Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Over at Climate Audit, Steve McIntyre is doing his usual superb job deconstructing bad science. In this case he is discussing the recent publication of the long-delayed “Pages2K” two-thousand-year multi-proxy study of ocean temperatures. The paper is called, “Robust global ocean cooling trend for the pre-industrial Common Era,” Helen McGregor, Michael Evans, et al., and it was published August 17, 2015 in the journal Nature Geoscience.
Steve has provided the R code for reconstructing their bizarre method of binning the data in 200-year bins, and then converting the values from degrees C to standard deviations. After going through all of that strange process to get their results, the second author opined in their press release:
Today, the Earth is warming about 20 times faster than it cooled during the past 1,800 years,” said Michael Evans, second author of the study and an associate professor in the University of Maryland’s Department of Geology and Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center (ESSIC). “This study truly highlights the profound effects we are having on our climate today.”
And here is their money graph, the one that is supposed to show those results.
Figure 1. From the Pages2K study, showing their binned ocean temperature results in units of standard deviations.
It shows the data in 200-year bins, centered in the middle of each bin, so the first bin is from 0-200 AD and the last bin is from 1800-2000 AD. I saw that graph and I said “Huh?” The change from 1700 to 1900 is not anywhere near 20 times as steep as the drop from the start of the study to the present, as Michael Evans claims. That is simply not true.
However, his statement is clear evidence that they are desperately looking to find a “hockeystick” shape, and are trying any method to find a way to present their results so that they appear to support their alarmist claims.
In any case, I thought I’d take a bit of a different tack from that of the authors, and show their results by ocean, in the original units of degrees C. We won’t be needing any math at all, as I prefer to start my investigations by just using the Mark I Eyeball. Before we can begin to discuss how we might average or combine these records, we need to first see just exactly what each individual record looks like. Let me start by showing the Indian Ocean:
Figure 2. Indian Ocean results from the Pages2K study.
Warming 20 times faster than it cooled? According to the proxies, the Indian Ocean didn’t cool much if at all, and it didn’t warm much if at all. Those findings certainly do not agree with the author’s claims.
Next, here’s the Southern Ocean, the waters that encircle Antarctica.
Figure 3. Southern Ocean results from the Pages2K study.
This graph to me perfectly exemplifies the problem with their method of averaging proxies to discern past temperatures. You can see that two proxies start out within a half-degree of each other at 14.5°C-15°C … and one cools steadily for the entire record, while the other doesn’t cool at all. Obviously, both are unlikely to be correct … but which one (if either) is correct?
Then we have the bizarre trace down near Antarctica where the water is cold … it says that the temperatures warmed by about 7°C from the year zero to the year 900 … and then cooled down by 7°C from there to 1900 or so. Unlikely.
Does anyone really believe that if we just average these proxy records in some form that we will actually have an accurate measure of the temperature variation in the Southern Ocean? Because for me, that’s all “garbage in”, and no matter how you might standardize it or anomalize it or average it, you’ll still get “garbage out” for your purported Southern Ocean temperature.
In any case, moving on, we have the Mediterranean …
Figure 4. Mediterranean Ocean results from the Pages2K study.
This is getting ridiculous. In their unending quest to claim recent anthropogenic warming, they’ve included a short segment that shows strong warming from 1700 to almost 2000 … but the rest of the Med disagrees. One proxy goes level, one has a slight rise since about 1700, and one falls pretty steadily from 400 to 2000. Again, garbage in …
We have two proxies from the Arctic Ocean, viz:
Figure 5. Arctic Ocean results from the Pages2K study.
Hilarious. One shows recent warming, and one shows recent cooling, both starting about 1700. People take this seriously? Go figure.
The Pacific is next.
Figure 6. Pacific Ocean results from the Pages2K study. I’ve assigned random colors to the different proxies so that they can be distinguished.
I cannot object in strong enough terms to professionals passing this nonsense off as science. They’ve included several short segments that show the Pacific warming very rapidly, along with another short segment showing it warming and then cooling, and a final short segment that shows it not changing at all since the year 1300… how can anyone mistake this foolishness for actual scientific findings?
I do love the purple line at the bottom, though, showing the Pacific Ocean warming by about two degrees from the year 0 to the year 1380 … righty-o ….
And to round out the madness, here’re the Atlantic proxies …
Figure 7. Atlantic Ocean results from the Pages2K study.
These include a proxy that claims, in all seriousness, that an area of the Atlantic which had a temperature of 15°C in both the year 0 and the year 1800 had fallen by a whacking 5°C, and was down to 10°C, by 1920 … I’m sorry, but that’s simply not credible. Had it happened, we would have seen it in the observational record.
And strangely, almost all of the cooler Atlantic proxies (less than 22°C) show steady cooling from beginning to end … who knows why.
I’m sorry, but their study is just scientific onanism. There is no way that we can combine these 57 proxies, regardless of what technique we might use, and come out with a meaningful value for global ocean temperature changes.
But that’s just what they claim that they’ve done. They’re claiming that it’s simple, all they have to do take those crazy results from those six oceans, standardize them, take a weighted average based on the area of the ocean in question, and presto, they come up with the global ocean temperature history for the last 2,000 years …
I say that’s dumb as a bag of ball bearings.
Finally, I defy anyone to show me an anthropogenic effect anywhere in these results. Most of the proxies that cover the period 1900-2000 show cooling temperatures, not warming temperatures as the authors claim.
Steve McIntyre continues to parse the study, and I’m sure will have further interesting results. I can’t recommend his site highly enough.
My best wishes to everyone, we now return you to my regularly scheduled holiday … at this moment the railroad train is coming by our tent, and the whistle is loud enough to make your eyes water.
Williams, Arizona.
w.
PS—Is there valuable information in these 57 proxies? I would say yes, very likely so … but they will never find it using those methods. Instead, each proxy needs to be considered on its own merits, and whatever value it might have needs to be considered and determined without reference to the others.
AS USUAL: If you disagree with someone, please have the courtesy to quote the exact words you object to. That way, we can all understand both who and what you are replying to.
DATA AND CODE: Available at Steve McIntyre’s site, linked to above.
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Another great piece of de-bunking is provided by Steve McIntyre and Willis Eschenbach. Helen McGregor, Michael Evans, et al. will just have to start all over again, I’m afraid.
I’ve run out of facepalms.
Well done. Very well done!
To the tune of The Garden Song:
Incn by inch, row by row,
We’re going to make the rascals go
All it takes is to look, don’t you know,
For their claims are so unsound.
It is interesting, in a train wreck sort of way, to watch what “scientists” are willing to do to impose their beliefs.
Are my tax dollars paying someone to guess the temperature of the Indian Ocean 1900 years ago? Western Civilization is dead, killed by decadence.
Unfortunately, you are employing an army of third-rate academics.
Twenty times faster(yes, I know it is a lie) until the last fifteen years.
‘Splain that!
=========
Paris is approaching. Remember, it’s not only what’s reported but what the media decides to repeat. It’s half-past September with only about 2 months to go. So long as there is a “claim” or “new study” or “latest findings” and a reference to someone in “science”, true is not an issue.
The Paris promoters have become increasingly shrill but you’re about to see the full-throat, screaming, splash page headlines that is the hallmark of our pseudo-science propaganda era. After all, it works just about every time it’s used.
When I was about 5 years old, a friend and I were digging a hole to China. He started adding dirt to the hole and explained by adding dirt we would then be taking more out. I put down my shovel and stared at him realizing that there was something very wrong with him. There was! After that he regressed and in a few months died of a brain disease. Since then, I have seen variations of adding dirt to the hole or mixing data or putting data in bins so that you could take more data out. It still makes me put down my shovel and stare.
“Scientific Onanism”. Now THAT is an hilariously astute and descriptive observation!
“I say that’s dumb as a bag of ball bearings.”
I prefer the expression “dumb as a box of rocks.”
The co-authors are not IQ dumb, but they have an agenda.
Has anyone noticed that the upward trends in 500/700 and 900/1100 look very similar to the upward trend 1700/1900? So the latest “uptick” is not unique and has happened at least twice before.
What is saddest is this: for the last billion years until today, the planet has had continuous climate changes of all sorts, the continents have and continue to move restlessly around the planet’s surface, crashing into each other and tearing themselves in half over and over again, asteroids and meteors have hit the planet changing things even more, the moon has moved slowly away from the planet changing the ocean tides and other things, etc.
The sun has been hotter, colder, more active, quieter depending on what is near or far, that is, other stars, interstellar dust, etc. and our solar system’s position in the galaxy has changed over a billion years, big time.
And someone wants to nail down our climate and everything else in one place so nothing ever changes?
Insanity. Not to mention, utterly futile.
Someone once told a Climate Scientist “You Can Do Anything” He believed them!
All of these various ocean temperatures and the large disparity in the number of samples per ocean combined with large variations in the temperatures leave me with one BIG question. What in the world are they doing? Have their brains been disconnected from their thought process? How can anyone conclude anything about the ocean temperature from this data? Let alone weather it is increasing or decreasing. How much volume does the temperature of each sample represent? How is this factored into the mass change in temperature? A temperature of a sample representing a large volume of water (ocean) can not be averaged with a sample representing a small sample of ocean.
Perhaps this simple example will make my point.
Fill a bathtub with water (temperature not important.)
Mix thoroughly.
Measure temperature at one foot from each end with the typical digital meat thermometer. Record.
After directing the flame of a typical propane torch (like used for soldering copper pipe) on a small portion of the water at the point that one of the two temperatures were taken for about five minutes, measure the temperature at both locations again.
Now: Who can possibly think that the temperature of the total volume of water in the bathtub is the average of these two temperatures?
Who can possibly think that the rate of change of temperature of either measurements has anything at all to do with the rate of change that would be suggested by the rate given by the change in temperature for the first and second set of readings?
All of the ocean temperature readings collected over the years have the above problem. They also have the problem of being affected by wind direction, weather conditions, and ocean currents at the time of collections. I have also read that these sensors float around in the ocean, adding even more complexity to the problem. You don’t have blind men trying to describe an elephant by feel, you have blind men sent to separate rooms, each with a different animal, trying to describe an animal they all think is only one animal.
Of course, even if recent warming were 20 times faster than previous cooling, or 200 times faster, that does not tell us that we have anything to do with it. At least three logical fallacies come into play to reach that conclusion: Argument from Ignorance; Affirming the Consequent; and Cum Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc. It seems to me that Argumentum ad Ignorantiam is fundamental here: we do not really know with any kind of accuracy how the Earth’s temperature has changed from century to century through the long ages of its chronology, so we do not really know if what is happening now is actually unprecedented, or simply unusual, or even unremarkable.
What I find really strange is the error range in the last bin is much larger than any of the others. Now, one would think more recent proxies should be more accurate. This alone pretty much destroys the entire study.
And now I read this “Why El Niños originate from geologic, not atmospheric, sources” @ur momisugly http://www.climatechangedispatch.com/why-el-ninos-originate-from-geologic-not-atmospheric-sources.html
Couple the temperature changes caused by the El Nino/La Nina (and their associated effects on weather patterns) emanating from the volcanic activity in the western Pacific, near Papua New Guinea, with all of the unknown, undetected, uncharted, unlooked for heat sources along the Atlantic rift and their effects and it is obvious that all of the data is worthless. There seems to be many sources of temperature, other than Sun, affection ocean temperature.
Also, It has always seemed strange to me that the El Nino appears to be opposite to what would be happening if caused by the trade winds and Equatorial currents. Since Willis has several orders of magnitude more sailing experience than me (Only a Sunfish) perhaps he has an explanation as to why the pointed end of the El Nino is on the wrong end. From this depiction –
http://biophysics.sbg.ac.at/atmo/el-scans/el-nino1.jpg – I get the impression that it would be narrow near Peru and gather more effect as the trade winds/currents concentrated the effect.
I think the fact that heat net leaves the planet and always has despite wide CO2 ranges in geologic time matters. We are on a thin crust over 1000 degree range mantle, so heat must net leave. The sun just modulates the heat flow outward.
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2015/09/06/the-sun-does-not-warm-the-earth/
Per Pacific temp patterns, I think the circumpolar current running into Drake Passage matters.
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2010/12/22/drakes-passage/
Hypothesis: Almost all climate related proxies for historical/paleo anything suck and any set of such data is likely useless if it isn’t actively misleading.
Can anybody suggest any exceptions other than radiometric dating and direct observations such as analyses of paleo atmosphere samples trapped in polar ice.
[snip – if you want to lambast the author for his credentials, let’s also see yours, and put your name to your words. I have little tolerance for cowards like yourself who take potshots from the shadows, and offer nothing of substance to refute the article. – Anthony
Thanks, Anthony.
Warren, I’ve never made a secret of the fact that I have no credentials at all … and despite that I have a number of publications in the scientific journals which to date have garnered about 31 citations in other scientific papers.
The point you seem to miss is that my credentials are immaterial—either my words are true or they are not. Either my claims are correct or they are not.
Do not be misled by credentials. As Feynman remarked, “Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts”.
w.
There cannot be a ” ” “PROXY” ” ” for the temperature of the Pacific Ocean, nor any other ocean or sea. The oceans are large and deep, with various currents, layers, and seasons. What exactly is the temperature of the Pacific Ocean now???
The Universities give the imprimatur of “Science” to this foolishness because the politicians permit it. The politicians permit it because their backers give them donations for so doing. Is there a conservative University President anywhere, even one?
Nick Stokes, why do you defend this?
So glad I went into engineering instead of “Science…”
So glad I went into engineering instead of “Science…”
APS IPCC Workshop 1/8/14
Dr Koonin’s opening remarks
“While not all or even most of the APS membership are experienced in climate, it’s important to realize that physicists do bring a body of knowledge and set of skills that are directly relevant to assessing the physical basis for climate science. Radiation transfer, including the underlying atomic and molecular processes, fluid dynamics, phase transitions, all the underpinnings of climate science are smack in the middle of physics.”
In order to earn, emphasis on “earn”, my BSME I had to demonstrate competence in chemistry, physics, heat transfer, thermodynamics, statistics, calculus, algebra, etc. Got the picture? The notion that these “climatologists” have some kind of special knowledge or scientific insight the rest of us haven’t got is just snake oil BS. We all recognize a used car salesman when we hear one.
A “climate scientist’s” most important knowledge is writing successful grant proposals, cashing those taxpayer checks, and attracting a posse of basement dwelling trolls to disparage and harass the skeptics.
It is quite amazing what people claim to be able to do with virtually no data. Even now, we only have about 3500 ARGO buoys that accurately measure ocean temperatures and they are showing no warming since the early 2000’s when they were deployed.
Can someone please explain how a max 1W/M^2 contained in the 13 to 18 µ wavelength can possibly warm the oceans? Don’t you need wavelengths that actually warm H20 to be warming the oceans? Or do we ignore basic physics when we are a Climate “Scientist?”
http://science.kennesaw.edu/~jdirnber/oceanography/LecuturesOceanogr/LecOceanStructure/0620B.jpg
Thanks for that, CO2. Any wavelength that is absorbed by the ocean leaves the ocean warmer than it would be had it not absorbed the radiation. Also, your graphic only shows “near” infrared, not the thermal infrared.
w.
Thanks Wilis, my understanding is that 13 to 18µ wavelength light is absorbed in what is called the “microlayer” of the surface, which results largely in evaporation, and warming of only the top millimeter or so of the ocean.
From Dr Roy Spenser’s “Can Infrared Radiation Warm a Water Body?”
It appears that even Dr Spenser doesn’t know the answer, which is odd given that this is “settled” science. Clearly it is a question that needs to be answered before anything is truly “settled.”
From the comments this was discovered:
It appears to me that a very very very important question than any real science would require to be answered to begin to “settle” the issue hasn’t even been considered by the climate “scientists.”
I stumbled upon this jem while looking up this topic.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/SSMI-vapor-thru-Jun14.png
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/UAH_LT_1979_thru_August_2015_v6.png
Penetration and absorption are different animals. Blue visible light penetrates deeply BECAUSE it is poorly absorbed.
In water shallower than 250m that blue light is also heating the bottom, as the water is essentially transparent. Of course, that warmed bottom is going to have a strong tendency to conduct and radiate back to the water above.In deeper water all light energy energy is ultimately absorbed by the ocean.
The spectral intensity is impressive in these bands.
Having absorbed this radiational energy, the water either radiates it back or heads straight for the surface.
AND this is why TSI may not be the whole story.
Slight changes in the wavelength of the solar spectrum may have a significant impact upon how much energy is absorbed by the oceans and at what depth.
I often wonder whether this has been accounted for in the so called “feint sun paradox”. In the early years, it is thought that there was more UV in the solar spectrum and that could have had a material impact on the manner in which the oceans were heated.
Leif claims there are satellites out there measuring the entire solar incoming spectrum and they don’t show much variation. This was news to me as last I heard our solar sensors were narrow bandwidth.
The young dim sum (as I call it) is a hypothesis based on our sun being a main sequence star. Growing gradually hotter is what main sequence stars do, but there is a lot of variation between different stars. I have seen estimates between 4 and 30% for how much dimmer the sun would have been at the Ordovician glaciation. One can gather that there is not a large shift in the distribution of light from lower solar radiation temperatures from this.
My understanding is that IR between 13 and 18µ doesn’t penetrate the oceans to any depth and likely causes evaporation, and that the “skin” of the ocean is cooler than the water immediately below it. Also, is it likely that the churning of the oceans is enough to overcome the natural tendency of the warmer water to rise? Calm lakes have wide dispersion of temperature between shaded areas and exposed areas, and yet have the same exposure to back radiation. It appears to me that this “settled” science has some pretty important unanswered questions.
Water absorbs 15 micron/667 wave number radiation VERY efficiently such that it penetrates little more than the wavelength before it is all gobbled up. The “cool skin” is not so very cool in relation to deeper ocean temperatures during the day as it is at night.
Mixing in the mixed (go figure) layer from wind, Rossby and Kelvin reaction waves, Ekman transport, etc. certainly forces warm water below and cooler water above where it would be in a stagnant gradient. Here are the mixed layer depths credit Willis.
Since the ARGO era the bottom of the mixed layer has been defined by a barrier layer based on density. Thermal communication through this barrier is very, very slow.
Science can be settled for politicians, never for scientists.
Do the different colours contain different amounts of energy ? And shouldn’t any diagram of absorption somehow show that ?
The energy of shorter wavelength light, the light that penetrates the oceans is of much much much higher energy than IR between 13 to 18µ Note the Log scale.
http://chemwiki.ucdavis.edu/@api/deki/files/38725/em_spectrum.png?revision=1
http://www.mpoweruk.com/images/emspectrum.gif
Isn’t this chart making my point? The GHG effect would only impact night time temperatures, and this clearly shows that the surface is cooler than the deeper ocean. If the radiated ocean warmed due to 13 to 18µ the surface would be at warmer than the deeper ocean. Clearly during the day the surface is warmer than the deeper ocean. That warmth is radiated as IR as it cools. The back radiation of 13 to 18µ would have to keep the surface ocean warmer than the deeper ocean to demonstrate heat being “trapped.” This chart is showing about a 2.5°C drop between day and night.
Wow. This post misrepresents what one of the authors of the paper said when it says:
Nick Stokes rightly points this out, saying:
But rather than acknowledge his error and thank Stokes for pointing it out, Willis Eschenbach responds in a way which shows he apparently hasn’t even read the paper, saying things like:
And:
Which show he has no idea what the paper actually says. This might be somewhat understandable as the paper is paywalled, but even the freely available FAQ shows you can get the 20x rate of cooling figure without grafting anything onto anything else as it says:
That doesn’t require grafting two series onto one another. You can just examine the two series independently of one another.
Leaving that aside, however, a person who had read the paper and/or its supplementary material would know other things Eschenbach apparently doesn’t know. For instance, 21 of the 57 series used in this paper had sufficient resolution that the authors considered them “High resolution reconstructions,” meaning they composited the series into 25-year bins for 1850 to 2000 as a separate process from the 200 year bins used in the graph Eschenbach looked at. This gave them results for the 20th century, without grafting the instrumental record on.
And oh, if Eschenbach would have read the paper he would have seen the authors converted the standard deviations into temperatures. Heck, he would have seen this if he had just read the post by Steve McIntyre he so highly praised as McIntyre discussed it, saying:
Why is this site running posts criticizing a paper by a person who clearly hasn’t even looked at the paper?
B.S.,
Have you read the paper?
I have Alan Robertson. It’s not very long. It’s only eight pages, two and a half of which are devoted to things like references and such. Half of the rest is images. It doesn’t take much time to get through. The supplementary material takes a lot more work to get through. As for the code provided with the paper, I’ve barely looked at that.
And this isn’t really important or anything, but as a favor, I ask people not to refer to me by my two initials. Those two letters together have an unpleasant connotation.
Brandon Shollenberger,
Q2- Did you purchase access to the paper, or was access provided? I ask only because you seem to be trying to support the paper’s methodology and conclusions by denigrating the paper’s critics. Perhaps that isn’t your intent?
I haven’t read the paper, just the article here and at Climate Audit and other links discussing the topic.
Rather than discuss any commentary critical to the paper, let’s assume for the moment that the paper’s conclusion(s) are precise and accurate, i.e.-reality matches the authors’ findings. In that case, the paper undermines the rhetoric (major tenets) in support of the CAGW meme:
1) Modern/current temps are unprecedented
2) Modern/current temp increase is unprecedented and attributable to man’s contribution of atmospheric CO2.
Alan Robertson:
Huh? I’m not a fan of the paper. I don’t agree with what the one author of the paper said, and I think the authors’ choice of methodology for combining their data in their bins was a bad one. I think steve McIntyre has already started to show this. But that doesn’t change the fact Willis Eschenbach clearly hasn’t read the paper and doesn’t know what the paper says.
As for how I read the paper, I found out you could get free access to the paper when a person over at Climate Audit mentioned you could. After I read a comment saying a person found a free copy of the paper, I looked where the person said he found it and went where he said he found a free copy of the paper found a free copy of it. Then I read it.
It’s really silly you think me criticizing one person who clearly hasn’t read the paper or its supplementary material for saying things about the paper which are absolutely untrue means I am “trying to support the paper’s methodology and conclusions by denigrating the paper’s critics.”
So you think that the method that determines the proxy trend is exactly comparable with the method that give current observations?
Why not just splice them on then?
You can’t have it both ways. Especially when looking at “standardised changes”.
Don’t blame Nock Stokes for doing this. You are defending it.
Typo, apologies to N<b.ick Stokes.
Brandon, what is the difference between stitching the two series together and “comparing” them?
If it is really true that we have had a 2000 year cooling trend interrupted by our emission of CO2, then I think we should be very glad that we started emitting all that CO2 before we started sliding inexorably into another glacial period.
SI figure 10 shows 25 year bins from 1850 to 2000, slicing and dicing the 57 proxies various ways. There is no overall warming, let alone at 20x the past. Evans knew that so deliberately misrepresented. In layman speak, he lied. Another sterling example of ‘climate science’ where down is up, day is night, and untruth abounds.
I hope you realize the authors of the paper created that figure to show exactly how well/poorly their proxies match up with the modern instrumental record (as provided by the Kaplan reanalysis data set), displaying results by various subsets to give readers a full understanding of the limitations/successes of their data.
That means you’re calling this man a liar for describing the modern instrumental record accurately, solely because he was talking about the instrumental record instead of the proxy record even though he wasn’t claiming to be talking about the proxy record. Pretty lame if you ask me.
Brandon,
How is it you don’t see that whether Michael Evan’s comments were part of the official press release or not, it is irrelevant?
And leaving aside the validity of using proxies to determine past temperatures with any degree of accuracy, why would you think that taking data points, slicing, dicing, and throwing them into the blender has any meaning at all? It is simply mathterbation.
timg56:
I’m pretty sure I didn’t say a single word about it mattering whether or not his comments were part of the official press release or not. I don’t know why you’re talking about that.
Again, why are you talking about this? This has nothing to do with anything I’ve said. Whether or not this paper has any merit doesn’t depend on whether or not this post has any merit. Willis Eschenbach could be completely wrong while at the same time this paper could be a bad paper. Eschenbach could have not even looked at a bad paper before writing a post criticizing it. It’d still be a bad paper.
I have no idea why you guys are acting like me criticizing this post because Eschenbach clearly didn’t read the paper he’s criticizing somehow means I think the paper is a good paper. Actually, I do. It’s just disturbing to think the tribalism is that strong here.
Proxies are little more than scientific parlor games, Ouija boards, tea leaves, magic 8 balls and equally informative.
Brandon Shollenberger
September 12, 2015 at 1:29 pm
Brandon, you had obviously criticized more than one person in this thread, at that point in time. Small thing, I know, but necessary perhaps, when you are going into the weeds with your criticisms and then in a later post, you add:
Tribalism? That’s rich. Call us the BS Detector Tribe.
“I’m sorry, but their study is just scientific onanism.”
Well, really now, seriously?
So how do I explain this to my 5 year old? 14 year old? Oh, in his case, never mind.
Isn’t all the voluminous co-authoring and pal-reviewing just a team sport version for the CAGW crowd?