The Volokh Conspiracy

ClimateGate Revisited

Jonathan H. Adler • July 11, 2010 8:49 am

Last week, the UK Independent Climate Change Email Review (aka the Muir Russell Review) released its report on the alleged scientific misconduct of climate researchers revealed by the disclosure of e-mails from the Climatic Research Unit at East Anglia University. As the NYT reports, the review rejects the claims that the ClimateGate e-mails disclosed scientific fraud or chicanery in climate science, but also criticized some of the scientists involved for some of their conduct and concluded that a specific graph of past temperatures was “misleading,” even if not fraudulent. In other words, the “trick” to “hide the decline” did produce a misleading graph, but the underlying scientific case for a human contribution to global climate change remains intact.

There’s lots of commentary out there, including thoughts from Bradford Plumer, Roger Pielke, Jr., and Ronald Bailey. The Guardian rounds up some scientific reactions here. I particularly like these comments by Mike Hulme (whose commentary on ClimateGate I’ve highlighted before, e.g., here and here).

I believe the CRU emails have been a game-changer for science – but have done little to alter the policy conundrums raised by climate change.

For climate science and scientists, three lessons must been learned: make sure to the extent possible that your analysis can be fully replicated by anyone who wishes to; as much rigour should be applied to communicating the “unknowns” as the “knowns” of scientific knowledge; and climate scientists need to re-emphasise (and maybe relearn) their public duty role as sceptics, scientific enquirers who, in the words of the Royal Society motto, “take nobody’s word for it”.

And for climate policy, I don’t think anything much has changed. We know humans have a significant role in changing the climate, but also that the future risks of such interventions cannot and will not be precisely described. The politics of climate change therefore remain, and will continue to remain, turbulent.

Meanwhile, the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency has also produced a review of the IPCC’s Working Group II report, finding several errors, most of which are rather small, including the overstatement of how much of the Netherlands is below sea-level. For more on this report, see these items from The Economist, Plumer, and Pielke. Jr.

Categories: Climate Change, Environment, Politicizing Science

346 Comments

redc1c4 says:

one can get a different review of the “inquiry” here.
July 11, 2010, 9:12 am
Pat H. says:

The reason the cover-up stories and explanations are going to spew for a long time is that there’s too much government power already vested in the Anthropogenic Global Warming Hoax, now called Anthropogenic Climate Change (a softer sounding nomenclature I suppose), for those interests to die a proper death right away.

I think this was summed up rather nicely in Global-warming Alarmism Dying a Slow Death, published in the New American last March.
July 11, 2010, 9:27 am
Still confused says:

But the tree ring data doesn’t match up with recorded temperatures.
July 11, 2010, 9:43 am
J.K. says:

Academics collude to protect fellow academics.

In other news, scientific evidence has led us to conclude that water is indeed wet.
July 11, 2010, 9:52 am
Skyler says:

The continued lying and grasping for power by the hoax deniers is expected.
July 11, 2010, 10:05 am
Metamorf says:

I’ve posted a little on this as well, mainly just linking to what I’ve found elsewhere, but I think it’s important to point out that, even without Climategate, and even accepting the likelihood of AGW, or ACC, or whatever PR acronym they slide to next, there remain serious problems with the politics around it all:

AGW is pretty clearly a fad, but it’s still likely to be a reality too. How much of a reality, though, what its real costs and benefits might be, what the economic costs of immediate mitigation through carbon reduction would amount to, and what future technologies might develop to allow us to manage things much more cheaply — these are all such huge uncertainties that the current hubbub around carbon reduction seems explicable only as another example of the madness of crowds, and even of the strange attraction of apocalypse.

Thanks especially for continuing to highlight Mike Hulme, by the way.
July 11, 2010, 10:07 am
zuch says:

[Mike Hulme]: The politics of climate change therefore remain, and will continue to remain, turbulent.

… for much the same reason that creationism/ID won’t go away.

Cheers,
July 11, 2010, 10:10 am
mary janes says:

They’re not total hypocrites, as they’re working overtime to abate the man-caused heated climate surrounding the AGW debate.
July 11, 2010, 10:11 am
Laura(southernxyl) says:

For climate science and scientists, three lessons must been learned: make sure to the extent possible that your analysis can be fully replicated by anyone who wishes to; as much rigour should be applied to communicating the “unknowns” as the “knowns” of scientific knowledge; and climate scientists need to re-emphasise (and maybe relearn) their public duty role as sceptics, scientific enquirers who, in the words of the Royal Society motto, “take nobody’s word for it”.

I guess my question is, why are they just now having this epiphany.

The fact that the “misleading” graph was introduced in the first place is profoundly troubling to me. This is falsification. I don’t understand the whitewash.
July 11, 2010, 10:17 am
music censor's family attorney says:

The fact that the “misleading” graph was introduced in the first place is profoundly troubling to me. This is falsification. I don’t understand the whitewash.

Post-normal science utilizes a different methodology than many of us learned in school, such as squinting, wetted finger in the air, grant-writing scholarship and p.r. alarmism.
July 11, 2010, 10:30 am
A. Criminal says:

We know humans have a significant role in changing the climate,

Boy, it’s a relief to know that that’s all settled! And a relief that Mr. Hulme, “a climate scientist at the University of East Anglia,” followed his betters’ instructions to say “climate change” rather than “global warming.”
July 11, 2010, 10:49 am
Gil says:

Why not instead of saying “AGW or CC is a fraud” or “AGW may be actually beneficial” (1816 “The Year Without A Summer” showed that Global Cooling would be extremely disastrous to humans), say “the atmosphere is part of the ‘commons’, i.e. no one owns it therefore no one has right to stop other from using it as a dumping ground, period”?
July 11, 2010, 11:11 am
Gil says:

Why not instead of saying “AGW or CC is a fraud” or “AGW may be actually beneficial” (1816 “The Year Without A Summer” showed that Global Cooling would be extremely disastrous to humans), say “the atmosphere is part of the ‘commons’, i.e. no one owns it therefore no one has right to stop other from using it as a dumping ground, period”?
July 11, 2010, 11:11 am
Russ says:

We know humans have a significant role in changing the climate

And exactly how do we know this, when all we have is models that have never shown be particularly accurate predictors of anything?
July 11, 2010, 11:35 am
Ken Arromdee says:

Metamorf: I’ve posted a little on this as well, mainly just linking to what I’ve found elsewhere

Interesting, your quote from your link says this:

The Russell inquiry, the last straw for Stringer, was held behind closed doors and heard only one side of the story. It failed to interview any scientist critical of the Climategate scientists; it failed to call witnesses who were the subjects of the emails, it failed to publish all the depositions, and its panellists could hardly be viewed as independent. One panellist, Geoffrey Boulton, was a climate change advisor to the UK and the EU; another, Richard Horton, had deemed global warming “the biggest threat to our future health.”

I lack the expertise to know if this is true, however. Can anyone verify it?
July 11, 2010, 11:40 am
Steve says:

Laura(southernxyl):
I guess my question is, why are they just now having this epiphany.The fact that the “misleading” graph was introduced in the first place is profoundly troubling to me.This is falsification.I don’t understand the whitewash.

Nothing was falsified. I don’t even understand why you would say that.

The report specifically says that the methodology was not false or misleading in itself, but that it nevertheless should have been explained more clearly. They didn’t say the graph shouldn’t have been introduced.
July 11, 2010, 11:43 am
Christopher Fotos says:

The phrase “we know” is a modern incantation usually followed by something that we do not know.
July 11, 2010, 11:59 am
byomtov says:

Why not … say “the atmosphere is part of the ‘commons’, i.e. no one owns it therefore no one has right to stop other from using it as a dumping ground, period”?

Um, are you familiar with the phrase, “The Tragedy of the Commons?”
July 11, 2010, 12:10 pm
Allan Walstad says:

Steve McIntyre is the one person whose independent work did the most to uncover the weird data analysis behind the so-called “hockey stick” graph. That’s the purported graph of reconstructed temperatures over the last millennium, the one that essentially erases the medieval warming and thereby gives the appearance that the late-20th century rise in temperatures was unprecedented. McIntyre’s blog is http://climateaudit.org/ He has been pointing out over and over again the shortcomings in the so-called “independent” investigations into CRU and the IPCC reports. A.W. Montford’s book The Hockey Stick Illusion basically follows McIntyre and the temperature reconstruction (mostly tree ring data) issue, up through the climategate emails. McIntyre himself, a retired professional statistician, is not actually a global warming skeptic or anti-government free market booster, but seems to have pursued the statistical questions first out of curiosity and later out of shock at what he was finding.
July 11, 2010, 12:32 pm
Laura(southernxyl) says:

Steve, I will explain it to you.

Tree ring data were used as a proxy for temperature, going back centuries. Assumptions were made, as one would have to do, that tree rings would correlate to temperature.

Once direct temperature measurements were available, these were added to the graph but the tree ring measurements were also continued, as they should have been.

It was then seen that the tree ring data and the direct temp measurements diverged: the direct measurements were showing a rise in temperature, which the tree ring data did not; they showed a decline. Obviously this meant that the correlation was not as good as was hoped.

Here’s where the falsification came in: Rather than produce all the data so that the user could see how useful the tree ring proxy was, or wasn’t, the tree ring data were removed only from the part of the graph that showed the divergence. The previous part of the graph still had the tree ring data.

Why? Because leaving the recent tree ring data on would have demonstrated that the low temperatures the tree ring data seemed to indicate in the past might be a divergence from actual temperatures, as it is in the present. In other words, it didn’t actually demonstrate that today’s temperatures are warmer than centuries ago. By using older tree ring data, and picking up with direct temp readings when the tree ring data went in an unfortunate direction, they had a continous curve from apples to oranges that told the story they wanted to tell. They had to remove data, to tell that story. That is falsifying.
July 11, 2010, 1:00 pm
required says:

Laura,
a usage note, be careful with the word “falsified”. In science the meaning is “has been shown to be false”. It has nothing to do with making misleading statements (or producing misleading charts).
July 11, 2010, 1:02 pm
Laura(southernxyl) says:

Required, I’ve worked in labs regulated by EPA and FDA for almost 30 years. I am very familiar with the term “falsify” and what it means.
July 11, 2010, 1:07 pm
Connecticut Lawyer says:

Laura,

Thanks for the cogent explanation.
July 11, 2010, 1:31 pm
Allan Walstad says:

Laura(southernxyl): Exactly.

required: I think I see what you’re getting at–Popperian philosophy of science? Ok then. Substitute “misrepresented,” “misrepresentation” for “falsified,” “falsification.” “Fraud” might be too strong, but not by much.
July 11, 2010, 1:35 pm
cce says:

We know that human beings have increased the CO2 concentration of the atmosphere about 40% since the industrial revolution. We know that there are enough readily available fossil fuels to at least double the pre-industrial concentration. We know from observations that climate sensitivity is very likely between 2 and 4 degrees for a doubling of CO2. http://www.jamstec.go.jp/frcgc/research/d5/jdannan/GRL_sensitivity.pdf

Therefore, we have very good confidence that humans are altering the climate and such a conclusion does not depend on computer models.

Also the “CC” in IPCC (est 1988) stands for “climate change.”
July 11, 2010, 1:37 pm
Skyler says:

cce, we don’t “know” any of those things. People who are proven liars have claimed it and presented fraudulent/misrepresentative data to make their claims, thus we don’t “know” it.
July 11, 2010, 2:18 pm
lgm says:

I congratulate Adler for coming this far and essentially accepting the scientists’ view of the climate change facts. The next stage for Adler would be to examine conservative/Republican efforts to deny climate change or, failing that, to argue that it is good for us, or failing that, to argue that there is no solution. Let’s have some criticism of the American Enterprise Institute.
July 11, 2010, 2:20 pm
yankee says:

cce: Therefore, we have very good confidence that humans are altering the climate and such a conclusion does not depend on computer models.

That’s not the important thing though. The important thing is to deny that any government action to prevent it could be desirable. That’s why denialists move seamlessly between the claims that the climate’s not changing, that it’s changing but it’s not caused by humans, that it’s changing and humans are causing it but there’s nothing we can do about it, that there’s change and humans are causing it but it’s a good thing, that there’s change and humans are causing it but doing something about it would be too expensive, that there’s change and humans are causing it but we shouldn’t do anything about it until developing countries agree to a lot more concessions, and that there’s change and humans are causing it but we shouldn’t enact [politically realistic climate-change proposal] because [politically dead-in-the-water policy] would be so much better.
July 11, 2010, 2:22 pm
zuch says:

Prof. Adler:

As the NYT reports, the review rejects the claims that the ClimateGate e-mails disclosed scientific fraud or chicanery in climate science, but also criticized some of the scientists involved for some of their conduct and concluded that a specific graph of past temperatures was “misleading,” even if not fraudulent.

From the report, page 12:

21. We do not find that the way that data derived from tree rings is described and presented in IPCC AR4 and shown in its Figure 6.10 is misleading.

[bold in original]

24. On the allegation that the references in a specific e-mail to a “trick‟ and to “hide the decline‟ in respect of a 1999 WMO report figure show evidence of intent to paint a misleading picture, we find that, given its subsequent iconic significance (not least the use of a similar figure in the IPCC Third Assessment Report), the figure supplied for the WMO Report was misleading. We do not find that it is misleading to curtail reconstructions at some point per se, or to splice data, but we believe that both of these procedures should have been made plain – ideally in the figure but certainly clearly described in either the caption or the text.

IOW, what they did wasn’t wrong. They just should have stated it more explicitly. But the reviewers are very clear there was no “fraudulent” activity.

From p. 60:

The WMO report is a short document produced annually. It does not have the status or importance of the IPCC reports. The figure in question was a frontispiece and there is no major discussion or emphasis on it in the text.

Because there’s no “major discussion”, there is no discussion of the “splicing” or “curtail[ing]“. It’s an review figure, to give the overall picture (in the frontispiece).

Then there’s this:

35. Handling the blogosphere and non traditional scientific dialogue. One of the most obvious features of the climate change debate is the influence of the blogosphere. This provides an opportunity for unmoderated comment to stand alongside peer reviewed publications; for presentations or lectures at learned conferences to be challenged without inhibition; and for highly personalized critiques of individuals and their work to be promulgated without hindrance. This is a fact of life, and it would be foolish to challenge its existence. The Review team would simply urge all scientists to learn to communicate their work in ways that the public can access and understand. That said, a key issue is how scientists should be supported to explain their position, and how a public space can be created where these debates can be conducted on appropriate terms, where what is and is not uncertain can be recognised.

Guess they don’t endorse the “FOAD” approach but suggest more constructive action, but they recognise the problem with carrying out disputes in such venues….

Cheers,
July 11, 2010, 2:31 pm
Laura(southernxyl) says:

Speaking for myself only, I don’t appreciate being lied to – oh, excuse me, “misled”.
July 11, 2010, 2:34 pm
zuch says:

Laura(southernxyl): The fact that the “misleading” graph was introduced in the first place is profoundly troubling to me.

All that was “misleading” was the lack of specificity as to the contents of a frontispeice figure in a “short document”. Once you add the description, the graph is still the same graph.

Cheers,
July 11, 2010, 2:36 pm
Skyler says:

Zuch is a believer, just like in any fanatical religion. You can’t change his mind no matter what the evidence and logic involved. He will continue to share the pronouncements of the global warming priesthood as though that were evidence to support their lies.
July 11, 2010, 2:41 pm
zuch says:

Russ: And exactly how do we know this, when all we have is models that have never shown be particularly accurate predictors of anything?

Your evidence that the models haven’t been “shown be particularly accurate predictors of anything”?

Do you have any alternative models that have been shown to be better?

Thanks in advance.

Cheers,
July 11, 2010, 2:42 pm
zuch says:

Allan Walstad: McIntyre himself, a retired professional statistician, is not actually a global warming skeptic or anti-government free market booster, but seems to have pursued the statistical questions first out of curiosity and later out of shock at what he was finding.

… and got his 15 minutes of blogosphere fame.

Cheers,
July 11, 2010, 2:44 pm
A. Zarkov says:

One of the ongoing controversies has been over what part the sun plays (if any) in average global temperature variations. The IPCC says virtually none. Scafetta claims to detect a solar signal in the temperature. After he published his findings, the attack dogs over at Real Climate pounced and claimed they could not replicate his calculations. Of course they couldn’t. They don’t understand the wavelet analysis technique Scafetta used, and Gavin Schmidt ending up looking like a fool when Scafetta challenged him.

Now this European blog claims the IPCC relied the work on one solar physicist, Judith Lean (she’s cute isn’t she?) for their conclusions. The “consensus” is a consensus of one in this case.
July 11, 2010, 2:46 pm
zuch says:

Laura(southernxyl): Here’s where the falsification came in: Rather than produce all the data so that the user could see how useful the tree ring proxy was, or wasn’t, the tree ring data were removed only from the part of the graph that showed the divergence. The previous part of the graph still had the tree ring data.
Why? Because leaving the recent tree ring data on would have demonstrated that the low temperatures the tree ring data seemed to indicate in the past might be a divergence from actual temperatures, as it is in the present.

Leaving out the tree ring data entirely presents much the same picture. And the phenomenon of divergence is well known (even if the cause is not as clear; but as the report states, recent work is narrowing down on that).

Cheers,
July 11, 2010, 2:47 pm
zuch says:

Laura(southernxyl): By using older tree ring data, and picking up with direct temp readings when the tree ring data went in an unfortunate direction, they had a continous curve from apples to oranges that told the story they wanted to tell.

They threw out the tree ring data for those periods where it was known to have diverged. Your assertion they did this because “the tree ring data went in an unfortunate direction” is unsupported.

Cheers,
July 11, 2010, 2:49 pm
zuch says:

A. Zarkov: One of the ongoing controversies has been over what part the sun plays (if any) in average global temperature variations. The IPCC says virtually none.

Nonsense. But it’s incumbent on those that claim that insolation accounts for the observed (long term) data to prove that. This they haven’t.

Cheers,
July 11, 2010, 2:52 pm
zuch says:

A. Zarkov: They don’t understand the wavelet analysis technique Scafetta used…

Oh. So Scafetta hasn’t described what he did in such a way as to be “reproducible”?!?!?

Cheers,
July 11, 2010, 2:56 pm
Skyler says:

It’s not incumbent on anyone to produce any alternate theories at all. The global warming fraud has been exposed. There need be no further action to advance anything related to it.
July 11, 2010, 3:01 pm
Allan Walstad says:

Zuch

Leaving out the tree ring data entirely presents much the same picture.

Hardly, Zuch. The tree ring data have played a very prominent role in the purported temperature reconstruction. Leave out the tree rings, and the problems with the analysis of the other sorts of data, also pointed out by McIntyre, will come to the fore.

They threw out the tree ring data for those periods where it was known to have diverged. Your assertion they did this because “the tree ring data went in an unfortunate direction” is unsupported.

It’s directly supported by the “hide the decline” language in the emails made public by the whistle-blower. It’s indirectly supported by the obvious effect it had of obscuring good reason to doubt the reliability of the tree ring temperature reconstruction.
July 11, 2010, 3:04 pm
music censor's family attorney says:

Wavelets probably in analysis.
July 11, 2010, 3:04 pm
zuch says:

Allan Walstad:

[zuch]: Leaving out the tree ring data entirely presents much the same picture.

Hardly, Zuch. The tree ring data have played a very prominent role in the purported temperature reconstruction.

No. See here.

Cheers
July 11, 2010, 3:28 pm
zuch says:

Allan Walstad: It’s directly supported by the “hide the decline” language in the emails made public by the whistle-blower.

The language of the e-mails (“hide the decline”, “trick”) has been beaten to death (and addressed in the latest report here). And the science in the PNAS article above.

Cheers,
July 11, 2010, 3:31 pm
zuch says:

Skyler: It’s not incumbent on anyone to produce any alternate theories at all. The global warming fraud has been exposed. There need be no further action to advance anything related to it.

“I doan wanna know nuttin’!!!!”

Cheers,
July 11, 2010, 3:32 pm
SG says:

zuch:
“I doan wanna know nuttin’!!!!”Cheers,

Ain’t that the truth…
July 11, 2010, 3:55 pm
bill-tb says:

Maybe the AGW fraudsters should stick to trying to find Al Gore’s warm CO2 blanket surrounding the equator … Apparently it has gone missing.
July 11, 2010, 3:56 pm
geokstr says:

This whole debate has become nothing more than politics as usual for the left. Just like illegal immigration, which they couch in feel-good squishy terms of “civil rights” and “fairness” and “social justice”, their “solutions” just happen to result in several tens of millions of new reliable victim group Democratic votes.

What a coincidence.

And just as coincidentally, their reactions and solutions to ~~global warm~~ climate change just happen to result, politically, in every wet dream of a century of progressive fantasies – massive redistribution of wealth and substantial control of private markets, and growth of centralized worldwide government in order to “save” the planet. No other possible solutions are even allowed to be considered. I guarantee that if tomorrow it was determined that ~~the earth~~ Gaia was actually cooling instead, their proposed plans of action would lead to exactly the same political results.

Hell, if there was nothing much happening to climate, they’d just come up with other reasons to get to the same place. But in this case, it’s totally in their interests to exaggerate the effects of any warming that may be happening to force the political results they desire.

Maybe Zuch can explain to us again why we’re all so heartless when we fail to give up our freedoms and sovereignty and agree to go back to a Stone Age economy because the Maldives will soon be under water and the Ganges river delta will disappear, drowning millions of brown people, both of which, of course, have been debunked. Or how the Himalayas will be a desert by 2035 (oops – that’s not happening either).

Or why the earth was lush with life in past epochs when the CO2 concentrations were hundreds of times higher than the present, when species diversity was much higher than today. But then again, T Rex didn’t drive those hated SUVs, so that must explain it.

cce says:
We know from observations that climate sensitivity is very likely between 2 and 4 degrees for a doubling of CO2.

We do, do we?

Then during past geologic epochs, when the CO2 was hundreds of times higher, didn’t all life on earth get fried, instead of blossoming?
July 11, 2010, 3:59 pm
Skyler says:

Zuch, there’s a difference between not wanting to know, and being obliged to provide alternate theories. There might be alternate theories, but no one has an obligation to produce one to satisfy the demands of fraudsters. Liars can make no demands.
July 11, 2010, 4:13 pm
Skyler says:

If there ever was anything to global warming charades, and there wasn’t, then the scientific community must now start over from zero to make their case. That means redeveloping all the data from scratch, redeveloping all the theories from zero, jettisoning any reference to any claims or studies made in the past 100 years and start it all over again with new people who have never studied it or written about it before.

They blew it. There is no confidence in them or those who were involved. It will take generations, rightfully, before they can make any sort of claim again and be believed by any except those in the church of AGW – and they have no say.
July 11, 2010, 4:19 pm
Metamorf says:

zuch is certainly working himself hard in the service of the believers, and deserves a “Cheers” himself! He hasn’t so far tried to explain why tree-ring data were used when it was known that they were a bad proxy, but he’s busy and I’m sure he’ll get to it.

Meanwhile, we could pull back from the apologetic details and look at a bigger picture — in which context, yankee’s series of the stages of skepticism are worth a more objective look:

The important thing is to deny that any government action to prevent it could be desirable. That’s why denialists move seamlessly between the claims that the climate’s not changing, that it’s changing but it’s not caused by humans, that it’s changing and humans are causing it but there’s nothing we can do about it, that there’s change and humans are causing it but it’s a good thing, that there’s change and humans are causing it but doing something about it would be too expensive, …

Never mind the propagandist term “denialist”, the important thing in this sequence isn’t some absurd effort merely to block government action — the important thing is to see how uncertainty is added to uncertainty, until it should become apparent to all but the most fanatic True Believers that actions imposing massive present costs on the global economy would be the the worst sort of ideological risk-taking (and so much for any putative “Precautionary Principle”). Just to be clear, let’s make those uncertainties explicit:
- First, is there a real warming trend? (likely, but not certain)
- Second, if so, is it caused primarily by human actions? (also likely, but not certain)
- Third, if so, is it the case that its costs exceed its benefits, and if so by how much? (note that no believer ever mentions that there could even be so much as a benefit from warming, as though magically we’re now at the just exactly right temperature)
- Fourth, if so, would the costs of immediate attempted mitigation through carbon reduction be less than the net costs of the warming itself? (Do we know the costs of such reduction? Do we know the likely effectiveness of such reduction? Do we know how those uncertainties affect the global cost-benefit balance?)
- Fifth, and probably most importantly, over the course of the century or two in which this warming manifests itself, are we sure that no new technologies will appear that will allow us to extract and sequester atmospheric carbon much more cheaply that through immediate carbon reduction policies? (See, e.g., “Washing Carbon Out of the Air”, Scientific American, Jun/10)
July 11, 2010, 4:39 pm
Joe says:

According to Global warming scientist, the level of CO2 has increased from approx 280ppm (pre man made warming period) to approx 380ppm – approximately a 100ppm increase. A CO2 molecule has approx 30% more heat retention properties than an O2 molecule. That equates to an effective increase in heat retention of approx 30ppm. In order to form a CO2 molecule, there is a combination of a C atom and 2 O atoms. Therefore, the delta is the difference between the co2 and the 02, not the just the co2 molecule. Even assuming that the delta is 50% increase in heat retention properties, it still only equates to an effective 50ppm. 50ppm translates to .005%. The hurdle the global warming scientists have to overcome is how an effective .005% increase in heat retention causes the amount of global warming that is being claimed. There is too big of a leap of faith to demonstrate a correlation.
July 11, 2010, 5:11 pm
Seattle Law Student says:

Skyler says: If there ever was anything to global warming charades, and there wasn’t, then the scientific community must now start over from zero to make their case. That means redeveloping all the data from scratch, redeveloping all the theories from zero, jettisoning any reference to any claims or studies made in the past 100 years and start it all over again with new people who have never studied it or written about it before.

Your remedy does not bear a rational relationship to the problem. A majority of climate scientists had nothing to do with the non-scandal linked to above. Do you believe that every employee of the state department, CIA, and DOD should be fired because of the significantly falsified evidence used in the lead up to the Iraq war? That would be absurd.

At a broader level is this a fundamentally impossible discussion to have? For those who believe that global warming is some sort of conspiracy or falsehood, there is no evidence that will satisfy them that global warming is a threat. For those who do believe global warming is a problem, there is very little that would persuade them to change their minds either. The fact that this issue is wrapped up with politics doesn’t help any.

I suspect that folks such as Skyler are at this time un-persuadable because the cognitive dissonance is too strong. I’ll throw myself under the bus and say that I’m probably un-persuadable as well in the other direction.

For Skyler and I, acknowledging that global warming is not what we perceive would be too much of a challenge to the rest of our mental image of the world to allow it. We’ll happily discount all evidence that disagrees with us, and go to sleep smugly knowing that we’re smarter (and probably better looking) than those who disagree with us.
July 11, 2010, 5:35 pm
karrde says:

zuch:
Your evidence that the models haven’t been “shown be particularly accurate predictors of anything”?Do you have any alternative models that have been shown to be better?Thanks in advance.Cheers,

Zuch: the lack of a competing model does not vitiate the claim that the current model is broken.

(If my high-school-age sister tells me that she never gets the right answer from the formula I gave her for solving a quadratic, I don’t tell her to supply us both with a correct one. I research whether I gave her the right one, and whether she is using it correctly.)

If the current model(s) are not broken, what predictions have they made that have been reflected in the real world? How often have the models been corrected, and how many years of accurate predictions come between corrections?
July 11, 2010, 5:41 pm
SenatorX says:

Another irritating thing about this charade is that there are real environmental issues that could use attention. Part of the cost of global warming fraud is its distraction from actual issues.
July 11, 2010, 5:50 pm
ShelbyC says:

zuch: They threw out the tree ring data for those periods where it was known to have diverged. Your assertion they did this because “the tree ring data went in an unfortunate direction” is unsupported.

Yes, that’s the whole point. They threw out the data when it demonstrated that the tree rings represented and unreliable proxy for temperature data, and used the data when it demonstrated that the proxy was reliable.
July 11, 2010, 5:57 pm
Elliot says:

“We know humans have a significant role in changing the climate, but also that the future risks of such interventions cannot and will not be precisely described.”

“Significant?” OK. How much?
“Precisely?” OK. To what level of precision?

Anyone remember the interview Phil Jones gave a few months back where he said there had been no statistically significant temperature rise in the 1995 to 2010 period?

Or the diasppearance of the Medieval Warming period from one IPCC report to another? Where did it go?

Or the urgent moral imperative to save millions of Bangleshis from the ravages of the Himalayan glaciers melting by 2035?

Ever notice how much mush is included in climate change advocacy? It sounds like we don’t know squat, but some folks want to pretend we do.
July 11, 2010, 5:59 pm
Skyler says:

Seattle Law Student:For Skyler and I

Fair enough, but I have a lot of evidence and common sense on my side and there’s a lot of hokey data on the other.

You can’t measure a global average temperature as used here with currently fielded stations. You can’t measure the temperature within a tenth of a degree for centuries past.

Once you hit those hurdles, there’s not a lot left to argue.
July 11, 2010, 6:01 pm
Elliot says:

“They threw out the tree ring data for those periods where it was known to have diverged.”

So, is there some reason to assume it was spot on in the past? It was accurate until just recently?
July 11, 2010, 6:01 pm
ShelbyC says:

zuch: Your evidence that the models haven’t been “shown be particularly accurate predictors of anything”?

Geez, man. Isn’t it kinda scraping the bottom of the barrel when you have to challenge somebody to produce evidence that your models haven’t been shown to be accurate? Suppose he’s wrong, you’re right and there is no evidence that these models haven’t been shown to be accurate? Then what?
July 11, 2010, 6:14 pm
Seattle Law Student says:

Skyler – You could not have made my point better.
July 11, 2010, 6:20 pm
Skyler says:

Seattle, there is no moral equivalence. One side is right and the other is wrong. The difference is that one is a lie. There is no merit to siding with a lie.

It is also true that if you start examining the most basic part of collecting the data then it’s clear that the claims are a substantial over reach.
July 11, 2010, 6:58 pm
Allan Walstad says:

Zuch

The language of the e-mails (“hide the decline”, “trick”) has been beaten to death…

Oh of course, the CRU people and their apologists have done their best to talk it away.

As for the paper to which you linked, the lead author is the same Mann whose bizarre treatment of the tree ring data was uncovered by McIntyre. The same analysis that generates hockey sticks for tree ing data can do the same for other data. But it’s not surprising that as the tree ring reconstructions started to be debunked, emphasis would shift to other things. And again, it’s not just that the tree ring temperature reconstruction is undermined by the more recent divergence; it’s also the behavior of the scientists responsible for the hockey stick graph, in trying to cover up the divergence, i.e., “hide the decline,” that must undermine confidence in all their results until and unless their work itself can be reconstructed by truly independent scientists, including those who have pointed out the shortcomings to start with.
July 11, 2010, 7:23 pm
Allan Walstad says:

Seattle Law Student

A majority of climate scientists had nothing to do with the non–scandal linked to above.

Actually, as far as the past temperature reconstructions are concerned, a relatively few people exert substantial influence over the peer review process and generation of the IPCC reports. The climategate emails clearly indicate their willingness (with at least some success) to use that influence to frustrate serious challenges to the hockey stick graph.
July 11, 2010, 7:31 pm
OperationCounterstrike says:

This whole story was a big nothing. What’s surprising is that it took as long as it did to fizzle out.
July 11, 2010, 7:37 pm
leo marvin says:

Skyler: Seattle, there is no moral equivalence. One side is right and the other is wrong. The difference is that one is a lie.

Lucky for us without science degrees that hard science questions can be answered with the same manichean biases we already use to answer hard social and political questions.
July 11, 2010, 7:55 pm
GaryP says:

Well, as a physicist, when the IPCC said that the sun had no influence on climate, I quit listening to anything they said. They obviously were not trying to interprete the science to help policy makers make good decisions (their job) but trying to distort science to encourage policy makers to make the “correct” decisions.
Recently it has become known that the “Sun has nothing to do with climate” meme came from one paper in which satellite data was distorted by the authors (at least the scientists in charge of the particular satellite in question said the data was distorted).
Obviously, the tree ring data was distorted in a similar fashion. As to not needing tree ring data (as asserted by the religious zealot, Zuch, repeat after me: there is no God(dess) but Gaia and Al is her prophet), THERE ARE NO TEMPERATURE MEASUREMENTS BEFORE THE 1700′s (i.e. before that time there is only proxy data such as tree ring data, ice core data, sea bottom core data and indirect evidence such as the settlement of “Greenland”, Britain once being a major wine producing nation–hint: it is too cold for wine production in Britain since Mideval times, etc.)
If Jones, Mann and the other frauds had not distorted proxy data and prevented dissenting scientists from being able to publish or even speak out for fear of reprisals (all for the noble goal of self-enrichment and self-promotion) we would all know that, while there are legitimate reasons to reduce the use of fossils fuels, climate change is not such a reason. Climate change is (principly) the result of variations in the Sun’s magnetic field and radiation output, as well as, variations in the Earth’s orbit, which we can do “bugger all” about.
Humankind needs to get over itself and try to address the problems we can have some impact on. AGW (or CC, if you prefer) is the most expensive (and hence, most destructive) hoax ever perpetrated on a (mostly) scientifically naive population of people looking for a religion (Gaia worship), in the hope of returning us to the (fictional) Garden of Eden.
July 11, 2010, 7:56 pm
Seattle Law Student says:

Allan Walstad says:Actually, as far as the past temperature reconstructions are concerned, a relatively few people exert substantial influence over the peer review process and generation of the IPCC reports. The climategate emails clearly indicate their willingness (with at least some success) to use that influence to frustrate serious challenges to the hockey stick graph.

Allan – that may be. I’m not disputing that, I was disputing Skylar’s proposal to take every client scientist out and (I’m guessing here) line them up against the wall for a lesson in 2nd amendment remedies.
July 11, 2010, 8:01 pm
lgm says:

A. Zarkov says:

Now this European blog claims…

We have refereed journals so that we don’t argue scientific claims in blogs.

Over and over Zuch points to factual errors in climate change deniers’ stories. Each time, Zuch and his evidence are dismissed because he believes in climate change. This puts us in the fascinating situation where you only believe evidence for climate change if it comes from someone who doesn’t believe in it. There’s a catch number for this situation.
July 11, 2010, 8:33 pm
Skyler says:

That is an outrageous and uncalled for assertion, Seattle.
July 11, 2010, 8:34 pm
Brett Bellmore says:

cce: We know from observations that climate sensitivity is very likely between 2 and 4 degrees for a doubling of CO2.

Actually, what we know, based on fundamental physics, is that ‘climate sensitivity’ ought to be a more of a logarithmic response to CO2, rather than linear. Because once CO2 has blocked half the infrared in a particular part of the spectrum, doubling it can only block half of the remaining half.

While you can approximate climate sensitivity as a linear function in response to small variations in CO2, (Any well behaved curve can be approximated as a straight line over short segments.) anyone pretending that the response is going to be linear over a range of several hundred percent of CO2 variation is a con artist, or ignorant of basic atmospheric physics.
July 11, 2010, 8:42 pm
Elliot says:

So, how do all the very smart and well educated folks who jumped on the climate warmimg wagon when it was popular manage to gracefully jump off?

They can’t just reverse course. That would bring their intelligence, education, and judgement into question. Worse, it would demonstrate that people they considered to be their intellectual inferiors were right while they were wrong. Self esteem and reputation are at stake here.
July 11, 2010, 8:43 pm
Laura(southernxyl) says:

lgm, did you see the emails where the climate change proponents colluded to keep skeptics’ papers out of refereed journals?

Zuch’s comments are nonsense. That’s why they’re dismissed.
July 11, 2010, 8:44 pm
Brett Bellmore says:

To follow up with an analogy to explain. Take a room with two windows. (One represents the IR band CO2 blocks, one the band it doesn’t block.) Hang a drape over one of the windows. (That’s your CO2.) The room gets darker. Hand another drape over the same window. The room does not get twice as dark. Hang yet another drape over the same window. The room doesn’t get three times darker.

The effect of CO2 on atmospheric transmission of IR is mostly saturated already. This is an objective scientific fact. Doubling CO2 will NOT double it’s obstruction of IR transmission. Not even remotely.
July 11, 2010, 9:00 pm
Seattle Law Student says:

Skylar – I should have put in the labels. I retract what was a lame attempt at humor. No intention to offend, more accurately, slight intention to poke fun at Conservatives in general (and Sharon Angle in particular), but nothing specific to you.
July 11, 2010, 9:02 pm
Thumbcruncher says:

Seattle Law Student: Allan — that may be. I’m not disputing that, I was disputing Skylar’s proposal to take every client scientist out and (I’m guessing here) line them up against the wall for a lesson in 2nd amendment remedies.

Interesting that Seattle Student would make that comment and bring up the 2nd A. The whole story Gun controlists have been saying for decades that there was no national militia system in the time of the founding father’s was an invention of an ACLU lawyer in 1918 (he was trying to stop the military draft). Until 2000 they never had any evidence to support their story that people were never to own guns unless they were part of the National Guard. But then Michael B decided they needed such evidence. That has lead to the explosion of research and data showing that the old story was just that, a story. Today you can find in Statutes at Large the various amendments and additions made to the 1792 militia all the way out to 1820 (twenty Years after the scholars say the act was completely abandoned). Instead of one militia Return, you can read dozens; And all the debates on everything from the suspension of a Tariff on firearm importation to the volunteer act of 1812 that gave men a gun and bayonet as a symbol of their completion of service to their country (key word, completion, as in after their military service was over).

People are finding that these stories and the supplied evidence (AKA massaged, polished, okay rewritten) has been going on for a long time. I recently found a favorite story of Apollo Moon landing types (both advocates and hoxaers) was actually created by the advocate of the landing Hoax (Bill Kaysing). He needed to show that the moon launch was beyond human technology so he took an engine malfunction in 1963 where the engine blewup just before the test run was to end and stated instead that the engine blew up on ignition. Moon landing supporters have since made this story one of their’s but as an example of our ability to surmount technical hurdles in a short time and thus be able reach the moon before 1970. The truth, that they just beefed up the engine alittle, may not sound as great, but it is the truth.

Global warming types were developing their story going back to the 1960s. We even now have some documents that the Nixon White House was looking into the statements radicals in the environmental movement were making. An old textbook of mine from the late 70s talks of the possibility, but notes the fact that from the second World war until the late 70s we had been undergoing a cooling period of equal magnitude to the warming that had occurred for four decades before WW2. Today you get no mention of this cooling period, or even that in 1939 the Channel froze at its narrowest part. People say the hockeystick graph was in 2000. But I found in an older Popular Science a very similar graph and article pushing Global Warming (of course Popular Science isn’t a peer review publication). In short the story has been polished, moded, embellished, as needed to maximise those in belief over a period of thirty five years. The problem is that as they have done this, they remove the wiggle room to deal with unexpecteds (like Antarctica being above normal for Ice for the last decade and the Arctic not already melted away). They have had to back pedal on the Mideval Warm period being only european, but still say now that since their is no evidence of a similar situation in the southern hemisphere that they can’t accept that its important. But then again, as already noted, antarctica isn’t melting lately either. In truth, like gun control or the Moon Landing Hoaxers, its just going to take more time for this to blow up. And we are just going to have to live with the fact that some of the proponents will have made excellent livings for decades pushing it. As PT Barnum said, there is a sucker born every minute.
July 11, 2010, 9:05 pm
pmorem says:

Elliot: So, how do all the very smart and well educated folks who jumped on the climate warmimg wagon when it was popular manage to gracefully jump off? They can’t just reverse course. That would bring their intelligence, education, and judgement into question. Worse, it would demonstrate that people they considered to be their intellectual inferiors were right while they were wrong. Self esteem and reputation are at stake here.

Sucks to be them. Perhaps they will find themselves needing to re-evaluate their entire worldview. Perhaps their heads will explode.

Not my problem.

Some, like Hulme, seem to have some notion that their position might be vulnerable.

Mostly, though, they’re oblivious, caught up on the bandwagon, not realizing that “People are dumb” applies to them as well.

(For the record, I know I’m dumb. Anyone who believes otherwise is deceiving themselves. I’ll explain myself in greater detail in the manner and time of my choosing.)
July 11, 2010, 9:30 pm
Skyler says:

Thanks Seattle. We’re good.
July 11, 2010, 9:51 pm
karrde says:

lgm:
We have refereed journals so that we don’t argue scientific claims in blogs.Over and over Zuch points to factual errors in climate change deniers’ stories.Each time, Zuch and his evidence are dismissed because he believes in climate change.This puts us in the fascinating situation where you only believe evidence for climate change if it comes from someone who doesn’t believe in it.There’s a catch number for this situation.

lgm and zuch:

I am waiting for an explanation of which predictions of models used by IPCC (or other reputable, peer-reviewed papers) have been seen in the real world.

A link would suffice, but the link should lead to a page which shows a model, year of publication, and predictions (hopefully 5-10 years worth), and a comparison of predictions with real-world results. The model doesn’t need to predict things exactly, but should be within a predictable limit of real-world output for the entire period (hopefully 5-10 years).

I hope I don’t need to explain that a model which is tinkered with every year for a decade isn’t nearly as good a scientific tool as a model which remains the same, and is used the same way, for that entire decade.

Since we’re talking about global warming per century, I figure that any model worth discussing should be able to produce a clear result (global average temperature, within certain levels of error) for a given set of inputs (how much CO2 is generated per year, average cloud cover per year, hard-to-predict events like volcanic dust being thrust into the upper atmosphere).

Any suggestions?

I’m not a scientist, and I’ve only done a little computer modelling. But that little I’ve done has been enough to convince me that anyone can produce a model that shows what he wants it to show.

It is much harder to produce a model that survives testing of the kind I’ve outlined above.
July 11, 2010, 10:02 pm
Joe says:

Unfortunately for the defenders of the report, there was blatant falsification and the manner in which it was done is truly tragic. There is a heat island effect and many temperature measuring stations placed in the 1980s gave erroneous reading that became worse the hotter it was. To compensate for this, temperatures were “normalized” and much of the original data was discarded. In those cases where we know what the original data is, it is extremely obvious that the normalization process was completely arbitrary. Another evidence of arbitrary normalization is that many temperatures are stair-stepped–they change in jumps as the raw data is suddenly modified by a magic number.

In addition, the statistical methods used intentionally twisted the results, sometimes to the point where it didn’t even matter much what the original data set was.

One final point; scientists have been measuring atmospheric CO2 for 200 years. Using the very same methods as in 1815, contrary to popular claim, CO2 concentration haven’t changed at all. Any “data” showing otherwise would have to be faked and/or simply made up. And therein is the real problem–proxies were favored over actual measurements even when it could be shown that the proxies didn’t show what they claimed.

The bottom line is that researchers faked data and destroyed original data. This is fraud on a massive scale and it has irrevocably damaged atmospheric science. (Worse, the number of temperature stations has been massively reduced in the last few decades. Current and historical data for many regions around the globe has been permanently lost.)
July 11, 2010, 10:54 pm
zuch says:

Skyler: Zuch, there’s a difference between not wanting to know, and being obliged to provide alternate theories.

Not much. There’s a difference between simply denigrating the prominent theory and actually providing a better explanation of what we have.

One of the prime examples is the creationist response to currently accepted science: “Gawddidit”. This is not a theory. It is constant picking of nits and hyping supposed ‘controversy’ or disagreement in evolutionary biology (or cosmology or even physics; see the “speed of light” nonsense), and then saying this proves that this science is false, without providing any coherent alternative theory. And that is what the anti-AGW’s modus operandi has been. It is not wanting to know because of preconceived beliefs unsusceptible to disproof (or proof). When you try to shoot down one theory and don’t provide another (that actually stands up), you’re pretty obviously on the side of the “Know Nothings”.

Cheers,
July 11, 2010, 10:55 pm
John Skookum says:

zuch: Do you have any alternative models that have been shown to be better?

Irrelevant. You hysterical big-government devotees are the ones wanting to turn civilization upside down. It’s your job to come up with models that are unequivocally correct prospectively and retrospectively. Until then, go to hell.
July 11, 2010, 10:59 pm
zuch says:

Skyler: Zuch, there’s a difference between not wanting to know, ….

Cf.

Skyler: If there ever was anything to global warming charades, and there wasn’t, then the scientific community must now start over from zero to make their case.

Kind of like Republican demands, at the two-minute warning, to restart the game from the beginning and start the health-care legislation process anew. Just buying time … in an effort to stop it completely (or at least, as long as possible).

I notice no diminution in the zeal of the anti-AGW crew in the face of new reports in recent months reaffirming and strengthening the AGW theories, and in the face of exonerations of the various accused scientists by review panels. Not in the least. Eric Hoffer had their number.

Cheers,
July 11, 2010, 11:01 pm
music censor's family attorney says:

Is Godwin’s Law in play when Creationists are dragged into a AGW debate, or do they have to be German?
July 11, 2010, 11:02 pm
John Skookum says:

ShelbyC:
Geez, man.Isn’t it kinda scraping the bottom of the barrel when you have to challenge somebody to produce evidence that your models haven’t been shown to be accurate?Suppose he’s wrong, you’re right and there is no evidence that these models haven’t been shown to be accurate?Then what?

Zuch knows science like Dan Rather knows reporting. Claims that are favorable to left wing causes are presumed true until proven otherwise.
July 11, 2010, 11:06 pm
Skyler says:

Zuch is the climate fanatic and he compares those who are upholding scientific standards with creationists. That’s just rich.
July 11, 2010, 11:06 pm
zuch says:

Metamorf: He hasn’t so far tried to explain why tree-ring data were used when it was known that they were a bad proxy….

This has been discussed in many places. They are not a bad proxy. But there is a known divergence in recent years. Sometimes, you do the best you can with the data that you have. When you know the data’s bad, you don’t include it (and this is true for recent tree ring data). What wasn’t known is whether the known earlier (pretty) good tree ring proxy data also pertained to the much older data where actual temperatures weren’t available for accuracy determinations. But, as said, when the tree ring data is tossed, much the same results are found.

Cheers,
July 11, 2010, 11:06 pm
zuch says:

Metamorf: – First, is there a real warming trend? (likely, but not certain)
- Second, if so, is it caused primarily by human actions? (also likely, but not certain)
- Third, if so, is it the case that its costs exceed its benefits, and if so by how much? (note that no believer ever mentions that there could even be so much as a benefit from warming, as though magically we’re now at the just exactly right temperature)

Will you agree that the third question is independent (although not entirely so) of the first two? That we can reach as best an answer as we can to the first two without knowing the third?

As to the answer to the third, there’s plenty of science being done on that as well. You’re free to dispute it, but once again, it is the responsibility of the people that dispute the existing science to come up with a better explanation.

Cheers,
July 11, 2010, 11:12 pm
lgm says:

karrde says:

I am waiting for an explanation of which predictions of models used by IPCC (or other reputable, peer-reviewed papers) have been seen in the real world.

There is lots in the refereed literature on this. You wouldn’t be able to understand it without (depending on your background) 5-10 years of training. That’s why we have experts.

A link would suffice, but the link should lead to a page which shows a model, year of publication, and predictions (hopefully 5–10 years worth), and a comparison of predictions with real-world results. The model doesn’t need to predict things exactly, but should be within a predictable limit of real-world output for the entire period (hopefully 5–10 years).

You can start with this web site, particularly their wiki. Many of your questions are answered here. But I warn you that it takes patience. It can take a day for an expert to understand a ten page paper. You should not expect that your precise question is answered in the first sentence. Please let me know what of their information you disagree with.
July 11, 2010, 11:15 pm
Skyler says:

No, the third question is not entirely independent. If we can’t change the climate, then the cost of natural change is completely irrelevant. There may be a cost, but if there is a cost, we must pay it regardless. So that second question is pretty key in understanding what the import of the third question is.
July 11, 2010, 11:16 pm
zuch says:

karrde: Zuch: the lack of a competing model does not vitiate the claim that the current model is broken.

The claim that the “current model is broken” isn’t particularly helpful.

It was known that the precession of Mercury was anomalous, even before Einstein came up with GR. That didn’t make people throw out all of Newtonian physics and start from scratch (Skyler’s suggestion). And Newtonian mechanics is still valid enough to be taught in college physics.

It was known that the energy of photoelectric electrons increased with frequency of the light, not the intensity, in contradiction with a Maxwellian analysis. They didn’t stop building electric motors as a consequence. When Einstein came up with the quantum theory, we had a modification of our understanding. And we still have electric motors, even though we also have SQUIDs.

We don’t toss the best known explanation just because of even demonstrated theoretical discrepancies, and the old theory is only supplanted (or modified) when a better understanding (perhaps a new theory) emerges.

… well, unless we have some ulterior motive for disparaging and then tossing (or attempting to toss) the theory (see “Creationism”).

Cheers,
July 11, 2010, 11:25 pm
John Skookum says:

zuch: They are not a bad proxy. But there is a known divergence in recent years.

Then they are indeed a bad proxy unless and until you fanatic commie bastards can come up with some explanation that doesn’t rely on cherry picking 11 specific bristlecone pine trees in Yamal. You lying bastards are going down. I hope to see commie bastard scientists sent to prison for this fraud. The qui tam lawsuits are only just getting started and I look forward to excuciating inquiries by the upcoming Republican congress that will start the criminal fraud prosecutions rolling.
July 11, 2010, 11:28 pm
Allan Walstad says:

When you try to shoot down one theory and don’t provide another (that actually stands up), you’re pretty obviously on the side of the “Know Nothings”.

That’s just complete nonsense, Zuch. If I have a theory that 100 lb objects fall 10 times faster than 10 lb objects, and you drop one of each from the top of a tall building and they hit the ground together within a few feet, you don’t have to have any competing theory about how things fall; you’ve shot down my theory.

But back to the matter at hand, namely, climategate. Steve McIntyre and others uncovered serious (to put it mildly) problems with the analysis of tree ring data that were used to deny the significance of the medieval warming period and make the late 20th century warming look unprecedented. Their requests for data and methodology were met with various forms of stonewalling. The peer review process and IPCC report process were gamed to protect the preferred narrative of the climate insiders. Data were deleted from the hockey stick temperature graph to hide the recent divergence of tree ring proxies from actual temperature measurements. This behavior raises serious questions, not just about the results, but worse, about the trustworthiness of the researchers.
July 11, 2010, 11:32 pm
Skyler says:

Zuch, you’re comparing mistakes and misunderstandings with a criminal fraud, lies, deception, faking, intent to influence governmental policy.

Also, Newtonian physics do work at certain levels where the differences for quantum physics aren’t critical.

There is no part of the climate models that worked, ever. The man working the model in Britain complained that there was no documentation and that changes were made willy nilly to get desired results, with no attempt to track or trace changes or how changes specifically affected modeled results.

Your comments would get more legitimate if AGW were found to be merely mistaken or that there was some theory missing from their understanding. This is not the case. People with an agenda to take money from developed nations and transfer it to parties that they control or influence were happy to defraud the world. All the research must be treated as suspect and must be thrown out.
July 11, 2010, 11:32 pm
zuch says:

ShelbyC: They threw out the data when it demonstrated that the tree rings represented and unreliable proxy for temperature data, and used the data when it demonstrated that the proxy was reliable.

No. They threw out the data from those times where it was demonstrated that the tree rings represented an unreliable proxy for temperature data (the observed late “divergence”), and used the data when it was demonstrated that the proxy was reliable (early 20th century). They also included even earlier tree ring proxies under an assumption that the divergence was a recent phenomenon only. But as pointed out, if all the tree-ring proxies are tossed (even the known good ones), we still get pretty much the same picture.

Cheers,
July 11, 2010, 11:32 pm
Laura(southernxyl) says:

When you know the data’s bad, you don’t include it (and this is true for recent tree ring data).

There’s bad data as in, I used the uncalibrated micrometer, or the samples weren’t stored correctly, or I don’t know which tree this came from. Yes, you exclude that.

Then there’s bad data as in, this doesn’t look like it’s supposed to and we don’t know why. You can’t just exclude this. You have to look at whether you have a systemic problem. The earlier numbers can’t be compared to real temperatures. You don’t know whether any of them should be excluded, or not. Therefore, the entire tree ring data set should be discarded, at least for the purpose of tracking temperature.

“You use what you have” – oh, no. If you don’t know something, you say “I don’t know” – you don’t just make stuff up to fill in the blanks. That right there is bad science and even a child of ten ought to see it.
July 11, 2010, 11:34 pm
zuch says:

Elliot: Or the diasppearance of the Medieval Warming period from one IPCC report to another? Where did it go?

It didn’t disappear.

Elliot: Or the urgent moral imperative to save millions of Bangleshis from the ravages of the Himalayan glaciers melting by 2035?

OK. Next typo of yours (uncorrected in the 5-minute editing period), and we can just ignore you from then until forever as completely full’o'shite. Fair ’nuff?

Cheers,
July 11, 2010, 11:36 pm
zuch says:

ShelbyC: Geez, man. Isn’t it kinda scraping the bottom of the barrel when you have to challenge somebody to produce evidence that your models haven’t been shown to be accurate?

Well, when they’re all, pretty much to a man, saying that the models have disproved, debunked, discredited … you might ask for evidence at the very least that the “models haven’t been shown to be accurate“.

Cheers,
July 11, 2010, 11:41 pm
zuch says:

Allan Walstad:

[zuch]: The language of the e-mails (“hide the decline”, “trick”) has been beaten to death…

Oh of course, the CRU people and their apologists have done their best to talk it away.

I’ve used “trick” in precisely the same way.

And as to “hide the decline”, they explained what they did, so it’s hard to say that this was hidden. You just have to show that what they did was wrong (and FWIW, this latest report is only the latest in a series that have cleared the scientists of fraud for what they did). But as stated, even if you leave tree-rings out, you still get pretty much the same answer (albeit with slightly larger error bars).

Cheers,
July 11, 2010, 11:45 pm
zuch says:

Allan Walstad: The climategate emails clearly indicate their willingness (with at least some success) to use that influence to frustrate serious challenges to the hockey stick graph.

The latest report debunks this claim.

Cheers,
July 11, 2010, 11:47 pm
Allan Walstad says:

Zuch

This has been discussed in many places. They [tree rings] are not a bad proxy. But there is a known divergence in recent years.

So, if someone from the future were trying to discern recent temperatures from tree rings, they WOULD be a bad proxy. If they can be a bad proxy now, they could have been a bad proxy in the past. These are the sorts of things that responsible scientists have to nail down before they tell us that the recent warming was unprecedented, as part of a bigger claim that huge economic disruptions are required to save us from disaster.

But, as said, when the tree ring data is tossed, much the same results are found…

…according to the same folks whose behavior and faulty methods warrant skepticism about those results.

As for your examples of theories not being tossed out, the differences between them and the case at hand undermine your contention. Mercury’s precession is a very small effect, and it occurs in the most extreme situation in the Solar System, namely, the closest planet to the Sun, in the strongest gravitational potential and traveling at the highest speed. But the divergence of tree ring proxies from temperature data is not a small effect and not occurring in some extreme situation. The photoelectric effect does not bear on the construction of electric motors, but a divergence of tree ring proxies from measured temperatures does bear on the reliability of such proxies.
July 11, 2010, 11:50 pm
John Skookum says:

Eco fascists like Zuch are fond of accusing climate change skeptics of being influenced by oil company money. What then to make of the revelation that the World Wildlife Fund stands to rake in $60 billion dollars on an investment in rainforest carbon credits? And would it surprise anyone that they lied and claimed scientific support for their proposed project that has now been shown to be an unsourced, unscientific propaganda paper?

Folks, these climate change people are thieves, liars, fraudsters and fascists. They want to steal your money and enslave your grandchildren.
July 11, 2010, 11:52 pm
Allan Walstad says:

The latest report debunks this claim.

Not if it’s a whitewash. The emails speak largely for themselves, as do the various other communications on record and the established facts.
July 11, 2010, 11:54 pm
John Skookum says:

Here’s the particulars to my comment above:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/7883372/Amazongate-At-last-we-reach-the-source.html
July 11, 2010, 11:54 pm
Allan Walstad says:

And as to “hide the decline”, they explained what they did, so it’s hard to say that this was hidden.

“Hide” was their word!
July 11, 2010, 11:56 pm
Bruce Hayden says:

zuch: No. They threw out the data from those times where it was demonstrated that the tree rings represented an unreliable proxy for temperature data (the observed late “divergence”), and used the data when it was demonstrated that the proxy was reliable (early 20th century). They also included even earlier tree ring proxies under an assumption that the divergence was a recent phenomenon only. But as pointed out, if all the tree-ring proxies are tossed (even the known good ones), we still get pretty much the same picture.

I think that we need a link here, and not to realclimate, etc. The contention that you don’t seem to be addressing is that the proxy data was used to supposedly extend the climatic record back in time to well before man started taking relatively accurate temperature readings. The proxy data didn’t show as much warming during the Medieval Warming Period as expected, and so the story that was the current (actually up through late 1990s) warming was unprecedented. But it appears that the proxy data showed recent times cooler than they actually were, suggesting, at least, that the proxy data fails to track higher temperatures as well (which I think means that it is not as linear as hypothesized). But instead of leaving the proxy data in for the recent temperature spike, or removing it for the MWP, it was selectively included when advantageous (i.e. when it would show that the MWP was cooler than most thought), but removed when it was necessary to hide the decline. As someone above pointed out, plotting apples and then oranges, and then not mentioning that more than one type of fruit was involved.

Of course, you still have the Russian allegations about cherry picking the tree proxies.
July 11, 2010, 11:58 pm
zuch says:

GaryP: Well, as a physicist, when the IPCC said that the sun had no influence on climate, I quit listening to anything they said.

Well, that might have been a good idea IF they had said that “the sun had no influence on climate”. Considering that the models in fact explicitly consider both insolation and reradiation, though (as well as other factors), I’m not quite sure I get your point.

Cheers,
July 12, 2010, 12:01 am
John Skookum says:

Allan Walstad: Not if it’s a whitewash. The emails speak largely for themselves, as do the various other communications on record and the established facts.

Does the whitewash report even mention HARRY_READ_ME.txt? That is not an email, but commentary with source code from an IDL program that contains a data array of undocumented correction factors for half-decade temperature records. It just so happens to match Mann’s fake hockey stick, suppressing evidence of warmer temperatures in the 1940′s. It’s the single most damning piece of evidence against the lying bastard CRU commies. Swept under the rug by a handpicked panel of more fellow traveling commie bastard AGW true believers.
July 12, 2010, 12:04 am
zuch says:

GaryP: THERE ARE NO TEMPERATURE MEASUREMENTS BEFORE THE 1700’s (i.e. before that time there is only proxy data such as tree ring data, ice core data, sea bottom core data and …

Yes. And there’s ways to calibrate and verify such proxies. But FWIW, the “hockey stick” discontinuity is more recent.

Cheers,
July 12, 2010, 12:09 am
John Skookum says:

Bruce Hayden: Of course, you still have the Russian allegations about cherry picking the tree proxies.

Indeed. Google “Yamal tree rings cherry-picked” for full details of the greatest scientific fraud since Piltdown Man.
July 12, 2010, 12:11 am
Bruce Hayden says:

John Skookum: Here’s the particulars to my comment above:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/7883372/Amazongate-At-last-we-reach-the-source.html

What is a bit scary is that the funding for the bizarre REDD Amazon carbon trading scheme appears to come from the World Bank, which to some extent, means at least some U.S. taxpayer money.

To rephrase what was going on, apparently, REDD (Reduction in Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation of Tropical Forests) is a consortium of the WWF and Woods Hole that was attempting to turn worries about the Amazon rain forests burning down due to lower rainfall caused supposedly by AGW into carbon credits, which they could then sell for a profit. The World Bank appears to have fronted $80 million for the scam. And one of their propaganda pieces made it into the IPC report as “hard” science.

I should note that that all was going on about the time that one of my in-laws gave me a WWF pile vest for Christmas, which I have worn on many occasions since then. Maybe not so many after reading this.
July 12, 2010, 12:13 am
Bruce Hayden says:

zuch: Well, that might have been a good idea IF they had said that “the sun had no influence on climate”. Considering that the models in fact explicitly consider both insolation and reradiation, though (as well as other factors), I’m not quite sure I get your point.

Possibly that since these factors are, by far, the most prominent, that it makes little sense looking at temperature charts without explicitly controlling for the level of solar radiation.
July 12, 2010, 12:18 am
Grover Gardner says:

Never mind the propagandist term “denialist”, the important thing in this sequence isn’t some absurd effort merely to block government action — the important thing is to see how uncertainty is added to uncertainty, until it should become apparent to all but the most fanatic True Believers that actions imposing massive present costs on the global economy would be the the worst sort of ideological risk-taking (and so much for any putative “Precautionary Principle”). Just to be clear, let’s make those uncertainties explicit:
- First, is there a real warming trend? (likely, but not certain)
- Second, if so, is it caused primarily by human actions? (also likely, but not certain)
- Third, if so, is it the case that its costs exceed its benefits, and if so by how much? (note that no believer ever mentions that there could even be so much as a benefit from warming, as though magically we’re now at the just exactly right temperature)
- Fourth, if so, would the costs of immediate attempted mitigation through carbon reduction be less than the net costs of the warming itself? (Do we know the costs of such reduction? Do we know the likely effectiveness of such reduction? Do we know how those uncertainties affect the global cost-benefit balance?)
- Fifth, and probably most importantly, over the course of the century or two in which this warming manifests itself, are we sure that no new technologies will appear that will allow us to extract and sequester atmospheric carbon much more cheaply that through immediate carbon reduction policies? (See, e.g., “Washing Carbon Out of the Air”, Scientific American, Jun/10)
July 12, 2010, 12:37 am
zuch says:

Skyler: Zuch is the climate fanatic and he compares those who are upholding scientific standards with creationists. That’s just rich.

No. The rhetorical methods of the anti-AGW crew (because the “science’ on that end is sparse) is similar to that of creationists (and for similar reasons). They pick at little flaws or discrepancies, perceived or real, in the accepted work, and then say:

Skyler: If there ever was anything to global warming charades, and there wasn’t, then the scientific community must now start over from zero to make their case. That means redeveloping all the data from scratch, redeveloping all the theories from zero,

that we need to toss everything out and start from scratch. Which is a truly absurd and unscientific attitude. But it is precisely what the creationists say. They say: “Piltdown is a hoax! Evolution is wrong!” They say, “Stephen Jay Gould says that we have punk-eek! Evolution is wrong!” They say, “You don’t have any transitionals! Evolution is wrong!” You demonstrate a[nother] transitional, and they say, “Now you’re missing two more transitionals!!! Gotcha!” Same MO, same sh*te.

Cheers,
July 12, 2010, 12:55 am
Bruce Hayden says:

Grover Gardner:
- Third, if so, is it the case that its costs exceed its benefits, and if so by how much? (note that no believer ever mentions that there could even be so much as a benefit from warming, as though magically we’re now at the just exactly right temperature)

I think that this here should usually end the discussion. Historically, man has done much better when it has been hotter, than when it has been colder. And, you just have to look at the shape of the continents to realize that a warming climate is likely to eventually open up far more farmland across Canada and Russia in particular, than will be lost, even if the seas do rise by a significant amount (which is looking ever less likely).

Plus, even if some land goes under water, so what? There is more than plenty left. Actually, as pointed out above, more will be opened up to habitation, by far, than could possibly be lost. And the cost of moving is unlikely to be all that large, since buildings have lifespans, and those lifespans are on the most part shorter than the time it would take to flood them.
July 12, 2010, 12:58 am
vic5 says:

zuch: When Einstein came up with the quantum theory

zuch

Before we castrate you (metaphorically of course) on AGW, just a liottle factual correction: Einstein DID NOT come up with quantum theory. In fact when confronted with quantum mechanics, he is reported to have said something on the lines of ” i cannot believe God palyed dice with the universe”.

As far as the proxie dat is concerned
1. There is noreal temperature data before the mid 1800′s
2. Tree ring data does not tell you the temparature, but the assertation is that the width, density, thickness etc of the tree rings is correlated to the temparature.
3. so what people did was the looked at tree ring data from the mid 1800 to the present and correlated it to temperature record.
4. once they figured out the relationship algorhythm, they extrapolated based on this backwards in time and constructed a temparature rcord going way back to the 10-12th centuries.
5. so they used tree rings as a ” proxy” for real temparatures. Which is why this is called proxy data.

So far so good

problem
from the 1980′s onwards the tree ring algorhythm does not correspond to ” measured” temparatures.

I do not think ANYONE disputes what i have said so far, on either side.

so what is the problem?

the fact of the divergence suggests that the calculated algorhythm may nbe incorrect, and therefore without recalibrating may not be appropriate to use, for extrapolating backwards – as in garbage in- garbage out.

bottom line – tree ring data- just based on this divergence needs to be thrown out. And the way it was deliberately misrepresented to hide the decline ( in tree ring temps) constitutes scientific fraud.

ALSO:

The yamal tree ring lineage seems to have based all of their extrapolations on just a handful of cherry picked trees. Brissa et al are the villians here.

I am sorry there are just so many more holes to be picked, that it would yake me all night. I suggest that perhaps you read a bit. climate audit.org is a goodplace to start.

science does better with heresy than it does with belief

in the meanwhile you can just go “Zuch Yourself”
July 12, 2010, 1:01 am
zuch says:

Skyler:

[zuch]: Will you agree that the third question is independent (although not entirely so) of the first two? That we can reach as best an answer as we can to the first two without knowing the third?

No, the third question is not entirely independent.

Did I say that?!?!? You really ought to try to read for comprehension. The second sentence there is the pay-dirt one, and should have helped you figure out what I was getting at.

It is true that specific answers to the first two might make the answers to subsequent questions (such as whether any suggested mitigation efforts would be cost beneficial) “academic” or irrelevant, but any conclusions as to the third question or others even further down the line hardly change the truth value of answers to the first two. And this is what I meant by “independent”.

Cheers,
July 12, 2010, 1:06 am
Grover Gardner says:

Sorry about the false post above.

“- First, is there a real warming trend? (likely, but not certain)
- Second, if so, is it caused primarily by human actions? (also likely, but not certain)”

Okay, so you think there’s likely warming and that it’s likely caused by human actions.

“- Third, if so, is it the case that its costs exceed its benefits, and if so by how much? (note that no believer ever mentions that there could even be so much as a benefit from warming, as though magically we’re now at the just exactly right temperature)”

What’s magic about it? We’ve spent centuries investing in certain climate conditions–for crops, livestock, the way we build our homes, our cities, the amounts of energy we consume. Whole economies in just about every part of the world are built around certain climate conditions. The fact is, we *are* at the right temperature now for the kinds of economies and infrastructures we’ve created everywhere. Those economies depend on the climate remaining relatively stable, wouldn’t you say?

“- Fourth, if so, would the costs of immediate attempted mitigation through carbon reduction be less than the net costs of the warming itself? (Do we know the costs of such reduction? Do we know the likely effectiveness of such reduction? Do we know how those uncertainties affect the global cost-benefit balance?)”

Do we know the costs, say of a three or four degree rise in average temperatures in Florida–in terms of the amount of extra energy that will need to be consumed to keep people comfortable? Do we know the costs of replacing a whole states’ worth of crops when it gets too hot or too cold for them to grow? Do we know the costs of abandoning ski resorts and tourist attractions in colder states when enough snow fails to materialize?

I mean, if you yourself think warming is likely, what do you estimate those costs to be?

“- Fifth, and probably most importantly, over the course of the century or two in which this warming manifests itself, are we sure that no new technologies will appear that will allow us to extract and sequester atmospheric carbon much more cheaply that through immediate carbon reduction policies?”

What about technologies we could develop right now to reduce the “likely” effects of climate change?
July 12, 2010, 1:07 am
Bruce Hayden says:

zuch: No. The rhetorical methods of the anti-AGW crew (because the “science’ on that end is sparse) is similar to that of creationists (and for similar reasons). They pick at little flaws or discrepancies, perceived or real, in the accepted work, and then say:

Love the debating trick. Denialists are just like creationists, and we know how illiterate those Christianist (or Moslem) creationists are, so the AGW denialists must be just as ignorant.

zuch: that we need to toss everything out and start from scratch. Which is a truly absurd and unscientific attitude. But it is precisely what the creationists say. They say: “Piltdown is a hoax! Evolution is wrong!” They say, “Stephen Jay Gould says that we have punk-eek! Evolution is wrong!” They say, “You don’t have any transitionals! Evolution is wrong!” You demonstrate a[nother] transitional, and they say, “Now you’re missing two more transitionals!!! Gotcha!” Same MO, same sh*te.

No. But maybe just the datasets that cannot be reproduced and whose adjustments cannot be documented and defended, and datasets depending on those that cannot be reproduced, and then maybe models that depend on those datasets. And IPC reports that either depend on one of the above or on advocacy publications. Other than that, it is probably ok.

But, right now, that appears to possibly leave one of the five primary global temperature databases. Three of the others (including the two satellite databases) were apparently calibrated utilizing the CRU data (which cannot be reproduced and whose adjustments cannot be documented or defended).
July 12, 2010, 1:07 am
zuch says:

John Skookum: You lying bastards are going down. I hope to see commie bastard scientists sent to prison for this fraud. The qui tam lawsuits are only just getting started and I look forward to excuciating inquiries by the upcoming Republican congress that will start the criminal fraud prosecutions rolling.

Why stop there? There’s the option of re-education camps, you know.

Cheers,
July 12, 2010, 1:09 am
zuch says:

Allan Walstad:

[zuch]: When you try to shoot down one theory and don’t provide another (that actually stands up), you’re pretty obviously on the side of the “Know Nothings”.

That’s just complete nonsense, Zuch. If I have a theory that 100 lb objects fall 10 times faster than 10 lb objects, and you drop one of each from the top of a tall building and they hit the ground together within a few feet, you don’t have to have any competing theory about how things fall; you’ve shot down my theory.

Rather than repeating myself, I’ll just link to this on-point comment.

Cheers,
July 12, 2010, 1:14 am
Grover Gardner says:

”Einstein DID NOT come up with quantum theory. In fact when confronted with quantum mechanics, he is reported to have said something on the lines of ”’i cannot believe God palyed dice with the universe’.”

Actually Einstein DID invent quantum theory. He posited “quanta” of light based on Max Planck’s experimental findings.

The *mechanics* of quantum theory were developed by others.
July 12, 2010, 1:14 am
zuch says:

Allan Walstad: But back to the matter at hand, namely, climategate. Steve McIntyre and others uncovered serious (to put it mildly) problems with the analysis of tree ring data that were used to deny the significance of the medieval warming period and make the late 20th century warming look unprecedented.

Huh? This old canard again. Mann et al. acknowledged the MWP. It was there with the tree-ring data in and when it was taken out. What is false is the accusation that they didn’t consider it or somehow made it go away.

Cheers,
July 12, 2010, 1:17 am
Grover Gardner says:

It was quantum MECHANICS that Einstein had trouble with. Do a little research yourself before you start talking big. :-/
July 12, 2010, 1:18 am
zuch says:

Allan Walstad: Data were deleted from the hockey stick temperature graph to hide the recent divergence of tree ring proxies from actual temperature measurements.

This is false. On the contrary, it was precisely this divergence that they cited as to why the tree-ring data were omitted.

Cheers,
July 12, 2010, 1:19 am
zuch says:

Skyler: Zuch, you’re comparing mistakes and misunderstandings with a criminal fraud, lies, deception, faking, intent to influence governmental policy.

Not at all. But the most recent report is just the last in a string of such that have cleared the accused of just such charges. The data just keeps piling up (just as does the climate science data), and you keep ignoring it.

Cheers,
July 12, 2010, 1:21 am
Bruce Hayden says:

Grover Gardner: What’s magic about it? We’ve spent centuries investing in certain climate conditions–for crops, livestock, the way we build our homes, our cities, the amounts of energy we consume. Whole economies in just about every part of the world are built around certain climate conditions. The fact is, we *are* at the right temperature now for the kinds of economies and infrastructures we’ve created everywhere. Those economies depend on the climate remaining relatively stable, wouldn’t you say?

Yes, but, that leaves out a lot of detail. First, man does not live any more in a single climate or temperate range. Rather, he survives from the hottest tropics to some of the coldest regions (though, as I mentioned above, he does better when it is a bit hotter). And he thrives through most of that. Agriculture has moved back and forth throughout recorded and prerecorded history – already noted here were grapes in Canada and England. Yes, maybe the Brits, and now the Canadians, may end up relearning to drink wine instead of as much beer and ale.

Keep in mind that in the past, these agricultural changes might have taken generations. Now, we can make them happen in years.

Grover Gardner: Do we know the costs, say of a three or four degree rise in average temperatures in Florida–in terms of the amount of extra energy that will need to be consumed to keep people comfortable? Do we know the costs of replacing a whole states’ worth of crops when it gets too hot or too cold for them to grow? Do we know the costs of abandoning ski resorts and tourist attractions in colder states when enough snow fails to materialize?

You might start with something credible. We just aren’t going to wake up tomorrow with the temperature averaging 4 degrees hotter in Florida. Just won’t happen that fast, regardless of what that crazed sex poodle AlGore tells you.

But also keep in mind that if the Earth really is heating up like that, that orders of magnitude more land will likely be opened up to cultivation as compared to what is lost through too much heat or flooding. Sure, we may have to shift crops, but, as I noted above, that isn’t anything new, and we can do that far faster than we did in more ancient times.
July 12, 2010, 1:22 am
zuch says:

Skyler: Also, Newtonian physics do work at certain levels where the differences for quantum physics aren’t critical.

I think I pointed that out. Matter of fact, it was one of my critical points: That the theories are revised, and it is not the case that:

Skyler: … the scientific community must now start over from zero to make their case. That means redeveloping all the data from scratch, redeveloping all the theories from zero, jettisoning any reference to any claims or studies made in the past 100 years and start it all over again with new people who have never studied it or written about it before.

A new theory may be synthesised (ala punk-eek), or a fairly radical new one introduced (QM/QED), but the old ones, at least those that weren’t based on bad data (or incompetent data), are supplemented. But to the extent well-established and “proven” older theories still pertain (v << c), they are still, to that degree, valid. To throw them out completely, you have to a). Show they give a completely wrong picture, and b). show that your alternative fits the data better.

Skyler: There is no part of the climate models that worked, ever. The man working the model in Britain complained that there was no documentation and that changes were made willy nilly to get desired results, with no attempt to track or trace changes or how changes specifically affected modeled results.

The Mann work in question is not a “model” (that’s not his field). It’s a description of what is happening. The documentation (read: “program comments“) had to do with the methods of processing the raw data (and even that’s been reviewed by a couple panels and given a clean bill of health).

Cheers,
July 12, 2010, 1:35 am
Grover Gardner says:

Bruce, nothing you say disputes my comments. Centuries ago populations were more nomadic and there did not exist anywhere near the infrastructures we have established today.

Second, there’s nothing incredible about positing extreme temperature rises in certain areas. But that wasn’t the point. The point is, Metamorf seems to accept the likelihood of climate change but only considers the pitential costs of minimizing it rather than the costs of it’s actually occurring.
July 12, 2010, 1:37 am
Grover Gardner says:

In other words, his cost/benefit analysis is a little one-sided.
July 12, 2010, 1:39 am
zuch says:

Laura(southernxyl):

[zuch]: When you know the data’s bad, you don’t include it (and this is true for recent tree ring data).

There’s bad data as in, I used the uncalibrated micrometer, or the samples weren’t stored correctly, or I don’t know which tree this came from. Yes, you exclude that.

More like:

My micrometer data from three weeks ago was validated by microscopic photography for quite a few selected samples, and was pretty good. I left the micrometer out on the bench, and this week, I’m getting some significant discrepancies between the measurements and what I got from the photographs…..

Cheers,
July 12, 2010, 1:41 am
zuch says:

Bruce Hayden: I think that we need a link here, and not to realclimate, etc.

I gave you one.

Cheers,
July 12, 2010, 1:45 am
zuch says:

John Skookum: Google “Yamal tree rings cherry-picked” for full details of the greatest scientific fraud since Piltdown Man.

Read the latest report for a discussion (page 61 in particular, but lots in there) of the Yamal stuff. Clean bill of health.

Cheers,
July 12, 2010, 1:51 am
John Skookum says:

zuch: Why stop there? There’s the option of re-education camps, you know.

Unlike the eco-fascists, I believe in the rule of law. All of these “scientists” hoovered up large quantities of taxpayer money. It is within our rights as taxpayers to demand that those funds not be used to lie to us with falsified data and unsupportable conclusions. Criminal prosecutions and qui tam civil actions are a well-established way of dealing with fraud against the United States while upholding our tradition of due process.

It is actually the eco-fascists who have voiced support for thoughtcrime prosecution of climate change deniers. I only support prosecuting thieves and liars who steal money from the American taxpayer.
July 12, 2010, 1:54 am
Dunstan says:

In a related story, it was shown that those claiming “LA LA LA I CAN’T HEAR YOU” could, in fact, hear the speaker. However, the denialists insisted that they could not hear any contrary evidence, and so the debate continues.
July 12, 2010, 2:00 am
zuch says:

Bruce Hayden:

[zuch]: Well, that might have been a good idea IF they had said that “the sun had no influence on climate”. Considering that the models in fact explicitly consider both insolation and reradiation, though (as well as other factors), I’m not quite sure I get your point.

Possibly that since these factors are, by far, the most prominent, …

Wouldn’t that be “assuming your conclusion”?!?!?

Bruce Hayden: … that it makes little sense looking at temperature charts without explicitly controlling for the level of solar radiation.

Can you show that this hasn’t been done? If you’re talking about Mann, et al., this is primarily research on observed temperatures. You’d have to go to other papers to find models on why the recent anomalous rises are occurring. And if you think it’s due to insolation forcing, you ought to be able to show that this fits the observed temperatures. Some people have tried, and there is some research showing that solar cycles do have some effect on temperatures, but what hasn’t been shown is that the recent significant rise is due to increased insolation. It just ain’t there.

Cheers,
July 12, 2010, 2:01 am
zuch says:

vic5:

[zuch]: When Einstein came up with the quantum theory

zuch
Before we castrate you (metaphorically of course) on AGW, just a liottle factual correction: Einstein DID NOT come up with quantum theory. In fact when confronted with quantum mechanics, he is reported to have said something on the lines of “i cannot believe God palyed dice with the universe”.

When you make a factual correction, you should make sure that your correction is factual. In fact, Einstein described the photoelectric effect in terms of quanta and this was really the major work for which he received the Nobel Prize (he’d done three seminal papers in 1905, PE effect, special relativity, and Brownian motion). This is quantum theory. It is true that others (P.A.M. Dirac, principally) first developed quantum mechanics, and it is true that he was hoping that quantum mechanics could eventually be reduced (or expanded?) to a less abstruse and non-intuitive theory, but I don’t think he ever denied quantum theory (and how could he?).

I see that others have pasted you for this as well; sorry for piling on … well, maybe just a teensy bit sorry.

Cheers,
July 12, 2010, 2:14 am
zuch says:

Bruce Hayden:

[zuch]: No. The rhetorical methods of the anti-AGW crew (because the “science’ on that end is sparse) is similar to that of creationists (and for similar reasons). They pick at little flaws or discrepancies, perceived or real, in the accepted work, and then say:

Love the debating trick. Denialists are just like creationists, and we know how illiterate those Christianist (or Moslem) creationists are, so the AGW denialists must be just as ignorant.

No. I’m saying that the method of “criticism” is similar, the motivations are similar, the results sought are similar, and that neither (for such reasons) are a particularly valid form of scientific criticism (much less original science).

I will make a distinction between some of the scientific sceptics and proponents of alternatives (such as solar forcing or cosmic rays, wrong though they might be) on the one hand, and the “denialists” (your word) as exemplified by Skyler in its rawest form here, and such as FauxSnooze and InsHannity with their “It’s snowing so we can’t have Global Warming!”, but also shown to some lesser extent by the less scientific frothers on NRO or other RW sites, and even some of the supposedly more scientifically adept bloggers such as WattsUpWithThat and ClimateAudit.

Bruce Hayden:

[zuch]: that we need to toss everything out and start from scratch. Which is a truly absurd and unscientific attitude. But it is precisely what the creationists say. They say: “Piltdown is a hoax! Evolution is wrong!” They say, “Stephen Jay Gould says that we have punk-eek! Evolution is wrong!” They say, “You don’t have any transitionals! Evolution is wrong!” You demonstrate a[nother] transitional, and they say, “Now you’re missing two more transitionals!!! Gotcha!” Same MO, same sh*te.

No. But maybe just the datasets that cannot be reproduced and whose adjustments cannot be documented and defended, and datasets depending on those that cannot be reproduced, and then maybe models that depend on those datasets. And IPC reports that either depend on one of the above or on advocacy publications. Other than that, it is probably ok.
But, right now, that appears to possibly leave one of the five primary global temperature databases. Three of the others (including the two satellite databases) were apparently calibrated utilizing the CRU data (which cannot be reproduced and whose adjustments cannot be documented or defended).

The CRU data are available for anyone else that wants to make a go if it. Funny thing is they don’t. Or if they do, they see pretty much the same thing. But I don’t know where you get this idea that four out of the five datasets have been indelibly poisoned by (allegedly) completely false CRU data (which it is not, particularly since they went and collected it from other people).

Cheers,
July 12, 2010, 2:39 am
Metamorf says:

zuch: This has been discussed in many places. They are not a bad proxy. But there is a known divergence in recent years.

Yeah! Just because they didn’t show the right temperature when we could, you know, actually measure temperature, or at least when we think we could actually measure temperature, doesn’t mean they didn’t show the right temperature when we couldn’t actually measure temperature. Or something. That’s certainly cleared that up.

Cheers, zuch.
July 12, 2010, 6:08 am
Metamorf says:

zuch:

Metamorf: — First, is there a real warming trend? (likely, but not certain)
- Second, if so, is it caused primarily by human actions? (also likely, but not certain)
- Third, if so, is it the case that its costs exceed its benefits, and if so by how much? (note that no believer ever mentions that there could even be so much as a benefit from warming, as though magically we’re now at the just exactly right temperature)

Will you agree that the third question is independent (although not entirely so) of the first two?

Umm — how is something independent although not entirely so? But, certainly we can reach “as best an answer as we can” to any of the sources of uncertainty, singly or in combination, without knowing the answer to the ones left out. The point is simply that uncertainties don’t just mount, they multiply as you concatenate the sources.

zuch: As to the answer to the third, there’s plenty of science being done on that as well.

Oh, there’s plenty of “science” being done all over the place — and other scientists do in fact dispute that science. You’re free to dispute the others but it’s the responsibility of the people doing the disputing to come up with a better explanation.

Cheers,
July 12, 2010, 6:26 am
Brett Bellmore says:

zuch: The CRU data are available for anyone else that wants to make a go if it.

The adjusted CRU data are available. The pre-adjustment data, so you can dispute the adjustments? Not so available… This concerns people, because it appears that the global warming only appears after adjustment.
July 12, 2010, 6:35 am
Metamorf says:

Grover Gardner: Never mind the propagandist term “denialist”, the important thing in this sequence isn’t some absurd effort merely to block government action — the important thing is to see how uncertainty is added to uncertainty, until it should become apparent to all but the most fanatic True Believers that actions imposing massive present costs on the global economy would be the the worst sort of ideological risk-taking (and so much for any putative “Precautionary Principle”). Just to be clear, let’s make those uncertainties explicit:
- First, is there a real warming trend? (likely, but not certain)
- Second, if so, is it caused primarily by human actions? (also likely, but not certain)
- Third, if so, is it the case that its costs exceed its benefits, and if so by how much? (note that no believer ever mentions that there could even be so much as a benefit from warming, as though magically we’re now at the just exactly right temperature)
- Fourth, if so, would the costs of immediate attempted mitigation through carbon reduction be less than the net costs of the warming itself? (Do we know the costs of such reduction? Do we know the likely effectiveness of such reduction? Do we know how those uncertainties affect the global cost-benefit balance?)
- Fifth, and probably most importantly, over the course of the century or two in which this warming manifests itself, are we sure that no new technologies will appear that will allow us to extract and sequester atmospheric carbon much more cheaply that through immediate carbon reduction policies? (See, e.g., “Washing Carbon Out of the Air”, Scientific American, Jun/10)

Grover, thanks for reprinting my comment — indicating the source would be nice, is all.
July 12, 2010, 6:35 am
Ricardo says:

Bruce Hayden: But also keep in mind that if the Earth really is heating up like that, that orders of magnitude more land will likely be opened up to cultivation as compared to what is lost through too much heat or flooding.

Maybe so. For instance, it seems plausible that millions of subsistence rice farmers in Bangladesh might have to pack up and move somewhere else as flooding and/or changed monsoon patterns no longer make their livelihood viable. Do you have a country in mind that would be willing to accept millions of Bangladeshi rice farmers as immigrants?
July 12, 2010, 6:47 am
Metamorf says:

Grover: Okay, so you think there’s likely warming and that it’s likely caused by human actions.

Yes, so far — but, a) it’s important to understand that these are distinct issues, though the second depends on the first obviously, and that the uncertainties multiply as we go from the first to the second; and b) the likelihood of both has been significantly reduced in the wake of the Climategate revelations of data tampering, misstatements, collusion, exclusion, and general True Believer behavior on the part of people involved in pushing both. As for the latest attempt at whitewashing all this, see the post I mentioned above.

Grover: What’s magic about it? We’ve spent centuries investing in certain climate conditions–for crops, livestock, the way we build our homes,…

Yes, we’ve spent centuries adapting to our current climate, just as people have spent centuries adapting to older climates, and just as we’ll have to spent centuries adapting to newer climates — it’s what we do. The “magic” is the Goldilocks notion that no other climate regime can ever be as “just right” as the one we’re currently in, when it may be that, by accepting the costs of adaptation, we can find ourselves in a much better regime that would more than pay for those costs.

Grover: Do we know the costs, say of a three or four degree rise in average temperatures in Florida–in terms of the amount of extra energy that will need to be consumed to keep people comfortable? …

Aside from this being irrelevant to my point regarding the costs of attempted mitigation, the answer is, no, we don’t know these costs, and that’s part of my previous point — again illustrating the concatenation of huge uncertainties.

Grover: What about technologies we could develop right now to reduce the “likely” effects of climate change?

Good point (finally) — why is so much political energy devoted to carbon emission reduction, which is known to have a serious global economic cost if it’s even feasible, and if it even could do much over the course of one or two centuries to reduce any actual climate effects, when there are already other means of addressing this issue — not to mention means that might be developed in the next 40 or 50 years, say? Could the answer involve a certain known hostility to industrial development itself on the part of the most vociferous believers? Just asking.
July 12, 2010, 6:59 am
Metamorf says:

Grover: The point is, Metamorf seems to accept the likelihood of climate change but only considers the pitential costs of minimizing it rather than the costs of it’s actually occurring.

I think you can copy-and-paste better than you can read — re: “the costs of it’s actually occurring”, see point #3: “Third, if so [i.e., if it's actually occurring], is it the case that its costs exceed its benefits, and if so by how much? (note that no believer ever mentions that there could even be so much as a benefit from warming, as though magically we’re now at the just exactly right temperature)”

The potential costs of trying to minimize it in the manner most under current consideration are taken up in point #4.

As for a “one-sided” cost-benefit analysis, point # 4 explicitly considers both sides: “Fourth, if so, would the costs of immediate attempted mitigation through carbon reduction be less than the net costs of the warming itself?” (emphasis added to make it easier to understand).
July 12, 2010, 7:12 am
klohy says:

Zuch,

You are really missing the point of the criticisms of the “hide the decline”. The issue is that you cannot drop just part of a proxy without a physical reason for doing so. It is inappropriate to eliminate just those tree ring data that show a current divergence without eliminating the entire proxy. As has been demonstrated many times, by doing this “trick” you create a hockey stick out of random series of red noise.

Secondly, don’t link to the Mann PNAS article without showing the three Supplementary Information additions (what other people would call corrections). If you eliminate the tree rings and the sediment data (which Mann used upside down), you get a different picture with an expanded Medieval Warm Period of similar temperatures to today’s levels. And that is without adjusting for all the other “innovative” statistical tricks used by Mann (his “pick two” methodology for example).

There may be areas of good evidence for AGW, but the hockey stick reconstructions are certainly not one of them.
July 12, 2010, 7:23 am
A.W. says:

The fact is that the scientists said that tree ring data correlates to real temperatures.

Oh, except they didn’t. The temperatures predicted by the tree ring data said that the temperatures would go down. But the real world temperatures did not. So, when facing undeniable evidence that the tree ring data DOES NOT CORRELATE they eliminated the data, as a “trick” to “hide the decline.”

I’ll concede for the sake of argument that the word “trick” doesn’t automatically indicate deception. But the word “hide” does, and it colors what we understand by the word “trick.”

I also see where Zuch is comparing the methods of so-called climate change “deniers” to (literalist) creationists. But it seems like at this point, it is the supporters of AGW that most resembles the creationists. At this point, they are not about following the data wherever it leads. Instead, like creationists, they have a pre-determined conclusion they are trying to prove to be the case, and are all about marshalling the evidence that supports it, and ignoring or explaining away all evidence to the contrary. So creationists struggle to explain away carbon dating and the Grand Canyon as evidence that the earth is much older than they claim. And climate scientists try to explain away divergences between predicted and actual temperatures, and the years of cooling (that they did not predict) that we are experiencing now.

The fact is the atmosphere is entirely too complicated to be able to know what is going on. The local weatherman is not able to tell me what the weather will be like 2 months from now, but hey, they can tell us what the weather will be 2 years from now—never mind the fact that they have been wrong over and over again. Over and over again, they say their “computer models”—that is their best predictions on what is about to happen—predicts X, but instead we get Y. But every time their predictions turn out wrong, they assure us that despite their clear f—up that the science is sound.

Is there any other brand of science where predictions prove wrong again and again, without anyone questioning the basis of those predictions?
July 12, 2010, 9:01 am
Joe Melnick says:

I think the emails are the red herring and the easiest way for the AGW folks to dismiss valid concerns. The computer model, which will accept any series of random numbers and still produce the same hockey stick, is the real smoking gun. No surprise it received so little attention in the media or from the likes of Zuch.

Another area that hasn’t received enough attention is the siting of the weather stations our temperature data is compiled from. Airport tarmacs can hit temperatures up around 180 degrees fahrenheit, and if your reporting station is 50 feet away, or sits beside an exhaust vent, it might not be that accurate. Also, there are 600 or so weather stations across Canada’s arctic but the IPCC only uses one. Which one? The one with the highest temperatures, of course.

To those who say the sun has nothing to do with our weather. If the sun turned off, in seven minutes or so we’d all be dead (more or less). If our planet were any closer or any farther away, we’d all be dead. I’d say it’s a significant factor.
July 12, 2010, 9:15 am
wes george says:

When Zuch implies that the skeptics need supply an alternative hypothesis to AGW, if they they think the AGW hypothesis is false, he reveals that he doesn’t understand scientific method, because he has inverted the burden of proof. Those who propose the AGW hypothesis are required to defend it. The skeptics are obliged only to hurl relevantly interesting questions. Seems harsh, but that’s the way science works. Actually, it gets much worse in the life of a hypothesis. If the hypothesis exhibits a single implication that is falsified by experimental or observational data, the whole hypothesis must go back to the lab and that’s where we are today with the AGW hypothesis–falsified.

Anyway, Zuch, it’s a moot point, because the skeptical position does provide an alternative hypothesis to explain today’s climate it’s called a the Holocene interglacial period and is 100% organic, natural. A greenie’s dream, really.
July 12, 2010, 9:16 am
rosignol says:

lgm:
We have refereed journals so that we don’t argue scientific claims in blogs.

If you consider debate in a public forum unreliable, why bother participating? If you are going to participate, why not point out errors of fact, instead of simply asserting that argument of scientific claims in a non-refereed forum is of dubious value?

From where I’m sitting, attacking a debate because of where it is being held, rather than any factual or logical errors by the participants, is very close to argumentum ad hominem.

lgm:
Over and over Zuch points to factual errors in climate change deniers’ stories.Each time, Zuch and his evidence are dismissed because he believes in climate change.This puts us in the fascinating situation where you only believe evidence for climate change if it comes from someone who doesn’t believe in it.There’s a catch number for this situation.

So far, in this thread all I’ve seen Zuch present is that the skeptics don’t all agree on why they think the arguments of climate change believers are questionable. This is not evidence that the skeptics are in error, or that their arguments are invalid, or that their arguments are being made in bad faith. It is merely evidence that there are several reasons to question the claims of the believers, instead of just one.

It’s not like there is only one opportunity for error in what is essentially statistical analysis that combines multiple data sets, a variety of analytical tools and methods, and several scientific disciplines. We are discussing information that will guide policy decisions involving trillions of dollars and will affect the lives of quite literally every human being. Considering what is at stake, it is not unreasonable to expect the evidence and the conclusions to be both clear and unambiguous.

For the researchers studying the issue to be completely transparent and forthcoming about both their data and their methods is a basic requirement.
July 12, 2010, 9:17 am
harkin says:

Is there a link missing in the “The Guardian rounds up some scientific reactions here.” line?
July 12, 2010, 9:23 am
PSGInfinity says:

Christopher Fotos: The phrase “we know” is a modern incantation usually followed by something that we do not know.

I just wanted to see that one more time. Thanks, Christopher!
July 12, 2010, 9:29 am
A.W. says:

Zuch

> Do you have any alternative models that have been shown to be better?

I could picture you as a prosecutor.

“Someone robbed the liquor store at 10:30 pm on Saturday, June 14. The Defendant says he was in another city that day and has ATM footage to prove it. But he can’t tell us who robbed the liquor store. Therefore he must be guilty.”
July 12, 2010, 9:30 am
EconRob says:

cce: We know that human beings have increased the CO2 concentration of the atmosphere about 40% since the industrial revolution.We know that there are enough readily available fossil fuels to at least double the pre-industrial concentration.We know from observations that climate sensitivity is very likely between 2 and 4 degrees for a doubling of CO2. http://www.jamstec.go.jp/frcgc/research/d5/jdannan/GRL_sensitivity.pdfTherefore, we have very good confidence that humans are altering the climate and such a conclusion does not depend on computer models.Also the “CC” in IPCC (est 1988) stands for “climate change.”

Nonsense. Maybe, maybe a correlation, maybe, if you trust the data. But there is clearly lots of evidence for no-correlation or no-causation. For one thing Greenland was once green. May other examples of climate being warmer in the past then today.
July 12, 2010, 9:35 am
wes george says:

Speaking of Creationism. There is some interesting metacognitive dissonance about climate change. First the Orwellian pseudonym for AGW, “climate change” is a tautology, since, by its very definition the climate, a complex nonlinear system, is always changing. Actually, it should be called “climate evolution” but then that would reveal it as natural.

Worse, the idea that we should “Stop Climate Change Now” as the Greenpeace slogan goes, is an oxymoron combined with a tautology. Brilliant really, in only four words too! Not only is climate evolution naturally occurring all the time, the idea that it’s humanly possible to prevent the climate from changing is an inane oxymoron.

And it gets worse: What Greenpeace really means is “Stop Climate Evolution Now.” Revealed as such, we can clearly see the Greenpeace slogan is the same kind of casuistic dialectic used by Creationists.

After all in order to believe that the climate must be prevented from evolving one must first posit that the climate once existed in a paradisiacal stasis and that change (evolution) represents a “fall from grace.” The concept of the world as a static system and humanity as an inherently corrupting influence is shared by both Climate Alarmists and Creationists. Both groups seek to deny evolution. Both groups also share a common belief in a coming apocalypse as well… Just a coincidence?
July 12, 2010, 9:39 am
tom swift says:

All that we really learned from this latest “report” (or, if you prefer, “whitewash”) is that the corruption which has attacked both the fundamental practice of science and the vaunted peer-review process has spread even higher up the food chain than we had already realized. And corruption it is. How anyone can even pretend to defend the absurd claim that tree-ring data is a useful proxy for temperature is just incredible. There’s more reason to believe that banging pots and pans together on the solstice will make the sun come back.

What tells the story is data. It’s no great feat to compare modern tree rings to the corresponding temperature record and see just how well they do, or do not, correlate.

“We know humans have a significant role in changing the climate,”

We know no such thing. And to be useful, we’d have to know considerably more than that. We would need an accurate metric of the quantitative effects. That metric would tell us if our carbon dioxide abatement efforts were working, how well they were working (more effort needed, less effort needed, blah blah), and when we could stop what would doubtless be a cripplingly expensive process. Without a reliable metric we’re totally helpless, even if we can actually establish what human activity has any effect on climate.

“For those who believe that global warming is some sort of conspiracy or falsehood, there is no evidence that will satisfy them that global warming is a threat.”

Rubbish. Of course evidence would be satisfactory. Empirical data is always acceptable. Gloom-and-doom prognostications, academic whitewashes, computer models, or UN reports are not evidence. The old “appeal to authority” is not science. So where does empirical data come from? You get it yourself from observation of the phenomena. My own confidence that AGW is a fraud is derived from my own observations and measurements, which I have been carrying out since the 1960s. They lead me to conclude that (i) there is no global warming or cooling of any significance happening today, and (ii) those who say there is are mistaken or pushing a fraud. Of course as an expensively educated scientist I realize that there is a possibility that I am wrong, and am receptive to evidence of such.

Naturally, those of you who have not had the foresight or scientific wherewithal to gather observations on your own are all at sea. You will have to make your pick of priest-kings and worship at his particular altar. Either that or get off your intellectual butts and start taking your own damn data. The secret of modern science is that final authority rests with the behavior of the real world, not with somebody’s opinion of the real world. Aristotle never figured that out, but a modern person has little excuse for being so ignorant.

“This puts us in the fascinating situation where you only believe evidence for climate change if it comes from someone who doesn’t believe in it. There’s a catch number for this situation.”

It’s not fascinating at all. It’s routine. It’s the foundation of modern science.
July 12, 2010, 9:57 am
wes george says:

So are climate alarmists really Creationists? Well no, but they use the same sort of anti-science techniques.

Take the MWP and LIA. Climate alarmists hate past climate variation, because they reveal that climate’s natural fluctuations are often greater in both amplitude and speed than modern warming.

The MWP was warmer or as warm as today, yet it occurred at pre-industrial CO2 levels. Therefore, this warming period can not be explained by the AGW hypothesis. In fact, the AGW hypothesis is irrelevant to the entire history of the planet save the last 75 years rendering it a fairly limited climate theory and almost impossible to test.

But the AGW hypothesis does make two very important predictions about past holocene climate change that can be tested. That is that warming is driven by CO2. Furthermore, today’s “anomalously” high temperatures CAN NOT occur naturally without atmospheric CO2 levels being around 385 ppm. The hot, low CO2 level MWP is an inconvenient truth. Game Over.

That’s why Michael Mann created the bogus hockey stick reconstruction of the last 2,000 years of climate showing no significant past climate change. Mann, being a real, if unethical, scientist, understood that if the true extent of the MWP and LIA were allowed into the paleoclimate record then the whole catastrophic global warming meme was rendered bunk and that the AGW hypothesis itself generated a prediction which did not correspond to the observed evidence. And what do real scientists call a hypothesis that fails to usefully predict observed data? Mann literally fit up the data to the hypothesis rather than the other way around! That’s a creationist technique.

What the MWP and the LIA reveal is that the parameters both in amplitude and in speed for natural climate change are significantly greater than the level of climate change observed since 1900. Therefore, there is no need for a one off hypothesis which can only be applied to the latest bout of warming, because modern warming is well within the bounds of historically normal warming. See Occam’s razor.

Of course, all AGW-supporters must deny and suppress evidence of past climate change, although the raw observational data is largely uncontested. That’s why the AGW crowd constantly calls every other heat wave “unprecedented.” Everything about the modern climate MUST be a superlative in relation to the recent paleoclimatic record in order to put the “catastrophic” and “anthropogenic” on the global warming.

Is modern warming really unprecedented? And if not, then why is it catastrophic or unnatural?

http://pages.science-skeptical.de/MWP/MedievalWarmPeriod.html
July 12, 2010, 10:31 am
A.W. says:

wes concurr with most of what you say, but…

there are other ways to test the AGW theory. For instnace, you can say to them “so is this going to be a heavy or light hurricane season?” or “will it be hotter next year or not. when they one or the other, and it turns out to be what they didn’t predict, again, game over.

i have never seen any form of science where its predictions are so often proven untrue and its adherants argue for no reconsideration of the theory.
July 12, 2010, 10:48 am
PaulD says:

Zuch asks: “Do you have any alternative models that have been shown to be better?”

As a matter of fact, I do. “Simple Model Leaves Expensive Climate Models Cold” http://www.masterresource.org/2009/11/simple-model-leaves-expensive-climate-models-cold/
July 12, 2010, 10:55 am
cecil kirksey says:

EconRob: Nonsense. Maybe, maybe a correlation, maybe, if you trust the data. But there is clearly lots of evidence for no-correlation or no-causation. For one thing Greenland was once green. May other examples of climate being warmer in the past then today.

Clearly you do not understand that co2 is a greenhouse gas which helps the earth be inhabitable, i.e., maintain a life sustainable mean temperature. There is clearly a cause not just a correlation between co2 levels and mean temperature. There are many other factors that have influenced the mean temperature of the earth over its lifespan. But hopefully the earth has reached an age where these other factors will not be significate. Think of a large NEO collision. That would be a major climate change event not manmade but hopefully man preventable. Just some food for thought.
July 12, 2010, 10:59 am
ShelbyC says:

zuch: No. They threw out the data from those times where it was demonstrated that the tree rings represented an unreliable proxy for temperature data (the observed late “divergence”), and used the data when it was demonstrated that the proxy was reliable (early 20th century). They also included even earlier tree ring proxies under an assumption that the divergence was a recent phenomenon only. But as pointed out, if all the tree-ring proxies are tossed (even the known good ones), we still get pretty much the same picture.

But there’s absolutely no basis for such an assumption. It’s a classic example of keeping data that you like, and throwing out the data you don’t.
July 12, 2010, 11:00 am
ShelbyC says:

Laura(southernxyl): There’s bad data as in, I used the uncalibrated micrometer, or the samples weren’t stored correctly, or I don’t know which tree this came from. Yes, you exclude that.

Well, hold on. If you see a chunk of data that doesn’t support your assumptions, so you double check and see that you used the uncalibrated micrometer or whatever that day, you can’t just exclude that data, or you introduce confirmation bias.
July 12, 2010, 11:07 am
grichens says:

The language of the e-mails (“hide the decline”, “trick”) has been beaten to death (and addressed in the latest report here).And the science in the PNAS article above.Cheers,

My vocation is a sub-specialty of hedge fund trading whereby directional bets are taken in the currency, fixed income and commodity markets for the risk and profit of client and personal trading accounts. To attempt cover up the risking of client funds with a refuted technique encourages the adverse attention of regulators and litigators.

The only out-of sample-data to give evidence to support the use of tree rings for paleo-temperature reconstructions is the correlation between the modern (post-1960) temperature record and the contemporaneous tree-ring data. The out-of sample data fails to confirm the use of tree rings in this manner and therefore presents an intractable credibility problem to paleoclimatology.

For such academics as Jones to attempt to “hide the decline” of the updated (post-1960) tree ring chronologies (i.e., the problematic out-of-sample data) is no better than hucksterism.

Recall another pair of celebrated academics, Myron Scholes and Robert C. Merton, who shared the Nobel Prize in economics in 1997 – one year before their part in the ruination of Long Term Capital Management.
July 12, 2010, 11:27 am
renminbi says:

For those with an open mind-
http://wattsupwiththat.com/

is the site to visit.You may also visit the pro AGW sites and compare the quality of argument. The measure of science is the ability to predict phenomena. Computer models may suggest things,but the gold standard is data. Also of course people who have a case don’t have to lie or stonewall. Right now there simply isn’t much evidence for CAGW.

Fortunately China and India have no intention of wrecking their economies for what is a passing fad.Not that they won’t take any largesse we may be foolish enough to give them
July 12, 2010, 11:30 am
uh_clem says:

As expected, no minds are being changed by the discussion here. Those who claim to be “skeptics” continue to believe the most outlandish thinly-sourced accusations as long as it comports with their preconceptions, and dismiss any and all evidence to the contrary.

On the other side, there are probably some papers and some research supporting AGW that are wrong, and there’s now a “circle the wagons” mentality that may cause some “bad” science to be supported for the wrong reasons. Of course, this circle-the-wagons mentality is a direct result of a horde of unqualified bloggers who’s only objective is to harass actual scientists.

Kudos to Prof Adler for retaining an open mind.
July 12, 2010, 11:37 am
zuch says:

PaulD:

[Zuch asks]: “Do you have any alternative models that have been shown to be better?”

As a matter of fact, I do. “Simple Model Leaves Expensive Climate Models Cold” http://www.masterresource.org/2009/11/simple-model-leaves-expensive-climate-models-cold/

Wonderful … ummm, blog: “MasterResource
A free-market energy blog”

I clicked on the link for the paper, and get “domain not found”.

I clicked on the link for an earlier paper, and get some carping screed citing all the usual suspects about the difficulties of forecasting (including taking Freeman Dyson’s off-the-cuff remarks out of context), and which insists in part that if we don’t know the “[c]osts and benefits of feasible alternative policy proposals” we can’t meaningfully talk about whether something is going to happen (see my comment here on this illogic), and repeats the trite and debunked “all the scientists were screaming ‘Ice Age! Ice Age!’ in the 70′s” foofrah.

What I don’t see is a “better model”.

Cheers,
July 12, 2010, 12:00 pm
Skyler says:

uh_clem: Of course, this circle-the-wagons mentality is a direct result of a horde of unqualified bloggers who’s only objective is to harass actual scientist

“Actual scientists” do not fabricate data, use data that is proven wrong, or hide data used in computer models, or refuse to release the programming used in said models.

If there were proof, the fraud wouldn’t be needed.

The only objective of the well qualified people is to expose frauds.

You don’t need to be a scientist or even educated to realize that there was a fraud. There are plenty of real scientists that are available if you require a pedigree to point out a liar.
July 12, 2010, 12:05 pm
zuch says:

Metamorf: [zuch]: This has been discussed in many places. They are not a bad proxy. But there is a known divergence in recent years.
Yeah! Just because they didn’t show the right temperature when we could, you know, actually measure temperature, or at least when we think we could actually measure temperature, doesn’t mean they didn’t show the right temperature when we couldn’t actually measure temperature.

As Hertz would say: “Not exactly”. They have been shown to be a good proxy for periods when actual concurrent temperatures were available, but they have shown a recent divergence from that.

But as I’ve (repeatedly) stated (and even given you folks a link for), if you take out the tree-ring proxies completely, you get pretty much the same picture, but with somewhat larger error bars for some periods.

Cheers,

Cheers,
July 12, 2010, 12:05 pm
stan says:

You wrote: “the underlying scientific case for a human contribution to global climate change remains intact.”

But the panel specifically denied that it looked at the science at all.
July 12, 2010, 12:05 pm
ShelbyC says:

zuch: What I don’t see is a “better model”.

Me neither. I guess that means we just don’t know what’s going to happen over the next few hundred years wrt the climate, eh?
July 12, 2010, 12:06 pm
ShelbyC says:

zuch: As Hertz would say: “Not exactly”. They have been shown to be a good proxy for periods when actual concurrent temperatures were available, but they have shown a recent divergence from that.

Could you please explain why that’s different from saying, “They have been shown to be a good proxy for periods when actual concurrent temperatures were available, except when they have been shown to be a bad proxy?”
July 12, 2010, 12:23 pm
SBark says:

It has previously been disclosed that East Anglia no longer has the raw data available. With that being the case, how could a review panel possibly conclude that there was no scientific fraud? It seems to me that if the scientists have destroyed the data necessary to review their methodologies and results, the best that could be said is that the data no longer exists to determine whether or not there was fraud.

If the panel is making statements that they don’t have the information to support, it strikes me as pretty strong evidence of a whitewash.
July 12, 2010, 12:24 pm
Elliot says:

” One of the panel’s four members, Prof. Geoffrey Boulton, was on the faculty of East Anglia’s School of Environmental Sciences for 18 years.”
Wall Street Journal, July 12, 2010

Seems the panel wasn’t all that independent.
July 12, 2010, 12:33 pm
Metamorf says:

zuch: As Hertz would say: “Not exactly”. They have been shown to be a good proxy for periods when actual concurrent temperatures were available, but they have shown a recent divergence from that.
But as I’ve (repeatedly) stated (and even given you folks a link for), if you take out the tree-ring proxies completely, you get pretty much the same picture, but with somewhat larger error bars for some periods.

(As Groucho would say, “A child of five would understand this. Send someone to fetch a child of five. “)

Those damn tree rings, huh zuch? They didn’t have to use ‘em — they just wanted to, I guess, sorta, “narrow the error bars” if ya know what I mean? But they did, and then they had to resort to “tricks” to “hide the decline”, and, well, here we are. But — and this is the thing — tree rings are good proxies for temperature when they tell us what we want them to tell us, but they’re not when they don’t — is that about right? Or was that recent “divergence” just a coincidence? Or, as Taranto suggested, maybe it’s the trees’ fault! But how would the trees have known to show a temperature decline just when we needed them to show a rise? Who got to them?

Cheers,
July 12, 2010, 12:37 pm
zuch says:

Metamorf:

[zuch]: Will you agree that the third question is independent (although not entirely so) of the first two?

Umm — how is something independent although not entirely so?

I’m going to start numbering my comments and just refer to them by number. May need a different cardinality … ;-) … but it may save blog space and my time.

Cheers,
July 12, 2010, 12:38 pm
zuch says:

Brett Bellmore: it appears that the global warming only appears after adjustment.

Huh? Cites for this?

Cheers,
July 12, 2010, 12:40 pm
Elliot says:

This isn’t hard. Can we agree tree rings are always correct proxies except when we have data to contradict them?
July 12, 2010, 12:41 pm
Metamorf says:

Elliot: ” One of the panel’s four members, Prof. Geoffrey Boulton, was on the faculty of East Anglia’s School of Environmental Sciences for 18 years.”
Wall Street Journal, July 12, 2010
Seems the panel wasn’t all that independent.

“… another, Richard Horton, had deemed global warming “the biggest threat to our future health.”
July 12, 2010, 12:41 pm
zuch says:

klohy: You are really missing the point of the criticisms of the “hide the decline”.

Why do you say that?

klohy: The issue is that you cannot drop just part of a proxy without a physical reason for doing so.

Mann said why they dropped the data, as I’ve pointed out here [repeatedly] as well.

Cheers,
July 12, 2010, 12:42 pm
zuch says:

klohy: It is inappropriate to eliminate just those tree ring data that show a current divergence without eliminating the entire proxy….

This has been dealt with by more than one review, and in addition, the data rerun with dropping of the tree-rings entirely (which shows larger errors but no substantial differences in the result. I’d note that the fact that dropping tree-ring proxies doesn’t show much difference is an indication that the recent known divergence wasn’t present during periods for which direct temperature data were available; the older tree-ring data pretty much agreed with the other proxy data for those times.

klohy: As has been demonstrated many times, by doing this “trick” you create a hockey stick out of random series of red noise.

Huh? CIte for this?

Cheers,
July 12, 2010, 12:48 pm
ShelbyC says:

zuch: Mann said why they dropped the data, as I’ve pointed out here [repeatedly] as well.

To hide the decline, right?
[Edit: Because without hiding the decline, “…the skeptics have an field day casting
doubt on our ability to understand the factors that influence these estimates
and, thus, can undermine faith in the paleoestimates. ” right?
July 12, 2010, 12:49 pm
JoeSixpack says:

Let’s see, we can either demand that all of humanity change the way it lives and give up decades of economic progress, or we can simply build a chimney!

http://www.superchimney.org/

If all these true believers would show any interest in solutions that don’t coincidentally match exactly how they wanted to engineer society before anyone ever heard of “global warming” and we were all being warned of the coming apocalypse caused by “global cooling”, they would have a little more credibility.
July 12, 2010, 12:51 pm
Metamorf says:

zuch: It is true that specific answers to the first two might make the answers to subsequent questions (such as whether any suggested mitigation efforts would be cost beneficial) “academic” or irrelevant, but any conclusions as to the third question or others even further down the line hardly change the truth value of answers to the first two. And this is what I meant by “independent”.

Fine, but in that sense, note that every step in the sequence, including the first, is independent of every subsequent step. On the other hand, as you say, every step but the first is dependent on previous steps in order to be relevant at all.
July 12, 2010, 12:52 pm
zuch says:

A.W.: I also see where Zuch is comparing the methods of so-called climate change “deniers” to (literalist) creationists. But it seems like at this point, it is the supporters of AGW that most resembles the creationists. At this point, they are not about following the data wherever it leads. Instead, like creationists, they have a pre-determined conclusion they are trying to prove to be the case, and are all about marshalling the evidence that supports it, and ignoring or explaining away all evidence to the contrary. So creationists struggle to explain away carbon dating and the Grand Canyon as evidence that the earth is much older than they claim. And climate scientists try to explain away divergences between predicted and actual temperatures, …

Huh? There are efforts to explain the recent tree-ring divergence, but you have to acknowlegde that the tree-ring proxies were valid for early 20th century temperatures.

A.W.: … and the years of cooling (that they did not predict) that we are experiencing now.

What “years of cooling”?!?!?

Cheers,
July 12, 2010, 12:53 pm
JoeSixpack says:

And by “all of humanity”, I of course mean everyone except super-rich liberals like Leonardo DiCaprio, who just clogged up the airport at the World Cup in S.A. with his private jet, not to mention true believers like Nancy Pelosi who commutes across the country every week in a B757.
July 12, 2010, 12:54 pm
Connecticut Lawyer says:

Zuch,

Enlighten me.

Why is tree ring data a good proxy for temperature in some eras but not others? What is the physical mechanism that explains that divergence? How can scientists rely on tree ring data for some periods if they can’t explain this divergence?
July 12, 2010, 12:54 pm
zuch says:

Joe Melnick: The computer model, which will accept any series of random numbers and still produce the same hockey stick, is the real smoking gun. No surprise it received so little attention in the media or from the likes of Zuch.

Hallucinations are usually not worth spending much time on, unless you’re a clinical psychologist.

Cheers,
July 12, 2010, 12:55 pm
zuch says:

Joe Melnick: To those who say the sun has nothing to do with our weather. If the sun turned off, in seven minutes or so we’d all be dead (more or less). If our planet were any closer or any farther away, we’d all be dead. I’d say it’s a significant factor.

#73.

Cheers,
July 12, 2010, 12:57 pm
zuch says:

wes george: When Zuch implies that the skeptics need supply an alternative hypothesis to AGW, if they they think the AGW hypothesis is false, he reveals that he doesn’t understand scientific method, because he has inverted the burden of proof.

#57

Cheers,
July 12, 2010, 12:59 pm
zuch says:

rosignol: So far, in this thread all I’ve seen Zuch present is that the skeptics don’t all agree on why they think the arguments of climate change believers are questionable. This is not evidence that the skeptics are in error, or that their arguments are invalid, or that their arguments are being made in bad faith. It is merely evidence that there are several reasons to question the claims of the believers, instead of just one.

#63

Cheers,
July 12, 2010, 1:01 pm
zuch says:

EconRob: For one thing Greenland was once green.

No, not any time in recent history. Many thousands of years of ice records prove this claim false. But this is just one of those Internet Facts™ that just won’t go away, sadly.

It is true that Antarctica was once “green” … but that was when it was nearer the Equator, which was many, many moons ago.

Cheers,
July 12, 2010, 1:04 pm
Allan Walstad says:

zuch says:

Allan Walstad:

[zuch]: When you try to shoot down one theory and don’t provide another (that actually stands up), you’re pretty obviously on the side of the “Know Nothings”.

That’s just complete nonsense, Zuch. If I have a theory that 100 lb objects fall 10 times faster than 10 lb objects, and you drop one of each from the top of a tall building and they hit the ground together within a few feet, you don’t have to have any competing theory about how things fall; you’ve shot down my theory.

Rather than repeating myself, I’ll just link to this on-point comment.

Fair enough. I’ll just paste in the last paragraph of an earlier on-point comment of mine.

As for your examples of theories not being tossed out, the differences between them and the case at hand undermine your contention. Mercury’s precession is a very small effect, and it occurs in the most extreme situation in the Solar System, namely, the closest planet to the Sun, in the strongest gravitational potential and traveling at the highest speed. But the divergence of tree ring proxies from temperature data is not a small effect and not occurring in some extreme situation. The photoelectric effect does not bear on the construction of electric motors, but a divergence of tree ring proxies from measured temperatures does bear on the reliability of such proxies.
July 12, 2010, 1:05 pm
ShelbyC says:

zuch: #57

why would #57 work this time any better than it did last time? Doesn’t your #57 comment deal with models that are know to have some degree of reliability but are not perfect? In this case, do we have any idea of the reliability of the current models?
July 12, 2010, 1:09 pm
zuch says:

tom swift: How anyone can even pretend to defend the absurd claim that tree-ring data is a useful proxy for temperature is just incredible. There’s more reason to believe that banging pots and pans together on the solstice will make the sun come back.

#143

Cheers,
July 12, 2010, 1:12 pm
zuch says:

wes george: So are climate alarmists really Creationists? Well no, but they use the same sort of anti-science techniques.
Take the MWP and LIA. Climate alarmists hate past climate variation, because they reveal that climate’s natural fluctuations are often greater in both amplitude and speed than modern warming.

The MWP is a rough equivalent of “Piltdown”: It gets shouted every time by the anti-AGW people (it’s not a true equivalent, because the Mann reconstruction includes the MWP even though the anti-AGW people insist it doesn’t.

wes george: The MWP was warmer or as warm as today, yet it occurred at pre-industrial CO2 levels.

Simply not true.

Cheers,
July 12, 2010, 1:16 pm
Allan Walstad says:

Joe Melnick

The computer model, which will accept any series of random numbers and still produce the same hockey stick…

According to A.W. Montford in The Hockey Stick Illusion, you don’t get hockey sticks from pure random numbers, if by that you mean “white noise.” But you do get them from so-called “red noise” (which is just about as damning). The difference is that in white noise the next number in the series is completely independent of the last, whereas in red noise the next number is produced by adding a random INCREMENT to the last. Not quite the same. Still, yes, the point demonstrated by McIntyre and others was that Mann’s statistical method tended to generate hockey sticks out of almost any data, giving huge weight to any tree ring series that showed an uptick in the 20th century, even if (as in the case of the bristlecone pines) the changes in tree ring widths were not likely due to temperature changes.
July 12, 2010, 1:17 pm
zuch says:

Connecticut Lawyer: Why is tree ring data a good proxy for temperature in some eras but not others? What is the physical mechanism that explains that divergence?

There’s work ongoing to try and resolve this. Patience, grasshopper.

Cheers,
July 12, 2010, 1:26 pm
Chris Green says:

cce: We know that human beings have increased the CO2 concentration of the atmosphere about 40% since the industrial revolution. We know that there are enough readily available fossil fuels to at least double the pre-industrial concentration. We know from observations that climate sensitivity is very likely between 2 and 4 degrees for a doubling of CO2. http://www.jamstec.go.jp/frcgc/research/d5/jdannan/GRL_sensitivity.pdfTherefore, we have very good confidence that humans are altering the climate and such a conclusion does not depend on computer models.Also the “CC” in IPCC (est 1988) stands for “climate change.”

The problem with the paper you cite is that the author did not conduct a controlled experiment to test his hypothesis. Furthermore, none of the studies he relies on were controlled experiments. In fact, the author has to make the assumption that AGW is true for some of the studies in order to factor them into the Bayesian update process.

In other words, the author assumes temperature changes in the last 150 years are due mostly to increasing carbon levels in order to predict how much more the temperature will rise if carbon levels go up even more.
July 12, 2010, 1:28 pm
zuch says:

Allan Walstad: Fair enough. I’ll just paste in the last paragraph of an earlier on-point comment of mine.

As for your examples of theories not being tossed out, the differences between them and the case at hand undermine your contention. Mercury’s precession is a very small effect, and it occurs in the most extreme situation in the Solar System, namely, the closest planet to the Sun, in the strongest gravitational potential and traveling at the highest speed. But the divergence of tree ring proxies from temperature data is not a small effect and not occurring in some extreme situation. The photoelectric effect does not bear on the construction of electric motors, but a divergence of tree ring proxies from measured temperatures does bear on the reliability of such proxies.

Because the tree-rings are shown to be reasonable proxies for some periods, but shown to diverge later, it seems that the models need to be updated. But that doesn’t change the fact that the tree-rings were reasonable proxies at some point, any more than GR changed the perihelion precession much from the Newtonian predictions.

But as I’ve said [repeatedly], you get pretty much the same picture when you throw out the tree-ring proxies, so quit shouting ~~“Piltdown! Piltdown! It’s all a fraud!”~~“tree-rings divergence so it’s all wrong!” over and over. Give it a rest, willya, folks?

Cheers,
July 12, 2010, 1:32 pm
Allan Walstad says:

Well, I guess I won’t stick around to see the thread hit 200 (unless a few more come in while I’m typing this).

Suffice to point out again that “hide” was the climate insiders’ word for what they did (when they thought no one was listening), as in “hide the decline.” A.W. Montford’s The Hockey Stick Illusion is a good account of Steve McIntyre’s work in uncovering Mann’s misleading statistical techniques and the shenanigans of the climate insiders in trying to frustrate all challenges to their work. It also usefully places some of the most damning emails into the context of other events. The behavior of the climate insiders, including in the preparation of the IPCC reports and in generating the misleading hockey stick graph for public consumption, casts serious doubt on the reliability of their research when it comes to requiring massive changes in our economic activities. Climate Audit is a good blog for information about the continuing state of affairs, where you can go back and see how the so-called vindication of the CRU and IPCC insiders was developing as a whitewash from the start. And yes, Zuch, you can demonstrate the unreliability of the observational and experimental basis for a theory without having an alternative theory of your own.
July 12, 2010, 1:33 pm
Allan Walstad says:

…so quit shouting “Piltdown! Piltdown! It’s all a fraud!”“tree-rings divergence so it’s all wrong!” over and over. Give it a rest, willya, folks?

Pure innuendo, Zuch.
July 12, 2010, 1:36 pm
ShelbyC says:

zuch: Connecticut Lawyer: Why is tree ring data a good proxy for temperature in some eras but not others? What is the physical mechanism that explains that divergence?
There’s work ongoing to try and resolve this. Patience, grasshopper.

So what you’re saying is that the tree ring data is a good proxy in the periods they’re using it to proxy in, and we should be patient while they figure out why it’s a good proxy?
July 12, 2010, 1:37 pm
klohy says:

Zuch,

klohy: As has been demonstrated many times, by doing this “trick” you create a hockey stick out of random series of red noise.

Huh? CIte for this?

The original discussion was Stockwell D, (2006) Reconstruction of past climate using series with red noise. AIG News 8:314. It has since been demonstrated on many blogs. It is not a difficult exercise – you should be able to show it yourself in an hour with any basic statistical package or even excel.

Your comments on the MWP are an overreach. Even Phil Jones has admitted that it is probably impossible to do 1000-year temperature reconstructions with any accuracy. Your dogmatism does not help your argument.
July 12, 2010, 1:45 pm
Chris Green says:

zuch: The MWP is a rough equivalent of “Piltdown”: It gets shouted every time by the anti-AGW people (it’s not a true equivalent, because the Mann reconstruction includes the MWP even though the anti-AGW people insist it doesn’t.Simply not true.Cheers,

zuch: The MWP is a rough equivalent of “Piltdown”: It gets shouted every time by the anti-AGW people (it’s not a true equivalent, because the Mann reconstruction includes the MWP even though the anti-AGW people insist it doesn’t.Simply not true.Cheers,

Are you saying that MWP did not exist (because Mann showed it to not exist) or are you saying that it exists and Mann took it into account (or are you saying something else).

If the former, well, the legitimacy of Mann’s research (especially his tree ring analysis) is being called into serious question. That is the point of many of the commentors here. There is a tremendous amount of evidence that things were significantly warmer from 950 to 1300, at least in large sections the Northern hemisphere. Are saying there is evidence that temperatures in the southern hemisphere were so cold that they averaged out to ‘no increase’?

If the latter, then why doesn’t the hockey stick graph that I’m familiar with show any increase during the Medieval period.
July 12, 2010, 1:48 pm
A.W. says:

Guys

Don’t bother with Zuch. He has an aggressive breed of ignorance where you can present him with clear evidence and he pretends not to see it. I witnessed it in another thread when i provided a link to a court case, and it was clear when he responded he hadn’t read more than the caption.

He’s a troll immune to evidence or reason.
July 12, 2010, 1:52 pm
observer says:

Hello Folks-

An interesting discussion, but it seems to be running out of gas a little doesn’t it? I’d like to pull back the focus a little. I’m the first one to admit I lack the background and the chops to prevail in some of the sorts of technical discussions many have on this topic. But let me resort to an ‘appeal to authority’ kind of arguement, in an odd sort of way.

Dr. Phil Jones. Head of the CRU. Roughly qualifies as the virtual pope of the AGW advocates. So if anyone has a weighty credibility with that crowd, then he is the one. He was apparently personally devastated, at least temporarily, in the aftermath of the ‘Climategate’ revelations. He made some public statements which certainly made me pay attention:

-the warming from 72-98 was similiar to two
previous episodes in the 20th cent
-current average temperature levels aren’t
significantly different than those during the
Medieval Warm Period

Now, he WAS careful to note that he has in no way changed his mind about the AGW proposition. However the above statements entirely contradict the assertion that we are enjoying any ‘unprecedented’ warming currently.
In this context, I often like to note that none of the climate models available in ’98 reflected the reality of climate trends that followed.
Given that AGW science has so much to be modest about, and that it is the basis for proposed world changing alterations to economic and political governance, perhaps it is appropriate to reconsider the trillion$ bets the transnational progressives are so enthusiastically promoting.
July 12, 2010, 2:10 pm
Metamorf says:

zuch: There’s work ongoing to try and resolve this. Patience, grasshopper.

Heh. No doubt they’re looking into the possibility that the trees themselves were simply early denialists.

A.W.: He’s a troll immune to evidence or reason.

I think really zuch sees himself as a Defender of the Faith here, which of course pretty much by definition means he must make himself immune to evidence or reason. Also explains his recent resort to simply repeating himself, since that’s about all you can do with dogma.
July 12, 2010, 2:18 pm
Chris Green says:

Zuch,

As one of the few supporters on this site of the AGW arguments, I give you props for providing an interesting discussion (and an opportunity to argue). I even admit that significant AGW is possible. I just don’t trust the scientists doing the research. The climate gate emails, my own research and everything else that has been said about it lead me to the conclusion that even the CRU folks, if they were being really honest with themselves, don’t know for sure what is going on.

Furthermore, many of them have tremendous financial and personal (other then pure science) incentives for wanting AGW to be true. Imagine all your financial support, all your fame, your sense of self importance and the sense that your professional life has any meaning at all being flushed down the toilet if AGW turns out to be exaggerated.

Furthermore, I think that many of these scientists have said to themselves, “Well, we don’t know for sure what is going on, but if what we suspect MAY be true, really is true, then the consequences could be awful. Thus, in our own best interests of humanity, we need to act as if significant AGW is true and that we are certain of it because if we don’t, ignorant politicians and voters will use any doubt we express as an excuse to kill any mediating actions.” Of course, in saying this, the assumption these scientists are making is that 1) people can’t figure out what’s best for them, only we can, and 2) the benefit that mediating actions will provide if dramatic AGW is true (like huge carbon cutting in countries that have any chance of going along with it (not Russia, not China, probably not India)) will out-weigh the harm these actions will cause, in the long run. However, neither of these assumptions are true simply because someone says they are, although that doesn’t mean they’re not true, there is just uncertainty.

That brings me to the reason I tend to sympathize with the anti AGW folks more then the AGW folks. The anti AGW folks are trying to argue that there is great uncertainty while the AGW folks are trying to argue that there is almost no uncertainty, and that everyone should just take their word for it. I’m extremely suspicious when someone says anything like that. I wish the AGW folks had taken a more open approach. It would have been easier to sympathize with them in that case.
July 12, 2010, 2:22 pm
zuch says:

klohy: The original discussion was Stockwell D, (2006) Reconstruction of past climate using series with red noise. AIG News 8:314.

So Stockwell says that you can find “trends” towards baseline when you use “red noise” (that is, time-correlated) noise. Wow. But what does it have to do with the price of tea in Sri Lanka? Or generating “hockey sticks”? Note that the “blade” is present in Stockwell’s pseudo-reconstructions; that part won’t (and can’t) go away. But what is the significance of “red noise” here (and the renormalisation to get the slowly decaying signal to regress to some arbitrary point [his "pseudo-MWP"])? Isn’t he just showing that you can get “hockey sticks” by choosing your parameters and data generation appropriately? I could also devise a (even a simple polynomial) function that shows a “hockey stick”, but then you need to show that this method of producing the “red noise” and setting regression parameters corresponds to some alternative model….

But FWIW, his “hockey sticks” don’t look like Mann’s to my eyes.

Cheers,
July 12, 2010, 2:33 pm
zuch says:

A.W.: Don’t bother with Zuch. He has an aggressive breed of ignorance where you can present him with clear evidence and he pretends not to see it. I witnessed it in another thread when i provided a link to a court case, and it was clear when he responded he hadn’t read more than the caption.

This is of course argumentum ad hominem. But I’m curious: Links to where you think I hadn’t read more than the caption?

Cheers,
July 12, 2010, 2:35 pm
zuch says:

klohy: Your comments on the MWP are an overreach.

How so?

klohy:Even Phil Jones has admitted that it is probably impossible to do 1000-year temperature reconstructions with any accuracy.

Cites?

Cheers,
July 12, 2010, 2:38 pm
A.W. says:

Chris

Well, in truth the climategate emails doesn’t disprove the theory of AGW. Its sort of like how the jury in the OJ trial said he was not guilty. That didn’t mean he was innocent, only that there wasn’t enough proof to convict. Many of the jurors said that they thought OJ was probably guilty, but they weren’t sure beyond a reasonable doubt and if you extend equal respect between the original criminal jury and the civil jury, then that is the only conclusion you can draw: the civil jury said he was more likely than not responsible for Brown and Goldman’s death, while the criminal jury said that the amoutn of proof was not enough to reach proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

People in washington are proposing to seriously curtail my freedom and harm my finances based on this AGW stuff. If they are going to do that, maybe they don’t need proof beyond a reasonable doubt, but how about a presentation that doesn’t include fraud?

They used a trick to hide the decline. And no one in the greater scientific world criticized them except for others who were then smeared as tools of the oil industry–as though there wasn’t far more money in global-warmongering. And all of those people, victim of ad homs, were telling the truth.

so yeah, maybe they were lying about the truth. But they would have to do better than that to impress me. And as for Jones, its great he admitting these things now, but he should have told us these things BEFORE he was humiliated, imho. if he said it back then, it would have been proper science. when he says it now, it just sounds like damage control.
July 12, 2010, 2:38 pm
zuch says:

ShelbyC: So what you’re saying is that the tree ring data is a good proxy in the periods they’re using it to proxy in, and we should be patient while they figure out why it’s a good proxy?

#19

Cheers,
July 12, 2010, 2:40 pm
zuch says:

Chris Green: Are you saying that MWP did not exist (because Mann showed it to not exist) or are you saying that it exists and Mann took it into account (or are you saying something else).

Short answer: #44

Longer answer: It’s “Piltdown” in the way it’s shouted. But as I said in the above link, Piltdown is not really a good example (except as to ‘methodology’ — and persistence — of argument) insofar as Piltdown was a demonstrated hoax. In the larger scheme of things, so many other parts of science showed evolution that even if Piltdown were the only data on hominid evolution, and was clearly fraudulent, the weight of the rest of the data still shows that evolution is a fact.

Maybe a better example would be polonium halos.

Cheers,
July 12, 2010, 2:48 pm
zuch says:

Chris Green: If the former, well, the legitimacy of Mann’s research (especially his tree ring analysis) is being called into serious question.

#58

Cheers,
July 12, 2010, 2:49 pm
zuch says:

Chris Green: The climate gate emails, my own research and everything else that has been said about it lead me to the conclusion that even the CRU folks, if they were being really honest with themselves, don’t know for sure what is going on.

Let me amend that:
[E]ven the CRU folks, if they were being really honest with themselves, don’t know for sure exactly what is going on. OTOH, folks like Skyler here think that “we doan no nuttin’”.

Chris Green: Furthermore, many of them have tremendous financial and personal (other then pure science) incentives for wanting AGW to be true. Imagine all your financial support, all your fame, your sense of self importance and the sense that your professional life has any meaning at all being flushed down the toilet if AGW turns out to be exaggerated.

You need then to take that metric and apply it to those whose financing is largely or even solely dependent on their putting forth the “party line” of their sponsor energy companies. But the relationship between finding specific results and the funding for publicly funded research is far more tenuous as a proposition for casting aspersions on motivation (and thus honesty).

Cheers,
July 12, 2010, 2:56 pm
zuch says:

Chris Green: The anti AGW folks are trying to argue that there is great uncertainty while the AGW folks are trying to argue that there is almost no uncertainty, and that everyone should just take their word for it. I’m extremely suspicious when someone says anything like that.

Which side do you pick, the creationists or the biological scientists?

Cheers,
July 12, 2010, 2:58 pm
A.W. says:

zuch

Keep on trolling, pretending not to know what is plain in front of you.
July 12, 2010, 2:58 pm
zuch says:

A.W.: People in washington are proposing to seriously curtail my freedom and harm my finances based on this AGW stuff.

Did you know that guns contribute to global warming? ;-)

Cheers,
July 12, 2010, 2:59 pm
ShelbyC says:

zuch: #19

What makes 19 better now than it was then?
July 12, 2010, 3:04 pm
klohy says:

Zuch,

With respect, your statistical knowledge of climate time series is pitiful. Everyone agrees that climate data is serially correlated. We can argue whether it is AR(1), ARMA(1,1), 1/f or something else, but it is always, always red noise.

Please re-read the Stockwell paper. Your response suggests you don’t have any understanding of what Stockwell was saying. It is quite simple: he says that a hockey stick is replicated if you take random series of red noise and discard those series which do not calibrate to the modern temperature record. Sound familiar? What do you think the point of his paper was?
July 12, 2010, 3:04 pm
ShelbyC says:

zuch: Which side do you pick, the creationists or the biological scientists?

The side that’s not telling me to take a bunch of stuff on faith.
July 12, 2010, 3:06 pm
ShelbyC says:

zuch: There’s work ongoing to try and resolve this. Patience, grasshopper.

HAVE FAITH AND ATTEND YE THE REVELATION OF THE DIVIRGENCE. Maybe this AGW thing is a cult.
July 12, 2010, 3:12 pm
DC says:

The juxtaposition of these two comments by Mike Hulme make it clear he doesn’t take seriously the need for scientific skepticism:

“…in the words of the Royal Society motto, “take nobody’s word for it”.

And for climate policy, I don’t think anything much has changed. We know humans have a significant role in changing the climate…”

As a skeptical scientist, I am not encouraged.
July 12, 2010, 3:15 pm
A.W. says:

shelby

of course its a cult.

Zuch

> Did you know that guns contribute to global warming? ;-)

Saying that to me is like saying that guns reduce the amount of fairy dust in the world. you live in a fantasy world in whihc AGW is not in doubt. sorry bud, but your faith based arguments have not swayed me.

And, btw, I would tend to think that guns would reduce the amount of carbon emitted. if i shoot a man breaking into my home, and kill him, he will never emit carbon dysoxide again, he will never drive a car, use electricity, etc. again. indeed, his body is likely to be buried in a place where he can contribute to the nutrition in the soil, encouraging the growth of plants that will further reduce carbon.

seriously, haven’t you heard the radical goofball environmentalists who apparently think the planet would be better of if we just killed ourselves?
July 12, 2010, 3:20 pm
richard40 says:

Skyler: It’s not incumbent on anyone to produce any alternate theories at all. The global warming fraud has been exposed. There need be no further action to advance anything related to it.

Minor disagreement here. There is no need for any Political or Economic action to aleviate global warming (or climate change) since the science is presently badly discredited and does not yet support it. However, there is a definite need for action on the scientific front. In the midst of all the politicised quackery there might be some real science trying to get out. But that wont happen until all the establishments currently doing climate science research are depoliticised and reformed. At minimum do the following:

1. The directors of East Anglia, and that guy in the US that published the infamous hockey stick graph should be dismissed, and replaced by scientists that are well known to be honest and impartial, and equally respected for their honesty by both the pro global warming community, and the global warming skeptics community. They need not specialize in Climate science, the main need here is for honesty and impartiality. Any other directors similarly involved in deception, or excessively politicised should also be replaced.
2. All Climate Science outfits that receive any public funds must publish their raw data, any algorithms used to process that data and produce graphs and conclusions, and any source code for their climate models, to ensure that independent organizations can try and replicate their findings. All current models and conclusions should be reviewed by independent outfits, including global warming skeptics, for compliance. Access to this data should especially not be denied to any global warming skeptics. Any Global Warming skeptic groups should have similar requirements if they publish peer reviewed findings.
3. All the organizations should have an independent scientist on staff, whose primary training is in statistics rather than Climate Science, to act as an internal inspector general, with access to all internal emails and deliberations, to ensure continued compliance with the previous mandate.
4. The peer review process needs reform, so reasonable papers can’t be stopped from being published merely because the reviewers disagree with them, as long as they comply with mandate 2. In the case of honest disagreements, the author must address the disagreement, and the reviewer has the right to publish their criticism in cunjunction with the paper, but can’t prevent publication. Any person who beleives they were unfairly denied publication should be able to appeal to an independent scientific body, outside that specialty.
July 12, 2010, 3:24 pm
zuch says:

ShelbyC:

[zuch]: #19

What makes 19 better now than it was then?

#28 and #44

Cheers,
July 12, 2010, 3:30 pm
Metamorf says:

zuch: #28 and #44

And what makes 28 & 44 better now than then?

Cheers,
July 12, 2010, 3:38 pm
zuch says:

klohy: With respect, your statistical knowledge of climate time series is pitiful. Everyone agrees that climate data is serially correlated. We can argue whether it is AR(1), ARMA(1,1), 1/f or something else, but it is always, always red noise.

The question is: “Is it ‘red noise’”, n’est ce pas? “Red noise” is serially correlated. Climate data is (probably) serially correlated. The question then is: Is climate data (the stuff under scrutiny) “red noise” and thus we see the correlation? Simply saying that “red noise” will produce a regression towards an arbitrary (as Stockwell admits) baseline under certain modes of analysis says little enlightening here. What is this purported “red noise”? Is all climatic variation simply random with some temporal correlation or persistence in the randomness? Obviously not … because even Stockwell’s graphs show the “hockey stick” blade for the period where we have real (and not just proxy) data. He did not show that “red noise” would simulate the “blade”.

FWIW, I see more ‘periodicity’ (including the MWP “bump”, not just the regression to a baseline) in the Mann graphs than I do in Stockwell’s “red noise” regressions.

Cheers,
July 12, 2010, 3:41 pm
zuch says:

A.W.: seriously, haven’t you heard the radical goofball environmentalists who apparently think the planet would be better of if we just killed ourselves?

One needn’t be an environmentalist to come to that conclusion. ;-)

Cheers,
July 12, 2010, 3:44 pm
zuch says:

richard40: 1. The directors of East Anglia, and that guy in the US that published the infamous hockey stick graph should be dismissed, and replaced by scientists that are well known to be honest and impartial, and equally respected for their honesty by both the pro global warming community, and the global warming skeptics community.

Both have been clearer (and by more that one review). About the only “review” that gave Mann a hard time was some trumped up Congressional ~~inquisition~~panel instigated by Joe Barton (R-Obviously). But even there, the result was more quibbling about the best methodology than anything.

Cheers,
July 12, 2010, 3:51 pm
A.W. says:

dumbzuch

dude, if only one review gave him a hard time, it is an indictment of the entire scientific community.

as is the rest of climategate.
July 12, 2010, 3:57 pm
Jeff says:

This discussion seems to be a bunch of fun. When I was growing up, speculation and doomsaying seemed rampant then too: we were headed for another ice age. So, with the AGW debate, it could just as easily be a good example of been there, done that.

Michael Crichton gave a lecture at Caltech that covered the problems of science and policy. The most important point was to get a true separation of those who make a theory from those who test it. The people who are avidly supporting AGW are the same people verifying it, just as they are doing the whitewashing of what is clearly scientific fraud.

I’ll believe their models after they’ve made predictions about the next ten years that are accurate. If we’re heading toward a global warming catastrophy, why aren’t we increasing the number of stations measuring temperatures and get better sample size? If Al Gore were serious about it, he’d be working on cutting down his carbon footprint instead of increasing it. As they like to say on Instapundit, I’ll believe we have a problem when they start acting like there’s a problem. They want us to jump in on their very weak premise and kill our economy when they are acting as if there isn’t a problem. We could substantially reduce the federal government’s footprint by downsizing the federal government. I may start believing when that happens. Until then, no sacrifices from me.
July 12, 2010, 4:17 pm
A.W. says:

jeff

well, to be fair, Al “Crazed Sex Poodle” Gore might not be the best example of restraint. I mean it is not inconsistent in theory for Gore to believe in AGW and not haved the moral fortitude to respond as he himself has suggested that we respond.

Which is not to defend AGW, but truth is truth.
July 12, 2010, 4:25 pm
klohy says:

Zuch,

You are hopeless. If you are arguing that climate data is not serially correlated, then I suggest you publish quickly and enjoy the accolades of overturning an entire field of study. Or why don’t you run one of the standard tests: Durbin-Watson is nice and simple – you should be able to do it.

He did not show that “red noise” would simulate the “blade”.

Did you even read the paper? He showed that if you take random series of red noise and discard those series which do not calibrate to the modern temperature record, you get a hockey stick. Shaft and blade.
July 12, 2010, 4:25 pm
getserious says:

Warning signs of impending sleight of hand

“I won’t show you my data.”
“That’s why we have experts.”
“You wouldn’t understand.”

I remain astonished that so few of the acolytes of AGW realize the how reasonable skeptics are being.

“If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I’ll delete the file rather than send to anyone. ”

“Don’t any of you three tell anybody that the UK has a Freedom of Information Act !”

Why would Jones write those, if his science were robust ?

He also urged others to delete emails specifically concerning AR4.

Do you seriously wonder why I think it’s a crock ? I ran a unit performing experiments daily, and if I found one of my engineers or metallurgists playing fast and loose with the facts — like including ONLY those proxy values that supported their POV — I would have fired them instantly. If you publish results, you publish all the results. Hell, we published all our negative results as well.

“We know humans have a significant role in changing the climate”

The truth is, thanks to Jones, we don’t. Everything CRU produced needs a complete, top-to-bottom vetting before being accepted. That’s precisely what is done after a fraud — yes fraud — is suspected.

Cook your books, expect a forensic accountant to dig through them. Lie to the police about your whereabouts the night a crime was committed, expect them to tear into every little detail of what you actually did on the night in question.

Lie to the public about your data (and by the way, when you claim to be an “expert” and you misrepresent your data to the laymen, that is a lie), expect to be called out on it, and to have all your data and conclusions thrown out unless and until a disinterested party vouches for it.

That said, I have not read the report referenced above, so I will withhold commenting on it. However, if it contains even one reference to “denialist” or “amateur” I will immediately know what its authors think of those unbelievers outside the fold.

For example, Plumer lost me when he wrote “Stephen McIntyre may be an amateur. . .” which basically holds the scientists up on a pedestal they most assuredly have not earned in this debacle. The truth is that whether errors in methods or statistics are discovered by PhD’s, engineers, undergrad students, or kindergarten teachers, they are still errors and need to be addressed without any ivory-tower nonsense.
July 12, 2010, 7:30 pm
richard40 says:

zuch: Both have been clearer (and by more that one review). About the only “review” that gave Mann a hard time was some trumped up Congressional ~~inquisition~~panel instigated by Joe Barton (R-Obviously). But even there, the result was more quibbling about the best methodology than anything.Cheers,

I beleive the review that cleared the East Anglia guys was a definite whitewash. The panel was stacked with Climate Change proponents. But even then they agreed that the “Hide the Decline” data manipulation was “misleading”. I beleive their refusal to honor freedom of information requests from Global warming skeptics, and their emails about pressuring journals not to publish reasonable research papers from Global Warming skeptics, also calls for their dismissal. Those guys are clearly highly politicised and biased. You, being a Global warming zealot, probably differ on this issue.
I beleive that any top people at these Climate Research outfits should be like Ceasars wife, completely honest and above reproach, and free of bias, either for climate change, or against it. The guys at East Anglia clearly are not. And the guy in the US that came up with the hockey stick is not much better. I want scientists at these posts, not propagandists. And unless the propogandists are purged from these posts, their “science” will never be beleived by enough of a concensus to support any real action. I am insisting on these changes not because I mistrust science, but because I do, and hate to see crude propogandists in charge of important scientific research.

I wonder, why are you global warming zealotes so afraid of putting completely unbiased scientists at these posts. Are you afraid they will discover the Global Warming emperor really does have no clothes. I do not fear the truth, but the guys there now are so biased that I can’t trust them to produce it.
July 12, 2010, 7:39 pm
Laura(southernxyl) says:

ShelbyC: Well, hold on. If you see a chunk of data that doesn’t support your assumptions, so you double check and see that you used the uncalibrated micrometer or whatever that day, you can’t just exclude that data, or you introduce confirmation bias.

What you do is, you write up a nonconformance, and do a root cause analysis to see how you came to use an uncalibrated micrometer; and do an investigation, and a corrective action, and check to see how much of your other data were collected with an uncalibrated micrometer, and you throw all that out too. And then three or six months later you revisit your corrective action to make sure you haven’t used the uncalibrated micrometer again.

: )

My point was that you can throw out data if you have a reason to think that it’s bad. Numbers that don’t look right should cause you to look at your system and see if you introduced error, and if you can find introduced error, you pull out the data. You can’t pull out the data because the numbers just don’t look right, or don’t tell the story you want to tell, which is what “hide the decline” appears to do.

A lot of people on here are light-years ahead of me in statistics, but I can go to the opening chapters of Standard Methods for the Examination of Water and Wastewater and find a nice little discussion about outliers, and a test to see whether a number can be excluded from a set or not. You set these rules up in advance, and then you apply them. But you can’t make them up on the spot.
July 12, 2010, 7:58 pm
richard40 says:

To Jeff, excellent comment.
I am old enough to remember that in the 1960′s many of the same people that are now talking about man made global warming, were then talking about a coming man made ice age, and with the same dire sounding predictions, backed up by “settled science”.

You are right that all the results of the climate scientists should be independently verified, with non-biased groups, with full access to the raw data, algorithms, and computer source code used to produce all these climate models and graphs.

Did you read the list of recommendations I had in a earlier comment. I think if they were implimented, they might allow us to finally have some climate science we can really beleive in, instead of the propoganda and trash that is currently being presented as “settled science”.

The thing that really burns me about this is that I really do respect science, have had scientific training myself, and regard it as a vital method for finding truth. I have often defended evolution and gealogy against the accusations of the “Creation Science” types. I really hate to see the integrity of science being perverted by these hack global warming propogandists currently in charge of the major climate science research institutes.
July 12, 2010, 7:59 pm
richard40 says:

Laura, good comment.
True, you can throw out data, if you have strong reason to think it is bad. But as you said, you must throw out all the data and start over, or have rules in advance to weed out bad data, and ensure those rules do not introduce bias. What you cant do is just get rid of the part of the data that doesn’t support your theory, like the climate guys have done.
July 12, 2010, 8:07 pm
richard40 says:

To GetSerious.
You sound like a real scientist to me. I have noticed that it is often the real scientists, outside of the climate field, that are most offended by this scandal, because they know it undermines the publics trust in real scientists.

We need to purge the propagandists from these climate research outfits now, get in honest brokers, and start over, reviewing all the raw data, and trying to replicate results from the ground up, with completely transparent raw data, algorithms, and published computer software, while allowing full comments and access to skeptical opinions, and addressing any reasonable skeptical objections. That is the only way a real scientist should act, and the only way to find the truth here.

This approach is not popular with the warming zealotes,because it will not produce the immediate action they demand, but I would rather have the truth 10-20 years from now, then the current propaganda we are trying to base our decisions on now.

They can label me a know nothing denier all they want, but it wont stop me from demanding the truth here. I beleive scientific experts when they behave like scientific experts, willing to be completely transparent with their data and methods, and addressing all reasonable objections, but mere appeals to authority, without the openness and honesty to back it up, do not impress me.
July 12, 2010, 8:28 pm
wes george says:

Zuch sez the MWP was not as warm or warmer than today. Will the real Denialists please stand up!

http://pages.science-skeptical.de/MWP/MedievalWarmPeriod.html
July 12, 2010, 8:34 pm
zuch says:

A.W.: dumbzuch
dude, if only one review gave him a hard time, it is an indictment of the entire scientific community.
as is the rest of climategate.

IC that we have reached the crux of the argument. Well, carry on.

Cheers,
July 12, 2010, 8:34 pm
zuch says:

Jeff: This discussion seems to be a bunch of fun. When I was growing up, speculation and doomsaying seemed rampant then too: we were headed for another ice age. So, with the AGW debate, it could just as easily be a good example of been there, done that.
Michael Crichton gave a lecture at Caltech that covered the problems of science and policy….

Ahhh, yes. The Michael Crichton that makes boodles of money scaring people with pseudoscientific crap (as I understand it, people started getting a little leery of living wills, donor cards, and even hospitals after seeing “Coma”). I read his first books as a teen-ager, but lost interest as I saw how off-the-wall his science was. To be fair, Clive Cussler’s worse, and I read his stuff nowadays for light vacation reading, but his books have diving stuff in them….

Cheers,
July 12, 2010, 8:40 pm
zuch says:

Jeff: The people who are avidly supporting AGW are the same people verifying it, just as they are doing the whitewashing of what is clearly scientific fraud.

The people who are avidly supporting evolution/QED/molecular biology/SS physics/superconductivity/HEP are the same people verifying it, just as they are doing the whitewashing of what is clearly scientific fraud….. Imagine that. Who do we think should be verifying it? Janitors? Bloggers? You tell me….

Cheers,
July 12, 2010, 8:43 pm
observer says:

Apparently Zuch disagrees(gasp) with Phil Jones about the Medieval Warm Period. How are we to resolve such a conflict of authority?
July 12, 2010, 8:46 pm
ShelbyC says:

Laura(southernxyl): My point was that you can throw out data if you have a reason to think that it’s bad. Numbers that don’t look right should cause you to look at your system and see if you introduced error, and if you can find introduced error, you pull out the data. You can’t pull out the data because the numbers just don’t look right, or don’t tell the story you want to tell, which is what “hide the decline” appears to do.

Sure, although with that approach numbers that don’t look right get stricter scrutiny than numbers that do, which can introduce bias in favor of whatever “looking right means.
July 12, 2010, 9:03 pm
ShelbyC says:

zuch: Huh? There are efforts to explain the recent tree-ring divergence, but you have to acknowlegde that the tree-ring proxies were valid for early 20th century temperatures.

Sure. But if the only way we can tell which periods they’re valid proxies for is by comparing them with the actual measurements, they’re not much good to us, are they?
July 12, 2010, 9:09 pm
zuch says:

klohy: You are hopeless. If you are arguing that climate data is not serially correlated, then I suggest you publish quickly and enjoy the accolades of overturning an entire field of study.

I actually said the opposite. Perhaps you’re hard of reading?

klohy: [zuch]: He did not show that “red noise” would simulate the “blade”.
Did you even read the paper? He showed that if you take random series of red noise and discard those series which do not calibrate to the modern temperature record, you get a hockey stick. Shaft and blade.

I’m wondering if you read the paper:

klohy: The original discussion was Stockwell D, (2006) Reconstruction of past climate using series with red noise. AIG News 8:314

This cite isn’t right. The actual cite is “AIG News 83, page 14″. Do you know if this is a peer-reviewed publication?

As to the paper (such as it is, all 2/3 of a page):

Here’s what I said:

zuch: Note that the “blade” is present in Stockwell’s pseudo-reconstructions; that part won’t (and can’t) go away.

By this I mean that Stockwell chose (only) those random series that showed the “blade” (that is to say, showed a significant correlation with the observed temperatures over the 20th century). Which is why there must be a “blade” in his graphs.

And I said:

zuch: Is all climatic variation simply random with some temporal correlation or persistence in the randomness? Obviously not … because even Stockwell’s graphs show the “hockey stick” blade for the period where we have real (and not just proxy) data. He did not show that “red noise” would simulate the “blade”.

He in fact picked those sequences that did show the blade, not just random “red noise” sequences.

Then he wonders why these sequences show a reversion to baseline farther away from the “blade”:

[Stockwell]: Clearly the ’hockey-stick’ pattern is easily produced by selecting those random series that correlate over the period of the calibration temperatures (producing the blade) and revert to randomness elsewhere (producing the handle). The apparent height of the MWP is an function of the arbitrary zero calibration point.

As I said, he admits that the “MWP” height is “arbitrary”. And that there is reversion to this baseline as you get farther away from the selected (not “random”) data.

What this doesn’t show is that “red noise” can produce the “blade”.

Why you find this interesting is beyond me.

Cheers,
July 12, 2010, 9:14 pm
Metamorf says:

zuch: Who do we think should be verifying it? Janitors? Bloggers? You tell me….

Scientists should be verifying it, if it’s true, and disconfirming it if it’s false. Notice the difference from proselytizers?

Cheers,
July 12, 2010, 9:20 pm
Laura(southernxyl) says:

Sure, although with that approach numbers that don’t look right get stricter scrutiny than numbers that do, which can introduce bias in favor of whatever “looking right means.

Shelby, if you think tree rings are a usable proxy because you’ve looked at some data sets and found a correlation, it makes sense that you would not scrutinize every new data set to convince yourself anew that the proxy works. At some point you have to accept something like that and go on. So when all of a sudden your tree rings diverge, your first step is to make sure that both your temps and your tree rings were measured properly. If you find a problem with your measurements, you determine the extent of it and throw out the bad ones. If you don’t, then you have to go back to your assumptions about how good your proxy was. It may be the thing to do, to go ahead and graph all of your data, and maybe point out that divergence and say “we don’t know why that happened.” But I don’t think that scrutinizing data at that point is confirmation bias.

If I’m looking at data from samples that a client tells me are influent and effluent at a water treatment plant, I expect to see that the effluent is cleaner than the influent. You don’t treat water by taking clean water and making it dirty. So I’ll look at the QC that went with the data, make sure it looks complete and all, and then I’ll go on. If the results show that the influent is cleaner than the effluent, you bet I’ll drill down, up to and including finding the sample bottles to see if they appear to have been labeled backwards, and calling the client. That’s not confirmation bias, it’s a reasonability check. (Yes, for anyone who might be keeping up with these things, I’m not at a chemical plant anymore, but have circled back around to environmental work.)
July 12, 2010, 9:31 pm
zuch says:

getserious: The truth is, thanks to Jones, we don’t. Everything CRU produced needs a complete, top-to-bottom vetting before being accepted. That’s precisely what is done after a fraud — yes fraud — is suspected.
Cook your books, expect a forensic accountant to dig through them. Lie to the police about your whereabouts the night a crime was committed, expect them to tear into every little detail of what you actually did on the night in question.
Lie to the public about your data (and by the way, when you claim to be an “expert” and you misrepresent your data to the laymen, that is a lie), expect to be called out on it, and to have all your data and conclusions thrown out unless and until a disinterested party vouches for it.
That said, I have not read the report referenced above, so I will withhold commenting on it.

OIC. You’re complaining that they need to do a review (and that they need to toss all the data, just for kicks), and you won’t even read the review they did.

Cheers,
July 12, 2010, 9:42 pm
Elliot says:

Zuch: There’s work ongoing to try and resolve this. Patience, grasshopper.

Sounds like warmers have accepted the conclusion on faith and are now patiently waiting for the data. Sees a bit like religion. All the faithful waiting for thr rapture
July 12, 2010, 9:42 pm
zuch says:

richard40:

[zuch]: Both have been clearer (and by more that one review). About the only “review” that gave Mann a hard time was some trumped up Congressional inquisitionpanel instigated by Joe Barton (R-Obviously). But even there, the result was more quibbling about the best methodology than anything.

I beleive the review that cleared the East Anglia guys was a definite whitewash.

If I’m not mistaken, this was not the first review of the CRU. How many do you want? As many as it takes to get the “answer” you have decided on?

Cheers,
July 12, 2010, 9:49 pm
zuch says:

richard40: I am insisting on these changes not because I mistrust science, but because I do, and hate to see crude propogandists in charge of important scientific research.

Going to hold your breath until you turn blue? One can always hope….

Cheers,
July 12, 2010, 9:51 pm
Elliot says:

“Scientists should be verifying it, if it’s true, and disconfirming it if it’s false. Notice the difference from proselytizers?”

Good point. Unfortunately the warmers threw out the source data. Makes it hard to replicate their work when nobody can produce the source data. But, I can understand it because they said they really needed the storage space.
July 12, 2010, 9:54 pm
zuch says:

wes george: Zuch sez the MWP was not as warm or warmer than today. Will the real Denialists please stand up!
http://pages.science-skeptical.de/MWP/MedievalWarmPeriod.html

Pretty. Flashy. No cites. Anyone “cherry-picking” here? How were these temperatures determined for the MWP? NWS records, perchance?

Cheers,
July 12, 2010, 9:56 pm
zuch says:

observer: Apparently Zuch disagrees(gasp) with Phil Jones about the Medieval Warm Period. How are we to resolve such a conflict of authority?

Huh? How so? Cites, please.

Cheers,
July 12, 2010, 9:57 pm
Engineer-Poet says:

Joe: According to Global warming scientist, the level of CO2 has increased from approx 280ppm (pre man made warming period) to approx 380ppm — approximately a 100ppm increase. A CO2 molecule has approx 30% more heat retention properties than an O2 molecule. That equates to an effective increase in heat retention of approx 30ppm.

I can’t believe anyone can read this site and be that stupid. This clown must think that atmospheric scientists are idiots, meaning he’s probably one himself.

Here is the IR absorption spectrum of the atmosphere. I’d include it as an image but VC won’t let me. That should settle the issue.

Oxygen and ozone are hardly there until you get below 0.3 μm (well into the ultraviolet). CO2 is major, MAJOR stuff. Water is bigger, but water condenses out; in the upper reaches of the troposphere it’s extremely dry (the “cold trap” which keeps water out of the stratosphere) and the non-condensible gases such as CO2, N2O, CH4 and the artificial contributors like CF4 and SF6 are all that’s left.

As we add CO2 and the others, the atmosphere remains IR-opaque to a greater and greater altitude. This means the depth of the convective layer is greater, and the depth over which the pressure-lapse temperature drop rules is greater. This means the surface gets warmer. There is no principled way to deny it; the ones who do are, at best, clowns like “Joe”.
July 12, 2010, 10:01 pm
zuch says:

ShelbyC:

[zuch]: Huh? There are efforts to explain the recent tree-ring divergence, but you have to acknowlegde that the tree-ring proxies were valid for early 20th century temperatures.

Sure. But if the only way we can tell which periods they’re valid proxies for is by comparing them with the actual measurements, they’re not much good to us, are they?

That would be true, but it turns out that their validity derives from more than just an ad hoc correlation with temperatures.

But see #19.

Cheers,
July 12, 2010, 10:03 pm
zuch says:

Metamorf:

[Jeff]: The people who are avidly supporting AGW are the same people verifying it, just as they are doing the whitewashing of what is clearly scientific fraud.

[zuch]: The people who are avidly supporting evolution/QED/molecular biology/SS physics/superconductivity/HEP are the same people verifying it, just as they are doing the whitewashing of what is clearly scientific fraud….. Imagine that. Who do we think should be verifying it? Janitors? Bloggers? You tell me….

Scientists should be verifying it, if it’s true, and disconfirming it if it’s false. Notice the difference from proselytizers?

And who do you think was doing the reviews (well, outside of Congressman Barton’s ~~inquisition~~‘investigation’)?

Cheers,
July 12, 2010, 10:09 pm
zuch says:

Elliot: Unfortunately the warmers threw out the source data. Makes it hard to replicate their work when nobody can produce the source data.

The review addressed this. What did they say?

Cheers,
July 12, 2010, 10:11 pm
observer says:

ZUCH– it’s interesting that you’re not aware of this and never bothered to inform yourself. Enjoy the link. I won’t bother to look up another for you. I wasn’t referring to a journal or any ‘peer reviewed’ nonsense. Public domain, wide distribution mass market journalism. And, in fact, a media source that is entirely sympathetic to your apparent persuasion. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8511701.stm
July 12, 2010, 10:18 pm
Elliot says:

“This means the surface gets warmer. There is no principled way to deny it; the ones who do are, at best, clowns like “Joe”.”

Perhaps measuring both?
July 12, 2010, 10:18 pm
Metamorf says:

zuch: And who do you think was doing the reviews

Looks like the “scientists” and ~~supporters~~ “reviewers” were both in the same Club of Believers.

Cheers,
July 12, 2010, 10:18 pm
zuch says:

Metamorf: Looks like the “scientists” and supporters “reviewers” were both in the same Club of Believers.

Yes, it’s indeed a pity that all the (first tier) biology journals are refereed exclusively by the evilutionists. The poor creationists just don’t stand a chance; they never get invited to the party. You do have to feel sorry for them.

Cheers,
July 12, 2010, 10:28 pm
zuch says:

observer: ZUCH– it’s interesting that you’re not aware of this and never bothered to inform yourself. Enjoy the link. I won’t bother to look up another for you. I wasn’t referring to a journal or any ‘peer reviewed’ nonsense. Public domain, wide distribution mass market journalism. And, in fact, a media source that is entirely sympathetic to your apparent persuasion. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8511701.stm

Ahhh, yes. That peer-reviewed research report in the BBC. But where’s the contradiction?

Cheers,
July 12, 2010, 10:31 pm
Metamorf says:

zuch: Yes, it’s indeed a pity that all the (first tier) biology journals are refereed exclusively by the evilutionists. The poor creationists just don’t stand a chance; they never get invited to the party. You do have to feel sorry for them.

Ahhh, yes — that old dodge for a crumbling argument: bring up an unrelated but long-discredited issue and try to pass it off as comparable. A little clumsy, but I know you’ll keep working on it.

Cheers,
July 12, 2010, 10:44 pm
Grover Gardner says:

Cripes, where are most of the commenters here getting their science–Ripley’s Believe It or Not?

“Einstein was befuddled by Quantum Theory–Believe It or Not!”

“Greenland was once green–Believe It or Not!”

“The same scientists who told us we were going to freeze to death are now telling us we’re going to burn up–Believe It or Not!”
July 12, 2010, 11:39 pm
zuch says:

Metamorf:

[zuch]: Yes, it’s indeed a pity that all the (first tier) biology journals are refereed exclusively by the evilutionists. The poor creationists just don’t stand a chance; they never get invited to the party. You do have to feel sorry for them.

Ahhh, yes — that old dodge for a crumbling argument: bring up an unrelated but long-discredited issue and try to pass it off as comparable. A little clumsy, but I know you’ll keep working on it.

Even if you fail to see the analogy, others will, I’m sure.

And how is the plight of the creationists a “long-discredited issue”? Isn’t that dispute in fact central to the issues involved here? Shouldn’t we have “equal time” for creationism, just to make sure than scientists don’t run rampant in their arrogance and we don’t miss some other intriguing possibilities? Shouldn’t creationists be allowed to sit on review boards and throw whatever darts Gawd grants them at the others? Doesn’t science deserve to be treated as a “he said, she said [so how the hell are we to know anyways]” controversy? I’m quite sure that the creationsists think so….

Cheers,
July 12, 2010, 11:43 pm
Metamorf says:

zuch: Even if you fail to see the analogy, others will, I’m sure.

And who would they be? Your dwindling band of lefty true believers? No doubt, but then resorts like that are a symptom of a certain desperation, don’t you think?

zuch: Isn’t that dispute in fact central to the issues involved here?

Never really understood the issues involved here, have you zuch?

Cheers,
July 13, 2010, 12:20 am
zuch says:

Grover Gardner: Cripes, where are most of the commenters here getting their science–Ripley’s Believe It or Not?
“Einstein was befuddled by Quantum Theory–Believe It or Not!”
“Greenland was once green–Believe It or Not!”
“The same scientists who told us we were going to freeze to death are now telling us we’re going to burn up–Believe It or Not!”

FauxSnooze. Pretty much the same.

Cheers,
July 13, 2010, 12:26 am
Elliot says:

“Even if you fail to see the analogy, others will, I’m sure.”

There is a valid analogy between the Creationists and the Warmers. Both base their ideas on faith. Creationists base their faith on the bible which cannot be demonstrated to be true or accurate. Warmers base their faith on tree ring data which also cannot be demonstrated to be true or accurate.
July 13, 2010, 12:54 am
zuch says:

Elliot: There is a valid analogy between the Creationists and the Warmers. Both base their ideas on faith. Creationists base their faith on the bible which cannot be demonstrated to be true or accurate.

There is an analogy between creationists and one of the AGW disputants. They both have strong extrinsic reasons for their beliefs (“People in washington are proposing to seriously curtail my freedom and harm my finances based on this AGW stuff.”). They both are immune to re-examining their views, no matter how much more data (and reports or reviews and whatever they demand) pile up; they just start shouting louder with each passing ‘disappointment’. They both have no valid theory of their own as an alternative to the prevalent theory. They both resort to carping at supposed errors and inconsistencies in the prevalent theory, and further claim that such disproves all of the theory. And the majority of rational scientists think both are full’o'sh*te. I guess we can look forward to a coming MWP-Land™ theme park … but maybe with a bit more class, given ExxonMobilChevronShellPeabodyBP’s resources….

Cheers,
July 13, 2010, 2:14 am
zuch says:

Elliot: Warmers base their faith on tree ring data which also cannot be demonstrated to be true or accurate.

#19

I should have thought of the numbered answer system sooner. Saves a lot of time.

Cheers,
July 13, 2010, 2:16 am
klohy says:

Zuch,

You appear illiterate in statistics but I will try one more time. In your link, you clearly question whether climate data is red noise, notwithstanding your protestations to the contrary. You then go on to say:

By this I mean that Stockwell chose (only) those random series that showed the “blade” (that is to say, showed a significant correlation with the observed temperatures over the 20th century). Which is why there must be a “blade” in his graphs.

By Jove, I think you got it (though you don’t seem to know it). Yes, he only chose those series of random red noise that calibrate to the modern instrument record, or as you also put it, those series that have a blade. And he got a hockey stick. Do you see his point now? In simple English: if you insist on discarding proxies that diverge from the modern instrument record, then even random red noise produces a hockey stick. Surely even you see the implications of this and how it relates the divergence issue.

On a related note, you show a complete misunderstanding of the statistical issues in response to my comment that you cannot drop just part of a proxy without a physical reason for doing so. Your response was “Mann said why they dropped the data, as I’ve pointed out here [repeatedly] as well.” Mann’s rationale was the divergence from the temperature record. This is not a physical reason. A physical reason would be an explanation why the tree rings suddenly ceased to be good proxies e.g. fires, damage, drought, human development. Just dropping proxies because of divergence is bad statistics, and as Stockwell shows, is guaranteed to produce a hockey stick. Geddit?

I apologize for my intemperate language but it is frustrating debating with someone who is clearly ill versed in the topic, has written what is really a bunch of arrant nonsense and refuses to learn anything.
July 13, 2010, 2:24 am
zuch says:

klohy: Zuch,
You appear illiterate in statistics but I will try one more time.

I guess my sadistics students should have been warned, eh?

klohy: You then go on to say:

[zuch]: By this I mean that Stockwell chose (only) those random series that showed the “blade” (that is to say, showed a significant correlation with the observed temperatures over the 20th century). Which is why there must be a “blade” in his graphs.

By Jove, I think you got it (though you don’t seem to know it). Yes, he only chose those series of random red noise that calibrate to the modern instrument record, or as you also put it, those series that have a blade. And he got a hockey stick….

As I said, the “blade” of the hockey stick wasn’t produced by “red noise”. It was selected. Once this sharp increase was selected, it should be no great surprise that some time-correlated “red noise data” will slowly regress to the (arbitrary) baseline, as even Stockwell admitted (as as I quoted him as saying). Which gives you a “hockey stick” (or something like that).

What you don’t seem to appreciate is that while some of the data is
“random”, some of the data is not, and that destroys the concept of “red noise“. Even if a “red noise” algorithm selected the original “red noise” sequences, after selection, the sequences were not random.

Your original assertion was that “red noise” will produce “hockey sticks”:

klohy: As has been demonstrated many times, by doing this “trick” you create a hockey stick out of random series of red noise.

This is simply not true. To get the “hockey stick”, you select a “blade” series, and then watch the unremarkable “regression” (to use Stockwell’s word) towards an “arbitrary” (again Stockwell’s word) baseline over time, away from the “blade” region. You might say that random (but time-correlated) fluctuations produce a regression similar to what was seen in the 1000BCE to 1900BCE range, but all you’re saying then is that there was no obvious sharp trend before CO₂ levels started increasing and that natural processes plus errors during that period produced nothing but “noise”.

klohy: … Do you see his point now? In simple English: if you insist on discarding proxies that diverge from the modern instrument record, then even random red noise produces a hockey stick. Surely even you see the implications of this and how it relates the divergence issue.

He didn’t address the “divergence” issue. He didn’t. Really. Not in any party of his 2/3 page article.

It is not true that “even random red noise” produces a hockey stick (see above).

klohy: On a related note, you show a complete misunderstanding of the statistical issues in response to my comment that you cannot drop just part of a proxy without a physical reason for doing so. Your response was “Mann said why they dropped the data, as I’ve pointed out here [repeatedly] as well.” Mann’s rationale was the divergence from the temperature record. This is not a physical reason.

Why do you need a physical reason? Just an empirically shown inaccuracy (“divergence”) is enough.

The main question is whether the older tree-ring proxies should be discarded when there was no direct temperature records to validate them, and when the early 20th century records showed good correlation but the later ones started to show divergence. I agree that without knowing the reasons for the later divergence, we can’t rule out the possibility that the pre-20th century data didn’t show the divergence as well. But if we simply divide the 20th century in half, we see that we have two different alternatives for pre-20th century conditions: Similar to the first half, or similar to the latter half. Picking one is a priori as likely as the other to be correct, and any considerations of continuity might argue for assuming the former rather than the later, absent information to the contrary. Given that, dropping early tree-ring data produces much the same result (albeit with greater error bars given the less samples), which leads one to believe that in fact, the pre-20th century data were most likely best reflected in the early 20th century data and not on the anomalous late 20th century data. Not to mention, dropping it entirely leaves pretty much the same picture [as I've said for maybe the 15th time so far here], which in addition provides if not correlation to actual temperatures in the earlier periods as validation, at least correlation to the other proxies used, (which hopefully also reflect actual temperature to some extent) for validation, which supports the hypothesis that something unusual changed in the mid-20th century.

klohy: Just dropping proxies because of divergence is bad statistics, and as Stockwell shows, is guaranteed to produce a hockey stick. Geddit?

Stockwell didn’t say this. Really. Read the article.

klohy: I apologize for my intemperate language but it is frustrating debating with someone who is clearly ill versed in the topic, has written what is really a bunch of arrant nonsense and refuses to learn anything.

No need. But if you want to apologise for the verifiable misteaks you made above that I pointed out, that would be appreciated.

Cheers,
July 13, 2010, 3:25 am
zuch says:

klohy: On a related note, you show a complete misunderstanding of the statistical issues in response to my comment that you cannot drop just part of a proxy without a physical reason for doing so. Your response was “Mann said why they dropped the data, as I’ve pointed out here [repeatedly] as well.” Mann’s rationale was the divergence from the temperature record. This is not a physical reason. A physical reason would be an explanation why the tree rings suddenly ceased to be good proxies e.g. fires, damage, drought, human development.

Just to forestall any misunderstandings on that subject, it is not at all uncommon in statistics to drop data without reason. Some descriptive statistics and even inferential statistics allow for the dropping of extreme values or “outliers”, even if perfectly reasonable (albeit the inferential tests are affected a bit by such procedures; in particular those that make assumptions as to distribution; bootstrap and jackstrap statistics if appropriately modeled and processed out to be immune to any such effects).

[I have to admit that I'm personally a bit anal-retentive myself and of the opinion that when you see data that is obviously wrong (my measurements of negative catecholamine concentrations, for instance), you ought to do the entire thing over; your samples are toast or your assay is cr*p. Well and fine, if you have the money and the time, but for some things such as historical data, that's not even physically feasible, much less practical.]

If you have a good reason, you might also well consider dropping some data samples … but you ought to be aware of the possibility that your “good reasons” ought not reflect your own personal biases, either consciously or subconsciously, and that when you do such (particularly post hoc, although that is the likely time of decision for anomalous data), you do introduce some risk of injecting your own biases into the data.

It is true that this criticism might be leveled at Mann et al., but to their credit, they repeated the analysis without the suspect data. The question is whether their “good reasons” were the simple fact of the divergence, or the direction of the divergence (which hardly makes a big difference in their reconstructions for late 20th century, as that was verifiable by actual temperatures … and a lot more data … anyway).

Cheers,
July 13, 2010, 3:54 am
klohy says:

Zuch,

For goodness sake. Stockwell most certainly did say that. He is a well known AGW skeptic and this paper was written specifically to criticize the calibration method that results in diverging series being excluded from reconstructions. Hell, M&M even referenced the paper in their published PNAS take-down of the Mann et.al. 2008 reconstruction. For anyone who has followed the debate, this is old news. I guess you were fooled because he doesn’t specifically, overtly reference divergence.

The rest of your comment shows a fundamental misunderstand of Stockwell’s analysis and does not even warrant a reply. Simple question – what do you think Stockwell was trying to say?

Me thinks the apology response is in your court.
July 13, 2010, 4:14 am
klohy says:

Zuch,

As I pointed out earlier, dropping the tree rings and correcting for the upside down sediment series does make a material difference to Mann’s reconstruction. Pity we had to wait over a year since the paper’s first publication to see the corrected version.
July 13, 2010, 4:20 am
klohy says:

Zuch,

I’ll take you at your word you are a statistics professor (though I am a little stunned how you are struggling to grasp some barely intermediate level time-series concepts. Do you teach time-series?). So here are some links to various discussions that deal with the concepts. You may find them helpful as I clearly am not getting my message across to you:

http://rankexploits.com/musings/2009/tricking-yourself-into-cherry-picking/
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/11/22/292/
July 13, 2010, 4:45 am
klohy says:

Zuch,

My last point. You say

What you don’t seem to appreciate is that while some of the data is
“random”, some of the data is not, and that destroys the concept of “red noise”. Even if a “red noise” algorithm selected the original “red noise” sequences, after selection, the sequences were not random.

Your original assertion was that “red noise” will produce “hockey sticks”

This is untrue. My assertion was:

It is inappropriate to eliminate just those tree ring data that show a current divergence without eliminating the entire proxy. As has been demonstrated many times, by doing this “trick” you create a hockey stick out of random series of red noise.

This was and remains correct. About that apology…
July 13, 2010, 5:05 am
papertiger says:

…the observed warming rises above the error bounds of the estimates during the 1980s decade, consistent with the known “divergence problem” (e.g., ref. 37), wherein the temperature sensitivity of some temperature-sensitive tree-ring data appears to have declined in the most recent decades. Interestingly, although the elimination of all tree-ring data from the proxy dataset yields a substantially smaller divergence bias, it does not eliminate the problem altogether (Fig. 2B). This latter finding suggests that the divergence problem is not limited purely to tree-ring data, but instead may extend to other proxy records. Interestingly, the problem is greatly diminished (although not absent—particularly in the older networks where a decline is observed after ≈1980) with the EIV method, whether or not tree-ring data are used (Fig. 2 C and D). We interpret this finding as consistent with the ability of the EIV approach to make use of nonlocal and non-temperature-related proxy information in calibrating large-scale mean temperature changes, thereby avoiding reliance on pure temperature proxies that may exhibit a low-biased sensitivity to recent temperature change.

That’s a quote from Zuch’s pnas link.

Here’s a picture of how the various proxies mesh together with the CRU temperature record.

Forget about whether these are tree rings, ice cores, or coral proxies, notice that none of the squigglies line up with the temperature record, neither upon entry nor exit of the validation period.

Then of course there’s the divergence present in all proxies.
Which is another way of saying Mike Mann knows F’all about how hot it is, even today! In the present. If this A hole recommends packing the suntan lotion, you better bring a jacket and scarf.

Oh and you better not take Zuch’s word on what’s inside a link without checking it either.

I’m hoping he copped the link from some treehugger on advise that it “like totally debunks that crap about treerings, dude”, rather then being deliberately deceptive.
July 13, 2010, 5:27 am
GaryP says:

zuch: Well, that might have been a good idea IF they had said that “the sun had no influence on climate”. Considering that the models in fact explicitly consider both insolation and reradiation, though (as well as other factors), I’m not quite sure I get your point.Cheers,

Well, Zuch, the IPCC concluded that the consensus was that solar influences upon the climate are “minimal”. Unfortunately, the consensus was based on ONE article whose methodology has been questioned by the scientists upon whose data the article was based.

The entire AGW scare factory is a transparent hoax based on greed (WWF alone plans to make $60B off Amazon carbon credit) and a lust for power. It is enabled by dishonest scientists and their political allies who intend to extend their control of the economy (and our lives) under the guise of “saving the planet.”

I can’t pretend to know your motives in supporting this cynical enterprise but at the very least you are acting in the role of what Lenin called a “useful idiot” in his own bid for world dominance.
July 13, 2010, 10:49 am
Elliot says:

Zuch: “They both have no valid theory of their own as an alternative to the prevalent theory.”

So what? What does that tell us about the accuracy of the Warmers predictions?
July 13, 2010, 11:22 am
ShelbyC says:

zuch: That would be true, but it turns out that their validity derives from more than just an ad hoc correlation with temperatures

Wrong. Since they don’t know what’s causing the divergence, whatever you say their validity derives from during the period they correlate must also be present during the period that they don’t correlate, which means we’re back to their validity deriving from the correlation.
July 13, 2010, 11:55 am
zuch says:

klohy: For goodness sake. Stockwell most certainly did say that. He is a well known AGW skeptic and this paper was written specifically to criticize the calibration method that results in diverging series being excluded from reconstructions.

Nope. Not in that paper you (mis)cited. I read it again (all 2/3 of a page) from top to bottom, and what you imagine is in there (“this paper was written specifically to criticize the calibration method that results in diverging series being excluded from reconstructions”) is simply not in there. Perhaps, though, I can perform a therapeutic role and you can explain what language there (as I was kind enough to do for you above) you think says what you think it says, and we can discuss it.

Ahhh, I think I know where you went wrong:

klohy: Did you even read the paper? He showed that if you take random series of red noise and discard those series which do not calibrate to the modern temperature record, you get a hockey stick. Shaft and blade.

You’re confusing Stockwell’s discarding of those random series that don’t show a sufficient correlation to the actual temperatures — or more accurately, his selection of those that randomly do show such [coincidental] correlation; a process that produces the “blade” — with the Mann process of using series that correlated with actual tempratures but then truncating said series at a fixed point (1960, IIRC) because of a demonstrated divergence of the proxy data from times later than that. Stockwell wasn’t addressing Mann’s discarding of the late 20th century divergent tree-ring data, which appears to be what you are ‘discusssing’:

[C]riticiz[ing] the calibration method that results in diverging series being excluded from reconstructions…

Note that Stockwell didn’t truncate “divergent” series here. What he did was reject entire series [the entire time frame] that didn’t correlate sufficiently (loosely, were “divergent”, although this is not a very accurate characterisation).

Stockwell’s claim is that “red noise” (time-correlated random series of no physical significance) will produce “all the salient aspects” (Stockwell’s words) of the “hockey stick” shape.

And as I explained above, well and fine!:

zuch: To get the “hockey stick”, you select a “blade” series, and then watch the unremarkable “regression” (to use Stockwell’s word) towards an “arbitrary” (again Stockwell’s word) baseline over time, away from the “blade” region. You might say that random (but time-correlated) fluctuations produce a regression similar to what was seen in the 1000BCE to 1900BCE range, but all you’re saying then is that there was no obvious sharp trend before CO₂ levels started increasing and that natural processes plus errors during that period produced nothing but “noise”.

To reiterate, you’ve already injected some ‘physical significance’ in the random “red noise series” by choosing only those that correlate with observed temperatures for the 20th century time frame (1885-1990) (Stockwell’s thick black line). That makes them, at least for that period, ‘proxies’ for temperature (albeit somewhat arbitrary ones). It may well be that there is no significance (or temporally decreasing significance) to the rest of the random series from earlier times, and that all you see when you move away from the times where you’ve insisted on (selected for) correlation) is a regression towards the mean. It may also be that the tree-ring data show no significant signal (i.e., no temporal fluctuations or trends) in these periods, and thus that the features of the two reconstructed series (tree-ring or “red noise”) show similarities in the “stick” region of the reconstructions. But all you’re saying is that the tree-ring data are not showing anything that could not be accounted for by random processes in that time frame; which is entirely consistent with saying there was no temperature trend before the recent sharp increase in CO₂ levels. Which might support AGW theory. The “regression” towards the baseline is not surprising either; as you move away from the time of lowest temperatures, the time-correlated random series ought to reflect less and less of that minimum. On that thinking, such “regression” (Stockwell’s term) is expected, and the observed higher “MWP” farther back of no physical significance. You might then argue that series showing a “MWP” might in fact be just “red noise” (not containing a real underlying physical trend), and that even the “MWP” shown in the Mann series may not be as significant (or large) as it is. Feel free to argue that, but it hardly helps the anti-AGW cause.

Stockwell’s claim is basically that the tree-ring data (and other LTP proxies) contain no information indistinguishable from “red noise” and thus conclusions based on their incorporation are unwarranted: “a ’hockey-stick’ shape is inevitable on any data resembling natural LTP series”. His fundamental mistake here is terming his ‘data’ as “random data”, which it most certainly is not. As I’ve explained, he selected from among his “red noise” candidate series those that showed a strong correlation with signal (the actual temperatures), at least in the “blade” timeframe. His work would have been better if he’d then selected those series that showed also a correlation with other proxy data that Mann had used over the larger time frame, and showed that these produced results that didn’t differ from using series showing no such correlation.

klohy: I’ll take you at your word you are a statistics professor (though I am a little stunned how you are struggling to grasp some barely intermediate level time-series concepts.

I never said I was a statistics professor. I TAed statistics in grad school.

klohy: As I pointed out earlier, dropping the tree rings and correcting for the upside down sediment series does make a material difference to Mann’s reconstruction.

“[M]aterial difference”? How so? Cites?

klohy: Do you teach time-series?). So here are some links to various discussions that deal with the concepts. You may find them helpful as I clearly am not getting my message across to you:
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2009/tricking-yourself-into-cherry-picking/
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/11/22/292/

These are not expositions on time-series analysis, but rather anti-AGW blogs. No thanks. Let’s discuss your cite here, the Stockwell paper.

klohy: Zuch,
My last point. You say

[zuch]: What you don’t seem to appreciate is that while some of the data is “random”, some of the data is not, and that destroys the concept of “red noise”. Even if a “red noise” algorithm selected the original “red noise” sequences, after selection, the sequences were not random.
Your original assertion was that “red noise” will produce “hockey sticks”

This is untrue. My assertion was:

It is inappropriate to eliminate just those tree ring data that show a current divergence without eliminating the entire proxy. As has been demonstrated many times, by doing this “trick” you create a hockey stick out of random series of red noise.

This was and remains correct. About that apology…

The technical discussion of this is above in this present comment as to your misconception of Stockwell’s work.

But here’s the relevant part of the discussion for which you’re asking for an apology:

[zuch]: Your original assertion was that “red noise” will produce “hockey sticks”:

[klohy]: As has been demonstrated many times, by doing this “trick” you create a hockey stick out of random series of red noise.

This is simply not true.

I quoted you fairly, and reasonably. You did say what I’d said you said, but more importantly, I (accurately) quoted your actual statement, and linked to where you said it. How can I be accused of mischaracterising what you said?!?!?

As to the additional first sentence you provided, it is simply wrong, so why bother adding it?

* * * * *

Just as a FYI, Stockwell’s “red noise” (which he characterises as “containing more low
frequency than high frequency noise”) is not quite accurate. It is true that the “red noise” generation process is essentially a bandpass filter that limits HF noise (or amplifies lower frequency noise, as you choose), but it also has a LF cutoff (the series are not infinite). As such, it’s not surprising to see a periodicity of, in the case of Stockwell’s “random” data, around 25 years or so, to my eye. Certain frequencies are quite probably more emphasised in his series. I bring up the LF “filtering” because “baseline” levels are (essentially) DC signals (and as Stockwell says, “arbitrary”).
July 13, 2010, 12:40 pm
klohy says:

Zuch,

It is a shame that you dogmatically refuse to read the links I sent as you may learn where you went wrong (Lucia is not anti-AGW, BTW). So let’s look at M&M’s PNAS published comment on Mann 08: “Numerous other problems undermine their conclusions. Their CPS reconstruction screens proxies by calibration-period correlation, a procedure known to generate “hockey sticks” from red noise (4)” The reference (4) is to the Stockwell paper (I took my cite from PNAS – if there was an error take it up with them). I think it is fair to say that M&M, in a peer reviewed comment in PNAS, agrees with my interpretation of Stockwell (“this paper was written specifically to criticize the calibration method that results in diverging series being excluded from reconstructions”). I think it is fair to say you are mistaken.

How you can read the 2/3rds of a page and not see this is bewildering. Stockwell says it in rather simple English: “Clearly the ’hockey-stick’ pattern is easily produced by selecting those random series that correlate over the period of the calibration temperatures (producing the blade) and revert to randomness elsewhere (producing the handle).”

And, oh, you did not quote my actual statement. You said:

Your original assertion was that “red noise” will produce “hockey sticks”

Show me where I said that? I certainly did not, because it is not true. Red noise does not in itself create a hockey stick. It needs to be combined with a screening of proxies by matching to the instrument period. Which is what Mann did (his truncating is just an extended version of this trick but does not change the criticism in any way).
July 13, 2010, 1:21 pm
zuch says:

papertiger: Forget about whether these are tree rings, ice cores, or coral proxies, notice that none of the squigglies line up with the temperature record, neither upon entry nor exit of the validation period.

Why would you expect they would? They’re proxies. What you would expect is that they are (mostly) within the error bounds, just as they are beyond these boundaries.

papertiger: Then of course there’s the divergence present in all proxies.
Which is another way of saying Mike Mann knows F’all about how hot it is, even today!

Not exactly. As Mann said, the divergence is less with both “no dendro” and EIV. They discuss this, and conclude that EIV is a more robust method of analysis (but still painting pretty much the same picture).

papertiger: Oh and you better not take Zuch’s word on what’s inside a link without checking it either.

From the PNAS link abstract:

Our results extend previous conclusions that recent Northern Hemisphere surface temperature increases are likely anomalous in a long-term context. Recent warmth appears anomalous for at least the past 1,300 years whether or not tree-ring data are used. If tree-ring data are used, the conclusion can be extended to at least the past 1,700 years, but with additional strong caveats. The reconstructed amplitude of change over past centuries is greater than hitherto reported, with somewhat greater Medieval warmth in the Northern Hemisphere, albeit still not reaching recent levels.

papertiger: I’m hoping he copped the link from some treehugger on advise that it “like totally debunks that crap about treerings, dude”, rather then being deliberately deceptive.

Why? Is this argumentum ad [transitive] hominem? It says what it says, and what I said it says, and I cited it (which is the proper thing to do when making assertions).

Cheers,
July 13, 2010, 1:30 pm
klohy says:

Zuch,

You keep asking for cites for things you really should know. Why don’t you do two seconds of research and google “mann supplemental information”?

If you keep making your definitive comments as to how removing the tree ring data does not make a difference to the reconstruction, it behooves you to do a little research.
July 13, 2010, 1:33 pm
zuch says:

GaryP: [T]he IPCC concluded that the consensus was that solar influences upon the climate are “minimal”. Unfortunately, the consensus was based on ONE article whose methodology has been questioned by the scientists upon whose data the article was based.

Cites?

Instead, why not trot out some reports that show that variations in insolation do account for the observed data, and do so better than IPCC models (that allegedly lack such).

FWIW, note that Mann et al. simply report on temperatures, and do not model IR warming, solar warming, or any other processes.

Cheers,
July 13, 2010, 1:34 pm
zuch says:

ShelbyC:

[zuch]: That would be true, but it turns out that their validity derives from more than just an ad hoc correlation with temperatures

Wrong. Since they don’t know what’s causing the divergence, whatever you say their validity derives from during the period they correlate must also be present during the period that they don’t correlate, which means we’re back to their validity deriving from the correlation.

Even if we assume the divergence, plausible explanations as to the “validity” (such as observed faster growth in warmer environments; you want to dispute this, tell it to the greenhouse owners) indicate that the tree rings are plausible proxies (even if imperfect) for temperature. That there may be other — some unknown — factors contributing to tree ring size (and possibly to the “divergence”) doesn’t change this.

Cheers,
July 13, 2010, 1:40 pm
zuch says:

klohy: It is a shame that you dogmatically refuse to read the links I sent as you may learn where you went wrong (Lucia is not anti-AGW, BTW)….

I looked long enough to see that these were blogs, and not expositions on time-series analysis (which is purportedly why you proffered them). If you think there is such within them, point it out. If they’re not that, then why should I be reading them?

klohy: So let’s look at M&M’s PNAS published comment on Mann 08: “Numerous other problems undermine their conclusions. Their CPS reconstruction screens proxies by calibration-period correlation, a procedure known to generate “hockey sticks” from red noise (4)” The reference (4) is to the Stockwell paper (I took my cite from PNAS — if there was an error take it up with them).

You ought to provide links for papers you cite. And it’s not my freakin’ fault if McIntyre and McKitrick have errors in their paper. You can shovel it off on them, but that hardly bolsters your case, does it?

Just because McIntyre and McKitrick say something doesn’t make it any more truthful (particularly when they make errors in their papers, eh?)

Mann et al., of course, reply to M&M’s carping (here).

klohy: I think it is fair to say that M&M, in a peer reviewed comment in PNAS, agrees with my interpretation of Stockwell (“this paper was written specifically to criticize the calibration method that results in diverging series being excluded from reconstructions”). I think it is fair to say you are mistaken.

Why don’t you reply to my criticism of Stockwell’s work and say why it’s wrong? Clearly, M&M didn’t do so, so whatever they said (which was just to cite Stockwell) is not particularly convincing.

Here’s Mann’s response to M&M:

McIntyre and McKitrick’s claim that the common procedure (6) of screening proxy data (used in some of our reconstructions) generates “hockey sticks” is unsupported in peer-reviewed literature and reflects an unfamiliarity with the concept of screening regression/validation.

(Mann also addresses the M&M accusation of “upside down” series [as M&M claim they found in a "personal communication"])

klohy: How you can read the 2/3rds of a page and not see this is bewildering. Stockwell says it in rather simple English:

“Clearly the ’hockey-stick’ pattern is easily produced by selecting those random series that correlate over the period of the calibration temperatures (producing the blade) and revert to randomness elsewhere (producing the handle).”

I’ve already dealt with this (more than once). You ought to address the substance of my comments.

klohy: And, oh, you did not quote my actual statement. You said:

[zuch]: Your original assertion was that “red noise” will produce “hockey sticks”

Show me where I said that?

Yes, I did quote you (and each of the quoted words in my rephrasing of your statement that you snipped here was in your original statement [along with a link to your original comment] which I provided in full just so that there could be no mistake).

And aren’t you insisting strenuously here that Stockwell was saying that red noise will produce hockey sticks (and in fact that this was the gravamen of his article? Doesn’t M&M say the same thing?:

Their CPS reconstruction screens proxies by calibration-period correlation, a procedure known to generate “hockey sticks” from red noise (4).

I said, yes, it does. It does so because you “force” the “blade” by twiddling with the “red noise” series generation (or more specifically, “selection”, but same damn thing in the end) so that it has a “blade” [and is no longer "red noise", making the general claim that "red noise" does this somewhat inaccurate and even more misleading, seeing as the properties of "red noise" is that it supposedly has no (or little) actual information content]. So what?

Cheers,
July 13, 2010, 2:23 pm
zuch says:

klohy: You keep asking for cites for things you really should know.

Perhaps. But still you should cite them (and link if at all possible). It’s the proper thing to do. At least in [purportedly] scientific discussion (although it’s a good idea in general).

Cheers,
July 13, 2010, 2:25 pm
zuch says:

klohy: If you keep making your definitive comments as to how removing the tree ring data does not make a difference to the reconstruction, it behooves you to do a little research.

#33

Cheers,
July 13, 2010, 2:27 pm
zuch says:

zuch:

[ShelbyC]: Wrong. Since they don’t know what’s causing the divergence, whatever you say their validity derives from during the period they correlate must also be present during the period that they don’t correlate, which means we’re back to their validity deriving from the correlation.

Even if we assume the divergence, plausible explanations as to the “validity” (such as observed faster growth in warmer environments; you want to dispute this, tell it to the greenhouse owners) indicate that the tree rings are plausible proxies (even if imperfect) for temperature. That there may be other — some unknown — factors contributing to tree ring size (and possibly to the “divergence”) doesn’t change this.

I would note in passing that when Mann et al. were developing and validating proxies, for some of these, they used two-tailed tests of significance, but for some (“[w]here 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”), they used one-tailed tests because the direction of the effect could be predicted by extrinsic means and therefore one-tailed tests would be appropriate. Seems reasonable to me. To deny any extrinsic knowledge of physics, chemistry, or biology that may be applied seems silly.

Cheers,
July 13, 2010, 3:34 pm
klohy says:

Zuch,

Your reference to 33 of course does not address the question (“As I pointed out earlier, dropping the tree rings and correcting for the upside down sediment series does make a material difference to Mann’s reconstruction”). Even after I was kind enough to give you the google search term. Are you even aware that Mann published supplemental information in November 2009? If not, you really have no business trying to sprout authoritatively about the impact of removing the tree rings from the reconstruction.
July 13, 2010, 4:19 pm
ruralcounsel says:

zuch: “I doan wanna know nuttin’!!!!”Cheers,

So a bad theory is better than no theory?
July 13, 2010, 4:30 pm
ruralcounsel says:

Elliot: So, how do all the very smart and well educated folks who jumped on the climate warmimg wagon when it was popular manage to gracefully jump off? They can’t just reverse course. That would bring their intelligence, education, and judgement into question. Worse, it would demonstrate that people they considered to be their intellectual inferiors were right while they were wrong. Self esteem and reputation are at stake here.

They’ll wander off on to some other project when their funding finally dries up. But that could be a while. Meanwhile, they’ll keep toeing the party line, but start slipping in wiggle room language to their writings and reports so they can later pretend to have taken a principled stand. Politicians are pretty bad at tapping the spending brakes and fess up to having voted stupidly. Especially if they jumped up and down screaming about the sky falling a lot to justify their grab for power. Existing programs wait until their funding isn’t renewed. We’re still wrestling with cap-and-tax legislation, because there are some politicians who just can’t walk away from that big of a payoff when they got so close!
July 13, 2010, 4:47 pm
klohy says:

Zuch,

I said, yes, it does. It does so because you “force” the “blade” by twiddling with the “red noise” series generation (or more specifically, “selection”, but same damn thing in the end) so that it has a “blade” [and is no longer “red noise”, making the general claim that “red noise” does this somewhat inaccurate and even more misleading, seeing as the properties of “red noise” is that it supposedly has no (or little) actual information content]. So what?

So what? So what?? It shows that a methodology of calibrating red noise series against the modern temperature record forces a hockey stick. Do you get the implication? (At least you finally, finally seem to accept what Stockwell was trying to say)

You again say that I ought to address the substance of your comments (critique of Stockwell). I’ve followed your links, and I’ve looked, but I can’t find any substantive argument. Are you perhaps referring to this paragraph:

zuch: To get the “hockey stick”, you select a “blade” series, and then watch the unremarkable “regression” (to use Stockwell’s word) towards an “arbitrary” (again Stockwell’s word) baseline over time, away from the “blade” region. You might say that random (but time-correlated) fluctuations produce a regression similar to what was seen in the 1000BCE to 1900BCE range, but all you’re saying then is that there was no obvious sharp trend before CO₂ levels started increasing and that natural processes plus errors during that period produced nothing but “noise”.

I don’t see how your analysis even lays a glove on Stockwell or how it addresses his main finding. Your last sentence is completely beside the point. He is commenting on the methodology of calibrating proxies. You are addressing some entirely different question

And are you seriously defending Mann’s response to the upside down sediment series? Really? You claim to have expertise in statistics, so does this comment make sense to you: “The claim that “upside down” data were used is bizarre. Multivariate regression methods are insensitive to the sign of predictors.” Firstly, CPS is not a multi-variate regression method (you agree?). Secondly, a regression that results in a correlation inverse to the physical meaning is a problem, right? Right!
July 13, 2010, 4:53 pm
zuch says:

klohy: Your reference to 33 of course does not address the question (“As I pointed out earlier, dropping the tree rings and correcting for the upside down sediment series does make a material difference to Mann’s reconstruction”). Even after I was kind enough to give you the google search term.

You should give cites (and links where possible) to your sources when you want someone to look at them. Also helpful are the relevant quotes from your sources that you think supports your position. Such as in “#33“. If you can’t do that, you won’t get far in the field of science.

Cheers,
July 13, 2010, 6:19 pm
zuch says:

ruralcounsel:

[zuch]: “I doan wanna know nuttin’!!!!”

So a bad theory is better than no theory?

A flawed theory is better than no theory. As I pointed out long ago, they still teach Newtonian mechanics in college physics (as well as Maxwell’s E&M). Newtonian mechanics is, strictly, “wrong” (or at best, valid for objects at rest … and that only for those parts of Newtonian mechanics that pertain to objects at rest). Should we stop teaching it?

Cheers,
July 13, 2010, 6:25 pm
Elliot says:

Zuch: “A flawed theory is better than no theory.”

Better by what standard? Is a theory concerning a given phenomenon correct if there is no other theory for that phenomenon?

So, in it’s day, was phrenology better than no theory?
July 13, 2010, 6:45 pm
zuch says:

klohy: So what? So what?? It shows that a methodology of calibrating red noise series against the modern temperature record forces a hockey stick. Do you get the implication? (At least you finally, finally seem to accept what Stockwell was trying to say)

As I said, when you force a “hockey stick” you ought not be surprised that you forced it. The implication that it is somehow something that happens with “random” data is misleading at best, because you are not dealing with random data once you have selected it. The requirement for the correlation with the (sharply increasing) empirical temperature records in the 20th century means your series will have an increase in temperature in the 20th century (that is to so, the “blade”). If things hadn’t changed (and what might have changed, eh?), then it wouldn’t be unreasonable for that trend to continue into the past and for the much older proxies to show much colder temperatures. OTOH, if things change (i.e., greenhouse effects not having set in yet, or we relax the requirements for correlation of our “random” data strings to some external data), then we might well have a discontinuity in the resultant trend lines (and perhaps even regression towards the ~~mean~~“arbitrary” baseline). That’s expected behaviour of “random” data (removed from constraints). What’s not expected of “random” data is that they will fit any arbitrary data series that you try to correlate them with. When you weed out all the ones that don’t (and most won’t) and select for those that do, you’re reflecting the characteristics of the underlying extrinsic data that you’ve decided to run the correlations against, not the characteristics of “random” data.

klohy: You again say that I ought to address the substance of your comments (critique of Stockwell). I’ve followed your links, and I’ve looked, but I can’t find any substantive argument. Are you perhaps referring to this paragraph:

[zuch]: To get the “hockey stick”, you select a “blade” series, and then watch the unremarkable “regression” (to use Stockwell’s word) towards an “arbitrary” (again Stockwell’s word) baseline over time, away from the “blade” region. You might say that random (but time-correlated) fluctuations produce a regression similar to what was seen in the 1000BCE to 1900BCE range, but all you’re saying then is that there was no obvious sharp trend before CO₂ levels started increasing and that natural processes plus errors during that period produced nothing but “noise”.

I don’t see how your analysis even lays a glove on Stockwell or how it addresses his main finding. Your last sentence is completely beside the point. He is commenting on the methodology of calibrating proxies. You are addressing some entirely different question.

How [and where] is he commenting on the “methodology of calibrating proxies” (which in his article is a simple linear regression of instrumental temperature/pseudo-”tree-ring” pairs)?

I’m saying that Stockwell’s findings are ‘true’ but unsurprising, trivial, and irrelevant.

What question do you think he’s answering?

Here’s one possibility:

Also if a methodology generates the same results with random data, as with the real data, it is highly likely the methodology simply embodies a logical fallacy know as petitio principii, or the circular argument, where the conclusions are assumed implicitly in the premises.

Only problem here is that Stockwell’s data is not random.

klohy: And are you seriously defending Mann’s response to the upside down sediment series? Really? You claim to have expertise in statistics, so does this comment make sense to you: “The claim that “upside down” data were used is bizarre. Multivariate regression methods are insensitive to the sign of predictors.”

Yes. Here’s the rest of it:

The claim that “upside down” data were used is bizarre. Multivariate regression methods are insensitive to the sign of predictors. Screening, when used, employed one-sided tests only when a definite sign could be a priori reasoned on physical grounds….

Once you allow in proxies that are validated, your “calibration” takes care of the sign.

Cheers.

Cheers,
July 13, 2010, 7:15 pm
zuch says:

Elliot:

[Zuch]: “A flawed theory is better than no theory.”

Better by what standard? Is a theory concerning a given phenomenon correct if there is no other theory for that phenomenon?

Sometimes. A correct theory is, and a flawed theory may be pretty much correct (but not perfectly so). A bad one isn’t.

Elliot:
So, in it’s day, was phrenology better than no theory?

No. It was not a “flawed” theory, but rather a “bad” one.

Cheers,
July 13, 2010, 7:19 pm
klohy says:

Zuch,

You should give cites (and links where possible) to your sources when you want someone to look at them. Also helpful are the relevant quotes from your sources that you think supports your position. Such as in “#33″. If you can’t do that, you won’t get far in the field of science.

Thanks for the helpful hint as to what I need to advance in the field of science. Thanks also for implicitly admitting that you had no idea about the supplemental information released in November 2009 and that you have making pronouncements from relative ignorance. (But you have tried really hard to sound authoritative).

Because you won’t spend the two minutes on the google search (for something you should have known about if you had any sort of background in this topic), I will spoon-feed the link: http://www.meteo.psu.edu/~mann/supplements/MultiproxyMeans07/NHcps_no7_v_orig_Nov2009.pdf

You’re welcome.

Based on this, do you think the Mann statement you quoted in 33 still stands? (“Our results extend previous conclusions that recent Northern Hemisphere surface temperature increases are likely anomalous in a long-term context.”)
July 13, 2010, 7:32 pm
Elliot says:

Zuch: “Sometimes. A correct theory is, and a flawed theory may be pretty much correct (but not perfectly so). A bad one isn’t.”

In that case, how does an alternative theory matter? The existence of an alternative has no bearing on the correctness of another theory. And the validity of the warmers contentions have nothing to do with the existence of an alternative theory.
July 13, 2010, 8:19 pm
klohy says:

Zuch,

As regards Stockwell, you and I just seem to be talking past each other. I can’t make head or tail of what you are trying to say except that you seem to be missing the object of what Stockwell is trying to show. Your critique about the data not being really random is mystifying – that is the point of the whole analysis. Please do me a favor, and read one of the two links to blog discussions I provided. This one is probably best: http://rankexploits.com/musings/2009/tricking-yourself-into-cherry-picking/ Also read the comment section – there are many statistics professionals who weighed in. (As an aside it is rather surprising that someone who has made about a million comments on this blog speaks so dismissively about other blog discussions). After reading this maybe you will realize that Stockwell’s comments are, as you said, “‘true’ but unsurprising, trivial” but by no means irrelevant.

As regards the sediment series, you probably don’t realize that you contradicted yourself. How do you reconcile:

Once you allow in proxies that are validated, your “calibration” takes care of the sign.

with

To deny any extrinsic knowledge of physics, chemistry, or biology that may be applied seems silly.

If your calibrations results in a correlation that is contrary to the ex ante physical theory, then it is spurious and the proxy should be rejected. Particularly when Tijlander has openly said that the proxy was contaminated by land usage during the calibration period and Mann even discussed the issues with this proxy in the paper (find your own damn cites). Kaufman, to his credit, issued a correction to a later paper when McIntyre pointed out that he had used Tijlander with the wrong sign (I am sure you can find a cite).

Even if you won’t concede this (you don’t like to concede anything so I am not holding my breath), will you accept that CPS is not a multivariate regression method?
July 13, 2010, 8:21 pm
zuch says:

klohy: Thanks for the helpful hint as to what I need to advance in the field of science. Thanks also for implicitly admitting that you had no idea about the supplemental information released in November 2009….

I did your Google (both with and without the enclosing quotes), and I found supplemental information from Mann … actually a couple of such things, but I have no idea what you’re driving at there. As I said:

zuch: You should give cites (and links where possible) to your sources when you want someone to look at them. Also helpful are the relevant quotes from your sources that you think supports your position. Such as in “#33″. If you can’t do that, you won’t get far in the field of science.

So if you can kindly explain what I missed in the “supplemental information released in November 2009″ and point out what you’re getting on about and what there is relevant to that, then maybe we can discuss it, eh?

klohy: Because you won’t spend the two minutes on the google search (for something you should have known about if you had any sort of background in this topic), I will spoon-feed the link: http://www.meteo.psu.edu/~mann/supplements/MultiproxyMeans07/NHcps_no7_v_orig_Nov2009.pdf
You’re welcome.

What about it?!?!? What does it have to do with this:

klohy: Secondly, don’t link to the Mann PNAS article without showing the three Supplementary Information additions (what other people would call corrections).

* * * * *

klohy: Based on this, do you think the Mann statement you quoted in 33 still stands? (“Our results extend previous conclusions that recent Northern Hemisphere surface temperature increases are likely anomalous in a long-term context.”)

Looks like it, yes. As Mann states, there’s more variance w/o the tree-rings, and as he said in the 2008 PNAS article I cited, the CPS records show more sensitivity to the absence of tree-ring proxies. But he gives you the EIV results as well.

Cheers,
July 13, 2010, 9:02 pm
zuch says:

Elliot: The existence of an alternative has no bearing on the correctness of another theory

It does if the alternative theory fits the observations better, no?

Cheers,
July 13, 2010, 9:05 pm
klohy says:

Zuch,

Well I was wrong. I thought you had finally conceded that Stockwell was criticizing the proxy selection methodology of calibrating to the instrument record. Clearly you had not. Why don’t we check what Stockwell himself says. Here is a link for you: http://landshape.org/enm/creating-a-statistical-model-with-a-cherry-picking-process/ To save you time, I will even post a quote:

This demonstrates that the method from dendroclimatology of choosing proxies based on correlation with the reference period, (aka cherry-picking) will generate plausible climate reconstructions even on random numbers.

Can we now put this issue to bed? Please.
July 13, 2010, 9:07 pm
zuch says:

klohy: As regards the sediment series, you probably don’t realize that you contradicted yourself. How do you reconcile:

Once you allow in proxies that are validated, your “calibration” takes care of the sign.

with

To deny any extrinsic knowledge of physics, chemistry, or biology that may be applied seems silly.

If the series is validated with a two-tailed test, it’s going to pass the appropriate one-tailed test (on that end of the statistic) as well. It must have passed either a two-tailed test or the one-tailed test on the appropriate side to get in (not clear which one was used for this series), and been shown to be a useful proxy. What’s the problem there?

Cheers,
July 13, 2010, 9:12 pm
zuch says:

klohy: If your calibrations results in a correlation that is contrary to the ex ante physical theory, then it is spurious and the proxy should be rejected.

Not exactly. The criteria for inclusion are tighter for the two-tailed test. The one-tailed test is appropriate when you know ex ante that the effect will be in one direction, and you want to relax your confidence intervals by using the one-tailed test to include series that might have a reasonable signal but not enough to pass the two-tailed test. Going with a two-tailed test is the conservative option, so how can you complain if this was in fact done?

Cheers,
July 13, 2010, 9:17 pm
klohy says:

Zuch,

I am not complaining about the one-tailed versus two-tailed test. I am complaining about ignoring the physical meaning. The problem is that the correlation is contrary to the physical meaning, as said repeatedly. Otherwise you just have statistics without understanding. You can’t ignore the physics. But you know that.
July 13, 2010, 9:17 pm
zuch says:

klohy: Even if you won’t concede this (you don’t like to concede anything so I am not holding my breath), will you accept that CPS is not a multivariate regression method?

I think that Mann was using “multivariate regression methods” in a more loose (or general) fashion than you are here. It may well be inaccurate, strictly speaking, but I believe that his thrust was that the sign was lost in the normalization (“standardiz[ing] and center[ing], potentially weight[ing]“) of the multiple variables, and this answers M&M’s objection. CPS is admittedly not such a thing as classical multivariate regression, but more regressions of multiple variables followed by combination.

Cheers,
July 13, 2010, 9:33 pm
klohy says:

Zuch,

This is not just a matter of semantics. Mann responded to the upside down claim by saying that “Multivariate regression methods are insensitive to the sign of predictors.” This response is highly dubious on its own but simply doesn’t apply to CPS. Data can only be “fed” into CPS one way. CPS is not a regression. Agree?
July 13, 2010, 9:38 pm
GaryP says:

Zuch,
There are many papers which provide both a hypothesis and data as to how the Sun can affect temperatures on Earth. Anyone wanting to attribute changes in terresterial temps to anything else than the Sun should have exhaustively studied this possibility before pursuing any other explaination (based on Occam’s Razor, if nothing else).
Here is one location that cites numerous (peer-reviewed) articles on the sun/climate http://theresilientearth.com/?q=content/solar-and-orbital-cycles.
There are many articles and should be many more. However, the AGW cabal (as demonstrated by the Climategate emails) conspired to pressure journals not to publish on certain subjects or to publish certain authors. This is one of the most shameful episodes in modern science and should have resulted in dismissal and disgrace for all involved (except for the timely whitewash by hand-picked committees of (mostly) co-conspirators and other biased persons.
July 13, 2010, 9:39 pm
zuch says:

klohy: I am not complaining about the one-tailed versus two-tailed test. I am complaining about ignoring the physical meaning.

What I’m saying is that IF Mann did a one-tailed test based on a known relationship here for this series, and the correlation was actually of the opposite sign, he wouldn’t have used the series and we wouldn’t be arguing about it. If he did a two-tailed test on the series (and included it), it would have been because he didn’t have any a priori knowledge of how the correlation would (or should) run for this particular statistic. And if the latter, more of an effect (in whatever direction) would have been needed for acceptance of the series as a proxy.

Cheers,
July 13, 2010, 9:40 pm
zuch says:

klohy: Data can only be “fed” into CPS one way.

No. They do (and say they do) the following:

[P]roxy data (such as tree rings, ice cores, or corals) considered to be sensitive to past surface temperature variations are standardized and centered, potentially weighted, and then composited to form a regional or hemispheric series.

Standardization may well involve a sign (and magnitude) change.

Cheers,
July 13, 2010, 9:45 pm
klohy says:

Zuch,

What I’m saying is that IF Mann did a one-tailed test based on a known relationship here for this series, and the correlation was actually of the opposite sign, he wouldn’t have used the series and we wouldn’t be arguing about it

Ah, but the problem is he did do a one-tailed test but by mistake reversed the series (or to be technically correct, he didn’t reverse the series when he should have). The test passed because the sediment record was contaminated by land usage in the calibration period. So we have a spurious proxy.

Mann’s response was to say that the criticism was “bizarre” and that ““Multivariate regression methods are insensitive to the sign of predictors”. But as we both know, this reasoning is wholly inapplicable to a CPS reconstruction.
July 13, 2010, 9:49 pm
klohy says:

Zuch,

Standardization may well involve a sign (and magnitude) change.

You missed my point, but in fairness I described it ambiguously. What I was trying to say is that in a CPS construction, you have to choose the sign going into the reconstruction (unlike multivariate analysis where you can feed data in any orientation). You are quite correct that standardization may require a sign change – that is actually the mistake Mann made (not changing a sign he should have). Mann’s defense about the sign being irrelevant is simply wrong in a CPS framework.
July 13, 2010, 9:55 pm
klohy says:

Zuch,

In fairness you seem an intelligent person. But debating you on this topic has been a little bit like shooting fish in a barrel. You are not well versed in the area and clearly have not had the benefit of following (and participating in) extensive discussions on Mann, hockey sticks and related topics over the past few years. Every issue we have debated here has been exhaustively covered in various forums (consensus and skeptic alike). Even some of the basic concepts seem to be new to you. You are at a severe disadvantage in not having the background of others.

When I was younger (much younger) I was a pretty good chess player, reaching a master rating. There were some games I won, not because I was the better player, but because the game steered to an opening I had studied but was new to my opponent (I lost a number of games that way too!). Every time my opponent made a move, I could counter immediately without even thinking. Reminds me a little of our discussion here.

I am done with this discussion. It is no longer interesting to me – we have not broached any new ground and seem to continually rehash core concepts that are taken for granted on some of the more technical discussion forums.

I encourage you to study the area further. Come to an independent view of the evidence for the hockey stick.
July 13, 2010, 10:35 pm
Elliot says:

But, as the day draws to an end, let us be thankful the IPCC has lifted the Bangledeshis’ 2035 sentence of extinction by melting glacier.
July 13, 2010, 11:10 pm
zuch says:

GaryP: There are many papers which provide both a hypothesis and data as to how the Sun can affect temperatures on Earth.

Well, yes. The AGW “greenhouse” models say that “greenhouse” trapping of IR re-radiation of solar energy can lead to temperature increases. What ever gave you the idea that such models don’t consider “how the Sun can affect temperatures”?

GaryP: Anyone wanting to attribute changes in terresterial temps to anything else than the Sun should have exhaustively studied this possibility before pursuing any other explaination (based on Occam’s Razor, if nothing else).

Yes, it would be a shame if the IPCC reports didn’t have sections like this.

Cheers,
July 14, 2010, 10:17 am
zuch says:

klohy:

[zuch]: What I’m saying is that IF Mann did a one-tailed test based on a known relationship here for this series, and the correlation was actually of the opposite sign, he wouldn’t have used the series and we wouldn’t be arguing about it.

Ah, but the problem is he did do a one-tailed test but by mistake reversed the series (or to be technically correct, he didn’t reverse the series when he should have). The test passed because the sediment record was contaminated by land usage in the calibration period. So we have a spurious proxy.

Assuming arguendo the base facts as you state them, you miss the point. To be included, the series need to be validated, and that involves seeing if they correlate to local temperatures. If they correlate, they are a “proxy”. Even if we assume that “land usage” was responsible for the correlation found, these sediment records are still an indirect proxy (of some power). What you’re saying in essence is that we don’t really know, as we would for oxygen isotopes in ice, all the mechanisms leading to the sediment variability so as to understand why we have the correlation … which would imply we ought to use a two-tailed test … and include the proxy if it’s sufficiently good (and discard it only if it can be shown that the proxy isn’t a reliable predictor for other reasons). Would you have us picking and choosing (umm, you know, like “cherry picking”) which proxies to use on ad hoc basis?

Cheers,
July 14, 2010, 10:28 am
zuch says:

klohy:

[zuch]: Standardization may well involve a sign (and magnitude) change.

You missed my point, but in fairness I described it ambiguously. What I was trying to say is that in a CPS construction, you have to choose the sign going into the reconstruction (unlike multivariate analysis where you can feed data in any orientation).

In CPS, you choose proxies based on their predictive ability, and then these proxies are “standardized and centered, potentially weighted, and then composited”. This involves, you know, changing such things as isotope ratios (a dimensionless number) or centimeters of sediment/tree-ring/ice into another number with the dimensions of “temperature”. This may well include a sign change amongst other things. Why do you think it doesn’t?

Cheers,
July 14, 2010, 10:43 am
zuch says:

klohy: You are quite correct that standardization may require a sign change — that is actually the mistake Mann made (not changing a sign he should have).

Cites for this claim?

Cheers,
July 14, 2010, 10:44 am
zuch says:

klohy: Mann’s response was to say that the criticism was “bizarre” and that ““Multivariate regression methods are insensitive to the sign of predictors”. But as we both know, this reasoning is wholly inapplicable to a CPS reconstruction.

I’d note, FWIW, that the EIV approach which Mann also used in the paper that M&M were criticising used is a variation on “multivariate regresssion”:

[Mann]: If one replaces the spatial field in the CFR approach by a single time series (e.g., hemispheric mean surface temperature), then the approach reduces to an EIV variant on multivariate regression.

It is true that this approach inherently neglects signs because the predictor(s) and predictand(s) are both scaled for errors (they are symmetric in the “prediction”) and sign reversals drop out. But it remains true that the CPS system can be sign-invariant with the appropriate “standardization” and “weighing”. It is not at all clear to me that this wasn’t done; just because a chart was upside down is no such indication.

Cheers,
July 14, 2010, 10:57 am
zuch says:

klohy: In fairness you seem an intelligent person. But debating you on this topic has been a little bit like shooting fish in a barrel. You are not well versed in the area and clearly have not had the benefit of following (and participating in) extensive discussions on Mann, hockey sticks and related topics over the past few years. Every issue we have debated here has been exhaustively covered in various forums (consensus and skeptic alike). Even some of the basic concepts seem to be new to you. You are at a severe disadvantage in not having the background of others.

Tu quoque.

Look, it’s not me that cites a reference that can’t be found and then goes on and proclaims what it said. It may well be that you got it by reading M&M’s carping screeds, which contain the citation error as well, but that is not a good indication that you actually read the original article, is it?

And you mischaracterise what Stockwell said(and still haven’t responded to this). You said:

klohy: On a related note, you show a complete misunderstanding of the statistical issues in response to my comment that you cannot drop just part of a proxy without a physical reason for doing so. Your response was “Mann said why they dropped the data, as I’ve pointed out here [repeatedly] as well.” Mann’s rationale was the divergence from the temperature record. This is not a physical reason. A physical reason would be an explanation why the tree rings suddenly ceased to be good proxies e.g. fires, damage, drought, human development. Just dropping proxies because of divergence is bad statistics, and as Stockwell shows, is guaranteed to produce a hockey stick. Geddit?

Stockwell never “drop[ped] just part of a proxy”. He didn’t address the cutoff of the tree-ring proxy data post 1960 ["drop just part of a proxy" because of "divergence"]. And his ‘demonstration’ of a “hockey stick” had nothing to do with that; this seems to be your misunderstanding, and you have never admitted this error.

Stockwell said that pretty much any arbitrary series will show a “hockey stick blade” … once you have forced a “blade” by requiring that the series actually correlate to a given “blade” (in the instrumental data). What happens past then (outside the “blade” region) depends on your chosen proxies. They could continue the “blade” slope/trend indefinitely (or over a much longer time frame) if the chosen proxy is a reasonably good proxy of a variable showing long-term linear change (in which case, the “stick-blade” angle would be very small, and the major effect would be in the error bars outside the blade region), they could revert to an “arbitrary” baseline (at some therefore arbitrary angle) if the proxy was pseudo-random outside of the constraint for correlation in the “blade” region, or they could reflect other changes and produce a different angle (possibly similar to that of the pseudorandom sequences) if the proxy was reasonably good and the variable of interest actually wasn’t timewise linear, and some significant change had occurred to affect that variable, say, around the time of the “blade”…. ummm, which is kind of like what they’ve been suggesting?

FWIW, I’d note that Stockwell’s “hockey stick” overshoots and undershoots the “blade” on both sides [just compare the heavy black line to Stockwell's series] ; to be expected for low-pass filtered time-correlated data. But Mann’s doesn’t.

klohy: When I was younger (much younger) I was a pretty good chess player, reaching a master rating. There were some games I won, not because I was the better player, but because the game steered to an opening I had studied but was new to my opponent (I lost a number of games that way too!). Every time my opponent made a move, I could counter immediately without even thinking. Reminds me a little of our discussion here.

TFB we aren’t playing chess. And totally irrelevant.

klohy: I am done with this discussion. It is no longer interesting to me — we have not broached any new ground and seem to continually rehash core concepts that are taken for granted on some of the more technical discussion forums.

I agree. We’re both pig-headed. But that doesn’t mean that both of us are right. And I’ve been trying to show where you’re wrong (see above).

klohy: I encourage you to study the area further. Come to an independent view of the evidence for the hockey stick.

And I might say the same to you … and encourage you to read more that M&M’s screeds and such.

Would you agree that Mann et al. actually produced some research worth discussing (and criticising and updating as warranted; you know, the way science works) and that all M&M are doing is throwing darts from the peanut gallery (when they’re not busy assassinating the character of the AGW scientists)?

Cheers,
July 14, 2010, 11:40 am
Elliot says:

“Subsequent to his release from the mad-house, Vicar Albert returned to the pulpit with an evangelical fury not seen since John the Baptist himself. “Sinners!” he cried from the alter, to the astonished flock. “Behold the picto-gram of the hockey stick divine! By thy carbon ethers thou hast brought great righteous anger to the Lord God and his holy mother Gaia! Repent now, lest ye be damned to an eternity of summers most uncomfortable!” Upon which he presented for sale to the duly frightened parishioners the only two true paths to their salvation: Vicar Albert carbon indulgences and Vicar Albert arse-corks.

IowaHawk
July 14, 2010, 12:03 pm
ShelbyC says:

zuch: Would you agree that Mann et al. actually produced some research worth discussing (and criticising and updating as warranted; you know, the way science works) and that all M&M are doing is throwing darts from the peanut gallery (when they’re not busy assassinating the character of the AGW scientists)?

So Mann produced research worth discussing, but discussing it is “throwing darts from the peanut gallery?” And hiding data that you don’t like because if you don’t the folks with different viewpoints will have a “field day” and saying you’ll delete data before releasing it is “the way science works” while what M&M is producing is “screeds”?

How about, Mann and M&M are discussing a complex issue in the imperfect way that humans disccuss complex issues, thereby demonstrating why humans can’t predict the climate within a few degrees a couple of hundred years out?
July 14, 2010, 2:21 pm
zuch says:

ShelbyC: So Mann produced research worth discussing, but discussing it is “throwing darts from the peanut gallery?”

No. Making trivial or stoopid (or even wrong) objections to it is. And taking the Skylerian approach of saying that any trivial inconsistency, typo, ad hom criticism, or such means the whole thing it wrong and needs to be tossed is even worse. But that seems to be the general approach of the anti-AGWers … nit-pickers to a Tee, and then screaming “Gotcha!” the second they find something (or think they do).

ShelbyC: And hiding data that you don’t like because if you don’t the folks with different viewpoints will have a “field day”…

No. Claiming that people are “hiding data” (when independent reviews are showing that this charge is false) and then saying the whole thing is wrong is not teh way science works.

ShelbyC: saying you’ll delete data before releasing it is “the way science works” while what M&M is producing is “screeds”?

They didn’t. Claiming they did is not the way science works. Whatever they said in internal e-mails in moments of frustration at just the kind of behaviour I’ve noted above, may not be commendable, but is understandable.

Cheers,
July 14, 2010, 3:23 pm
zuch says:

klohy: In fairness you seem an intelligent person. But debating you on this topic has been a little bit like shooting fish in a barrel. You are not well versed in the area and clearly have not had the benefit of following (and participating in) extensive discussions on Mann, hockey sticks and related topics over the past few years. Every issue we have debated here has been exhaustively covered in various forums (consensus and skeptic alike).

You gave me some links to learn up on. I didn’t bother earlier, but I will now take a look:

IC that this link that you proffer:

http://landshape.org/enm/creating-a-statistical-model-with-a-cherry-picking-process/

is just Stockwell restating what he said in his article (and stating, FWIW, that the article wasn’t peer-reviewed).

And the you give this link:

http://rankexploits.com/musings/2009/tricking-yourself-into-cherry-picking/

which shortly arrives at this gem:

To screen out the series that prove themselves insensitive to temperature, I’ll compute the autocorrelation, R, between Hadley monthly temperature data and the tree-ring data for each of the 154 series.

Yes, indeed, a far better source of knowledge of statistics than is Mann et al. Should have lerned my sadistics heer furst.

How about the third proffered “edeucational” link:

http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/11/22/292/

Just more of the same ‘argument’ repeated, along with some denigrating non-scientific comments casting aspersions on the AGW scientists:

Continued acceptance by the premier global warming scientists demonstrates a clear political bias at the top of the global warming community, leaving the world at the mercy of the conclusions of a large power hungry government organization. (this was written in Sept of 2009)

Now that the emails have been released including what appear to be discussions of bending data to fit the pre-determined conclusions, elimination of ‘skeptical’ editors and manipulation of IPCC rules to prevent the points here from being made, the truth of my statement is apparent.

Oh, yeah, and the first comment on this blog post asks whether Alan Jones has picked up on this on his radio show….

And what is it I’m supposed to learn from all this, klohy?!?!? I seem to be missing it….

Cheers,
July 14, 2010, 4:49 pm
klohy says:

Zuch,

I know that I said that I was done with this discussion (you just repeating your same flawed logic does not make it any more valid), but I can’t resist one last response.

Your claim about me -”Look, it’s not me that cites a reference that can’t be found and then goes on and proclaims what it said” – is itself a link to a reference that can’t be found (Error 404 – Not found)! Priceless.
July 14, 2010, 5:44 pm
zuch says:

klohy: … you just repeating your same flawed logic does not make it any more valid….

Just linking to blog pages that make the same damn ‘arguments’ about “hockey sticks” as we’ve already run into the ground, and then pretending they have something to say about statistics, doesn’t mean they’re anything other than just the same tired ‘argument’ rewarmed.

klohy: Your claim about me -“Look, it’s not me that cites a reference that can’t be found and then goes on and proclaims what it said” — is itself a link to a reference that can’t be found (Error 404 — Not found)! Priceless.

My apologies there. It was a typo; some text got accidentally pasted over part of the link that shouldn’t have been there.

The link as it got mangled:
http://volokh.com/2010/07/11/climategate-revisited/If%20one%20replaces%20the%20spatial%20field%20in%20the%20CFR%20approach%20by%20a%20single%20time%20series%20(e.g.,%20hemispheric%20mean%20surface%20temperature),%20then%20the%20approach%20reduces%20to%20an%20EIV%20variant%20on%20multivariate%20regression.

The link as it should have been:

Look, it’s not me that cites a reference that can’t be found and then goes on and proclaims what it said.

or in text, not link form:

http://volokh.com/2010/07/11/climategate-revisited/#comment-877259

(which is a link to a previous comment on this thread, which I’m quite sure was readily accessible by other means).

But it was my typo, so mea culpa; it is indeed embarrassing. What about yours? Why was your typo lifted from the M&M article, eh? Did you actually read the original article, or did you just rely on what M&M said?

Cheers,
July 14, 2010, 6:21 pm
klohy says:

Zuch,

I tried to give you a cite in a standard format and thought the easiest was to copy from the M&M comment (not “article” as you say). There was a minor error in the cite, whether it was the fault of M&M or PNAS typesetting, I don’t know. You of course jumped directly to a conclusion. Your comment that this minor error made the cite “a reference that can’t be found” is just foolish. What did it take you to find the original paper – maybe 10 seconds of googling? The fact that you continue to harp on this minor error says far more about you than me. Yes, instead of saying “Stockwell D, (2006) Reconstruction of past climate using series with red noise. AIG News 8:314.” I should have said “Stockwell D, (2006) Reconstruction of past climate using series with red noise. AIG News 83:14.” Wow, shoot me. It is, however, quite delicious that you made a similar error in castigating me for my horrible failing.

I don’t get how you can continue to say that I mischaracterized what Stockwell said. I was correct from the beginning. You were wrong (but it is clear you will never admit it).

I assume you realize that those “blog pages” that you so readily dismiss are written by people with damn sight more experience in these areas than you. Lucia, for example, has a PhD in statistical mechanics and is a respected research scientist. In the comments sections are contributions from at least three professors of statistics or econometrics and multiple other qualified contributors. Perhaps I would take you more seriously if you had a substantive criticism of what they said. I don’t see what your complaint was with the paragraph you quoted from Lucia unless you are complaining about her non-standard use of the word “autocorrelation” instead of “correlation”. If so this is rather foolish, focusing on semantics rather than the substance.

Looking back, I see I never addressed your failure to understand my reference to Mann’s supplemental information. The point was (as I have said multiple times) that the reconstruction changes materially if you both eliminate both tree rings and the Tijlander sediments. Of course, you again won’t admit the obvious.

You also write this paragraph:

To be included, the series need to be validated, and that involves seeing if they correlate to local temperatures. If they correlate, they are a “proxy”. Even if we assume that “land usage” was responsible for the correlation found, these sediment records are still an indirect proxy (of some power). What you’re saying in essence is that we don’t really know, as we would for oxygen isotopes in ice, all the mechanisms leading to the sediment variability so as to understand why we have the correlation … which would imply we ought to use a two-tailed test … and include the proxy if it’s sufficiently good (and discard it only if it can be shown that the proxy isn’t a reliable predictor for other reasons). Would you have us picking and choosing (umm, you know, like “cherry picking”) which proxies to use on ad hoc basis?

This is so bad, it is not even wrong. No, we do know the physical theory that relates sediments to temperature. However, we also know that the relationship broke down in the calibration period because of land use contamination. As a result, the proxy cannot be calibrated and should be excluded. I think even the most dogmatic AGW supporters (even William Connolley!) now accept this. You can continue to be pig headed. It will, however, be hard to take seriously anything you say in the future.
July 14, 2010, 7:45 pm
Metamorf says:

Clive Crook, The Atlantic, “Climategate and the big green lie”, July 14/10:

By way of preamble, let me remind you where I stand on climate change. I think climate science points to a risk that the world needs to take seriously. I think energy policy should be intelligently directed towards mitigating this risk. I am for a carbon tax. I also believe that the Climategate emails revealed, to an extent that surprised even me (and I am difficult to surprise), an ethos of suffocating groupthink and intellectual corruption. The scandal attracted enormous attention in the US, and support for a new energy policy has fallen. In sum, the scientists concerned brought their own discipline into disrepute, and set back the prospects for a better energy policy.

I had hoped, not very confidently, that the various Climategate inquiries would be severe. This would have been a first step towards restoring confidence in the scientific consensus. But no, the reports make things worse. At best they are mealy-mouthed apologies; at worst they are patently incompetent and even wilfully wrong. The climate-science establishment, of which these inquiries have chosen to make themselves a part, seems entirely incapable of understanding, let alone repairing, the harm it has done to its own cause.

Contrast zuch.
July 14, 2010, 8:08 pm
zuch says:

klohy: I don’t get how you can continue to say that I mischaracterized what Stockwell said. I was correct from the beginning.

Right here:

zuch:

[klohy]: On a related note, you show a complete misunderstanding of the statistical issues in response to my comment that you cannot drop just part of a proxy without a physical reason for doing so. Your response was “Mann said why they dropped the data, as I’ve pointed out here [repeatedly] as well.” Mann’s rationale was the divergence from the temperature record. This is not a physical reason. A physical reason would be an explanation why the tree rings suddenly ceased to be good proxies e.g. fires, damage, drought, human development. Just dropping proxies because of divergence is bad statistics, and as Stockwell shows, is guaranteed to produce a hockey stick. Geddit?

Stockwell never “drop[ped] just part of a proxy”. He didn’t address the cutoff of the tree-ring proxy data post 1960 [“drop just part of a proxy” because of “divergence”]. And his ‘demonstration’ of a “hockey stick” had nothing to do with that; this seems to be your misunderstanding, and you have never admitted this error.

I stand by my words. I note that “divergence” is the term used for the tree-ring discrepancies in the later part of the 20th century. It is not lack of correlation, which is what Stockwell says is the reason for dropping some series (leaving only correlated series). I really don’t think you knew what Stockwell said or did.

klohy: I assume you realize that those “blog pages” that you so readily dismiss are written by people with damn sight more experience in these areas than you.

Argumentum ad verecundiam, always a winning argument. Then why do they write like one-note eedjits and partisans?

klohy: Lucia, for example, has a PhD in statistical mechanics and is a respected research scientist.

Then you’d think she’d know what an “autocorrelation” is, eh, rather than use this term repeatedly in her “Method: Step 2″? Or perhaps she did hit the “Autocorrelate” button…..

klohy: In the comments sections are contributions from at least three professors of statistics or econometrics and multiple other qualified contributors.

Yes, I notice that McIntyre chimed in there…. Got a regular ~~circle-j~~party going, IC. ;-)

klohy: Perhaps I would take you more seriously if you had a substantive criticism of what they said.

Perhaps you have difficulty recognising (or understanding) substantive criticism when you see it. I’ve made my points here, and there’s nothing on those web pages that differs in any substantial way, or adds on to, what we’ve already gone over here. I think, actually, I’ve already said that:

zuch: Just linking to blog pages that make the same damn ‘arguments’ about “hockey sticks” as we’ve already run into the ground, and then pretending they have something to say about statistics, doesn’t mean they’re anything other than just the same tired ‘argument’ rewarmed.

* * * * *

klohy: I don’t see what your complaint was with the paragraph you quoted from Lucia unless you are complaining about her non-standard use of the word “autocorrelation” instead of “correlation”.

Let’s see if we can make it clear to you:

klohy: And are you seriously defending Mann’s response to the upside down sediment series? Really? You claim to have expertise in statistics, so does this comment make sense to you: “The claim that “upside down” data were used is bizarre. Multivariate regression methods are insensitive to the sign of predictors.” Firstly, CPS is not a multi-variate regression method (you agree?).

And as I noted above, EIV (also used by Mann in the paper M&M criticised) is multivariate regression.

klohy: Looking back, I see I never

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