isolated aliens amongst a family of Russian thermometer records back to 1880. And IIRC, ALL the Team Hockey Sticks depend on Yamal, Tiljander, and/or the bristlecone pines, stripbark extremophiles with huge local variation in tree growth and ring growth rate, which are therefore also known as being totally unsuitable for temperature studies. Superwoman Gergis failed to fly to the rescue.
I’m not going to take more time out to argue with Joel again – just note this strange “water off a ducks back” – whereas I was once an active warmist, who defected on the strength of better evidence, more love of truth, and more courtesy. It took me several weeks of veering horribly back and forth, studying the best evidence on all sides, not knowing who to believe, until I had got to the scientific bottom of all the typical SkSci issues.
To me it’s obvious that Joel’s independend “Nullius In Verba” scientific BS nose (which is what science training should train) is not as highly-trained as his capacity to repeat orthodoxy. Yet still, Joel is courteous and an accredited scientist and claims to have no conflicting interests.
There has to be a conflicting interest somewhere. Perhaps Joel has a horror of even considering the possibility that the WHOLE of Climate Science has been corrupted.
Is Joel in denial? He certainly cannot accuse me of this, since I have been active on both sides.
“This should have been reworded. It varies by location, but most of our recorded weather history starts in the late 1800s. The statement ignores the fact that a high temperature would be more likely to be set in the 1930s because of the much shorter amount of history that had been recorded up to that point.”
He accounts for this. He also submitted several other graphs, one shows records using the previous 10 years of data for each year.
Sincere thanks to A Lovell for: August 2, 2012 at 8:28 am
All the quotes Allan MacRae posted (and much, much more) appear at:
http://www.green-agenda.com
___________
Please go to this post and read it – excellent information.
Here is the first quotation:
“The common enemy of humanity is man.
In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up
with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming,
water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill. All these
dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through
changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome.
The real enemy then, is humanity itself.”
– Club of Rome,
premier environmental think-tank,
consultants to the United Nations
I hope Dr. Christy is right about CO2 having caused no global warming. I really hope he is right.
Robbie says: August 2, 2012 at 10:22 am
“I hope Dr. Christy is right about CO2 having caused no global warming. I really hope he is right.”
___________
I’m pretty sure John Christy is essentially correct, Robbie, but I wish he was wrong.
We are heading into another continental “Ice Age” – anytime in the next few thousand years.
Watch out when a 2km thick continental glacier comes knocking at your door.
There goes the neighbourhood!
And another thing: http://gcaptain.com/arctic-thickest-decade-shell/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Gcaptain+%28gCaptain.com%29
Joel Shore,
You claim:
“Let’s take the “upside down proxies” example. In fact, the Tiljander proxies were not “upside down”…Their orientation was automatically determined by the algorithm based on its correlation with the temperature. ”
This is quite incorrect. The paper is unambiguous on this point in discussing screening: “Where the sign of the correlation could a priori be specified (positive for tree-ring data, ice-core oxygen isotopes, lake sediments, and historical documents, and negative for coral oxygen-isotope records), a one-sided significance criterion was used.”
You know what “a priori” means, right? The Tiljander proxies should never have passed screening and the only reason they did is because (1) they were contaminated in the screening period and (2) they were used upside down. Yes, upside down.
Joel, until you and your fellow warmists accept the simple fact that Mann made a mistake, you will have very little credibility among skeptics. Skeptics are going your use your unwillingness to acknowledge this rather basic error as a cudgel to beat you for years to come.
fedden,
You are absolutely correct about the upside-down Tiljander proxy. But you are too kind in allowing that Mann ‘made a mistake’. Dr Tiljander had informed Mann before he published that she discovered that her sediment proxy was corrupted. But MANN USED IT ANYWAY because it gave him the hockey stick shape he wanted.
Mann did not make a ‘mistake’. He deliberatly engaged in scientific misconduct.
Robbie-“I hope Dr. Christy is right about CO2 having caused no global warming. I really hope he is right.”
I’d believe your sincerity more if it didn’t require you to put words in people’s mouths and totally misrepresent the position of an esteemed scientist. When, in his testimony did Dr Christy say that CO2 hadn’t caused any warming globally? Nowhere. Not ONCE did he say anything remotely resembling that.
I hope you get your hearing checked. I really do.
From around minute 134 in the EPW video of the hearing, is an exchange between Sen. Boxer in a Sheila Jackson Lee moment. Dr. Christy had used the word ‘bias’ in his statement regarding the temperature station readings and results. Sen. Boxer wanted to know “who is guilty of this bias”, which ridiculous question threw Christy off. Dumbest question ever.
Boxer outdid herself, exposing not only her impenetrable ignorance, but her stellar stupidity, as well. She could be described as intelligent only relative to those who voted for her.
Andrew says: August 2, 2012 at 12:00 pm
Thanks for the correction. You are correct. He didn’t say that. Dr. Christy admits global warming by CO2 and not what I have written.
I misinterpreted the title of the blog with CO2 and global warming.
It takes a strange logic to claim, (as does Joel Shore,) that plagiarism, (actually poor citation,) invalidates a papers results.
Using that logic, if I were to plagiarise the entire MBH98/99 papers, my result would be invalid, therefore, the plagiarised papers would logically also be invalid. Do you get that Joel?
DaveE.
Scott B says:
August 2, 2012 at 8:40 am
Inferences about warming based on reports of high temperatures are thoroughly worthless. This is easy to prove in practice. Go to Wunderground and look at the list of temperature stations for your neighborhood. There are at least 15, right. There in your own neighborhood are fifteen possible high temperatures for each day of the year, century, whatever. Suppose each of those 15 thermometers in turn registers a high temperature for that thermometer. You have 15 consecutive days of high temperature. Yet it tells you nothing about the (average or overall) temperature for your neighborhood. That is because the other 14 thermometers can be a degree or two lower than the one “high” thermometer on its day. The information is simply worthless.
William McClenney says:
August 1, 2012 at 10:27 pm
“Intentionally repeating myself, “warmists and skeptics thus find themselves on the mutual, chaotic climate ground where the efficacy of CO2 as a GHG had better be right.”
The “Precautionary Principle” is rather absolute on this point.”
The Precautionary Priniciple is a version of Pascal’s Wager. When is Lisa Jackson going to take up Pascal’s Wager and require all of us to attend church on Sunday mornings?
You might be rather young. The Precautionary Principle was analyzed fully and put to death on WUWT several years ago. You will not find people here who are interested in it.
Stephen Richards says:
August 2, 2012 at 7:19 am
“I am thoroughly disappointed with Mosher. Since he tagged with Lucia and Zeke he has completely lost the plot. He makes cryptic comments sans valeur. Criticisms without a critique. A few years back he took a break from blogging and I suspect fell in with a bad crowd. Sad really sad.”
You might not have noticed but for several years Mosher has gone bananas whenever he discovers that someone he respects, such as Anthony Watts, is arguing from observable data to the conclusion that some statistical trend work is incorrect. In a contest between observable data and statistical analysis, Mosher will argue that the data are wrong or, more insidiously, that they are irrelevant.
Anthony, thank you for that detailed response as it is exactly what I have come to trust regarding your work. I find it disappointing that his involvement with BEST has made him behave like this. He is also attempting to work McIntyre over to try and get at you.
I completely support releasing the data AFTER the paper is published. You are under no obligation to do so before.
Lately Mosher has also been arguing from strawmen relating to nonsense about skeptics not supporting that it has warmed since the LIA. I suspect he believed the BEST results would convert more people to his position and not receive the backlash that it did.
Allan MacRae says: August 2, 2012 at 8:10 am
I don’t have time to back-up all my statements, but here is a critical point regarding North agreeing with Wegman:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/05/18/the-question-put-to-dr-mann-at-disneyland-today/#comment-989861
Here is direct evidence of the facts: Both the Wegman and North Committees condemned the Mann et al methodology.
_________
P.S. to Joel:
The four most beautiful words in our common language: “I told you so.”
– Gore Vidal, October 3, 1925 – July 31, 2012
I’m ashamed I’m from California where that disgusting woman, Barbara Boxer was elected. I simply do not understand how she won the California Senate election.
Barbara Boxer slams Christy for an “error” in Satellite temperature data that was within the margin of error, but says nothing about how far off the predictions are from the reality.
Barbara Boxer is a liberal. Aren’t liberals supposed to be concerned about poverty? As Christy said “I’ve lived in Africa, and I can attest that without energy, life is brutal and short.” I suppose not. Only when it has a vote attached to it.
Gail Combs says:
August 2, 2012 at 7:37 am
Gail (and Theo Godwin August 2, 2012 at 2:52 pm), I was having some fun with the PP.
As regards Gail’s point 2, I submit:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/12/30/the-antithesis/ and
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/03/16/the-end-holocene-or-how-to-make-out-like-a-madoff-climate-change-insurer/
As regards Gail’s point 4:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/01/05/on-%E2%80%9Ctrap-speed-acc-and-the-snr/
Theo did indeed guess correctly though, I am indeed quite young. I turn 58 next month, having only spent the last quarter century plus either risking-away inconsequentially contaminated sites or more frequently designing/building and running from my iPhone, these days, some of the most sophisticated toxic cocktail remediation systems you may never have imagined.
To me it’s all good, clean fun.
As it turns out the humor I was intending to purvey missed its mark with some. If, strictly for the purposes of discussion, one accedes that CO2 actually is the heathen devil gas it is made out to be, the only, repeat, ONLY intelligent reason for reducing its concentration in the late Holocene atmosphere would be to assist a normal, natural descent into the next glacial. I propose that this would not be a bad thing. Removing said heathen devil gas from the late Holocene atmosphere might be the physical equivalent of adding some much needed chlorine to the hominid gene pool………if you take my meaning.
Leaving or increasing plant food’s atmospheric concentration could be the functional equivalent of supporting the propagation of Mannly McKibben’s. Are you really sure that would be the preferred outcome? Plant food for thought, you might say……….
Meanwhile, enjoy the end extreme interglacial, while it lasts.
A mountain of BS that has been spread here and elsewhere about the North and Wegman reports on the Mann hokey schtick.
Here are some facts – my apologies for the long post.
North and Wegman agreed in their conclusions – that is proved above.
The original Wegman Report is online at
http://climateaudit.files.wordpress.com/2007/11/07142006_wegman_report.pdf
The Wegman Report (excerpts)
The debate over Dr. Mann’s principal components methodology has been going on for nearly three years. When we got involved, there was no evidence that a single issue was resolved or even nearing resolution. Dr. Mann’s RealClimate.org website said that all of the Mr. McIntyre and Dr. McKitrick claims had been ‘discredited’. UCAR had issued a news release saying that all their claims were ‘unfounded’. Mr. McIntyre replied on the ClimateAudit.org website. The climate science community seemed unable to either refute McIntyre’s claims or accept them. The situation was ripe for a third-party review of the types that we and Dr. North’s NRC panel have done.
While the work of Michael Mann and colleagues presents what appears to be compelling evidence of global temperature change, the criticisms of McIntyre and McKitrick, as well as those of other authors mentioned are indeed valid.
“Where we have commonality, I believe our report and the [NAS] panel essentially agree. We believe that our discussion together with the discussion from the NRC report should take the ‘centering’ issue off the table. [Mann’s] decentred methodology is simply incorrect mathematics …. I am baffled by the claim that the incorrect method doesn’t matter because the answer is correct anyway.
Method Wrong + Answer Correct = Bad Science.
The papers of Mann et al. in themselves are written in a confusing manner, making it difficult for the reader to discern the actual methodology and what uncertainty is actually associated with these reconstructions.
It is not clear that Dr. Mann and his associates even realized that their methodology was faulty at the time of writing the [Mann] paper.
We found MBH98 and MBH99 to be somewhat obscure and incomplete and the criticisms of MM03/05a/05b to be valid and compelling.
Overall, our committee believes that Mann’s assessments that the decade of the 1990s was the hottest decade of the millennium and that 1998 was the hottest year of the millennium cannot be supported by his analysis.
[The] fact that their paper fit some policy agendas has greatly enhanced their paper’s visibility… The ‘hockey stick’ reconstruction of temperature graphic dramatically illustrated the global warming issue and was adopted by the IPCC and many governments as the poster graphic. The graphics’ prominence together with the fact that it is based on incorrect use of [principal components analysis] puts Dr. Mann and his co-authors in a difficult face-saving position.
We have been to Michael Mann’s University of Virginia website and downloaded the materials there. Unfortunately, we did not find adequate material to reproduce the MBH98 materials. We have been able to reproduce the results of McIntyre and McKitrick
Generally speaking, the paleoclimatology community has not recognized the validity of the [McIntyre and McKitrick] papers and has tended dismiss their results as being developed by biased amateurs. The paleoclimatology community seems to be tightly coupled as indicated by our social network analysis, has rallied around the [Mann] position, and has issued an extensive series of alternative assessments most of which appear to support the conclusions of MBH98/99… Our findings from this analysis suggest that authors in the area of paleoclimate studies are closely connected and thus ‘independent studies’ may not be as independent as they might appear on the surface.
It is important to note the isolation of the paleoclimate community; even though they rely heavily on statistical methods they do not seem to be interacting with the statistical community. Additionally, we judge that the sharing of research materials, data and results was haphazardly and grudgingly done. In this case we judge that there was too much reliance on peer review, which was not necessarily independent.
Based on the literature we have reviewed, there is no overarching consensus on [Mann’s work]. As analyzed in our social network, there is a tightly knit group of individuals who passionately believe in their thesis. However, our perception is that this group has a self-reinforcing feedback mechanism and, moreover, the work has been sufficiently politicized that they can hardly reassess their public positions without losing credibility.
It is clear that many of the proxies are re-used in most of the papers. It is not surprising that the papers would obtain similar results and so cannot really claim to be independent verifications.”
Especially when massive amounts of public monies and human lives are at stake, academic work should have a more intense level of scrutiny and review. It is especially the case that authors of policy-related documents like the IPCC report, Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis, should not be the same people as those that constructed the academic papers.”
‘Treeman says:
August 1, 2012 at 5:23 pm
Australia needs a John Christy to counter alarmist shrill on this side of the Pacific.’
You have one, Treeman.
He’s called Professor Robert Carter.
Christy didn’t stonewall access to his data, put some data in a “censored” file, misrepresent his exchanges with Mc (e.g., that Mc had asked for data in spreadsheet form), accuse his critics of bad faith, etc.
Mr MacRae Here is direct evidence of the facts: Both the Wegman and North Committees condemned the Mann et al methodology.
Hardly. In his testimony, Gerald North agreed that there were less than ideal choices made in some respects, in particular PCA, that is where he agreed with Wegman, but unlike Wegman he was clear that these did not have a material effect on the outcome…
North As part of their statistical methods, Mann et al. used a type
of principal component analysis that tends to bias the shape of
the reconstructions. A description of this effect is given in
Chapter 9. In practice, this method, though not recommended,
does not appear to unduly influence reconstructions of
hemispheric mean temperature; reconstructions performed without
using principal component analysis are qualitatively similar
to the original curves presented by Mann et al. […] none of the
statistical criticisms that have been raised by various authors
unduly influence the shape of the final reconstruction. This is
attested to by the fact that reconstructions performed without
using principal components yield similar results.
And, consistent with what Joel has written, North was ‘not impressed’ with many aspects of Wegman:-
At the hearing you were asked if you disputed the conclusions
or the methodology of Dr. Wegman’s report, and you stated that
you did not. Were you referring solely to Dr. Wegman’s criticism
of the statistical approach of Dr. Mann, or were you also
referring to Dr. Wegman’s social network analysis and conclusions?
North: Dr. Wegman’s criticisms of the statistical methodology in the
papers by Mann et al were consistent with our findings. Our
committee did not consider any social network analyses and we
did not have access to Dr. Wegman’s report during our
deliberations so we did not have an opportunity to discuss his
conclusions. Personally, I was not impressed by the social
network analysis in the Wegman report, nor did I agree with most
of the report’s conclusions on this subject […] I was
also somewhat taken aback by the tone of the
Wegman Report, which seems overly accusatory towards Dr. Mann
and his colleagues, rather than being a neutral, impartial
assessment of the techniques used in his research. In my
opinion, while the techniques used in the original Mann et al
papers may have been slightly flawed, the work was the first
of its kind and deserves considerable credit for moving the
field of paleoclimate research forward. It is also important
to note that the main conclusions of the Mann et al studies
have been supported by subsequent research.
When Senator Joe Barton made the same claim as Mr MacRae in a letter to the Washington Post, North’s response was unequivocal:-
While we did find some of the methods used in Michael E. Mann’s original papers to be less cautious than some of our members might have used, we have not found any evidence that his results were incorrect or even out of line with other works published since his original papers.
Not exactly a ‘condemnation’,
Sources:-
http://init.planet3.org/2010/10/gerry-north-complaint-re-rep-barton.html
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CHRG-109hhrg31362/html/CHRG-109hhrg31362.htm
Phil Clarke,
Are you prepared to step in and defend Mann’s use of upside down Tiljander? Joel Shore has now gone remarkably radio silent after his misunderstanding was pointed out. It amazes me that not a single warmist will admit the most basic of errors when committed by their champions. And then warmists wonder why their credibility is challenged by skeptics. It seems to me that skeptics are far better at acknowledging genuine errors and correcting them. On the flip side, it is extremely rare to hear any warmist acknowledge any shortcomings in, say, short-centered PCA, biased screening, BCPs or, of course, upside down Tiljander.
Phil Clarke says blah blah blah. : August 3, 2012 at 3:37 am
I already covered this point elsewhere Phil, at comment-1050435, excerpted below.
Dr. North, in my opinion, veered widely off his task to say that even though Mann’s methodology was incorrect, that did not mean that Mann’s results were incorrect. North was an inappropriate choice for the task, imo, because he was clearly supportive of Mann’s conclusion (even though Mann was demonstrably false).
Wegman responded directly to North’s nonsense by saying:
“[Mann’s] decentred methodology is simply incorrect mathematics …. I am baffled by the claim that the incorrect method doesn’t matter because the answer is correct anyway.
Method Wrong + Answer Correct = Bad Science.”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/08/01/pielke-jr-demolishes-ipcc-lead-author-senat-epw-testimony/#comment-1050435
(excerpt)
The good Dr. North was rather mealy-mouthed in his public comments about the validity of Mann’s hokey stick, UNTIL he was placed under oath.
UNDER OATH, Dr. North stated that his committee’s conclusions agreed with those of the Wegman Committee.
Quelle surprise!
“Nothing focuses the mind like being shot at dawn.”
_______________
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CHRG-109hhrg31362/html/CHRG-109hhrg31362.htm
CHAIRMAN BARTON. I understand that. It looks like my time is expired, so I want to ask one more question. Dr. North, do you dispute the conclusions or the methodology of Dr. Wegman’s report?
DR. NORTH. No, we don’t. We don’t disagree with their criticism. In fact, pretty much the same thing is said in our report.
______________
more from the same session (full text above) …
MR. BLOOMFIELD. Thank you. Yes, Peter Bloomfield. Our committee reviewed the methodology used by Dr. Mann and his coworkers and we felt that some of the choices they made were inappropriate. We had much the same misgivings about his work that was documented at much greater length by Dr. Wegman.
Here in France it’s really cold, and our local alarmist really quiet a real benediction ! I love cold summers…
On the flip side, it is extremely rare to hear any warmist acknowledge any shortcomings in, say, short-centered PCA, biased screening, BCPs or, of course, upside down Tiljander
Au contraire, North agrees that short-centred PCA was not an optimal choice, but as has been shown many times over, using ‘correct’ PCA or even no PCA gives you a Hockey stick. As for a ‘warmist’ admitting the shortcomings, here is Dr Mann himself from the same hearing…
If the question this committee seeks to answer is whether knowing
what I know today, a decade after starting the original
study, my colleagues and I would conduct it in exactly the
same way, the answer is plainly no. The field of
paleoclimate reconstruction has evolved tremendously over
the past decade.
Important new proxy data have been developed.
Reconstructions have been compared with independent
estimates from climate model simulations and confirmed by
those simulations. Statistical methods for reconstructing
climate from proxy data have been refined and rigorously
tested, and I have been actively working in each of these
areas. This is important because all the focus of criticism
on our work in the late 1990s has been on the statistical
conventions we used. My co-authors and I have not used those
conventions in our later work
And indeed there is no PCA step in Mann et al 2008, which fits within the error bars of MBH99. As for Tiljander, the choice was to use it in the orientation that the algorithm determined, or leave it out, potentially discarding useful proxy data. Mann himself was aware of the probelms with the sediments as he wrote in SI for the paper …
the original authors note that human effects over the past few centuries
unrelated to climate might impact records (the original paper
states ‘‘Natural variability in the sediment record was disrupted
by increased human impact in the catchment area at A.D. 1720.’’
and later, ‘‘In the case of Lake Korttajarvi it is a demanding task
to calibrate the physical varve data we have collected against
meteorological data, because human impacts have distorted the
natural signal to varying extents’’) […] We therefore performed
additional analyses as in Fig. S7, but instead compared the reconstructions
both with and without the above seven potentially problematic series, as shown in Fig. S8.
As for strip-bark Bristlecones, it is commonly stated that the NAS panel recommended they should be avoided, this is a half-truth, again we can go back to what North’s actual testimony
Hence, in context, what the clause “strip-bark samples should be avoided
for temperature reconstructions” was intended to convey is that
strip-bark samples from the mid-19th century to the present are
very difficult to calibrate against instrumental records of
temperature, and the easiest solution is therefore not to use
them. However, strip-bark data are considered suspect only after
the modern increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations.
In other words, conclusions from more than 150 years ago using strip-bark samples are unaffected.
What is actually rare is to hear any ‘sceptic’ put these issues and uncertainties, the like of which occur in every branch of the natural sciences in context and discover if in fact they have a material affect on central conclusions. For Tiljander, PCA and strip-barks, the answer has been known for some time. It is ‘No’.
Smokey says:
Simply untrue. Because of potential problems identified with the four Tiljander proxies and 3 other proxies, Mann et al showed in their Supplementary Materials how the reconstruction was changed if they were left out: http://www.pnas.org/content/suppl/2008/09/02/0805721105.DCSupplemental/0805721105SI.pdf (See Fig. S8), which is not very much.
So, in other words, Mann et al did what any good scientist would due when faced with some data that are potentially compromised: He showed what happened both if the data were included and if it were left out.
Hi Joeldshore, I’m French so be lenient with my English. I used to analyze big data for banks using PCA and other similar statistical tools. From this experience, I think we find in data what we are looking for, the light do not magically flows from the data enlightening us with new information. It can happen we learn new things obviously but we look at data with our own prejudice and the willingness to find something or to consolidate claims we make.
What happens with climate data is nothing else but the real sin is to pretend to find something which is not in the data or to twist them in such a way we can make them telling what we want. This was Mann’s and Jones’ sin, but a bigger sin was to see scientists backing them up despite many signs showing that their graph was wrong. In particular, erasing almost completely the medieval optimum and the little ice age which were historically attested was astonishing.
Seeing Mann playing the role of the persecuted scientist by the force of the dark side would be hilarious if we were not almost every day shelled by the alarmist doxa in all the media, it is at least the case here in Europe. People do not want to be treated of deniers, of criminals, just because they do not believe what a group of politicians and scientists say : ti is however what happens every day. These methods are communist ones, politic commissars are on Michael Mann and Phil Jones side, not the contrary.
So trying to present things as a matter of spreadsheets and methodological errors not changing the overall picture is strange from my point of view. The all things is much more a Gramscist enterprise to take control of the society by controlling the cultural sphere than a debate between scientists.
rogerknights says:
(1) As I have noted, Mann publicly released ALL data and code for his PNAS paper. By contrast, UAH has not publicly released one line of their code.
(2) The “censored” thing is a red-herring: It is a term used in the field to represent the idea of leaving out certain pieces of data and seeing how it changes the results. Mann did this in preparing his 1998 paper and indeed that paper talked about the fact that the inclusion of the tree ring data from the Southwestern U.S. was vital in getting a skillful reconstruction. You can see the discussion of this in http://www.ltrr.arizona.edu/webhome/aprilc/data/my%20stuff/MBH1999.pdf (p. 761) Discussing something in Geophysical Research Letters is generally not considered the best way to hide something.
(3) The “spreadsheet” thing is making a mountain-out-of-a-molehill. There is no way to know who remembers better the exact exchange that took place. Furthermore, in a bit of irony, I believe that McIntyre himself misrepresented what Mann said in his book, saying that Mann said McIntyre asked for an Excel file when in fact Mann said just that he asked for it in spreadsheet form…a minor error, yes, but just the sort of picayune things that McIntyre jumps on Mann for. If the best thing that McIntyre can find to criticize Mann’s book on is this, you know he has very little material to work with.
You are basically just repeating debunked talking points.
Allan MacRae says:
So, your original claim was “to claim that Mann’s hockey stick is valid flies in the face of all the credible work done on it, from the initial work of Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick to the North and Wegman Commission reports” Now, you admit that in it only flies in the face of the North report (which is the only objective source of the 3 that you cite) if you cherrypick one small part of what they say and ignore the larger conclusion that you don’t like.
It is really enlightening to see your logic in action.
The “spreadsheet” thing is making a mountain-out-of-a-molehill. There is no way to know who remembers better the exact exchange that took place.
Quite. The data was supplied as a comma-separated values or csv file. A format that all common spreadsheet packages can read natively without conversion. Indeed, on my Windows computer csv files are associated with Excel as the default application. This really is pettifogging stuff.
Joel D Shore, Phil Clarke, and any others wanting to defend the indefensible:
The ‘climategate’ emails show beyond any possibility of doubt that the Mann, Bradley & Hughes (MBH) papers of 1998 and 1999 were scientific fraud.
The basic facts of the fraud are not affected by whether or not the method used by MBH was correct (it was not), or whether or not Wegman and North condemned that method (they did).
The fraud was as follows.
1.
The MBH method showed a decline in global temperature after 1960 but measurements of global temperature all showed it rose after 1960.
2.
MBH deliberately used “Mike’s Nature trick” to hide the decline in global temperature after 1960 which was indicated by the MBH method.
3.
This “trick” consisted of
(a) not reporting the decline in the text of their two papers,
(b) providing the data in graphical and not numerical form, and
(c) covering (thus hiding) the data after 1960 in the graph with measured data which showed a rise.
The ‘climategate’ emails which discuss “Mike’s Natute trick” to “hide the decline” state that this was a deliberate act to mislead in furtherance of “the cause” of promoting the AGW hypothesis.
And MBH mentioned “the decline” as a minor point in another paper thus providing themselves with a ‘get-out’ if their fraud were soon detected.
This fraud was of identical nature to the most infamous scientific fraud in history; viz. the Piltdown Man.
In each case, the Piltdown Man and the MBH ‘hockey stick’ consisted of
(i) selecting parts of two different items,
(ii) not presenting the not-selected parts,
(iii) joining the two selected parts to construct a misleading artifact, and
(iv) presenting the constructed artifact as an item of evidence
(v) with deliberate intent to mislead the scientific community.
There is no doubt of any kind that Mann, Bradley & Hughes conducted this fraud. And anybody who condones this fraud is guilty by association.
Richard
Anyone know which correction factor Christy used to convert the UAH lower troposphere to surface values on his CIMP5 vs UAH figure and were the CIMP5 curves whole Earth or just land surface?
Phil Clarke,
You make the same mistake as Joel Shore when you say: “As for Tiljander, the choice was to use it in the orientation that the algorithm determined, or leave it out, potentially discarding useful proxy data.”
You are mistaken. The orientation was not determined by the algorithm – it was decided a priori. I already quoted from discussion in the paper on screening but will do so again as you seemed to miss the point: “Where the sign of the correlation could a priori be specified (positive for tree-ring data, ice-core oxygen isotopes, lake sediments, and historical documents, and negative for coral oxygen-isotope records), a one-sided significance criterion was used.”
Why oh why can’t you bring yourself to admit that Mann made a mistake?
Mann did not make any mistake, he did what he did on purpose: scare people.
Fedden – I think you need to revise your statistical terms, – the ‘sidedness’ of the significance tests is not the same thing as the sign of the correlation. Mann specifically addresses this in his book:-
These, incidentally, are the records that McIntyre was apparently claiming were used “upside down.” Yet there was no such thing as “upside down” in our methodology: In one of our methods (composite approach), proxy data were screened to determine if they possessed a local temperature signal, based on their correlation with modern instrumental data. In the other method (RegEM), the proxy data were used in a sophisticated multivariate regression, and again the relationship with climate was determined empirically, with no a priori assumptions made. Either the record was employed using these objective procedures, or it was thrown out.
Mann, Michael (2012-01-24). The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines (Kindle Locations 7033-7038). Perseus Books Group. Kindle Edition.
Exactly as I stated.
Phil,
What you say makes no sense. You only use a one-sided test if you are testing a specific sign of the correlation. You said that the orientation was determined by the algorithm. But the paper clearly contradicts you – it says (and I quote for the third time): “Where the sign of the correlation could a priori be specified”. This is unambiguous. You are unambiguously wrong. Mann is saying clearly that the sign of the correlation was determined in advance – not by some algorithm. Mann used a one-sided screening because he was testing only one orientation. Unfortunately it was the wrong orientation.
Your attempt to say Mann’s screening test is not linked to “the sign of the correlation” is just baffling. The paper specifically uses the term “the sign of the correlation”. How can you ignore this?
fedden:
At August 3, 2012 at 1:51 pm you ask Phil:
I am sure you know the answer to your question, and I am equally sure that Phil will not state the answer. So, I write to state the answer to ensure onlookers know it too.
The persistent debate of this issue is intended to distract attention from the fr@ud which I detail above at August 3, 2012 at 9:53 am.
‘Warmers’ do anything they can to avoid discussion of the fr@ud.
Richard
Eli Rabett says: “Anyone know which correction factor Christy used to convert the UAH lower troposphere to surface values on his CIMP5 vs UAH figure and were the CIMP5 curves whole Earth or just land surface?”
Dividing by 1.2 (this is the value he has quoted repeatedly for a few years now), And I can’t imagine they were land only so I have no idea why you would suggest this.
BTW, 1.3 seems to be a more realistic to me, based on the amplification of year to year variability. But it’s a small difference.
1. In the CPS methodology, the orientation of the proxy is fixed by the screening process and the requirement for local correlation with temperature. If you have an a priori expectation that the orientation is the opposite sign, then the proxy cannot be used, which is what I said. The Tiljander proxies were used, and the effects of withholding them also calculated.
2. The point is entirely moot in any case, Neither reconstruction (for NH mean (EIV) or NH land (CPS) temperature) would be materially affected by the absence of the Tiljander proxies. This is the identical result to what you would have if you had a priori insisted on the opposite orientation of the proxies in CPS.
Tiljander is a complete distraction. As Gavin Schmidt wrote, If you think the Tiljander proxies are not usable or must be used in a different orientation, then Mann et al (2008) already showed what difference that makes to the overall reconstruction. There is nothing else left to do. All code and all data are available online for people to check this for themselves.
If you believe that reversing the sign of, or removing the Tiljander sediments makes a material difference to the conclusions of the study, all the tools are there for you to demonstrate it. Knock yourself out. As Schmidt also wrote: (Consequences of all this)/(amount of time devoted to discussing it in the blogosphere) = a very small number.
Phil Clarke says:
“Tiljander is a complete distraction.”
You wish. Deliberately using a corrupted proxy = scientific misconduct.
“””””…..William McClenney says:
August 1, 2012 at 10:27 pm
Intentionally repeating myself, “warmists and skeptics thus find themselves on the mutual, chaotic climate ground where the efficacy of CO2 as a GHG had better be right.”
The “Precautionary Principle” is rather absolute on this point……”””””
Well the precautionary principle would tell the cave men to not leave the cave, just in case dire wolves, and sabre toothed tigers, might be lurking outside.
We know for sure that cavemen simply pooh poohed the precautionary principle, and ignored it, because if they had heeded it, then all the caves would be stacked high with the bones of dead cave nen, who all starved to death, worrying about sabre toothed tigers.
See how the simple absence of (enough) bones in caves is a reliable proxy for the plentiful supply of food, and of the guts of those cavemen to go outside and get it.
The precautionary principle has to be just about the dumbest philosophical utterance anyone ever was silly enough to come up with. Somewhat like the advice about believing in a “god”, and the hereafter. Might as well believe, because if you are wrong, well you will never find out, so who care; and if you are right,well glory be!
Wildebeestes must be a lot smarter than humans, because they know for sure that when they cross that river twice a year, that some of them are going to get their arses chewed out by the crocodiles; yet they know that if they don’t cross that river twice a year, they are ALL going to starve to death, so they cross it anyway, and do so all together, since that is the surest way of lessening their odds of becoming crocodile doo doo.
The Mayflower passengers certainly didn’t believe in the precautionary principle; chickens probably do.
Interesting video. I note his early statement that temperatures are increasing. It was hard to see clearly, but his graph looked like the IPCC extreme warming case. Even the IPCC regards that as a low probability outcome!
The really intriguing item was that both high temperature and low temperature records were set this year. If it is not CO2 driving this, what is spreading the temperature frequency distribution curve in both directions?
Deliberately using a corrupted proxy = scientific misconduct.
Doing a study with and without a problematic proxy = good science. History repeats itself, just as all the words expended on short-centred PCA had an insignificant impact on the actual result of MBH98/99, so removing or inverting the Tiljander proxies does not effect the headline conclusions of Mann 2008. Just throwing sand in the air.
Folks, observe a textbook example of the Argumentum ad Ignorantium fallacy:
“If it is not CO2 driving this, what is spreading the temperature frequency distribution curve in both directions?”
Translation: “Since I can’t think of anything else, then CO2 must be the cause.”
Phil Clarke says:
“…removing or inverting the Tiljander proxies does not effect (sic) the headline conclusions of Mann 2008. Just throwing sand in the air.”
If you were clever, you would have used ‘smoke’ instead of ‘sand’. Missed opportunity.☺
Anyway, that is simple misdirection. Dr Tiljander informed Mann BEFORE HE PUBLISHED that she had discovered her sediment proxy was corrupted by bridge and road building almost a century earlier. Mann knew the proxy was corrupted — but he used it anyway, because it gave him the hockey stick shape he craved. If you’re going to be Mann’s apologist, at least pick your battles better.
Richard: That’s a nice story you’ve weaved there. I particularly like this part:
You have the perfect non-falsifiable hypothesis: If they hadn’t mentioned it, it would be evidence of fraud and since they did mention it is evidence of fraud!
And, of course, we can also weave in the fact that all of the different investigations of Mann et al have concluded otherwise…with in your non-falsifiable world just becomes evidence of an ever more massive whitewash and cover-up.
I am almost think you guys are desperately trying to make the scientific community think you are clowns.
joelshore says:
“I am almost think you guys are desperately trying to make the scientific community think you are clowns”
Fact: the scientific community is represented by real professionals like the 31,000+ scientists and engineers who co-signed the OISM petition, stating clearly that CO2 is harmless, and beneficial to the biosphere.
Shore’s alarmist contingent cannot come anywhere close to those numbers. In truth, the alarmist crowd is only a small minority of wild-eyed, deluded scaremongers, or self-serving dissemblers like Mann, with their snouts in the public trough. Some of them are both. And then there are the far-Left extremists like joelshore; fellow travelers with a thin veneer of pseudo-science covering their anti-American beliefs.
And speaking of a falsifiable hypothesis, joelshore always squirms away like a slippery eel whenever I propose my testable hypothesis:
At current and projected concentrations, CO2 is harmless and beneficial
Shore contorts into a pretzel trying to avoid the challenge for one simple reason: he cannot falsify that hypothesis. It would be very easy, if CO2=AGW were true. Simply show that global temperatures are accelerating beyond past long-term parameters along with the rising CO2 level. An eminently testable and falsifiable hypothesis.
Shore will either give it his best shot… or prevaricate, as usual. I predict the latter.
Smokey says:
Simply untrue. Because of potential problems identified with the four Tiljander proxies and 3 other proxies, Mann et al showed in their Supplementary Materials how the reconstruction was changed if they were left out: http://www.pnas.org/content/suppl/2008/09/02/0805721105.DCSupplemental/0805721105SI.pdf (See Fig. S8), which is not very much.
I can repeat this as long as necessary if you continue to say untrue things.
joelshore says:
“Simply untrue.”
Ah, but absolutely true. And posting a paper by Mann in support of Mann has zero credibility. I get my Tiljander info from someone honest: Steve McIntyre, who is destroying Michael Mann because of Mann’s transparent dishonesty — the only thing that Mann is transparent about.
And I note that joelshore continues to avoid testing my hypothesis.
I can repeat this as long as necessary if joelshore continue to misdirect, and uses Mann as the Authority supporting Mann, and avoids the hypothesis that debunks his globaloney warming nonsense. It’s fun ‘n’ easy.
Phil and Joel,
You are writing nonsense, but I think you know that.
Your defense of “Piltdown Mann” is pathetic, your own personal “Divergence Problem”.
You are NOT writing to argue against those of us who disagree with you – we all know you are misrepresenting the truth.
You ARE writing to throw up a smokescreen, to deliberately delude those neophytes who might visit this website.
Here is some news for you – the neophytes may be new to this subject, but they are not stupid.
Suggest you take the weekend off and enjoy your life.
Phil Clarke,
You write: “In the CPS methodology, the orientation of the proxy is fixed by the screening process and the requirement for local correlation with temperature. If you have an a priori expectation that the orientation is the opposite sign, then the proxy cannot be used, which is what I said. The Tiljander proxies were used, and the effects of withholding them also calculated.”
I am pleased to see that you are not repeating your baffling argument about a distinction between the ‘sidedness’ of the significance tests and the sign of the correlation. I agree completely with you when you say “If you have an a priori expectation that the orientation is the opposite sign, then the proxy cannot be used”. This is the core of the problem. We know the sediment series was corrupted by land usage during the screening period to the extent that the believed a priori physical correlation to temperature was reversed. So the series should never have passed the screening test as described by Mann. Yet it did. Simple question, Phil, how did this happen – how did it pass the screening test? (Hint: the answer includes the words “upside down”).
Your argument about this issue being moot is pure evasion. A few points why:
– Mann included a chart without Tiljander and one without tree rings. However, he did not include a reconstruction without both until updating his supplemental data significantly later. This “corrected” reconstruction shows a MWP within the error bars of modern temperatures
– Even Gavin Schmidt concedes that without tree rings and Tiljander, the reconstruction only validates for a significantly shorter period (only 1,000 years IIRC)
– the refusal of warmists to acknowledge this basic error is an issue of credibility
– it is just fun to make people like you defend the indefensible
joeldshore:
Your entire post at August 3, 2012 at 6:13 pm is daft.
It attempts to distract attention from the fraud of Mann, Bradley and Hughes which I detailed in my above post at August 3, 2012 at 9:53 am then throws ad hominems as a ‘red herring’.
I now write to answer your silly distraction so there is no possibility that your foolishness will mislead onlookers. You write:
Absolutely not!
Mann, Bradley & Hughes deliberately and with malice aforethought used “Mike’s Nature trick” to “hide the decline” in both their papers which provided the ‘hockey stick, and those papers made no mention of “the decline” which proves beyond any doubt that their method gives WRONG indications. That failure to mention “the decline” alone was a fraud. Indeed, “Mike’s Nature trick” proves that failure was a deliberate fraud.
Clearly, mention of “the decline” as a minor point in another paper did provide them with a ‘get-out’ if their fraud were soon detected. Unless, of course, you have an alternative explanation? And please note that your alternative explanation needs to say why they did not refer to that minor point (published in another paper) in either of their papers which provided the ‘hockey stick’ or at any time when the ‘hockey stick’ was reproduced, discussed and/or used in in other papers including the IPCC AR4.
And they constructed the ‘hockey stick’ by stitching part of their reconstruction with part of the measured data set by use of “Mike’s Nature trick”.
As I said,
And I remind that I also wrote:
Richard
Richard, you are perfectly right!
I would like to add that Mann in his last book insults anybody who does not agree with him, accusing systematically the others to lie, not to be professionals or to believe they are new Galileo. He does not cite Svensmark nor Kirkby from the CLOUD project because he knows their arguments are difficult to rebut, he only mentions Shaviv saying his 2002 paper has been refuted by Rahmstorf omitting to mention Shaviv detailed response in 2004. He blames the media when they cite Shaviv but finds normal they echo the catastrophic predictions he makes up. The term “denier” he uses to refer to those who disagree with him is absolutely disgusting. I am astonished by his impudence and the support he receives.
He is not a scientist but an activist.
– Even Gavin Schmidt concedes that without tree rings and Tiljander, the reconstruction only validates for a significantly shorter period (only 1,000 years IIRC)
Now who is misdirecting? The issue was Tiljander, now you drag in tree rings! Anything else you’d care to remove while you’re at it? I’m sure you could get an upside down sine wave if you threw out enough data. Without Tiljander the reconstruction validates just fine until well before the MWP, and shows modern warmth to be anomalous. You might want to re-read the abstract.
– the refusal of warmists to acknowledge this basic error is an issue of credibility
Huh? Thousands of words have been expended on this, as I’m sure you know. The credibility issue is with those who continue to drag the issue up – but fail to do the simple step of demonstrating the impact it has.
Fact: the scientific community is represented by real professionals like the 31,000+ scientists and engineers who co-signed the OISM petition, stating clearly that CO2 is harmless, and beneficial to the biosphere.
A whole 31,000 Scientists, Engineers, Medical Doctors, Vetinarians and Chiropracters signed a petition over a decade?. Out of millions who were eligible? Wooo I am impressed. That must be what – a whole 0.1% of the possible constituency.
I recommend for those who did not read it Shaviv answer : Detailed Response to “Cosmic Rays, Carbon Dioxide and Climate ” by Rahmstorf et al.
Cosmic Rays determining low cloud formation is certainly a much more interesting theory than carbon dioxide, the last paper of Svensmark : “Evidence of nearby supernovae affecting life on Earth” is really great.
At least CRF is as legitimate as AGW.
joeldshore says:
August 3, 2012 at 7:24 pm
“Smokey: Mann knew the proxy was corrupted — but he used it anyway, because it gave him the hockey stick shape he craved..”
Simply untrue. Because of potential problems identified with the four Tiljander proxies and 3 other proxies…
It isn’t that there were “potential problems” — the Tiljander series “are uncalibratable due to contamination of the temperature signal by local activities, from the 1700s to the present.”
http://amac1.blogspot.com/2010/03/another-scientist-commends-mann-et-al.html
Now add the fact that Mann inverted *two* of the four proxies — he only inverted two, not all four, so he didn’t do it by mistake.
I can repeat this as long as necessary if you continue to say untrue things.
Repeat away. All you’ll do is destroy what little credibility you have remaining.
Smokey says:
Let’s look at Smokey’s logic here:
(1) Smokey says something incorrect about what Mann et al.’s paper says or doesn’t say.
(2) I show it is incorrect by linked to THE ACTUAL PAPER IS QUESTION!
(3) Smokey responds by saying that he won’t look at the paper because “Mann has zero credibility” and instead he will just blindly believe what McIntyre tells him.
This would be funny if it wasn’t so pathetic.
Phil Clarke says: August 4, 2012 at 1:18 am
“Fact: the scientific community is represented by real professionals like the 31,000+ scientists and engineers who co-signed the OISM petition, stating clearly that CO2 is harmless, and beneficial to the biosphere.”
A whole 31,000 Scientists, Engineers, Medical Doctors, Vetinarians and Chiropracters signed a petition over a decade?. Out of millions who were eligible? Wooo I am impressed. That must be what – a whole 0.1% of the possible constituency.
So that makes the 75 who make up the cabal of the ‘consensus’ about .00024% of your possible constituency?
Phil Clarke,
You know very well why it is important to look at the reconstruction without tree rings. If it wasn’t an issue, why would Mann specifically update his supplementary information to show the effect?
I note you completely ducked my direct question to you – so I’ll repeat it:
I agree completely with you when you say “If you have an a priori expectation that the orientation is the opposite sign, then the proxy cannot be used”. This is the core of the problem. We know the sediment series was corrupted by land usage during the screening period to the extent that the believed a priori physical correlation to temperature was reversed. So the series should never have passed the screening test as described by Mann. Yet it did. Simple question, Phil, how did this happen – how did it pass the screening test?
I eagerly await your response:
It is apparent to anyone with half a bfain that Mann has no credibility and has been exposed as a liar and a fraud continuously. For Joel of course, who’s of the same creed as Mann, Mann’s work is all above board and is supported by his own paper! Now that is the most inane and mindless comment one can ever hear. [SNIP: Sorry, Venter, but this really is a bit over the line. Sorry. -REP]
This is the level of brainless trolling that characterises the alarmists.
This is the core of the problem. We know the sediment series was corrupted by land usage during the screening period to the extent that the believed a priori physical correlation to temperature was reversed. So the series should never have passed the screening test as described by Mann. Yet it did. Simple question, Phil, how did this happen – how did it pass the screening test?
I HAVE answered the point, twice by my count. Firstly there were two methods (as detailed in the book extract I quoted) RegEm is insensitive to the sign, in the composite method the screening is passed if a correlation is found during the training period. I fail to see the relevance of whether ‘the believed a priori physical correlation to temperature was reversed’; whether the various proxies entered the analysis “right side up” or “upside down”, the regression would have forced increasing values (say) to correlate to increasing temperatures. We just know that the series passed the screening (the P value was rather low, at 0.1). Now it may be that this was a ‘spurious’ correlation due to contamination, which would mean the proxy should not have been used- oh hang on, the authors were aware of the recent possible corruption issues and other quality problems with these 4 and 3 other proxies, so they did the reconstruction with and without these and found it made no material difference to the overall conclusion of anomalous modern warmth. This is not that surprising; if you look at the actual curves for the sediment proxies they are pretty much flat over the MWP and earlier; far from being ‘the core of the problem’ in terms of paleoclimatic reconstruction its a non-issue. Anyone who disagrees is free to download the code and data and redo the reconstruction with the proxies in, out, ‘upside down’ or ‘right way up’ and publish their findings. That none of Mann’s critics seem to have done so speaks volumes ……..
So that makes the 75 who make up the cabal of the ‘consensus’ about .00024% of your possible constituency?
Ah, you mean the Doran et al study? Of course the number of ‘actively publishing climate scientists’ is a tiny fraction of ‘all people with a science-related degree’, so what? This just demonstrates the pointlessness of the OISM study. OISM sent out the petition accompanied by a misleading and error-filled article deliberately tricked out to look like a peer-reviewed PNAS paper, prompting the NAS to issue a press release disavowing the petition. The petition was widely spoofed at first (early signatories included the cast of M*A*S*H, pop stars etc) and since 1999 31,000 or so graduates seem to have been taken in (although a probe by Scientific American in 2004 found about 10% of actual scientist signatories they contacted had never heard of the thing, a trifle worrying). Most of the signatories (>15,800) are actually engineers rather than scientists, let alone climate scientists and given that there are around 2 million graduate engineers in the US this gives a positive response rate rather lower than a junk mailshot. Unconvincing.
OTOH 100% of the professional associations of scientists, including the major national scientific academies, with several hundred thousand scientist members between them have issued position statements endorsing the conclusions of the IPCC …..
Phil Clarke,
Earlier you bemoaned those “who continue to drag the issue up”, but the dishonesty in your last response is exactly the reason why we do. And we will continue to do so until you and other warmists accept the obvious, Mann made a mistake in his screening.
You have again claimed that Mann’s critics should download the code and redo the reconstruction without sediments. But as I have stated twice previously, there is no need for us to do so as Mann did this himself in his updated supplementary materials. The version without sediments and tree rings (which should have been in the original paper but for his screening error) shows an elevated MWP and validates for a far shorter period.
Your response above completely fails to explain how the tree rings passed the CPS screening test. You only address RegEm and even this response is bizarre. (You have no issue if the sediment series was used with the inverse correlation to the physical meaning?) But let’s stick with CPS. We know a one-sided screening test was used based on the a priori expected correlation. We know that the sediment series should have failed the test because of the contamination. The only possible way it could have passed the test is if Mann erred and tested the wrong orientation. Why can’t you just admit this?
fedden says:
August 4, 2012 at 7:55 am
Phil Clarke, … “So the series should never have passed the screening test as described by Mann. Yet it did. Simple question, Phil, how did this happen – how did it pass the screening test?”
One more simple question, Phil – why did Mann purposely invert *two* of the four proxies to reverse the direction of their orientation, rather than use all four completely unaltered?
Phil Clarke:
At August 4, 2012 at 9:55 am you say;
Not all those position statements support the IPCC position. For example, the Russian Academy of Sciences is predicting imminent cooling (n.b. cooling and not warming); see e.g.
http://notrickszone.com/2012/05/21/scientists-of-the-russian-academy-of-sciences-global-warming-is-coming-to-an-end-return-to-early-1980s-level/0/
And those Academies which have provided pro-IPCC position statements did not consult their Members. The statements were issued by Executives of the Academies, and those Executives have been usurped by activists.
Richard Lindzen provides shocking analysis – which names names – of how that usurpation has been achieved. It is a good read and can be accessed at several places including this one
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=16330
So, your statement is not true and if it were true then it would be meaningless.
Richard
Phil Clarke,
The boards of professional associations do not speak for their membership’s views. If they wanted the members’ views known, they would go to a professional pollster and do it right. I notice they never do that. And a ‘press release’ changes nothing; it’s just impotent whining by petty tyrants and activists who want to censor the rank-and-file’s opinions, but can’t.
Next, PNAS can ‘disavow’ anything they like — just like anyone can disavow PNAS. What they cannot do is rescind the names of 31,400 co-signers. Neither can you, or anyone else except the co-signers themselves.
Next, the OISM website lists the names of all co-signers. Anyone contesting their name has been removed. That still leaves more than 31,400 valid signatures stating that CO2 is harmless and beneficial. That’s 75 possible alarmists vs 31,400 confirmed skeptics . Suck it up.
Next, you denigrate thousands of professionals with advanced degrees by implying that they were tricked into signing. They are not fools, they can read a simple statement, and sign it if they agree. More than 31,400 agree that CO2 is harmless, and beneficial to the biosphere.
Next, Phil Clarke says: Most of the signatories (>15,800) are actually engineers rather than scientists, let alone climate scientists and given that there are around 2 million graduate engineers in the US this gives a positive response rate rather lower than a junk mailshot. Unconvincing.
Really, Phil? 31,400+ is an overwhelming sample of U.S. scientists and engineers; a much bigger sample than professional pollsters use. Further, they cannot submit by email, they must sign a hard copy, and either pay the postage and mail it, or hand it in in person. Each co-signer went out of his/her way to express their view. That means more than the handful of board members of an organization, doubled and squared. It is reality vs baseless propaganda. Let’s see you produce even 10% of the number of OISM signatures who claim that CO2=CAGW. The fact is that the alarmist crowd has repeatedly tried, but failed to get even 10% of OISM’s 31,400+ signatures. Obviously, the Consensus is entirely on the side of scientific skeptics [the only honest kind of scientist]. And only a deluded climate alarmist would denigrate engineers. Engineers and scientists sent men to the moon. But if a group of scientists competed with a group of engineers to do the same thing, there is no doubt that the engineers would win the contest. Further, all engineers are scientists. But not all scientists are engineers.
Face it, Phil, this isn’t a battle you can possibly win. You are simply arguing with bluster. There are far more scientific skeptics than climate alarmists, as the number of OISM co-signers proves.
I challenge you to produce more than 31,400 signatures from professionals in the hard sciences, stating that CO2 will cause runaway global warming and climate disruption. Hell, I challenge you to produce 10,000 signatures. Or even 5,000. Put up or shut up, Phil.
joeldshore says:
August 4, 2012 at 7:09 am
Smokey says: “Ah, but absolutely true. And posting a paper by Mann in support of Mann has zero credibility. I get my Tiljander info from someone honest: Steve McIntyre, who is destroying Michael Mann because of Mann’s transparent dishonesty — the only thing that Mann is transparent about.”
Let’s look at Smokey’s logic here:
(1) Smokey says something incorrect about what Mann et al.’s paper says or doesn’t say.
(2) I show it is incorrect by linked to THE ACTUAL PAPER IS QUESTION!
Now let’s look at Joel’s logic.
1. Smokey says that Mann knew about the problems with the post-1700 Tiljander series, that he still used them, and that he used them in a manner inconsistent with Tiljander’s own interpretation.
2. Joel offers proof that Mann *didn’t* do that by saying “Read Mann’s paper.”
*koff*
“Why’d you shoot Bart, Jesse?”
“I didn’t shoot Bart, Sheriff.”
“Ten witnesses say you pulled your six-gun and put three rounds into him.”
“Looky-here, Sheriff! See? I still *have* three bullets in my six-gun!”
richardscourtney says: August 4, 2012 at 10:43 am
For example, the Russian Academy of Sciences is predicting imminent cooling (n.b. cooling and not warming)
Russian Academic Oleg Sorokhtin , for some years now has advised against the warming euphoria.
http://en.rian.ru/analysis/20080103/94768732.html
Extrapolation of the 350 year CET record supports conjecture of a forthcoming cooling.
Smokey says:
August 4, 2012 at 10:55 am
“I challenge you to produce more than 31,400 signatures from professionals in the hard sciences, stating that CO2 will cause runaway global warming and climate disruption. Hell, I challenge you to produce 10,000 signatures. Or even 5,000. Put up or shut up, Phil.”
This is in danger of becoming an “appeal to authority” post, but you did
ask.
http://tigger.uic.edu/~pdoran/012009_Doran_final.pdf
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/06/04/1003187107.full.pdf+html
Entropic,
I note that you have failed to produce even my lowest, easiest challenge: produce 5,000 co-signers who believe that CO2=CAGW. Key word: failed.
Either produce signatures of alarmist scientists, or admit that the consensus is not on the side of the alarmist crowd [which is in reality quite small], but that the consensus is on the side of scientific skeptics.
Ball’s in your court. Produce the signatures, or you lose the argument.
Dr. John Christy:
“Now, it gives some people great comfort to offer a quick and easy answer when the weather strays from the average rather than to struggle with the real truth, which is, we don’t know enough about the climate to even predict events like this.”
* * *
If we all just say “we do not know” . . .
A starting point on the end. . .
In nature, everything has happened in the past, do not hesitate, but not always for the same reasons.
macnmat:
Dr Christy was presenting scientific information.
Your post at August 5, 2012 at 10:45 am goes to the heart of a difference between science and the Precautionary Principle. It says;
The Null Hypothesis is a basic principle of science. It says that
It must be assumed that a change has not happened unless there is evidence that a change has happened.
In the case of climate behaviour,
the Null Hypothesis decrees that the cause of an observed climate change is the same as the cause of similar previous climate changes unless there is evidence to the contrary.
Dr Christy was pointing out the scientific conclusion that the Null Hypothesis decrees that – at present – there is no evidence that climate behaviour has changed since the industrial revolution: this is because there is no observed climate behaviour since the industrial revolution which did not happen before the industrial revolution.
This conclusion is the only valid scientific conclusion concerning the cause(s) of recent climate changes. And the fact that this is the only valid scientific conclusion on the matter is why Trenberth infamously attempted to reverse the Null Hypothesis as it applies to climate change.
The conclusion informs that we need research intended to determine the cause(s) of climate change because, as Dr Christy says,
“Now, it gives some people great comfort to offer a quick and easy answer when the weather strays from the average rather than to struggle with the real truth, which is, we don’t know enough about the climate to even predict events like this.”
The Precautionary Principle says the industrial revolution may have changed climate behaviour so we need to reverse the industrial revolution in case it has. This is the antithesis of science.
Science has given us many benefits. The Precautionary Principle has yet to provide any benefits.
Richard
And, the PP has probably killed a lot of people in the process of blocking the implementation of scientific progress. Not just hundreds or thousands. (I fully expect the anti-nuke crowd to chime in – go live in an electrically-heated dwelling in Germany or Scotland, on a pensioner’s income.)
richardscourtney says:
August 6, 2012 at 2:36 am
Part (I):
Firstly let us see what we have in common:
1. Null hypothesis; thanks for your gentle reminder. Certainly your definition is perfect.
2. Null hypothesis generally has total control over our actions and relationships. By definition, all people are innocent of any charges unless it is proven otherwise.
3. You say; “Science has given us many benefits. The Precautionary Principle has yet to provide any benefits”; yes it’s often true, but not always.
4. Generally I feel positive about comments offered by Dr. Christy.
So, we may have unity in this regard.
Part (II):
What I doubt about:
You say;
“The Precautionary Principle says the industrial revolution may have changed climate behaviour so we need to reverse the industrial revolution in case it has. This is the antithesis of science.”
***
1. I think this is not “Precautionary Principle”, however it can be part of your “understanding and interpretation”.
2. The “Precautionary Principle” is a “Principle” not a “Hypothesis”. By scientific definition “Principle” is “Principle”, it cannot be changed.
2. “The Precautionary Principle” is not necessarily synonymous with “reverse” to the past. I didn’t understand your argument. Logically, this condition is never achievable. So probably your logic is not correct, neither is your understanding of the “Precautionary Principle”.
3. Maybe this simple example can clarify the matter; you may be faced with frost on your winter trips, the tires on your car should be equipped with safety devices. This condition is a wise precaution. Relying on “Null hypothesis” and using the “Precautionary Principle” you start your travel safely.
Part (III):
In the case of climate behaviour,
1. Before the Industrial Revolution, the planet was only influenced by natural factors. For ease of expression, let’s call this era briefly as “cause”.
2. Gradually, after the Industrial Revolution, the human intervention was added to the set of natural factors. This condition did not exist at all in the past. Let’s call this course briefly as “cause+”.
3. The difference between “cause” and “cause+” is the impact of GHGs on the climate, regardless how large the amount may be. As a matter of fact, this cannot be ignored; GHGs including CO2 have an impact on the climate. This has been continually tested and proven through nearly a century of primary research.
4. What can be the meaning of evidence here, industrial revolution or its aftermath? This of course is a long discussion. Both the outcome of this era in terms of GHGs “quantity” and “quality” are quite important. I’d rather make things easier. Industrial revolution means CO2, soot or (BC) Black Carbon. The reason is that MAN makes GHGs as well as nature itself. THIS IS NOT THE MAIN ISSUE; THE REAL QUESTION IS HOW LARGE THE IMPACTS ARE.
5. I read good things about the matter of GHGs especially CO2 somewhere; “we should not be worried about CO2 in the atmosphere imminently leading to an Armageddon Scenario. But that does not mean we should not research the issue at hand, the better to understand any future potential complications at play.”
macnmat.