by Rud Istvan
This instantly ‘famous’ 2013 Science hockey stick paper derived from Marcott’s 2011 Ph.D thesis at Oregon State University, available here. His thesis doesn’t show a hockey stick ‘blade’ projecting above its anomaly baseline NCDC 1961-1990. H/T to Jean S, posted at Climate Audit. Something changed after the thesis was published to produce the new ‘blade’ in Science. That something was significant, since the Science paper’s Supplementary Information discussion said it did not enable discriminating such a temperature variation (i.e. a ‘blade’) on such a short a time scale.
See my previous post here, Lets Play Hockey Again, which was right about the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) but wrong about the ‘blade origins. Mea Culpa. Here we deduce whence the ‘blade’ came using ‘crowd-sourced’ science.
First, SI table S1 and thesis figure C1 confirm both use exactly the same 73 proxy records. The only difference is that thesis series MD98-2181 was renamed KY07-04-01 in the SI.
Second, thesis figure C7 graphed each proxy series individually using the mean and 2 sigma error band from its Monte Carlo statistical error estimation technique. A visual check confirms that there is no near T0 (1950) ‘blade’ visible in any of 73 dithered proxies, although five have distinct upticks near ‘present’ (the past 100-200 years or so visually). These include Dome C (Antarctic ice core δD with ±30% uncertainty), MD98-2165 (equatorial Mg/Ca), TN057.17 (temperate diatom mat with ±0.75°C uncertainty), Agassiz Renland (Arctic borehole δ18O with ±30% uncertainty), and GeoB3910, an equatorial alkenone. The thesis itself shows (below) that these are insufficient to uptick the ensemble.
Importantly for what follows, figure C7 also shows start and end dates for each proxy series as given by their references, along with their proxy age/date [radioisotope] controls. 20 unequivocally carried through about 1850, and 9 extended beyond T0 (1950). All the other proxies ended earlier in time. For example, proxy MD95-2043 (Cacho 2001, alkenone, Western Mediterranean) ended about 942 AD per its reference, with a notable ending uptick from the Medieval Warm Period. Remember this proxy for a couple of pages more.
Third, the outstanding Ph.D thesis on which this Science paper was based does not contain a hockey stick ‘blade’ anywhere. We can compare five important correlated pieces of information from its chapter 4 and supplemental data to deduce where and how the Science ‘blade’ originated. To start, both 2000-year reconstructions were compared to Mann 2008. The purple lines are the ‘standard’ simple area weighted mean 5×5 grid reconstructions.
The Science ‘blade’ is obvious. It does not exist in the thesis. Something changed.
The ‘blade’ (above anomaly baseline) is visibly present in all Science reconstruction methods, yet in none in the thesis. It is therefore not an artifact of the various reconstruction methodologies. Something changed in either the data or in the data processing algorithms to produce the blade in Science.
The blade is obvious in the mean of all 1000 dithered Monte Carlo proxy simulations in Science, yet is non-existent in the equivalent 10000-simulation thesis mean. The thesis error band widens symmetrically and significantly as T0 is approached. It must, given that Science reported the mean proxy resolution is 180 years, and the median is 120 years. This validates the thesis’ basic statistical algorithm as directionally correct and obviously useful.
The schematic algorithms used to generate the above error information are identical. Without comparing the underlying code, it is impossible to ascertain with complete certainty that there was no algorithm change in Science. But beyond any reasonable doubt, the ‘blade’ arose from some data change rather than from some algorithm change
The ‘blade’ is only present in data for figure S12a’s 20-year sampled reconstruction after 1900. It is not present in the 100-year version that goes to 1900, and which closely tracks the 20-year version to that time. Although lower frequency sampling will mask any earlier changes, significant data changes obviously occurred in the years after 1900 where the blade arose.
The latitude coverage in Science and the thesis is identical (horizontal grey bars). It has to be, since using the same proxies. The number of Mann2008 proxy records increases identically as the present is approached (vertical tan bars). They have to, since the same study. In both Science and the thesis, the number of Holocene proxies available at ‘2000’ is identically about 70. It should be. (And actually is exactly 70 based on scrutiny of thesis figure C7). These figures appear to be accurate visual representations of the underlying analytical facts.
But the number of Holocene proxies is not the same after about 1550 (500 before T0). Oddly, Science includes more proxies until after 1900. Even more oddly, in the thesis 9 ‘survived’ 1950, yet in Science none did.
Zero. And that is the proverbial smoking gun. The data were changed by re-dating, and Science figure 1G proves it without digging into proxy details buried deep within the SI proxy data spreadsheets.
The authors of this paper re-dated selected proxies after the thesis to take advantage of ‘mean dropout’ to fabricate a ‘blade’. As proxies end, only those that remain contribute subsequent information. Three ‘proxies’ over five time periods illustrate how this works. Each hypothetical ‘proxy’ individually signals no change over time, although proxy 3 oscillates neutrally around a 0 anomaly.
Time period 4 3 2 1 T0
Proxy 1 -1 -1 -1 -1 na
Proxy 2 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1
Proxy 3 +1 -1 +1 -1 +1
Recon. mean +1/3 -1/3 +1/3 -1/3 +1
To generate the blade in Science, it sufficed to ‘pull back’ in time some ending downtick proxies, and pull forward to T0 some ending upticks. It is evident from 1G compared to 4.3C that 9 were pulled back at least a few decades. We shall look at one below. It is also evident that about 10 others were pulled forward, since in Science at 1850 (100 before T0) there were still about 30 proxies in the area weighted mean, while in the thesis there were only about 20. The Science ‘blade’ was manufactured by ±time shifting proxy start/end dates to take advantage of mean dropout. Unfortunately, time shifting from reference dates with associated multiple age controls is nowhere noted or justified in the Science paper or the accompanying SI prose. It should have been.
The bigger question is whether it was justified even though not disclosed?
Comparing SI proxy data to the original reference data shows exactly what was done, and discloses whether re-dating might have been justified. The inestimable Climate Audit[or] Steve McIntyre has done so for the alkenone proxies (31 of 73 total), the largest subgroup. Steve plotted the re-dated Science SI alkenones using the paper’s ‘standard’ weighted area mean 5×5 reconstruction (SI data spreadsheet page 2, column AJ) to produce remarkable ‘McIntyre 1’:
The rise from 1920 to 1940 is over 1°C (more than IPCC AR4 over a century), ending far above the anomaly baseline NCDC 1961-1990, and even above NCDC 1990-2010 (red)! Alkenones alone essentially explain Science figure 1a.
Steve emailed Dr. Marcott on or about 3/13, inquiring how this ginormous sudden rise could be. The response was that the Science paper said uncertainty increased toward T0 as fewer proxies were available, so this result was probably ‘not robust’. He never said that to his many MSM interviewers about the new hockey stick, saying instead “It’s really the rates of change here that’s amazing and atypical”. Not robust but still amazing? Steve’s email gave Dr. Marcott an opportunity to mention re-dating. He chose not to do so, perhaps unaware that published figures 1G versus 4.3C provided conclusive ‘smoking gun’ evidence without studying the gory SI data details in the SI Excel spreadsheet.
Marcott was probably also unaware that Steve had already said publicly that proxy re-dating was problematic, and that he would comment on it. The day after publishing Marcott’s nonresponse, Steve published his re-dating comment, with McIntyre 2 worth more than a thousand words. Black is Science with Marcott’s re-dating. Red is Marcott’s thesis before re-dating.
(Steve’s time axis is reverse labeled from Science, counting up not down.)
To get this subset result Marcott pulled back two negative alkenone proxies so they did not contribute to the most recent 20-year points. OCE326-GGC30 with a steady decline was pulled back 191 years despite three radiocarbon age controls in the past two millennia. Here it is from figure C7 with its radiocarbon age controls (+).
The second ‘re-dated’ negative alkenone proxy (SI#23, Isono 2009, off central Japan) seems particularly indefensible. This proxy record is an unusually valuable composite of a piston core plus a box core from the same location. Piston cores penetrate deeply to sample long ago sediments, but the coring process makes the top unreadable (typically for many hundreds of years). Box cores are shallow in time, but preserve resolution to the core top. Isono dated his core top to 1991 (Marcott’s date notation -41), and carefully spliced the cores together with a large overlap period to create a long continuous record with about 32-year resolution. The reference core top date must be approximately correct, since 3 cm below was the classic isotope ‘bomb spike’ caused by atmospheric nuclear weapons testing in the 1950’s. Since it is not possible to ‘re-date’ the incontrovertible beginning of the atomic era, the most recent three (negative) proxy data points of Isono’s proxy just ‘disappeared’, conveniently removed from the 1940 Science ‘blade’ calculation. (Excel NaN [Not a Number] is triggered by division by 0.)
5 other alkenone proxies with ending upticks were pulled forward. MD95-2043 ends at ‘942’ according to its reference and 7 age controls. It of course shows a distinct MWP peak at its end. Marcott pulled it forward exactly 1008 years to T0 1950, so the MWP onset contributes to the 20th century blade. (This wonderfully precise re-dating had the additional ‘virtue’ of diminishing the MWP signal.) Here are the proofs from Science SI Excel data comparison
Here are MD95 2011 (pulled forward an ‘unexplained’ 510 years) and 2015 (pulled forward an ‘unexplained’ 690 years) from thesis figure C7:
No justification is given for such extreme re-dating of proxies containing numerous radioisotope (+) age controls. If the original reference papers had large date errors, these should have been corrected in the thesis. In the absence of any kind of explanation, this has the appearance of either gross incompetence then or fabrication now.
The curious minor re-dating of GeoB 6518-1, oddly pulled back just 32 years, shows beyond any reasonable doubt it was not incompetence. Quite the opposite; the re-dating appears to have been carefully and skillfully done. This post 1950 uptick was pulled back just enough so that all of it got included in the pre-1950 ‘blade’ reconstruction. Here is that proxy from thesis figure C7:
Note the post-1950 age control (+) that Science re-dating overrode.
Hockey is a fast contact sport. The whistle has blown on an obvious high stick foul just 11 days after Science first published Marcott’s hockey stick. This post is with sincere thanks to the formidable Steven McIntyre of Climate Audit, to whom I ‘passed the puck’ in my previous on-line posting ‘Let’s Play Hockey Again’ at Dr. Judith Curry’s invaluable Climate Etc.
JC Comment: This post is a follow-up to Rud’s previous post, which now has over a thousand comments. Again, I am not personally digging into the science aspects of this study, although I find the sociology of what is going on here very interesting. All this makes Mike’s Nature trick seem straightforward.
Reblogged this on Climate Ponderings.
A sign of recklessness, or insanity, to tout such a flawed paper in the manner it was. And yet, the lie dashed its way around the world, while Steve was putting on his boots.
The brittleness of the narrative is being exposed. Fragile it is, gently, gently.
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I’m stifled by tight-fitting giggles at the closeness of 1939.07 to 1940. Ooh, what a close shave that data had.
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Are the skeptics saying the temperature didn’t rise nearly a degree since the LIA, as Marcott said, or are they just saying Marcott is right for the wrong reasons? I haven’t followed the debate on this, but I think his temperature rise is about right compared to thermometers, especially for land areas.
Much too smart for this, Jim D. Say it ain’t so.
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kim
Faith is a blessed thing – even when it’s blind.
Max
So the skeptics ARE saying that the thermometer temperature didn’t rise that much over land, and that is why this is a big deal? Maybe someone else can explain it better than kim did.
Observe the narrative need for catastrophic warming, observe the recent lack of warming, observe the presentation of this paper by authors and funding source, draw your own conclusions, and please put them out here. All ears, here.
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I don’t follow. You think 1 C since the LIA would be catastrophic or just truly what happened over land?
The warming since the Little Ice Age has been massively beneficial for human culture and for the whole earth’s biome. The next such warming, if we get it, will also be massively beneficial for all concerned.
But we’re not likely to get it. CO2 as a warming agent is impuissant, and the next glaciation looms.
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Jim D, there is a commenter named ‘hmmm’ who has said @ 8:13 on the latest Core Top thread @ ClimateAudit in response to Richard Teleford what I tried to say to you above.
Your pretended innocence is revelatory, just as Richard’s is to hmmm.
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Kim, so you are comforted by the upward spike that continues into the future, or would you prefer it to stop going up now?
Well, since it’s imaginary, I shadow box with it.
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Kim, you mean imaginary like the Arctic sea ice disappearing is imaginary, or imaginary like the Argo ocean heat content rise?
Marcott’s spike, and future extensions of it, are imaginary. Global warming since the depths of the Little Ice Age are not imaginary. There is a difference, and confidence in attribution has something to do with it.
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Marcott’s spike is somewhat similar to what you might get by plotting BEST. So, do you expect it to now go flat suddenly or tail off to flat more gradually while also noting that CO2 shows a sharp recent rise.
If you compare Marcott’s spike to BEST, you are comparing apples and oranges, and the resemblance is co-incidental. In this case the co-incidence is the result of fraudulent manipulation of the data, ordinarily criminal were the public involved.
Hey, we are involved!
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And Jim D, you’ve given yourself away. From past commenting, we know you are too smart for this line of reasoning. We also know that Mann, Marcott, and Shukan are not too smart for this line of reasoning.
So, please, stop embarrassing yourself, and giving the whole game away.
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Consensus is agreement. You can describe consensus by what they profess to believe. Skeptics do not have consensus and you cannot say one thing to represent what skeptics believe. You cannot cover what skeptics believe with any blanket statement.
kim, Fan below compared it to HADCRUT3. It agrees with that too. Had Marcott just used the temperature record, this graph would have been fine. The skeptical types are splitting hairs to say he somehow got it right with the wrong methods. Their whole complaint is somewhat muted because it draws attention to this type of Holocene graph, which they normally would not want to do for obvious reasons.
Jim, there are a couple of problems. The manipulations of the data are one set of problems. I am waiting for the response from the authors since I don’t see anything so far that they wouldn’t have known about and thus must have perfectly legitimate reasoning at their fingertips for why they did the things that are being listed as issues. The problem that the paper has in general even, if the answers the authors can provide are convincing, is that the resolution of the bulk of the paper is over several hundred years and the comparison is being made to 100 years. Average in the LIA with the last century and you have a comparable comparison. The argument that we just know this time it will be different and the warming will be sustained and substantial just isn’t going to be convincing to skeptics. They don’t use the same crystal ball that you do and the future is less certain.
Apparently you just don’t get it, but I’m surprised and dismayed.
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We can but hope that the warming will be ‘sustained and substantial’. Look at Marcott’s Holocenic graph, such as it is. Yes, I choose warming.
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kim, I get that this is all a personal attack on young scientist named Marcott, but it distracts from what the Holocene temperature record actually says, which is a lot like Marcott showed.
Jim D, you are a case study in how true belief in the CO2 control knob can blind one to the flaws, and the mistaken memes derived from them, in this paper.
Yes, Jim D, Marcott’s overly smoothed Holocenic curve shows us nothing about the present but that we are at the cool end of the Holocene. And you want to demonize the one weak weapon we have against glaciation? Madness, over the long term.
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A billion years of evidence goes into the control knob plus actual physics that quantifies it. Complete denial of such an effect is not rational. A true skeptic would say it is possible, but (then fill in an idea that also explains the data, or something that explains why they think the data are wrong but coincidentally confirms the control knob).
Kim, I lean more towards the methodology suggested by the scientists during the non-cooling scare of the 70s. Putting soot on the ice to prevent the expansion of the poles. We know soot works. CO2 we aren’t so sure about.
Apples and oranges? Set a Best apple and a Marcott orange in a room. Check their temperature after 11.3 hours.
One is not going to be room temperature?
An imaginary rise is beneficial to delusional folks such as kim. The rise would be good if it existed, but it doesn’t exist. That’s called a rationalization trick-box.
The problem with people like that is they have no self-awareness and can not even understand the inconsistencies that come out of their mouths.
Yes, some of us can look at the data and theories dispassionately and understand the statistics and science for what it is. Others can’t, which includes the schleptics and the plausible deniers and that crowd.
Good idea to read this account on “Meta-rationality”:
https://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/2013/03/15/meta-rationality/
which is the extension of “unfooling yourself”
What is also troubling is the amount of gaming that goes on. It’s meta-irrationality when you can no longer tell if the arguer is actually taking a real stance or is simply trying to prank the argument, either by becoming increasingly preposterous or silly.
I don’t know what to call this other than a kind of trolling prank that seems to be in vogue. There is certainly evidence that this exists based on ridiculous survey responses . It also occurs on TV shows such as Jay Leno where people intentionally appear as clueless or embarrassing as possible when asked questions on current events.
Typical dialog between Siri and a Plausible Denialist
Siri: The average global temperature is increasing.
PD == No it isn’t.
Siri: But it is.
PD == Well that’s good, as I like it warmer.
Siri: Glad to see you agree
PD == Only as far as it keeps us out of an ice age.
Siri: So you do accept GHG forcing?
PD == No
Siri: What other mechanism is halting the slide to the ice-age then?
PD == What is happening is irrelevant when you consider the emails.
Siri: What does that have to do with science?
PD == Feynman. At least he plays fair.
Siri: That is quite an accomplishment since last I heard he is dead.
PD == Chaos suggests that he could come back to life, as the death attractor is weak in comparison to the power and resiliency of the earth.
Siri: Well that is good to know, as we can harness that power with wind turbines and PV technology.
PD == That’s no good — too many birds and bats are killed
Siri: Is that something we can deal with?
PD == Not when it forces people to go hungry, as bat-meat is prized in certain cultures.
Siri: But the energy source is important too, is it not?
PD == Au contraire, we have endless fossil fuel supplies.
Siri: Wouldn’t that cook us in terms of GHG generation?
PD == It is endless but within limits.
Siri: What you are saying is that alternatives will be within reach should the time come?
PD == Yes.
Siri: So you have smart guys working on this?
PD == Willis is street smart, as it takes street smarts to have s*x with three women at the same time.
Siri: How do you know that?
PD == He told me hisself.
Siri: What else does he say?
PD == The GHG theory is wrong.
Siri: What are the alternate theories?
PD == There are dozens and dozens of them … some guy keeps a list.
Siri: Among these dozens, they can’t all be right, can they?
PD == Only empirical evidence can prove them wrong.
Siri: But lack of direct evidence is what you use to challenge GHG.
PD == Only because climate scientists are incompetent and can’t prove AGW in a laboratory setting, like Cavendish Labs in Cambridge using glass boxes and such.
Siri: Perhaps education can change that.
PD: Yes, we can lure Prof. OManuel out of retirement.
Siri: What do use as a lure?
PD: How dare you! This is civilzed discourse.
—
That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Which are melting, BTW.
Jim D: So the skeptics ARE saying that the thermometer temperature didn’t rise that much over land, and that is why this is a big deal?
Analysis has shown (pending some really good explanation by Marcotte et al) that there are problems with the Marcotte et al Science paper; and the main result widely hyped by Marcotte and the press is not supported by the data.
If you have other reasons for believing in AGW, so be it. This paper is in trouble.
Webby
I love your simplistic “typical conversation” approach.
Let me give you an alternate (using the same characters:
Typical dialog between Siri and a Plausible Denialist
Siri: The average global temperature is increasing.
PD == Not right now it isn’t.
Siri: But it did until 1998.
PD == That’s OK with me, as long as it doesn’t start really cooling for a longer time.
Siri: But the models say it will warm even more rapidly.
PD == All model predictions so far have failed, from Hansen 1998 to the IPCC TAR/AR4 forecasts.
Siri: Well, but there was warming, wasn’t there?
PD == Until around 1998, yes, at half the rate predicted by Hansen, but after that, no.
Siri: OK. So you agree that there was some late 20thC warming, even if much less than predicted?
PD == Yes.
Siri: Would you also agree that human CO2 emissions were a primary cause for this warming?
PD == Not really, as there is no empirical evidence to support that hypothesis.
Siri: Yes, but we have many model runs, which provide evidence for CO2 as a principle driver
PD == No they don’t. Model outputs are only as good as the inputs (GIGO).
Siri: But, if CO2 really is a potent GHG, as the models demonstrate, shouldn’t we curtail emissions?
PD == Only if this can be done at no added cost to humanity over the use of fossil fuels.
Siri: But there are studies, which show that curtailing GHG emissions will save us money long term.
PD == I have read what Bjorn Lomborg has to say on this, and he disagrees this is the best choice.
Siri: What would you think is the best choice?
PD == Get more data first to see if GHGs really are a problem.
Siri: But, assuming these data confirm what the models are telling us, what then?
PD == We should prepare to be able to adapt to any climate challenges that Nature or GHGs pose locally or regionally, if and when these appear imminent.
Siri: But wouldn’t that already be too late?
PD == Not really. Why should it be?
Siri: A carbon tax would help us set our priorities and reduce fossil fuel use, wouldn’t it?
PD == Lomborg has addressed this; a carbon tax simply puts an added burden on society with no positive effect.
Siri: But we have to do something, don’t we?
PD == Not really. Most important is to get our data right first, before we embark on any corrective actions
Siri: Wouldn’t a world-wide extension of Kyoto help all nations work together to solve the problem?
PD == I believe this is a pipe dream – there will never be a binding global agreement signed by all nations.
Siri: But shouldn’t we in the industrially developed world set the good example of reducing our CO2 first?
PD == And commit economic suicide in the process – what for?
Siri: Doesn’t someone need to take leadership here to solve this problem?
PD == What problem?
Siri: Well, the emission of all that CO2 to levels we haven’t seen in millions of years.
PD == But what’s the problem?
Siri: We don’t know for sure that there is a problem, but there could be one.
PD: Like what, for example?
Siri: Well, warming of up to 6°C over this century.
PD: There isn’t enough carbon in all the fossil fuels on Earth to reach 6°C of warming.
Siri: How in the world do you figure that?
PD == WEC tells us that be 2008 we had used up 15% of the total recoverable fossil fuels that were ever on our planet, leaving 85% in place then.
Siri: That seems like a very high estimate of remaining fossil fuels; I thought we are facing “peak oil”.
PD == Yes, but even at this high estimate, we could never exceed 980 ppmv CO2 when all are gone.
Siri: That can’t be right – how did you figure that?
PD == If 15% got us from 280 to 385 ppmv in 2008, the remaining 85% will get us to 980 ppmv.
Siri: OK, I guess that’s right, but still that is a very high level and will cause major warming.
PD == Like how much, would you estimate?
Siri: Again, I think that could lead to warming of 6°C, or even more .
PD== Wrong. At the latest ECS estimates of around 1.5°C, this could lead to 2°C warming; at the old IPCC estimate of around 3°C, this could lead to 4°C warming – both as an asymptotic maximum ever attainable if and when all fossil fuels are 100% used up some 200-300 years from now.
Siri: I never looked at it that way, but it makes sense; but don’t you think 4°C warming is too much?
PD == The more likely number is 2°C, since it is based on latest data on ECS.
Siri: But don’t we have to include ALL the GH warming since pre-industrial times, adding 1.5°C?
PD == Why? We’ve already seen (and enjoyed) that warming without any bad effects.
Siri: But that’s the convention we use in climate science.
PD == A silly convention. Change it.
Siri: You’re telling me that all I’ve read by IPCC and elsewhere is wrong and that AGW is no potential threat to humanity or our environment.
PD == Yep. That’s what I’m telling you. But go out and question things critically yourself and see what you conclude.
Siri: OK. Thanks for the tip.
PD == You’re welcome
MiniMax,
How is that serial data manipulation coming along?
http://judithcurry.com/2013/03/10/new-perspectives-on-climate-sensitivity/#comment-304226
Is it that you just can’t help manipulating data? More of that gaming strategy of yours, eh?
Now I understand why Willard calls you MiniMax.
And don’t worry, I documented the atrocities, so there is a record should you decide to update your flikr account chart.
As I think McIntyre pointed out, most (or all?) of the proxies are marine sediments which should correlate with SST’s or even deeper ocean temp.’s, not the higher and more “volatile” atmospheric temperatures. Even in Rud’s post above he shows that the 1920-1940 temp. is way off the actual.
I would say this story has a hard time getting traction unless they show the result is wrong in an important way (i.e. one the public would understand, not a time shift error that can’t be seen on a 10000 year scale). Unfortunately for skeptics their emphasis only brings out the kinds of graphs that Fan has shown here, with thermometer records and projections, which won’t help the skeptical cause to make public.
“Marcott’s overly smoothed Holocenic curve shows us nothing about the present but that we are at the cool end of the Holocene.”
Well that’s the the climate skeptic error in a nutshell.
If it’s overly smooth then how can you possibly know we are at the cool end?
How do you know the past 100 years of warming haven’t already taken us past the holocene maximum?
You can’t know that, not unless you accept a way of comparing the instrumental record with proxy reconstructions.
Sad, lolwot; the smoothing doesn’t eliminate a warmer end and a cooler end of the Holocene.
Not shown, of course, by this study, but many series do show higher temperatures at the Holocenic climate optima.
I take your point about melding temperatures and proxies for them, but the problem is intractable at present. The problem will remain intractable, and tarnish everything it touches, so long as climate science tolerates academic misbehaviour such as this article by Dr. Marcott illustrates.
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“Marcott’s spike is somewhat similar to what you might get by plotting BEST. ”
Are you being ignorant on purpose. Marcott has no spike. He manufactured it by pulling MWP data forward. His idea was to show that proxy data supports instrument data. But it does not. He has no proxies to show what he claims. His proxies don’t show contemporary warming. His real proxies don’t support the instrument data. Only his fraudulent data does. Best data is also fraudulent. It claims that UHI is negative. Hundreds of studies show that it is hugely positive. Only the satellite data can be trusted. But it shows nothing alarming. Some warming is happening. But so what. The earth is always either warming or cooling. And the current warming is neither alarming or unusual.
JCH
The BEST apple and Marcott orange will both be within 0.01C of room temperature, but the Marcott orange will not be edible – because it is rotten, as the posts by Rud Istvan have demonstrated.
Max
> Now I understand why Willard calls you MiniMax.
Yup.
At least I don’t call him MaxiMin.
Willard, thanks for documenting the atrocities.
One of the reasons that I come back here is that I am very tuned into Rovian strategy of attacking your opponents strong points, applying projection, and setting up strawmen.
The more that the skeptics try to obscure some hidden truth, the deeper the hole that they dig themselves. Witness, MaxiPad’s attempt to stop the leakage of his failed attempts to debunk the very simple log(CO2) fits to the land-based warming.
Those are the places that it pays to keep investigating. When one gets closer to hidden truths, the more the anti-scientists howl with disapproval. For some strange reason, it also helps with motivation. Something to do with Illegitimi non carborundum.
willard (@nevaudit) | March 21, 2013 at 8:36 am |
> Now I understand why Willard calls you MiniMax.
Yup.
At least I don’t call him MaxiMin.
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How noble of you! Almost as noble as me calling you Wee Willie instead of Swillard. Our charity doth overfloweth.
WebHubTelescope | March 21, 2013 at 9:01 am |
” Witness, MaxiPad’s attempt to stop the leakage of his failed attempts to debunk the very simple log(CO2) fits to the land-based warming.”
Hmmm… WebHubColonoscope and MaxiPad. You two are almost kissing cousins huh?
Land-based warming in the higher latitudes of the northern hemisphere perhaps. Everywhere else, not so much. You know why. CO2’s effect on surface temperature is negligent where there is water free to evaporate in response to the increased downwelling mid-infrared radiation. It’s a straightforward property of water that it evaporates when illuminated with EMR in that frequency range. It’s what causes the topmost millimeter of the ocean’s surface to almost always be 1C cooler than the water below it. Given ocean surface is over twice land surface and some of the land some of the time is quite wet this drags down the average that CO2 warming can acheive on a global basis. It’s why you boys were blindsided by a 15-year (and still growing) pause in the rise of global average temperature. Someday you’ll publically accept what I’ve described. I’m pretty sure you privately accept it even now and are just too emotionally vested in the catastrophic anthropogenic warming narrative to let go of it. Sort like it’s hard for babies to let go of the ba-ba or the binky or the blanky. The global warming narrative has become an essential part of your existence and you don’t know what you’d do without it. I feel your pain but I’m real glad I don’t share it.
I appreciate Springer’s almost plausible argument. He is claiming water will evaporate directly from infrared radiation without raising its temperature.
An individual molecule can only directly vaporize from an absorbed photon if that photon possesses enough energy to transfer to the molecule so that it can overcome the heat of vaporization barrier.
On the other hand, a thermal bath works in a statistical mechanical fashion, and it is only enough that a Boltzmann factor is applied to ensembles of water molecules to determine the probability of a single molecule leaving the surface. This leads to the Clausius-Clapeyrone law and Henry’s law.
The infrared photons that dominate the downwelling spectrum are all individually less energetic than the heat of vaporization required. Therefore, the infrared radiation transfers it energy to vibrational and rotational states of the liquid water, and that thermal energy can diffuse away from the surface, thus raising the temperature of the water both near the surface and below it through diffusion, eddy diffusion and convection. This temperature rise allows the water to evaporate through Boltzmann (aka Arrhenius) activation.
Springer is sounding more like Myrrrhhh.
@Web: The problem with your argument is that it presumes that there is not a statistical distribution of kinetic energies among the top-most water molecules, such that a certain percentage of them are within a single photon’s energy of the heat of vaporization. That, of course, is silly.
Qbeamus, Stop with the negative logic. Articulate what you want to say like a normal person. What I described is thermal activation.
1. Its not just skeptics who object to the modern area part of the chart.
2. The rise shown in the graph is
A) at the wrong time
B) not supported by the math or analysis.
I will say that a few folks who believe in AGW have privately expressed their disapproval of the chartmanship. Its unnecessary. Its Wrong, but without it perhaps there is no headline because the paper confirms what we already knew. we are close to be as warm or warmer than it has been in the past 12K years. That observation isnt very interesting since the question is how much warmer will we be in 30,50,100 years.
That is an eminently sensible and well-written argument, steven mosher. Bravo!
Mosher’s Corollary An efficacious remedy for a short flimsy single-study hockey blade is a long robust multi-study blade!
Steven Mosher:
The answer is most likely not a whole lot warmer and chances are the globe will be a whole lot colder!
You are chasing the wrong problem and the only defense is to adapt to the coming cooling.
Stephen Mosher: You wrote: the question is how much warmer will we be in 30,50,100 years.
That is easy to answer. It will follow the pattern of the past ten thousand years. After the oceans warm and the Arctic does open, it always snows more and tips us back toward colder. Place yourself at about this temperature in the Medieval Warm Period or the Roman Warm Period and look 30, 50, 100 years beyond and that will be closer than any other model. Earth’s past data is the best model for the future.
CO2, aerosols, solar cycles, orbit cycles, etc, might change the temperature a little, might try to change the temperature a lot, but this well bounded cycle has a set point that is based on the temperature that Arctic Sea Ice melts and freezes.
This is the real tipping point. When the Arctic opens Earth cools and when the Arctic closes Earth warms.
Steven writes:
“I will say that a few folks who believe in AGW have privately expressed their disapproval of the chartmanship. Its unnecessary. Its Wrong, but without it perhaps there is no headline because the paper confirms what we already knew.”
And therein lies the problem. Why don’t these folks publicly express their dissaproval? Why are only the skeptical sites discussing the issues with the paper? Surely by now the pro AGW side must see that silence is not helping their cause.
“without it perhaps there is no headline.” Don’t you think you could have removed the equivocating phrase “perhaps” from that sentence?
Tim:”Surely by now the pro AGW side must see that silence is not helping their cause. ”
The AGW side own the mass media and the journals. They got out the story that they wanted to get out. Why should they debate the critics/deniers? Jim D has given the AGW crowd’s serviceable non-response, for propaganda purposes. Don’t expect a comprehensive, legitimate defense of the paper. It ain’t necessary. The only meaningful place to attack this crap is in the Republican controlled Congressional oversight committees. Defund the funders of this crap.
” the paper confirms what we already knew”
There are hundreds of AGW papers that are wrong that are used to “confirm” the theories of your cult. But just because they tell you what you want to hear, does not make them true.
Tim.
Why dnt they express their disapproval publically?
That’s a good and fair question. I suppose there are as many different answers as there are people.
1. they dont feel like its their job to police science. Science is self correcting and maybe after 40 years or so as with piltdown man the bad stuff will be dropped.
2. They dont want the same done to them.
3. They dont want to get twisted up in the climateball circus.
4. They saw what happened to Judy.
5. They dont have time or have better things to do.
Like one guy, looks at it, reads it quickly, and says Bullshit, they cant get
that spike from those proxies.. He aint gunna spend time on bullshit
6. They think criticism should be private and praise public..
Many many reasons, none of them says much about physics.
me? I can criticize it openly. why?
“we are close to be as warm or warmer than it has been in the past 12K years.”
Horse manure. It was warmer 6000 to 8000 years ago and the Arctic was clear of ice in the summer then.
“because the paper confirms what we already knew. we are close to be as warm or warmer than it has been in the past 12K years.”
How come I don’t know that?
“no headline because the paper confirms what we already knew. we are close to be as warm or warmer than it has been in the past 12K years.”
I don’t think this argument can be reasonably made yet, and I wish it could. I certainly haven’t run across any evidence to support this conclusively.
Steven Mosher writes:
“1. they dont feel like its their job to police science. Science is self correcting and maybe after 40 years or so as with piltdown man the bad stuff will be dropped.”
Steven, I respect your posts on this site and others, particularly because of your fidelity to the proper use of language. I am dumbstruck by this sentence. Do you not see the inconsistency in that statement? How can science be self correcting if other scientists don’t feel like it is their job to police science? Exactly who should police science? Politicians?
This topic isn’t some dry, obscure academic debate that only a few specialists care about. People are demanding action – large, expensive action based on “the science.” Out comes a paper that gives support to the most aggressive corrective actions. The press highlights the findings (i.e. another validation of the hockey stick). Steve McIntyre has documented significant flaws with the paper which challenge the hockey stick conclusion. Yet others that agree with him are silent.
Nice. And people wonder why skeptics remain so.
Steven Mosher | March 20, 2013 at 10:40 pm |
“me? I can criticize it openly. why?”
Because you don’t have a career in climate science to worry about. You don’t have to go along to get along. You can say whatever stupid things you want without consequence. That’s why. Same as me in other words. But unlike you my predictions that date back to 2006 are right on target with regard to black carbon being far more significant than thought in NH glacier and sea-ice melt and anthopogenic global warming in general being highly exagerrated with unjustified extrapolation from a natural warming cycle. Seven years later and 15 years into a cessation of lower troposphere warming I was bang on right. AGW is on the order of 0.05C/decade globally and it’s a good thing because it is largely delivered to high northern latitudes in the winter which benefit from milder winter temperatures.
Thanks for playing. Better luck next time.
Don Monfort | March 20, 2013 at 12:33 pm |
+1
Herman Alexander Pope | March 20, 2013 at 9:45 am |
“This is the real tipping point. When the Arctic opens Earth cools and when the Arctic closes Earth warms.”
Exactamundo! I’ve made an analogy to Arctic sea ice and the thermostat in an automotive cooling system many times. Snow and ice make a great insulator. It’s why the inside of an igloo is 60F higher than outside with just body heat to warm the interior. It’s why sled dogs bury themselves in snow when they sleep. When Arctic sea ice opens up more it exposes more water to evaporative and radiative cooling both of which are nullified when ice covers the water. Only conduction can move heat from water to air through an ice cover and ice is a piss poor thermal conductor.
Why more people don’t arrive at this common sense conclusion that no engineer worth his salt should miss is a mystery to me. Good for you. I noted your prediction last fall of greater snowfall this winter and almost prophetically people up north are now asking what the F is up with all the cold and snow on the first day of spring. Good call. You da man.
lolwot | March 20, 2013 at 7:13 pm |
“How do you know the past 100 years of warming haven’t already taken us past the holocene maximum?”
Because over 100 higher resolution proxies from all over the world including the Antarctic penninsula covering just the past 2000 years indicate it was warmer during the MWP than it is now. If today isn’t the warmest time in the past 2000 years it can’t possibly the warmest time in the past 12,000 years either. Write that down.
Jim D – the Dan Rather of Climate Etc. The papers may be obviously forged, but the story is still true. So, in the words of the worst Secretary of State we have ever had – “What difference does it make” if people are lying.
Gary,
Love the analogy. Now, will people remember what this did to Rather’s credibility? Then again, perhaps it doesn’t matter. Credibility doesn’t appear to retain the value it once held.
May or may not be. You don’t know these papers were forged. there was a difference of opinion on that. The full actual records have still not been made public despite many requests. But you don’t care to believe it even if it were true do you? In this respect you demonstrate the same lack of care for the truth that the climateers show. Different ideologies, same human traits!
JimD, Did you read the post? The blade is a statistical artifact and the author acknowledges its not robust. The time resolution of the reconstruction is 5 orders of magnitude longer than the resolution of the land surface record. So it is nonsense to talk about relative rates of warming as one of the authors did in an interview.
We simply don’t know how the last century of warming compares to the last 12000 years based on this paper. It adds nothing new as Mosher points out and the press reports and the authors statements are totally unsupported by the science itself.
Your approach is one of either willful ignorance or deliberate obtuseness. You cannot separate the paper from its PR. The PR focuses on the uptick wrongfully shown in the headline graph – an uptick that was obtained, apparently, through deliberate manipulation of certain datasets, as show in McIntyre’s analysis and nicely summarized and explained above by Rud. Examples of the PR are shown here:
True face of climate’s hockey stick graph revealed – http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23247-true-face-of-climates-hockey-stick-graph-revealed.html
We’re Screwed: 11,000 Years’ Worth of Climate Data Prove It – http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/03/were-screwed-11-000-years-worth-of-climate-data-prove-it/273870/
Global warming is epic, long-term study says – http://edition.cnn.com/2013/03/08/world/world-climate-change/index.html
Global temperatures are close to 11,000-year peak – http://www.nature.com/news/global-temperatures-are-close-to-11-000-year-peak-1.12564
Scientists Find an Abrupt Warm Jog After a Very Long Cooling – http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/07/scientists-find-an-abrupt-warm-jog-after-a-very-long-cooling/
The latter headline is from Revkin – who should know better.
So far, what we have is a relatively unexceptional plotting of early Holocene temperatures. The resolution of that plotting makes it impossible to determine whether there were any centennial (or less) temperature swings during periods such as the Minoan, Roman or Mediaeval warm periods. In fact, as you yourself argue in this thread, the study shows nothing about modern warming. The lack of resolution, however, means that you cannot compare their graphing of the early Holocene with the 0.7 – 0.8 degree C. temperature change experienced over the course of the 20th century. As Robert Rohde noted in discussion with Revkin:
“The 20th century may have had uniquely rapid warming, but we would need higher resolution data to draw that conclusion with any certainty. Similarly, one should be careful in comparing recent decades to early parts of their reconstruction, as one can easily fall into the trap of comparing a single year or decade to what is essentially an average of centuries.”
The temperature spike shown at the end of their “headline” graph was only obtained through apparently deliberate manipulation of core top dates – manipulation that resulted in excluding some data while including other. Neither the paper nor its SI includes any justification for this re-dating: while a general assumption was given (i.e., core-top dates were to be assumed to be 1950 unless otherwise provided in the source), they have changed the dating of core tops which have clear and well defined dates. Those changes were made without explanation and only by doing so, were they able to obtain the apparent temperature spike at the end of the graph (one which actually does not correspond with measured temperature changes, given that their study date stops mid-20th C).
This approach and manipulation of data should be condemned not condoned.
Ian,
Thank you. It was looking like nobody was going to respond rationally to Jim D’s seemingly innocent musings.
Jim,
Either I have given you more credibility than deserved up to now, or you are playing cute.
Which is precisely the point. The data end points were purposely changed to make the graph appear to correlate with thermometers. In other words, the error is not an error, it was deliberate. This makes it scientific fraud.
Rud Istvan
Thanks for all your efforts in exposing this study as yet another “shtick”.
Max
Thanks. I merely stand on the shoulders of Giants like Steve McIntyre and Judith Curry and Anthony Watts and…
But I thought I might contribute a nice lawyerly bow tie to this particular debacle.
Regards, and enjoy my book on same.
It’s well done. I expect that the “discourse” on this paper will continue for a while.
Good article! What book are you referring to?
Serious question: did you actually read the paper (freely available through Google Scholar)? Because in the version I read, the blade is explicitly not robust and the authors repeatedly insist that their method cannot capture high frequency information.
” He never said that to his many MSM interviewers about the new hockey stick, saying instead “It’s really the rates of change here that’s amazing and atypical”. ”
He’s talking about the instrumental record and projected warming. Note that the current warming is not a high-frequency “spike”, because it is expected to be durable – even if we completely stop pumping CO2, temperatures will remain high for centuries.
Readme, So the Author’s knew the blade was not robust, knew the blade did not exist in the thesis, knew the method could not capture high frequency information, yet included it anyway for exactly what reason? Dramatic effect, academic suicide, 15 minutes of fame or to trash Science mags reputation?
“It’s really the rates of change here that’s amazing and
atypicalspurious”. Would have been better or perhaps ““It’s really the rates of change here that’s amazing andatypical nonsense that tends to discredit paleo-climate”It wasn’t very long ago that a number of Paleo-climatologists banded together to express their displeasure with liberties being taken. The Paleo Reconstruction Challenge was initiated to restore the reputation of paleo-climate. Now we have a new Phd arbitrarily re-dating the diligent work of the true paleo-climate “professionals” in a haphazard manner to get published in a glossy.
For some reason I am not in the least surprised.
Capt dallas:
It would not be surprising if the goal of the authors was to discredit some of the Paleo research and Science mag for publishing/ promoting this drek.
Temperature will remain high just about as long as temperature remained high during the Roman Warm Period and the Medieval Warm period. This normal and natural warm period should and will be much like the warm periods that happened before in this ten thousand year paradise that we have enjoyed. More CO2 will make green things grow better while using less water, but temperature and sea level will stay inside the bounds of the last ten thousand years.
+1
It’s hard to enjoy it with all the Cassandras yaketty-yakking and trying to increase my taxes. :)
Herman,
You forgot to mention that this benevolent period will be washed out in the paleclimate record because of the low resolution proxy measurements used.
Paleoclimate?
Jeff, Paleclimate is a keeper,
“I looked, and there before me was a paleclimate! Its rider was named Energy Poverty, and Hades was following close behind him. They were given power over a fourth of the earth to kill by regulation, famine and plague, and by the wild Polar bears of the earth.”
I reckon that would be a paraphrase.
Readme-
You write- “Because in the version I read, the blade is explicitly not robust and the authors repeatedly insist that their method cannot capture high frequency information.”
It may come as a surprise that when queried by Revkin, Mann began with the following Media Chyron-
“The key take-home conclusion is that the rate and magnitude of recent global warmth appears unprecedented for at least the past 4,000 years and the rate at least the past 11,000.”
Given that the blade is not robust, and the data’s 0.003 yr^-1 cutoff frequency cannot reveal high rates of change or multicentennial temperature extremes, here is an obvious, serious question:
Did Mann (who is rumored to have been one of the reviewers) actually read the paper?
Naw, Michael ‘Piltdown’ Mann ran with the convenient narrative, inconveniently untrue. He runs, and nature holds the rope.
============
Readme: He’s talking about the instrumental record and projected warming.
The “projected warming” is not actually the topic of the thesis or the Science paper. The issue here is how the analyses for the Science paper produced such a different result from the analyses for the thesis. So far, Marcotte et al have not explained how both can be reasonably accurate.
Readme
Maybe yes.
Maybe no.
We (that includes you and me plus Hansen, Trenberth, Jones and the IPCC) don’t have an earthly notion what is going to happen to our “globally and annually averaged land and sea surface temperature anomaly” over the next two years, let alone the next few hundred years.
To think otherwise is simply fooling yourself.
Don’t fall into that trap.
Max
The next two years and the next hundred years will find temperature in the same bounds as the last ten thousand years. This is the new normal.
Readme, the answer to your question is self evident. I read the paper, the SI, and studied the Excel data. And the thesis, whence some of the figures come. How else could this have been written.
I agree with you about the caveats. That was my previous post. But those have gotten ‘forgotten’ in the MSM reporting of this result. Go see the Atlantic headline “we’re Screwed”. And he was not talking about the instrumental record. He was talking aboutnhowmhis Science paper showed an alarming upturn in the proxies. I thought as you did originally, hence the mea culpa at the beginning of this guest post.
Regards
The “MSM” made him do it.
More apparently, Marcott, Shukan, and the funding source, made the MSM do what they wanted to do anyway. This is not even a sporting contest, to play with narrative as at jacks, while nature blows the scratchings in the dust around.
===================
No, the reviewer(s) probably suggested it or pressure from his advisor to make it sexier so it could be a “Science paper” did. The MSM just did what it always does – go for the flashiest headlines and the ones they like best are the ones that happen to agree with their own political and “moral” beliefs.
So, Readme, what does the paper actually(maybe) show? A downward trend(smoothed as troubled waters) throughout the Holocene. How about a lifeboat drill on this ship of state instead of a polar bear viewing side excursion?
===================
This is the most favored part of the Holocene for sea ice because the northern summer is in the furthest part of the orbit from the sun, but somehow the sea ice is disappearing anyway. The Holocene Optimum melted the ice age glaciers because at that time the northern summer was closest to the sun in the 25000 year precession cycle. So now we are half a precession cycle away from that.
There is a lovely irony about the climate discourse in here, and a yawning dilemma for the alarmist narrative. I was amazed to see this sentence in CNN’s first reporting of this article: ‘If not for man-made influences, the Earth would be in a very cold phase right now, and getting even colder’.
========================
Indeed, CO2 levels are now near 400 ppm, which is what they were about 20 million years ago, so this is what prevents it from being the coldest in 10000 years. Last time we had 400 ppm, we had no Greenland ice cap or Arctic sea ice and sea levels were higher. The ice ages didn’t start until 2 million years ago when it first dropped to less than 300 ppm. It’s your control knob effect.
‘coldest in 10,000 years’. Yes, Jim D, you are becoming aware of the narrative dilemma, emerging from the mist like a locomotive.
============
It pays to understand paleoclimate. It means there are no surprises in what is happening now.
JimD, “The establishment of the modern meridional and zonal SST distributions leads to roughly 3.2 degrees C and 0.6 degrees C decreases in global mean temperature, respectively. Changes in the two gradients also have large regional consequences, including aridification of Africa (both gradients) and strengthening of the Indian monsoon (zonal gradient). Ultimately, this study suggests that the growth of Northern Hemisphere ice sheets is a result of the global cooling of Earth’s climate since 4 Myr rather than its initial cause.
My bold. link http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1324186/
The “modern meridional and zonal SST distribution” is a result of the Drake Passage and Panama changes. The Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) provides a wealth of information.
There is also a few new studies based on the GFDL (Toggweiler et al. among others) models that indicates that the density gradient due to fresh water in the Arctic is not sufficient to halt the THC.
Annan and Hargreaves or was it Hargreaves and Annan have a new paper that indicates a much lower “sensitivity” based on paleo-reconstructions.
There is a whole new world of Earth Science unfolding before our very eyes.
Oh, how many surprises the surprising Doctor Marcott’s smoothing hides.
===================
JimD, BTW, I was curious how much impact the isolation of the Antarctic had on global temperatures based on the normal radiant balance, so i did some quick estimates using the Meridional energy flux based on the satellite based SST OI v2 data.
http://redneckphysics.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-isolation-of-southern-pole.html
As a rough check, I am incline to believe Brierley and Foderov has a pretty state of the art Ocean model.
Jim D
Guess that mean the Antarctic sea ice is at the closest part of its orbit in the summer there, right?
How do you explain that end-summer Antarctic sea ice is growing (end-February 2013 = 29% above the 1979-2000 mean baseline)?
Max
JimD, Ever really wonder if climate was controlled by insolation or ocean circulation?
Nielsen has.
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-KP7wTwKqG4g/UUkuweyzcsI/AAAAAAAAHhg/SyVMsdYW_iA/s912/southern%2520ocean%2520recon%2520nielsen%25202009.png
That is using 1950 as present.
Those are irregular 1450 to 1700 years pseudo-cycles. Since the Ice age frequency shifted from 41ka to ~100ka, there is no good reason to think they might not have another shift in store. A possible double dip Holocene with the same roller coaster ride. That “abrupt shift at the end started in ~1900ad, which is about what the new hockey stick master should have noted. As they say, timing is everything.
I think there has been some mention of unpredictable natural variability on fairly large scales, ~+/- 2 C degrees or so, but not much more, at least for the oceans.
Jim D
I cited the Antarctic sea ice extent anomaly compared to the 1979-2000 baseline.
But even more interesting is the GLOBAL (Arctic + Antarctic) sea ice extent for the latest month (end-February).
It is at 18.49 million square km, compared to a 1979-2000 baseline of 18.58 msk, or 0.5% below the baseline after all these years.
Amazing, right?
Hardly any change at all,
Max
Jim D | March 19, 2013 at 9:03 pm | Reply
“This is the most favored part of the Holocene for sea ice because the northern summer is in the furthest part of the orbit from the sun, but somehow the sea ice is disappearing anyway. The Holocene Optimum melted the ice age glaciers because at that time the northern summer was closest to the sun in the 25000 year precession cycle. So now we are half a precession cycle away from that.”
That’s all bunged up. Axial precession is the big Kahuna and it’s only halfway to the extreme the favors glacial advance. Apsidal precession, which you describe, isn’t quite that simple.
Earth’s furthest approach to he sun is currently July 5th, a bare two weeks into summer. It has to occur in the hottest part of summer, around August 5th, for the greatest effect to which you refer. But you have a point because it is indeed in the summer and it could be in the winter. However, that’s a double edged sword. Northern hemisphere summer is now about 4 days longer than northern hemisphere winter. That’s because orbital speed changes with position within the elliptical orbit. At the closest approach to the sun the earth is moving the fastest in its orbit. So although insolation is weaker now in the summer because of the ellipse summer also lasts longer and the result is a wash favoring neither winter nor summer total insolation.
Be that as it may the planet is going over the hump in axial precession moving towards the favorable stage for glacial advance. You seem disappointed that the interglacial period isn’t showing any sign of ending. I understand tree huggers. Trees are good. But you’re an ice hugger and that baffles me. What’s good about ice? Trees don’t grow in ice. Nothing grows in ice that I’m aware of. Please explain the rationale of ice hugging.
Earth’s
furthestclosest approach to he sun is currently July 5thTypo fix
Plus one.)
Yr award, Kim, was meant ter link ter yr 8.55 pm
‘troubled waters’ comment.
Rud Istvan, what is your reaction hockey super-stick that is being promulgated by the Dutch climate-science website Klimaatverandering?
Rud Istvan, are climate-change denialists not fiddling, but quibbling — indulging in demagogic denialism’s trait #13: quibbling — while the planet burns?
Rud Istvan … quibbles aside … is it scientifically plausible that the hockey super-stick is real?
The world wonders, eh?
‘warming quickly’? Says who and why? Not this study, my child.
=============
• 13 Quibbling The emotional faith that cherry-picked refutations of weak climate-change science suffice to refute strong climate-change science.
The good news, kim, is that the habit of quibbling *can* be unlearned! Indeed, the Pontifical Academy of Science is planning an entire conference focused upon the moral necessity to address these serious topics seriously:
Sustainable Humanity, Sustainable Nature
Joint Workshop of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences
and the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences
2-6 May 2014
That will be a *GOOD* scientific conference, eh kim?
Will your conference understand that a warmer world sustains more total life and more diversity of life?
===============
Kim, the Pontifical Academy of Science is unlikely to embrace your Panglossian philosophy, for sound scientific reasons, eh?
I hope kim reads about optimist Candide in that first link.
Voltaire tends my garden, when I’m too busy.
====================
a fan of *MORE* discourse: • 13 Quibbling The emotional faith that cherry-picked refutations of weak climate-change science suffice to refute strong climate-change science.
Quibbling, again?
The result widely reported from the paper is not supported by the data, and the result contradicts the results of the thesis. If you disagree, then show how the result can be obtained from the data, and reconcile the thesis and the Science paper. Otherwise you are a waste of time.
‘Fan’, if you wish to debate, bring facts rather than aspersions and emoticons. Else, best go elsewhere. Since I speak fluent German and grok Dutch, your reference to the Dutch website Klimaatveranderung (Klimatveranderung auf Deutsch) carries about as much weight as a reference to John Cook’s SkepticalScience (where even the site name is the opposite of the site facts).
No regards to you.
Rud Istvan, logical form and factual content of your reasoning strikingly parallel the logical form and factual content of Willis Eschenbach’s reasoning … perhaps everyone here on Climate Etc can appreciate that, eh?
Rud,
Is his thesis really “outstanding” or just a good one? Do you know enough about this area to make that conclusion? Not being snarky, just wondering. I mean there are many very good PhD theses out there in many areas. And this one did not tell us much new and may have understated the MWP. I would save the “outstanding” (personally) for a thesis that discovered a new cancer drug or a new mechanism for a disease that immediately suggested ways to look for new treatments. And this kind of funding is getting pushed out by all the funding into climate and alternate energy sources.
“The Two Epochs of Marcott” in Dutch? Is that double Dutch?
It is odd that according to Dr. Marcott our grandparents in the 1900s spent their freezing childhood in a climate colder than 95% of the Holocene, while in the 1930s they sweated and raised families in almost the top quartile. And none of them thought to mention it.
LOL +2
@ Fan It seems like when one is supporting a losing proposition they should recognize it sooner rather than later and quit digging the hole deeper. I can tell that as the evidence mounts against you, on any number of fronts, you are getting a little more desperate, which accounts for all the slightly off point comments. Reading your comments in five years should be a hoot.
@dennis adams
To Fan you say
‘ Reading your comments in five years should be a hoot.’
They are already pretty tittifillarious.
Fan’s (supposedly) conclusive answer to any point witters on about his and James Hansen’s ‘moral worldview’.
Last time around he invoked the Pope on his side as well. A fine man in many ways no doubt but not a guy, I surmise, with a detailed knowledge of paleoclimatological statistics.
The cynics among us might consider this theological interruption to be a second rate attempt at distraction.
But however hard Fan tries to avoid it, the elephant is still in the bathroom.
12 standard deviations, huh? That’s some prediction. Some would call it crazy, but not this hunney-bunney.
fan,
I recently came across some emoticons that should be a required attachment for most of your posts.
(_o_) an ass that’s been around
(_zzz_) a tiresome ass
(_?_) Dumb Ass
We are cooling, folks; for how long even kim doesn’t know, but Doctor Marcott knows it’s been about 11,000 years.
=============================
CGC says alarmist kim.
Kim:
Somewhere in the neighborhood of 5,000 years! ;)
A fan of *MORE* discourse | March 19, 2013 at 9:18 pm
Actually, no, the world doesn’t wonder, Fan. Because while you may still be wondering, the rest of us can smell garbage when it is laid out in front of us.
The paper was published once without the blade of the hockey stick, and by munging the same data, published again with the blade … and you wonder if the blade is real?? Really???
Start at the top and read the whole thing again, my friend … you clearly didn’t understand Rud’s clear expose of the scientific malfeasance. If you still don’t get it, go read Climate Audit.
And if you still don’t get it … well, then what are you doing in serious scientific discourse?
w.
Hmmm … the “morning Willis” and the “evening Willis” are strikingly different personas: posts by the morning Willis are commonly are well-reasoned, polite, and even charming, whereas the evening’s posts commonly are bellicose, abusive, and even irrational.
Perhaps tomorrow morning’s Willis will appreciate that the Hockey Super-Stick is an ingenious synthesis of multiple independent lines of evidence, such that cherry-picked quibbles that focus upon a small number of Marcott end-point proxies are only marginally relevant to the overall scientific issues?
The question asked … quibbles aside … bluster aside … abuse aside … is straightforward: is it scientifically plausible that the Hockey Super-Stick is soberingly real?
Nope. Nada. Nein.
And you had best leave your disgusting ad hominem slurs elsewhere.
Judith has a lot on her plate, and should not have to deal with the likes of you and yours.
At any other site you would have been murderated by now.
Auf Wiedersehen. Hoffentlich bis ins Ewigkeit.
Again my deepest disregards
Rud Istvan, custom requires that you use the word “ilk” in referring to folks who believe (like me and the Pope) that James Hansen’s worldview is likely to prove broadly correct, both morally and scientifically.
Note, for example, that advanced Google search finds 213,000 results of the general form: “You and your ilk are getting more and more desperate”.
your colleague in “ilk”, FOMD
Fanny
You asked a question:
Rud Istvan gave you a straight answer: “NO”.
Assuming you were referring to the “daddy” of all hiockey sticks, the Mann et al. version, there are many reasons for arriving at this conclusion, Fanny, regardless of where one sits on the ongoing scientific debate surrounding AGW and the CAGW premise, as outlined by IPCC in its AR4 report.
The biggest reason is that it has been statistically discredited (even before the “hide the decline” discovery) by McIntyre and McKitrick.
This was corroborated under oath before a congressional committee by the Wegmancommittee.
http://republicans.energycommerce.house.gov/108/home/07142006_Wegman_Report.pdf
The Wegman committee concluded that the M+M critique was valid for statistical reasons having nothing to do with climate science per se and that the “hockey stick” conclusions were not valid.
http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/StupakResponse.pdf
These findings were validated again under oath before the same committee by a panel from NAS.
http://www.energy.probeinternational.org/climate-change/lawrence-solomon-under-oath-north-faults-mann-too
The whole grisly tale leading up to this and following it can be read in Andrew Montford’s book.
So, in this case, it is no longer scientifically plausible that the Mann hockey stick is real.
It also casts serious doubt on the claim made by IPCC in AR4 that the “warmth of the last half century is unusual in at least the previous 1,300 years”.
Now, as far as Marcott et al. is concerned, it has already come under scathing attack (by Rud Istvan and others). Deep flaws in the methodology and some last-minute finagling of data have been exposed.
In view of all the rebuttals and falsifications that have already come out, I’d say that there is only a very slim chance that it is “scientifically plausible that the Marcott et al. paper is soberingly real”.
My guess is that it will, like the Mann hockey stick, end up on the trashheap of scientific history as yet another bogus paper.
But we shall see.
Max
a fan of *MORE* discourse: The question asked … quibbles aside … bluster aside … abuse aside … is straightforward:
Is the result of the Marcotte et al Science paper supported by the data and analysis? You seem to want to write about everything else but that.
How can it possibly be plausible when one of the authors has previously published a totally different graph while citing exactly the same base data? I cannot help but agree with a previous commenter that either the original thesis is incompetent or the latter one deceptive. Given the analisys in the post,I lean towards deception,but please feel free to demonstrate incompetence.
@ A Fan
The question is not whether
‘James Hansen’s worldview is likely to prove broadly correct, both morally and scientifically (*)’
it is whether the paper under discussion can be distinguished from attention-seeking junk.
And it seems pretty clear that the answer to that is ‘No’. Even if Marcott’s underlying thesis work is correct (which has yet to be reexamined) he has polluted the paper beyond repair by this tacky Hockey Stick stunt.
Sadly for him he may well have done similar damage to his career. Like Gergis before him, the hubris of media attention will lead to the nemesis of being damaged goods.
*And it’s news to me that science or indeed ‘Science’ progresses by the use of concepts such as the morality of a worldview. Nor by being ‘broadly correct’.
When I trained in science it was about data and observations. What a long way it has travelled in 35 years! And to this observer at least – in exactly the wrong direction.
Excellent work like Rud’s and Steve McIntyre’s and Jean S’s and Doug Kennan’s and many others is beginning to nudge it back to the correct course.
But it is noticeable – and shocking – that all the guys doing us this invaluable service are – in the best sense of ‘lovers of the subject’ –
amateurs. The so-called ‘professionals’ do little but close ranks as they watch their monstrously unscientific edifice take heavy fire and slowly crumble about their ears.
They have nothing better than vapid statements like
‘my worldview is broadly morally correct’.
Tosh and balderdash!
‘
Thank you for that good question, MRM! The simple no-quibble answer is, that Steve Mosher called it right!
Now … what is the natural, logical, and crucially important follow-up question, Matthew R Marler?
As Rud has already said, any suggestion that Willis is in any way different in the morning, afternoon or the evening is an ad hom.
To comment on personal characteristics instead of focussing on the argument is a surefire indicator of fighting a losing battle!
Willis kind of invites it on himself with all the talk of his setsual escapades. Is that the attention-seeking junk you guys are talking about?
a fan of *MORE* discourse: Steve Mosher called it right!
Yes he did! The part of the paper that has generated all the publicity (“warming at an unprecedented rate”, and all that) and got it accepted at Science is unsupported by the data. Other than that, the paper only says that much of the time since the end of the Ice Ages was warmer than what we have now, and much of the time wasn’t warmer than what we have now.
Rud,
From below:
Willis Eschenbach | March 20, 2013 at 1:07 pm
I assume you’ll get right on that? No doubt, your “disgust” must be unbearable!
lol!
Peter –
Just because I thought you might like a refresher!
Willis Eschenbach | March 20, 2013 at 1:07 pm
Just to be clear, not an excuse for Fan’s sillyness… Just to comment on the never-ending irony of blog foodfights… lest anyone forget.
nor his silliness.
Rud –
Oops. Mistaken cut-and-paste above – I wouldn’t want you to miss your opportunity…
Only a matter of time ’till you take Willis to task. The countdown has started.
Of course, he could always offer the excuse that the “MSM” made him do it.
“Skeptics” = never-ending amusement.
Joshua, Willis may or may not be right about his opponents’ courage, but what he says is not an ad hominem. He is making an ethical point about them directly.
mike –
I think that arguments about what technically is or isn’t an ad hom is one of the most amusing features of blog discourse. It is almost always nothing other than a reflection of combatants’ inability (or unwillingness) to control for their own subjectivity/confirmation bias/motivated reasoning.
I get the distinction that you are making there, but: (1) I think that the distinction is unknowable, actually. Do you really think that in his rant about people being “cowards” – people I will point out that Willis doesn’t know personally, who he has formed a definitive judgement of with no actual information to assess their character – is not meant as a (at least partial) statement on their motivations and reasoning? Seriously? Do you think that you could ever impugn someone’s integrity so without also expecting carry-over to the validity of their argument?
And, (2) The main point I was making was the selectivity of “disgust” and concern about ad homs. Even if we did determine your distinction between insulting a person and criticizing their argument (a distinction I don’t accept), the precisely same reasoning could be turned around to characterize Fan’s post. In his post, Fan didn’t attack Willis’ arguments by virtue of attacking Willis’ character. He attacked Willis’ arguments by attacking the attributes of Willis’ arguments (by virtue of the silly distinction of when Willis posted).
If we wanted to play the “Blog Ad Hom Definition Game,” I’d say we could just as easily say that Fan’s posts is less of an ad hom, from a technical standpoint, than Willis’ rant.
The point is that neither Fan’s nor Willis’ syntax has any place in serious scientific discourse. So let’s just acknowledge that neither deserves to be taken seriously when they write such nonsense. Arguing about the application of ad hom to either’s comments only becomes more same ol’ same ol’
Well, perhaps Willis will speak for himself. For myself, that was exactly the impression I got as the point what he said: “This is wrong. These people have a moral obligation as scientists and human being to stand up against this kind of thing, as we expect them to stand up against plagiarism and fudging data outright.”
What’s more, I’ve heard him say this kind of thing before, so I think it matters to him. He went off topic here, but that’s his business.
Mike –
Guess we just have one of those agree to disagree scenarios. I think it is silly to assert that calling people he’s never met “cowards” is not attacking the integrity and validity of their arguments and scientific perspective. The logic is possible, but just not plausible, IMO.
How Willis might speak for himself seems immaterial: Someone could always claim their intention was misunderstood. What matters to me is the evidence available and the plausibility of the arguments. Say what you will about Willis, but one thing he has done is provide plenty of evidence. IMO, just the fact of habitually and loudly passing judgement on the character and motivations of people he’s never met speaks volumes about the quality his reasoning when he goes “off topic” as you euphemistically describe.
Even if this were a one-off, I might have a different interpretation. It isn’t a one off.
It is a pattern that he repeats often, and even goes further to rationalize with his own version of “cowboy noble cause” justification. I know some people that grew up on ranches. They might be boorish in their weak moments, but they also stand up to be accountable for their actions. I fail to understand why anyone serious about climate “skepticism” would make excuses for Willis when he displays such fundamentally flawed, biased, and unscientific analysis.
IMO, I see some “skeptics” make some reasonable arguments – even skeptical I would say, but at times they leave a stain on the nobility of skepticism. This would be a case in point. I don’t see any way around it.
The same would be true for Fan’s weak argumentation. Wouldn’t you agree in that case?
Tell you the truth, I am not really competent to judge most of the scientific issues here. I’m more or less a spectator. But it seems to me that Willis attempts to present scientific studies on various topics. Someone else will have to judge their quality.
Fan, on the other hand, and _almost all commenters on almost all blogs_, is a spectator, not someone doing scientific work. As such, I ignore his comments entirely no offense intended, as I ignore most of what commenters say everywhere. It’s not that I don’t see why they think I should take their opinions seriously. It’s that I don’t see why they take their own opinions seriously. As I said, I am a spectator and I know it; they should too. Following blogs voraciously doesn’t make me an expert, reading and working out the scientific papers in the field is the only way to get an opinion I will take seriously.
The threading is a bit wonky here but this comment is for Joshua, who seems to think that I might have a double standard when it comes to ad homs. No, I don’t think that I do but as you have previously said, its all pretty subjective.
The difference between what Willis said in a generic sense about a group of people and what was specifically said of Willis as an individual by Fan is to me quite clearly the difference between a general snark and an ad hom.
Peter D –
Hmmm. Ok. I will acknowledge that is a difference of type. I’m not sure it substantiates a distinction between ad hom and non-ad hom – it is still attempting to demean someone’s perspective by insulting their character – but it is a difference.
But what does that difference mean? That it is better to demean numerous people that you’ve never met and that you have no interaction with whatsoever than to demean one person that you haven’t met but have interacted with through blog comments?
But tell me – you seemed to object to Fan’s comment on the basis of a logical fallacy embedded therein. Do you really think that Willis’ rant against (who knows how many?) people that he has never even met reaches some higher standard?
If we look beyond debate comparing the negative attributes of each post – do you see something about the value added in the different comments, respectively, that is worthy of note? If so, what would that be?
Joshua “The point is that neither Fan’s nor Willis’ syntax has any place in serious scientific discourse. ”
I agree with this (except to replace the word “serious scientific” with the words “general blog” because the territory seems not ideal for any degree of rigour) but acknowledge that arguing about semantics would be a waste of everyone’s time.
Fair enough, Peter.
Hahaha, a ‘Mark’ @ Climate Audit has the perfect roasting of an old chestnut:
‘Marcott is both valid and confirms the hockey stick. Unfortunately, the parts that are valid do not confirm the hockey stick and the parts that confirm the hockey stick are not valid.’
==================
Hehe.
We invented a hockey stick,
We invented it thrice,
Tryin’ ter show weather’s
Nasty, now, not nice.
I think we need a new convention to cover the use of the term ‘Doctor’ when applied to climate ‘science’.
I propose that the usual term ‘Dr.’ be applied to those who have completed a Ph.D. where as the term ‘Doctor’ be applied to those who have not only completed a Ph.D but have also then gone on to practise their doctoring on some real live data. Doctor Marcott might be an example…
Doctor is supposed to mean ‘teacher’. What is Doctor Marcott teaching us?
====================
Perhaps the term witch doctor is appropriate?
Or Dr of Illusion?
Go with the flow (especially of money)
Max
there’s another word for this kind of doctor: QUACK
Max,
Marcott may take offense at your quack comment.
He is, after all, a Beaver (Oregon State University) and not a Duck (University of Oregon).
Marais de Marcott.
==============
When Dame Edna was simple Edna Everage back in the seventies, she described leftist political hero Dr. Jim Cairns as “not a make-you-better doctor”. She said it with a tone she reserved for Catholics, migrants and Sydney people.
What about “not a make-you-better doctor” or NaMYBD after Ph.D.? At least for “earth sciences” and such like.
Lew,
How about doctor (Dr.) and doctorer (Drr.)?
Why is all this discussion necessary? It is an open and shut case of fraud. Obviously Marcott was “leaned on” to make the necessary changes but by whom? He is the guy who is going to face the consequences.
One of the most unfortunate outcomes of Marcott et al and Mann et al and the maneuverings of Mann and the gang will ultimately be a perceived black mark on the whole of science and the conscientious efforts of many in what may prove to be areas of significant concern.
In this case, I cannot see how the results in Science were not predetermined and then a method used to get those results formulated.
If one believes there is a strong AGW signature (I don’t) this kind of work
will ultimately prove negative rather than positive in convincing others.
This branch of science is imitating the ‘climate’ of politics. Politicians seemed to have moved from an ‘atmosphere’ of serving to one of winning.
Can anyone say there is currently a high amount of respect given to politicians, even though some may be supreme in their efforts?
DarrylB, your comment is trenchant. I worry about this also, but for other reasons. We face future resource and environmental issues far beyond the Euro crisis or the US budget deficit. None having to do with CAGW. Read my previous two ebooks on same.
At some point the debate has to get real. But that won’t happen until the ‘junk science’ represented by this paper ‘disappears’, rather than the solid contradictory data that this paper ‘disappeared’.
Regards
Hear, hear!
You are correct Rud Istvan! That is why you and I can both endorse the Vatican’s common-sense program for real climate-change debate
Aren’t these “Sustainable Nature” economic considerations wonderful, Rud Istvan?
The Church’s thoughtfully foresighted analysis is greatly appreciated, Pope Francis!
Rud,
I’ve repeatedly made similar comments on how there are far bigger issues needing to be addressed than potential impacts from “climate change” and attempts to focus resources on these suppossed impacts is most likely going to lead us down a dark alley.
Cue a fan comment with links to Hansen or some non-relevent graph.
Climate science, the Inquisition for climate data. Here the Torquemadas of smart hide it, invert it, re-date it, teleconnect it, manufacture it in computers models, and in short torture it in any way imaginable to get it to confess the holy truth of CAGW.
Michael Mann – you can’t Torquemada anything.
Remember, do yer remember
Upside Down Tiljander, back
in 2009? What goes around
comes around, an alkenone –
reconstructed – new – hockey – Schtick
from Marcott – Shakun – Clark and, er, Mix.
This is what Post-Modernist Science looks like. It is all about power and money and nothing else.
Kim: you are awesome this evening. Nice to see you stepping out with such vigorous eloquence.
+1
Kim is always good!
SP/MR
Kim drives the alarmists mad! Love every minute of it. I leave it to the master.
Isn’t that the point, that it’s all just a game to you?
WEB,
If there is a game involved, it is pin the tail on the donkey.
For this thread fan is on the verge of being recognized as a new sub species – the multi tailed ass(icon).
Rud, It was interesting to watch as the initial inklings that something wasn’t right with the study became voiced and looked at from different angles. I remain fascinated at Steve’s analysis of the proxies and study methods. Thanks for pulling all of this together as the information unfolds and working with Steve to lay it out in understandable terms.
As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, an essential part of Marcott’s method is that of perturbing the raw temperature data 1000x for each datum within the age-uncertainty for that datum. The Marcott Magic is that for 1950-dated data the age-uncertainty is zero. Marcott’s output is binned into 20-year bins, but with the zero age-uncertainty of 1950-dated data, those data do not cross-pollinate their temperatures into other 20-year bins, whereas everywhere else all the 20-year bins freely exchange temperatures. The outcome is that from 8400BC-1900AD the Marcott temperatures are very much smoothed, but the final 1940AD bin (holding 1930AD-1950AD data) is insulated, not exchanging temperatures with its neighbors, and so sticks out like a sore thumb with its raw non-averaged temperatures.
So Marcotte’s perturbation-algorithm guarantees that the 1940-bin temperature will be differently-formulated than all the rest of the Holocene in that it alone retains its raw average temperature. This was fine for Marcott’s thesis, because those temperatures were not, ahem, “fiddled”. For the “Science” article, however, they were indeed “fiddled” as outlined in the main article here, and also as analyzed by Steve McIntyre on his Climate Audit site.
I’ve outlined this before on other websites, and I presume this will be uptaken in the final analysis because it is an essential element of what was done in the Marcotte “Science” article.
NZ Willy,
How do you cram a proxy record measured every 120 years into a 20 year bin without interpolating the data or excluding the data?
The re-dating was so skilfully done that it took Steve McIntyre et al, hardly any time at all to discover the skill used :-)
The idea that weasel words of uncertainty can be contained within an academic publicly funded paper,whilst the authors go on a public relations spree stating certainty, is well just not science but PR for the cause.
To paraphrase Professor Feynham PR will always loose to science/nature.
While Republican politicians are gerrymandering congressional districts Democrat scientists are gerrymandering climate data.
I seriously begin to wonder if academics are really as bright as they like to tell us they are.They certainly don’t seem to be very worldly-wise.
Here we have four supposedly clever guys producing a paper with some results that are at least ‘surprising’ and it never seems to have occurred to them that somebody might just raise an enquiring eyebrow and wonder exactly how they were arrived at.
Nor did it seem to cross their mind that a reader might idly pick up Marcott’s PhD thesis on the same topic and note the striking differences. You do not need to be a Nobel Prize winner to imagine that the other eyebrow might become twitchy at this point.
Even a non-climatologist of only average intelligence might conclude that some definitive explanation for these ‘interesting’ phenomena will likely be needed. But that somebody might question their work appears to have come as a complete bolt from the blue to our Four Hapless Musketeers. ‘Rabbits in the headlights’ is the expression that springs to mind. After nearly a fortnight of brick by brick demolition, they have had no response whatsoever.
Sensible far-sighted authors would have addressed these points in their paper..and it wouldn’t be unreasonable to expect that even mediocre authors would have had a Q&A pre-prepared with the answers to the likely top 20 objections and talking points.
As to the peer-reviewers and peer-review process I think that the exercise so far has amply demonstrated how laughably inadequate it is. That no reviewer had eyebrows of sufficient mobility to prevent the paper being published without such explanations is ludicrous.
Anybody from the ‘real world’ who has ever been involved in presenting ‘new stuff’ (as I have) surely views this lack of preparation as shamefully amateur and deeply unconvincing. If the authors really wanted their work to be taken seriously they should have acted professionally and thoroughly from Day 1.
Instead they give the impression of not knowing their arses from their elbows.
“Here we have four supposedly clever guys producing a paper with some results that are at least ‘surprising’ and it never seems to have occurred to them that somebody might just raise an enquiring eyebrow and wonder exactly how they were arrived at.”
LOL Latimer. My thoughts exactly. Hard to fathom. I guess they don’t call it an “ivory tower” for nothing. Curious about the origin of the term, I found on a quick search that it originally appeared in the bible Song of Solomon 7:4:
“Thy neck is as a tower of ivory; thine eyes like the fishpools in Heshbon, by the gate of Bathrabbim: thy nose is as the tower of Lebanon which looketh toward Damascus.”
The idea being that “ivory tower” came to symbolize virginal purity and eventually a place of unworldly isolation.
Again, want to tip my hat to Fan, who continues to be the skeptics great ally and friend.
Pokerguy,
“Thy neck is as a tower of ivory”. Only the part at the top is virginal, untouched by the real world.
Cleverness and naïveté are not mutually exclusive. The process of earning your credentials in any group means submersing yourself in commonly shared memes. There’s little profit in being a maverick when depending on the acceptance of others. The danger, of course, is that the memes may not accurately represent reality and that more accurate ones are rejected by the group. A cabinet maker can be blindingly clever with three tools but he rarely if ever produces furniture as elegant as the one whose training included a dozen tools. But because of his restricted training, the former was taught that his three are superior and sufficient. Only curiosity and understanding of human nature might make this naive one question his circumstances before experience teaches its cruel lesson. Cleverness has little to do with it.
…but the thrill we’ll never know Is the thrill that’ll getcha when you get your picture on the cover of the IPCC (IPCC)
Wanna see my picture on the cover (IPCC)
Wanna buy five copies for my mother (Yes) (IPCC)
Wanna see my smilin’ face on the cover of the IPCC
More and more it seems that people with huge egos, power in isolation, (that is, with no over sight) and that live life’s separate from having to accept responsibility for their actions, increasingly feel that they are invincible. They will continue to test the borders of consequential actions because they have the feeling of being above it all and are immune.
Examples: members of congress texting nude pictures of themselves, ponzi
schemes which are certain to collapse, scientists presenting work which
almost insults our intelligence. (and a peer review process that is increasingly becoming a good old boys and girls club)
As a retired high school teacher, the foundation to what I taught seems to be crumbling and yes it does make me angry. I keep thinking that if it is apparent to me, how come it is not so apparent with so many within the walls of ivory.
As in Donna L’s book which shows the IPCC to be a spoiled child. there never was an adequate policy of checks and balances in ‘the gold standard organization’ no oversight.
Regardless of pro or con beliefs on AGW, this kind of work lowers the standard for all us.
I normally just read this blog to learn.
But today I have to say that KIM, who normally gives lines all of about five words really has become verbally prolific.
If by slim change we should ever meet, I will be sure to buy you a cold one.
Thank you, Rud Istvan, for an unequivocal no-quibble answer that expresses the irrational quintessence of climate-change denialism.
We have seen the denialist quintessence before on Climate Etc when denialists refuse to entertain even the logical possibility that James Hansen’s scientific worldview is broadly correct …
… because this would mean that the consensus-science Hockey Super-Stick provides a credible depiction of humanity’s future.
Rud Istvan, the denialist faith that AGW cannot possibly be a sobering reality is (by denialists) unquestioned-and-unquestionable, unjustified-and-unjustifiable, undenied and undeniable.
That’s why denialists resort to quibbling (and other classic demagogic forms), eh?
It’s a good thing that institutions like the Vatican Academy are embracing a more rational, more foresighted, more scientific, more moral response.
Isn’t that good, Rud Istvan?
Morning Fan,
Methinks that your appeal to The Church of all places, as an authority in matters of science speaks for itself.
Your insight is 100% correct PokerGuy!
The Catholic Church rejects climate-change denialism because:
• quibbling over Galileo’s science … was futile,
• quibbling over Darwin’s science … was futile, and
• quibbling over Hansen’s science … will be futile.
For one simple reason: the Hockey Stick is real, eh?
Your insight is astute, PokerGuy! Thank you!
fan,
what parish to you attend Mass at?
For me it is Holy Trinity and St Anthony’s (depending on whether I’m in Oregon or Washington).
Why, the very same parish as the redoubtable Wendell Berry!
You belong to this same parish, timg56!
I clicked on your Wendell Berry link and as usual, it had zero bearing on the question. No where does it mention his religious affilation. The closest it comes is a coment by a reviewer of one of his works about the “failings” of the world’s religions.
Will you ever provide a direct response to a question? This one was an easy one. You could have provided several different answers, including “It isn’t any of my business.” But apparently direct, honest communication is not something you put much value in. Far more important to show off how witty, urbane and intelligent you are.
does one have to be guilty of all 13, or is employing at least 10 of the 13 – as you do – enough to qualify?
Tomorrow I will be at the Met Office archives. I am trying to extend the CET instrumental record back from 1660 and as readers of ‘The long slow thaw’ may remember I got back to 1538.
My research at the Met Office is concentrated on the period 1250 to 1450AD as I hope to identify the transition betweeen the MWP and LIA, thereby filling in much of the gap between 1538 and my intended goal of 1000AD.
I am hoping to translate a document on weather observations 1350 to 1450 which unfortunately is in its orginal French and Latin. Fortunately the other document in the series-1250 to 1350- had been translated 40 years ago.
Weather extremes were greater in the past than today, there were also periods of warmth that were at least as great. Below is a first attempt at a graph that combines known glacier advance and retreat, as this helps to put some constraints on CET research-there is good correlation betweeen glacier movements and CET as noted by such as Pfister.
http://climatereason.com/Graphs/Graph01.png
I had previously commented that I was unsure of my CET reconstruction around 1640 and 1530’s as this seemed warmer than I had expected. After further research it appears they are correct. Phil Jones also identified them, as did Lamb.
Looking at the many thousands of observations I have collected from personal research at a mumber of places ranging from The Met office archives and Library, The Scott Polar Institue in Cambridge, The library of Exeter Cathedral etc I do not recognise the temperature tendancy that the graphs in the article demonstrated particularly as regards the blade reading so much warmer than other periods..
Isn’t it about time that historical climatology and science -that currently likes to discount observations as ‘anecdotal’ but cheerfully uses other proxies- cooperated more closely so we can gain a more reliable climatic picture of the last 1000-2000 years?
That the MWP and LIA were real is perfectly obvious, that there is nothing unusual going on today should be equally so.
tonyb
Great undertaking, Tony. If there are no heavy transcribing probs, I may be able to help with translation if text can be sent to me. The CET is a real treasure, which is suddenly less than popular in some quarters. Whodda thunk?
Love your work.
mosomoso
French or Latin?
tonyb
Either one, Tony. If you can make out the words, the language shouldn’t be that inaccessible. Leave the Old French in its raw state if you’re transcribing it, and we’ll see how we go.
Mosomoso
Ok, I will transcribe a couple of random paragraphs. It’s quite long and if it can be translated I suspect I will need to ask permission to continue and obtain a photocopy, or at worst do transcribing over a number of visits.
Tonyb
If it’s just Latin or any form of French of the period it shouldn’t be hard. Code, abbreviations, professional in-talk could present probs, but the transcriptions won’t be wasted even if I’m not the man for the job. Odd that it hasn’t been done already.
mosomoso
As I mentioned earlier there are two pamphlets in the series. One was translated 40 years ago as part of a phd thesis, the other was untouched. I have asked and been told it was never translated but I will double check this before any large scale translation is attempted.
tonyb
Say, tony –
i often read “skpetics” saying that they don’t doubt that the earth is warming, and that it is warmer now, relative to the past few hundred years (they only question the extent to which that warming has been anthropogenic). Are you in disagreement with those “skeptics?”
Joshua, I notice you keep harping away on this while I continue to wonder what your point is. Why don’t you just come out and say what it is? Meanwhile, I must say that your posts continue to drift ever further away from anything that could be called relevant or interesting. I don’t know anyone this side of a loony bin who denies we’ve warmed since coming out of the LIA (by definition).
That said, you’re wrong when you say skeptics “don’t doubt that the earth is warming.” The operative word being “is.” I I’d say plenty of skeptics do doubt that. But skeptics aren’t members of an organized religion in the way alarmists seem to be. You talk as though there’s an official skeptics’ position paper somewhere. Where do you get that idea?
Joshua
I don’t doubt that the earth is warmer than the LIA, which is when many records began. That it has become progessively warmer since around 1680 I also don’t doubt, with the caveat that there are some periods (around the 1730’s) that appear to be around as warm. Why that shoud be I dont know, but we seem to be fixated on GISS since 1880 which appears to be a staging post of increasing temperatures, NOT the starting post.
Do I think today is warmer than the 1640’s or the first part of the 1500’s? I don’t know. There were some very interesting arctic expeditions taking place around both dates and undoubtedly it was a warm period. Talk of an ‘anthropocene’ or extreme weather is not borne out by the facts.
tonyb
Thank, tony –
So for those periods that you think may have been warmer – say the 1640s or the first part of the 1500s, do you have any theories about the natural phenomena that would be explanatory? Assuming that you have identified some, do you see evidence of those same factors in play in the mid-late 20th century?
PG –
Thanks, once again, for reading. I can understand what a sacrifice that is for you, given that my comments are so far away from anything that could be considered relevant or interesting.
I am deeply touched that despite the unpleasantness of that task, you yet manage to summon up the strength to persevere in directing such a high % of your comments here at Climate Etc. to instructing me about the irrelevance and uninteresting nature of my comments.
I can’t be completely certain that your efforts will ever pay off with any kind of change in my posting behavior – but it’s worth a shot, and in the meantime you should know that I do always find your comments towards me to be quite amusing.
Did I not already know Joshua, I’d find these questions of his entrancing. And so, they still entrance me. These are skeptic’s questions.
===================
Joshua
Now if I came up with theories it would spoil the fun of those here who like to produce computer models wouldn’t it? :)
For what its worth, we can clearly see that weather varies greatly from decade to decade (see my previous graph) sometimes one decade is astonishingly different to the one before or after it. Why should that be?
Well, reading the observations it is apparent that weather gets ‘stuck’ (technical term) in a certain pattern, sometimes for many years. I think the wind direction is important in this, and sometimes this becomes more predominant for long periods from one direction than another. For example Britain traditionally has extended periods of warmer westerly winds, but at times these get replaced by cold easterlies (warm in summer). The jet stream effect can also be clearly seen in the weather observations and this is a major factor if again it gets stuck for any length of time. The warmth of the ocean/currents clearly has an impact but I can’t pick that up from observations.
I remain ambivalent about the effects of sun spot activity.
tonyb
tony –
Seems to me that your interest is in global temperatures, (even if from what I’ve seen, your data collection is heavily concentrated on a small % of the earth’s surface).
As such, wouldn’t changes in wind direction likely be a regional influence and not a global influence – kind of moving around which areas are “stuck” from one part of the globe to another without changing the overall temperature balance of the globe? Unless, of course, you have some sort of metric to quantify some kind of “global wind total” (another technical term) – and even then you’d need some sort of theory for explaining the mechanism for changing “global wind.” Seems to me that there’s still an energy balance problem in play with moving from the data you’ve collected to interpreting how it might relate to AGW.
Now sun spot activity might be a different story. Have you come across any historical data that might tie changes in sun spot activity to your observations on (mostly regional) patterns in temperatures?
So kim –
If I understand that comment correctly, (in your view) it is not the nature of the questions that makes a skeptic, but your interpretation of their conclusions? (Without evidence, I might add.)
If so, interesting.
ClimateReason,
Why don’t you do real science? It’s not hard. If you want to take a look with what you can do with wind statistics, go look at my latest post at
http://theoilconundrum.blogspot.com
This is from a couple of days ago so is pretty fresh.
What you are doing is comical.
Dang, you broke the spell.
===========
Webby
Fortunately such people as Dr Hansen and Hubert Lamb have done a lot of work already on historic wind reconstruction so I have no need to duplicate their work.
tonyb
Heh, tony, the sunspots themselves are ambivalent, that’s why they’re going all Cheshire grinning on us. It’s so that we can understand them, and of course, they themselves. I’d grin too. Understanding, at long last!
===================
Joshua
Many leading scientists believe that CET is a reasonable (but not perfect) proxy for Northern Hemisphere and Global temperatures, presumably precisely because of our geographic position and the resultant weather patterns/wind direction.
You said;
“Now sun spot activity might be a different story. Have you come across any historical data that might tie changes in sun spot activity to your observations on (mostly regional) patterns in temperatures?’
The trouble is that even in the LIA you can have one warm year juxtaposed to a cold one. So did the sunspots affect one year but not another? Iremain to be convinced, but an article on sunspots by an appropriate expert would make a good discussion topic here if Judith is listening.
tonyb said, “The trouble is that even in the LIA you can have one warm year juxtaposed to a cold one. So did the sunspots affect one year but not another?”
It looks more like the orbital force change has more impact that solar cycle changes, especially in the North Atlantic region. Higher and lower tides change the currents and ice stability. I have seen some studies that include the lunar tidal cycles, but I haven’t found one that combines solar and lunar tide changes for that far back in time for the North Atlantic.
Tony – this probably silly, but has anybody done a proxy-based reconstruction of the CET?
Climate reconstruction from tree rings: Part 1, basic methodology and preliminary results for England
JCH
CET is the worlds most examined temperature record so I am sure someone somewhere has done what you suggested. Can’t say I’ve seen it though
tonyb
That paper is behind a pay wall, but so far it is the only one I’ve found that might have a proxy reconstruction. It would be interesting to see if there is a divergence problem. I would expect there would be one.
JCH
I note your comments about the paywalled item on tree rings. It seems to be this one;
“ http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/pubs/byauthor/wigley_tml.htm
“Climate reconstruction from tree rings: Part 1, basic methodology and preliminary results for England.” Journal of Climatology 3, 233-242 (R) “
It was within a book called ‘A slice in time.’ which by one of those extraordinary coincidences I came across when carrying out research at the Exeter Cathedral library last May when looking for material for ‘The long Slow thaw.’ Here is a section from my notes at the time;
——- ——— ——- ——
Tree rings-Saw two reports from English Heritage undated but probably from around 1999/2000
Tree rings in Cathedral to be dated and measured against English template from Midlands dated from 882 to 1810
Two graphs drawn. Earliest records 1810-low and 1820 high. Great peaks-favourable weather around 1825 to 1855
Low points around 1860. Similar sets of peaks 1875 to 1890. Little variation from then until the last record taken from trees around 1975. (see my hand drawn graph)
All above taken from timbers from Law library and 2 buildings on the Close. Similar set taken from timbers of Archdeacons house dates from 1186 to 1404. The report seems primarily concerned with dating of timbers but mentions broad and narrow rings as representing climatic conditions-but notes younger trees such as oaks grow differently to older ones and local conditions affect them. Also depends on growing season-April to October in Exeter but differs elsewhere. Good growing seasons have relatively wide rings, poor growing seasons have very narrow rings and average rings in average years. Accurate to around 40 years.
See books ‘Tree ring dating and archaeology (bailie 1982) or ‘A slice through time’ (bailie 1995) Obviously at that time tree rings were considered primarily as a tool for dating timbers and the climatic information was secondary and imprecise.
———– ——- ——– ——
What was of interest to me was that at the time of the Exeter report the Mannian promotion of tree rings to superstardom had obviously not filtered through. I will see if I can get a copy of the book from the Met Office library
tonyb
Tony, I suggest that you start at 1200 rather than 1250, as 1251 is a changepoint in some proxy datasets
Steve
Thanks for your advice. I intend eventually to work back to 1000AD so I can make direct comparisons with such studies as those by Dr Mann. There is a lot of material out there, some better than others. I note the 1251 proxy change point.
tonyb
Tony B
Am looking forward to reading your study on this when you have completed it.
This is extremely important work, as it could finally give us a real insight into the climate prior to the 16thC, which we have only had through questionable paleo-climate reconstructions of proxy data.
Keep up the good work.
Max
Tony, keep up your excellent work. Is it recognised as such professionally in the UK or elsewhere? Does it enter into the public or scientific CAGW debate?
Faustino
Thank you. My work is considered ‘anecdotal’ (although I do try to merge it with scientific papers) and is a rather unfashionable branch of research at present, although there are a number of good professionals in the field.
Prof Phil Jones produces some great work, although probably the late Hubert Lamb surpasses any modern researchers and would have had a field day with the internet and the many new sources of information coming to light. The trouble is that the vast majority of historic printed work is not digitised. If its not digital it doesnt exist and therfore its not going to be found by most researchers.
tonyb
The stratigraphy of information has a discontinuity there.
==============
That is an understatement.
Qualitative research has little basis in the scientific process. The lack of objectivity prevents anyone else from making quantitative comparisons and verifying the work or even determining error bars. It turns into a subjective analysis, completely open to interpretation.
The rules are different for schleptics. If it was up to them, they think this is PhD caliber work, much better than the approach that Marcott is stuck with. No wonder Faustino is impressed by it, as the social sciences is loaded with this kind of stuff.
WHT
In considering the value of using historical material the sceptical question first needs to be asked as to whether there is likely to be documentation/records available that let us look in detail at events that happened many hundreds of years ago and combine them with scientific material in a structured fashion that can elevate them above the easily dismissed ‘anecdote’ which –whilst often interesting in themselves-tend to be one off snapshots that are not corroborated from other sources.
Those interested in learning something of the nature of historical climatology and how material is compiled might find this comprehensive article on the subject interesting.
http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~rjsw/papers/Brazdil-etal-2005.pdf
When sufficient data becomes available ‘anecdotal’ information such as contemporary observations, historic records etc is translated into data following the methods detailed by , for example, Van Engelen, J Buisman and F Unsen of the Royal Met office De Bilt and described in the book ‘History and Climate.’
tonyb
Keep up the good work Tony. The hockey stick issue is a glaring example of incorrect splicing of data with vastly differing resolutions.
Where is this rulebook?
Rulz, rulz? Web don’t need no need for rulz.
=======
Tony, thanks for that link, looks interesting. As Webby notes, it might be more accessible to me than much of the climate science material.
Webby
Tony is correct in writing that his line of work (historical documentation of past climate) is an “unfashionable brand of research at present”, but IMO this no way detracts from its significance.
You are wrong to equate it with the more “loosey-goosey” socio-psychological stuff that gets published as climate-related research (some of which we have seen featured on this site in the past).
The two are completely different fields (an I’d agree with you on the irrelevance of the socio-psychological gibberish).
Written history is an extremely important record of the human species, arguably the most accurate one we have.
Archeology is another science that uncovers riddles of our past, but it usually covers periods that are more distant in time and precede a written record. And it leaves a lot more open questions than a written historical record.
Paleo-climate reconstructions are even more dicey, as they often become nothing more than subjective interpretations of proxy data of questionable accuracy over cherry-picked periods of our distant geological past, applying argument from ignorance in establishing a preconceived attribution of some parameter to the reconstructed climate – in other words, not much better than reading tea leaves.
Unfortunately, this segment is “getting all the bucks”.
But, as we see, it has spawned discredited studies, such as the Mann et al. hockey stick, or apparently flawed studies, such as the Marcott et al. copy “shtick”. And I’d wager that there are a lot more “shticks” out there in paleoclimatology that just haven’t met their “Steve McIntyre” yet.
So, hats off to Tony and his work. Let’s hope it shines a bit of light on our past climate, which the theoretical physicists have missed.
Max
Hey Max, how is that manipulation of data coming along?
Basic mathematics says that if a function doesn’t have an inflection point then the log of that function won’t either, and vice versa. I can prove it in two lines of calculus.
I like how all the skeptics close ranks around their tribal members while MiniMax creates all these peaks and valleys in the data to make the correlation look bad.
Don’t act so clueless as your manipulation is much easier to spot for an amateur.
Just wondering where “flawed science” ends and “fraud” begins in climate research. In most ordinary branches of science, tampering with data like this would be called fraud without any hesitation.
“fraud without any hesitation” seems to be not unknown in this field.
Cee de Valk
Scientists take up a certain position and are reluctant to retreat from it. I would never use the word fraud, but some may be ‘over enthusiastic’ in trying to prove their point.
tonyb
Well I’m inclined to believe in their good intentions too, but intentions are not relevant for deciding whether something is fraud or not. Framing these discussions in a moral setting is not helpful in my opinion; I’d rather just look at what has been done. There must have been reasons to deviate from the procedure and results of Marcott’s thesis, it cannot have been an accident because the difference is so obvious (whether you call it robust or not). And deliberately modifying your source data (obtained from others) without describing what you did and why you did it is normally called fraud. Even in medical research. Without such fairly basic standards being maintained, how credible is the work published in your discipline?
“And deliberately modifying your source data (obtained from others) without describing what you did and why you did it”
That’s nonsense. They said exactly what they did:
“The majority of our age-control points are based on radiocarbon dates. In order to 66 compare the records appropriately, we recalibrated all radiocarbon dates with Calib 6.0.1 using 67 INTCAL09 and its protocol (1) for the site-specific locations and materials.”
They listed their age control points, the authors’ original dating, and their revised dating.
It isn’t even source data. The authors use calibration programs too. Marcott et al just used a standard one for all proxies which was in many cases more up to date.
Really?
BREAKING CLIMATE-CHANGE SCIENCE NEWS:
the WHEELCHAIR supplants the HOCKEY STICK
On sites that include:
• Jos Hagelaars’ Klimaatverandering, and
• Bart Varheggen’s My View of Climate Change, and
• Eli Rabett’s Rabett Run
The instantly-iconic broad-band Wheelchair Graph has supplanted the outdated Mann/Marcott hockey-stick!
The new icon of consensus climate-change science is proving to be a tough challenge to demagogic denialism’s quibblers, cherry-pickers, astro-turfers, and smearers … who find themselves playing a frustrating medieval game !!!
The redoubtable A-Team has now provided a provocative scientific supplement to the WheelChair: Post-Holocene Geological Divisions (proposed).
Key Question Is the short-sighted willful ignorance of demagogic denialism disastrously propelling humanity through the “Dumbassic Age”, first via the “Anthropocene”, and then via the “Endocene”? The world wonders!
Fan, having last used a clunky, very heavy, bone-shaker wheel-chair in the 1960s, I recently borrowed what was by comparison an F1 lightweight technological marvel to scoot round the Prado exhibition at the Queensland Art Gallery. I don’t think that there has been a similar rate of technological advance in hockey sticks, so I’m sure that the wheelchair graph must be an improvement. Mann must be gnashing his teeth, a “Why didn’t I think of that?!!!” moment.
Dang, broke my “never reply to Fan” resolution!
That, is Willard bait but allow Eli to play The difference between the heavy lumber Eli used to wield and today’s wonder weapons, is like the difference between pine and polymers:)
No wood, no good.
My conjecture is that this highly questionable re-analysis occurred during peer review because a reviewer, perhaps even Mann, objected that the results did not support the hockey stick. The review correspondence might be quite revealing.
Most interesting is what made Dr. Marcott into Mr. Hide.
=======================
You’d better Seek the answer.
Mann got an entire institute at Penn State as a reward for the hockey stick. That is a powerful message.
http://www.essc.psu.edu/ Mann is Director. Note his many awards. Hockey sticks pay.
Hey Fan,
There’s an interesting post over at your hero’s Anthony W.’s site concerning Hansen’s 1988 predictions, with an analysis of how well they’re stacking up against real world data. Graph taken from RealClimate.
Of course, Real Climate shamelessly pretends all is well in AGW Fantasy LAnd, their ongoing position continuing to be, “who are you going to believe, us or your own lying eyes?”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/03/20/how-well-did-hansen-1988-do/
What’s New? Appreciation that (in the long run) Hagelaars’ WheelChair is real
Thanks for reminding Climate Etc readers that (in the long run) demagogic denialism’s quibbling, cherry-picking, astro-turfing, and smearing all are irrelevant … eh PokerGuy?
Of course, thoughtful citizens and institutions have understood this for a long time … right PokerGuy?
Thanks for the response Fan, but instead of just snorting ClimateEtc’s propaganda like some sort of warmist drug addict, I suggest actually looking at the graph. TRy it fan, it will only hurt for a second or two.
The truth will set you free, eh Fan of *more* discourse?
LOL … PokerGuy, suppose that long-term climate-change science was nearly perfect (up to decadal scale fluctuations) …
Then climate-change predictions would be half too low, half too high, eh?
And that near-balance between too-low and too-high climate-change predictions is what we observe, right PokerGuy?
Conclusion Demagogic denialism’s quibbling, cherry-picking, astro-turfing, and smearing nowadays serve chiefly to demonstrate that (in the long run) … Hagelaars’ WheelChair is real!
That’s plain common-sense, eh PokerGuy?
All I can say my dear Fan is that if sheer insistence that something be true were enough to make it so, I’d have ten million dollars in the bank, and a harem full of lovely, insatiable women.
Seriously though Fan, here’s a hypothetical. Suppose the Grand Poo-Bah himself, James “turn up the heat and let ’em sweat” Hansen, issued a statement to the effect that he was wrong after all, and therefore taking it all back.
“The skeptics were right as it turns out,” says Hansen. “Climate sensitivity has been shown to be much lower than I’d anticipated. There’s no hot spot, and the heat isn’t missing because it wasn’t there in the first place. In fact, I’ve decided the Co2 is actually beneficial, and at much higher levels than we have today. I’ve contacted Anthony Watts, and he’s graciously agreed to work together with me to spread the word.”
Nice to dream, eh FOMD??
But Fan, I honestly don’t think that would be enough for you. I think you’re going to be passionately convinced of this stuff until the end of your days.
The world wonders, eh Fan of *more* discourse?
Hmmm … most folks would seriously foresee that Hansen’s statement would (like Hansen’s prior statements):
• have multiple co-authors,
• be carefully reasoned,
• be clearly explained,
• be thoroughly referenced,
• be respectfully phrased, and
• give suggestions for further work.
Any such Hansen statement would repay serious consideration, PokerGuy!
Just like prior Hansen statements have been well-worth serious pondering, eh?
pokerguy the WUWT article glosses over a lot of things. For a better look at Hansen’s prediction go read the skepticalscience piece on it, it covers it in a lot more depth. For example WUWT did not mention which scenario the real world has followed (hint: it’s not scenario A)
lolwot,
You have that right. The number of skeptics that haven’t a clue about the effect of noise and fluctuations on the data set is incredible.
These “noise riders” will only get embarrassed when they get bucked off the curve.
I know enough about time series with limited data to not read too much into periodicities, yet all when has to do is some simple comparisons on the residual temperature anomaly against noise models and one can see what role it plays. This plot is the residual noise after removing a 3C doubling CO2 sensitivity trend from the BEST data:
http://img442.imageshack.us/img442/9962/bestresidual.gif
Why use the BEST? Because it is modeling fast transients in sensitivity,
Also perplexing to me is the adjustment of the sensitivity based on recent downward fluctuations. Somebody got roped into calling these things “pauses” whereas they look more like noisy fluctuations.
All the volcanic disturbances and ocean cycles when put together create a form of red noise that is simply modeled as an Ornstein-Uhlenbeck random walk process.
I wonder why this topic isn’t studied to death considering the theme of the blog is uncertainty quantification.
An inability of the proponents of a cause to even admit one misstep, one mistake, one error. All the evidence in the world that they bring forward is supposed to be taken as wrote and good and correct and irrefutable. Human Caused Co2 Induced Global Warming Climate Science brings a return to the dark ages. Infallible, untouchable and certainly not to be questioned by the unwashed, “they” decide for us what truth is and we will be forced to do as they declare because “they” are closer to God than thou.
I often have the same thoughts pd. They’re never, ever, ever wrong, about anything. How can that be? In itself, that’s pretty damning for any objective observer
Too long double or nuthin’.
===========
As one of the great unwashed (and in a population of 4 billion, every single one of us is one of the great unwashed on at least a few thousands topics), I find myself more and more inclined to listen to opinions and to hold back my own. Because as a reflection of society as a whole, the louder and more bombastic someone offers up their opinion, the less inclined I am to believe them (unless they are particularly compelling or the loudness is associated with some form of impending doom – WATCH OUT!). And so it is with climate science, the louder the story, the less likely it is to be believed. And since climate changes so slowly, I feel we are all entitled to take our sweet time before we embark on some project of changing a massive and heretofore somewhat successful global society. And so now what should come down the pike but another study purporting to show “unprecedented” warming that is broadcast by mass media, attended to with press releases and published by the most widely circulated journal and it turns out to be shoddy science at best or a fraud at its worse. I am generally a loud person, but the world around me is so loud that it teaches me what my own failings are. If only the entire heterogeneous Human Caused Co2 Induced Global Warming Climate Science mass would get some humility and start speaking with their inside voices.
Not very mindful, the mindlessness of it all.
===========
“they” are closer to God than thou … Only because they wear elevated shoes and are supported by hyper-inflated egos.
“All this makes Mike’s Nature trick seem straightforward.”
But the more I read, the more often I seem to discover these kind of gymnastics which frequently can be condensed down to:
‘Take some imprecise measurement that has [Time] on the x-axis, and find an excuse for shifting the data either to the left, or to the right.’
This is a most powerful “tool” in that it would also allow the arrow of time to be dodged if, say, one was confronted with CO2 inconveniently rising before temperature in the empirical data.
To state the obvious, and probably what everyone is thinking, but not saying.
Did the authors interactively manipulate the data records until a HS popped out? Then seek a justification for said data processing post mortem?
I’d really like an honest answer to that one, but I doubt I will ever get it. Maybe the answer “yes” is the only answer my biased view would be willing to accept as truthful.
I’m showing my age, but the phrase “DOS ain’t done till Lotus doesn’t run” comes to mind.
It is an interesting question. My belief is that they did not have to fool around, but rather could just decide in advance which proxies to re-dat. It is pretty easy to do from the charts in figure C7, pages 200-203 In the thesis.
What I don’t understand is how they thought this would not be caught out when Science demanded the data file for the SI, the thesis is publicly available for comparison, and many of these proxies are publicly archived for independent scrutiny. And when, for example, important 2043 (pulling the MWP forward to the 20th century) was explicitly core top dated in the reference and in the NOAA archive.
I have been following for part of the discussion at Climate Audit. Based on that I think that the upstick is purely an artifact of the method. To be more specific, what seems to cause it, is as follows.
1) The proxies are calibrated (i.e. given a zero point for the temperature scale over the period 2500-3500 years before present.
2) Therefore the proxies lead to quite different temperatures in the 19th and 20th century.
3) The proxies end at variable dates before the last year presented in the analysis (1940)
4) During the last decades before 1940 the number of proxies is very low. The average is calculated from this small and diminishing number of proxies.
5) Whenever the number of proxies goes further down when the year 1940 is approached, the average may jump suddenly, because the proxy dropped may have had a very different temperature from the mean of the remaining proxies.
6) Based on that the temperatures may go suddenly either up or down at any of the latest time steps. That tells nothing about the real temperature behavior.
The authors tell that the latest period is not robust. In my view they should have left the last decades out of the paper and and perhaps 1900 or even earlier.
There has been redating. The nature of the data is such that redating is a well justified procedure. Redating changed strongly those decades that should have been left out of the paper.
Pekka, that is pretty much a perfect summation. The averaging period they used though could have made a more interesting paper since they include paleo ocean data with the “seesaw” effect. The deep ocean lags the surface by about 1700 years and the northern extent oceans are out of phase with the southern extent oceans. You can get a pretty wide range of “Average” with either an uptick or downtick depending on your mood.
Mixing surface air, SST and deep ocean temperature proxies makes fruit salad or Ambrosia if you prefer..
What about the confidence interval though. If you look at the GISS the difference in the annual mean of 1945-50 is 0.3 degrees, and between 1950-53 its also 0.3 degrees.
The CI for the ‘new’ reconstructed global is mean +/- 0.17 degrees. You could detend the GISS instrument estimation of global temperature and it would be wider than the detrended data in this ‘Science’ paper.
Doc, When you mixed apples and oranges, confidence intervals are meaningless. If the paper had used the actual confidence intervals of the reconstructions, there would be a plus or minus 1.5 C gray cloud that would have buried that hockey stick.
That tells nothing about the real temperature behavior. … – Pekka
Pekka – are there lines of evidence that are robust with respect to the self-inflicted gaps in the reconstruction you are suggesting should be made?
JCH,
I don’t understand your question.
The problems in extending the analysis to 20th century and even to 19th century are mainly due to the nature of the proxies. Those problems lead to the small number of proxies that cover these periods. Filling missing data is also impossible at the ends of the periods. Filling gaps adds always to uncertainty but it may still be worthwhile away from the ends as it makes the rest of the analysis much easier.
One particular problem explained convincingly by Steve McI and by Richard Telford in the discussion at CA is that the the modern end of the alkenone proxies is commonly assumed that they extend to 1950. This assumption is known to be suspect and often seriously wrong, but it does not affect those applications where the data is mostly used, i.e. studying periods more than 1000 years in the past. It’s obvious nonsense when the analysis is extended to 20th century. Telford stated (emphasis mine):
steven mosher | March 19, 2013 at 11:06 pm
There’s a technical name for those kinds of folks, Steven.
We call them “cowards”, and it is only necessary for them to continue their cowardice in order for climate science to continue its downwards spiral.
Cowards, Steven. The people you are praising are cowards. Perhaps you could comment on that.
And describing what they did as “chartsmanship”? Really?
There’s a technical name for what Marcott-Shakun folks have done, but it’s not “chartsmanship”.
It’s called either “outright fraud” or “unbelievable incompetence”, take your pick. And the sooner apologists like yourself realize that, the less you will look like their witting or unwitting accomplices.
Because right now, that’s what you give every appearance of being, an accomplice of Marcott and Shakun, trying to excuse their actions as chartsmanship.
“Chartsmanship”? Get real. I can think of a lot of less deceptive ways to describe their actions, but it’s a family blog …
w.
The Captain is watching you, willis.
What I don’t get Don is if you are really the brave war hero you claim, why do you keep picking on such a pathetic weak sister? It should be beneath you.
Did I claim that, howie? I am sure cowboy willis appreciates you taking up for him. He doesn’t have the guts to do it himself. Every time I see willis call somebody a coward, or a liar, I will remind him of his own failings. Get used to it, howie.
That’s too bad Don. I gather you are addicted to these pathetic boosts to your self esteem by picking on a child. Carry On Skipper
You have taken your gratuitous shot from the high weeds, howie. Feel better now?
+1
Willis I think Mr Mosher just wants us all to know what a swell guy he is hanging with the big dogs. Probably didn’t occur to him that they were cowards.
who said they all were “big” dogs? If they were all big dogs I would surely indicate this. I don’t consider myself a swell guy, just a guy. The chart is messed up. If pat micheals did it, I’d have the same reaction. fix the chart.
hell even when Goddard makes stupid mistakes I suggest that he fix the chart. No real point is trying to get at motives.. unless they fight fixing the chart.
Big dogs? Climate scientists? That’s a contradiction in terms. Governors, 4 & 5 star generals, senators, Fortune 500 CEOs, president, high ranking cabinet members, billionaires… those are big dogs. Pro ball players, some hollywood actors, directors, and producer might be big dogs. Not climate scientists. The science is kind of cultish. More people recognize the term Scientology than Climatology fercrisakes.
Willis, cowards are guys who fake suicides. Cowards are guys who praise liars and conmen.
‘So I was half drunk by that time, I said OK, well, we’ll just blackmail the Japanese Ambassador into giving you guys a piped water system. And when he asked what I was babbling about, I explained to him the devious plan that had somehow sprung full-blown into my brain when he presented the problem.”
“Whenever I think that I’ve done bold things in my life, I think of My-mummie audaciously and cleverly bluffing her way in, all the way up to the top to see the King of Egypt himself, Farouk the First, in order to save dying children … and I realize I’ve done nothing, really, nothing at all …”
Now of course, I would not describe it this way. I would call it noble cause corruption. Kidnapping reagan? noble cause corruption.
Faking suicide to get out of an evil war? noble cause corruption.
blackmailing a the japenese ambassador to get water pipes? noble cause corruption. Bluffing and lying to save children. Noble cause corruption.
Basically, I don’t find your in a position to moralize or get on your high horse. I would think your love of bluffers and tall tales would give you more sympathy for the devlis.
Mosher, Science is close to the top journal in most fields. My institute give a cash prize for researchers who get published in Science.
This paper went to referees, picked by the handling editor, and they accept this piece of ‘Chartmanship’.
It is quite clear that the referees were at best complete unable to function in their gate keeping role. The referees were incapable of using Excel to examine the line-shape of the proxies which end in the near past.
The referees were either too stupid to review this article or too corrupt to investigate the origins of a line-shape that pleased them. In either case the Editorial board of Science should examine the whole of their policy on publishing ‘Climate Science’ as the handling editors are incapable of finding referees who know their cūlus from their olecranon.
@DocMartyn
+1
Let me suggest for you a more charitable interpretation, Willis Eschenbach!
Please reflect on the many folks who have been politely and respectfully assisting you to a broader scientific and moral understanding of climate-change:
• Steve Fitzpatrick is patiently teaching you basic thermodynamical principles,
• Steven Mosher is helping you to a broader appreciation of climate-change,
• Jos Hagelaars is giving you a unified overview of long-term climate-change, and
• the Vatican is reminding you of moral responsibilities associated to climate-change.
You are fortunate to have all these people helping you, eh Willis Eschenbach?
Perhaps you should repay them with the rationality and respect that they are showing you!
Fan, I suppose you do not know the meaning of the word ” Toomler”. Look it up and see if it fits.
Fan,
Statistical mechanics and thermo are apolitical. I don’t like to have people making unchallenged nutty claims which only muddle reality and mislead the untrained about what is physically possible. Willis is for sure too prickly by half when faced with criticism, but he seems to be sincere and to honestly care about people, especially poor people. In general, I like and even admire him, but I would be more comfortable with that admiration if he were a just bit more careful in his technical analysis.
Willis
And, to follow Fanny’s advice to you, you should also be thankful to Fanny, for showing you how to shovel the s**t elegantly with beautiful decorative smileys to mask the odor.
To paraphrase: Perhaps you should repay Fanny with all the respect he/she is showing you.
Max
Agreed 100%!
And yet even Willis’ compassion has curious blind-spots. For example, his stories of South Sea island life are warm and funny. And yet, how many decades have passed since Willis visited these outer islands? Because nowadays, the communities living on these sandy low-lying outer islands see the oceans rising/lands eroding with their own eyes (the now-submerged WWII runways precisely at at 7°22’34.86″N, 143°54’28.42″E for example).
For all of Willis’ good points, his understanding of climate-change has three limitations:
[1] lives in the past,
[2] feeble grasp of the basic science, and
[3] doesn’t realize [1-2] (Dunning-Kruger effect).
Willis, yah need to return to the Outer Islands, where you can verify these things with your own eyes (that’s how I learned them).
`Cuz the world has changed, Willis! And your understanding must change with it.
fan,
Willis excellent post at WUWT on floating islands examines the
real reasons low lying atolls like the Maldives are endangered,
not from CO2 and rising seas. Coral atolls are essentially
floating islands that rise as the sea rise. They exist in a delicate
balance between erosion by wind and water and production of
new sand. Over fishing of the Parrot fish and other beaked fish
that grind and excrete the coral as new sand is a major problem
of ‘sinking’ islands. Taking too much frashwater from the ‘lens’
on which the island floats is another problem.Read Willis’ article
fer yrself, fan. BC
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/01/27/floating-islands/
You ain’t visited the FSM Outer Islands recently, have yah Beth? They ain’t easy to get to … there’s no regularly scheduled service of any sort.
Fan, I’m sure the Woleai islanders (http://goo.gl/maps/Q3qmD) will be intrigued to learn that they’re living underwater
As a typhoon approaches, every Outer Islander does this calculation:
• begin with sea-level, then
• add the island elevation (a few feet).
• subtract the storm-surge (of several feet).
If the total is positive, you and your family live …
… if the total is negative, then you and your family (and everyone on the island) all die.
People who don’t do this calculation should not mock those who do, eh phatboy?
Because I can testify (from personal experience) that on the low-lying Outer Islands, when wind and water are rising, no-one is laughing.
Conclusion Willfully ignorant mockery is a particularly stupid form of demagogic climate-change denialism.
Hopefully you (and other demagogic denialists) on Climate Etc have learnt from this calculation, Phatboy!
Your point being?????
I suppose you’re now going to tell us that the coral atolls were 42 metres above sea level 10,000 years ago when the sea level was 40 metres lower?
Oh yesirree! Never let the facts spoil a good fairy tale, eh Fan?
Phatboy’s latest post doubles-down on willful ignorance.
Aye, Climate Etc lassies and laddies … doubled-down ignorance is symptomatic of denialist cognition …
$latex \scriptstyle\rule[2.25ex]{0.01pt}{0.01pt}\,\boldsymbol{\overset{\scriptstyle\circ\wedge\circ}{\frown}\,\spadesuit\,{\displaystyle\text{\bfseries!!!}}\,\spadesuit\,\overset{\scriptstyle\circ\wedge\circ}{\frown}}\ \rule[-0.25ex]{0.01pt}{0.01pt}&bg=bbffbb&fg=008888&s=1
You mean Ngulu of course.
From Wikipedia:
(my bold)
Now you, fan, would have people believe that the whole place is underwater, and only so since the advent of AGW.
Is there no depth you wouldn’t sink to, eh fan?
You don’t get it, do yah Phatboy?
There’s *no* land at those coordinates … just a submerged atoll … known only to Outer Island fishermen … that was drowned by rising sea-levels.
It’s visible from a canoe as a lighter-color patch of ocean … that is all.
A US nuclear submarine did have a memorable encounter with an uncharted one, however.
Get a clue please, Phatboy! When atolls drown, people drown … it’s not complicated.
Yes indeed fan, that deeply submerged reef is known to the Outer Island fishermen, as it was known to their fathers before them, and their fathers before them…
And all you have to counter is a completely irrelevant account of a submarine colliding with an undersea mount at a depth of 160 metres!
Time to change the record, eh fan?
You still don’t quite get it, PhatBoy.
Large portions of that once-dry now-drowned atoll extend to within two feet of the surface (e.g, Google Earth 8°21’39.18″N, 137°29’17.83″E).
That’s what all of the present-day Outer Islands are slated to look-like, eh?
Hopefully your understanding has deepened, phatboy!
If not, at least your posts have provided Climate Etc readers with a paradigmatic example of the sustainment of denialist cognition!
Yes, most of the reef is deeply submerged, and some of it is above the surface – which means that parts must by definition be just below the surface – surprise surprise, eh fan?
Why don’t you quit before you make a complete idiot of yourself, instead of trying to score points by coming up with an endless stream of utter irrelevancies?
Because, fan, if there was any substance to your scare stories of widespread instances of communities disappearing beneath the waves, these would be very well documented indeed!
Isn’t that so, fan?
LOL thank you for further outstanding examples of the remarkable tenacity of denialist cognition, PhatBoy!
fan, your feeble attempts are increasingly being seen as desperately transparent.
Doggerland indeed! What can he come up with next?
The world waits in fevered anticipation, not so, fan?
A fan of *MORE* discourse | March 21, 2013 at 7:29 am
I would also be a lot more comfortable with YOUR analysis if you were a lot more skeptical of nonsensical conclusions. Yes, sea levels have risen since WWII (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Trends_in_global_average_absolute_sea_level,_1870-2008_%28US_EPA%29.png), but there is no possibility that flooding of WWII runways was caused by a 5″ rise in sea levels since 1946. There are large differences in regional rates of rise which have nothing to do with the overall average rise, at least not beyond that 5″ overall rise since 1945. So accuse Willis all you want of living in the past. It seems to me you are living in a world which accepts rubbish data uncritically. I try to look critically at all claims, and the more surprising, the more critically. I suggest you look especially critically at data which supports your current personal beliefs. You strike me as someone who ought not be accusing people of suffering from the Dunning Kruger effect.
LOL … Drowned Doggerland Denial (D^3) establishes an unsurpassably irrational standard of denialist cognition, PhatBoy!
Steve Fitzpatrick, your theoretical argument does not take into account that sea-level rise-rates are nowhere greater in the western equatorial pacific.
Not to mention, I’m reporting my personal confirmation of what the pacific’s Outer Islanders see with their own eyes: the ocean is eating the land.
That is a sobering reality, eh Steve Fitzpatrick?
fan, Doggerland drowned 12,000 years ago.
Everyone can see that.
Not so, fan?
As yes … in retrospect, it’s observationally obvious and theoretically elegant … the Woleai runway is submerged because the rapidly rising western-pacific sea-level has acted to raise the island’s Ghyben-Herzberg water lens.
Conclusion It’s a freshwater lens that has risen to pool on Woleai’s runway.
Needless to say, I never thought to taste that water! So thank you, Steve Fitzpatrick, for helping to create this elegant unification of citizen climate-change observation with fundamental climate-change physics!
fan, having dug oneself into a rather deep hole, the sensible optionwould be to stop digging.
Isn’t that right, fan?
Be of good cheer, PhatBoy, because Faustino and Willis are keeping you company in that hole!
fan, I wish to give you my heartfelt thanks for seeing fit to become such an excellent ambassador for the sceptical side.
‘Cos fan, with enemies like you, who needs friends, eh?
Isn’t that right, fan?
@phatboy
It would take a heart of stone not to read AFOMD’s incoherent witterings without succumbing to hilarity.
He’s the scpetics best recruiting sergeant.
BREAKING NEWS It appears that Climate Etc stalwarts like Faustino and Steve Fitzpatrick have abandoned the foxhole of willfully ignorant climate-change denialism.
That foxhole-of-willful-ignorance was getting kinda cramped, eh folks?
`Cuz plenty of sobering scientific reality coupled with sobering economic reality has been seeping into the bunker, eh?
But do not worry irredemptibles like Latimer Alder and PhatBoy and Eschenbach are still hunkered-in-the-bunker! The bunker-of-willful-ignorance will never be totally empty, will it?
Willis Eschenbach
What is “chartmanship”?
One definition is:
ClimateObserver goes a step further in its definition:
http://climateobserver.blogspot.com/2009/08/chartmanship.html
OK. So the intention is to “mislead” (i.e. to “lie”)
Yet this is achieved “without actually cheating”?
In my book, this is an oxymoron, because “misleading” = “cheating”.
But let’s take a classical example from IPCC, the infamous FAQ 3.1, Figure 1 in the FAQ section 3.1 of Ch.3, AR4 WG1.
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3221/2534926749_f2be35e86f_o.jpg
This shows the HadCRUT3 temperature record since 1850 with linear trend lines, which all end in 2005, but which begin at different years, covering time periods of 150,100, 50 and 25 years.
As would be expected in a rough sine curve like the temperature record, the shorter the time period, the steeper the slope.
The footnote states (bold type by me).:
Here we have a classical case of “chartmanship”. The misleading statement in the footnote was that the chart indicated accelerated warming, when in actual fact it does not.
A similar chart with lines starting in 1906 (IPCC’s start of the 20th Century) with the ends in 1955 and 2005 would show a steeper first line than the longer second line, but this would not “indicate decelerated warming” over the 20thC.
I agree with you that “chartmanship” = “misleading” = “cheating” = “lying” and there is no place in a scientific report for deliberate lying.
But, hey, this is not the only example.
Max
Thanks, Manacker. The difference between chartsmanship and what these jokers have done is that chartsmanship involves how the data is displayed. But it doesn’t involve screwing with the data.
That’s what they have done, and when you mess with the data, you’ve gone way beyond chartsmanship …
w.
Manacker screws with the data, Willis something else. In triplicate.
Yo sho have punkt everyone.
re; willis calling others cowards
pot:kettle:black
David Springer
I have not seen evidence on this site that Willis acts like a coward.
He seems ready to take anyone on.
Have you seen other behavior?
Or are you reaching back to something from the distant past that is totally irrelevant here and now?
Just curious.
Max
Dishonorable service to his country. He was afraid of going to Vietnam so he faked mental illness to get out of it. Some other young man had to go in his place. That is cowardice. Don’t matter how long ago it was a tiger can’t change its stripes. The deed is done. The draft continues until the required number of boots are on the ground. A brave man filled in for him.
I could have a modicum of sympathy if he’d fled to Canada and given up his American citizenship. But here he still lives with someone else’s blood paying his tab. He isn’t fit to be an American.
“Redating changed strongly those decades that should have been left out of the paper.”
Right, Pekka. The redating was done deliberately to strongly change those decades into the blade of a hockeystick.
My understanding is that the only sensible thing to do with the most recent decades included in the paper would have been cutting them off.
Steve McI. presents plausible arguments that that part of redating that did influence strongly the latest datapoints was erroneous, but no redating would make them significant. Thus they should have been dropped from the paper, which would have made also these questions on the details of the redating procedure moot. (The questions raised by Steve McI. extend in one case 1000 years to the past, but the larger number of proxies lessens the influence of that over earlier periods.)
So why do you think that they did not do the only sensible thing, Pekka? Are they that stoopid?
I may have my own speculations, but I have no support for them. Thus I don’t write them out.
Pekka,
You are a gentleman and a scholar.
What would a gentleman and scholar do? Why read the ClimateGate files, and end the speculation.
======================
You are making exactly the same error as everyone made with the “hockey stick”. The blade of the hockey stick is the instrumental record. In this case, the sharply rising back of the wheelchair is the instrumental record and the CMIP5 A1B models. The key area for joining Marcott to these is 1800-1900.
The best place to look at the data and the issue is a series of posts at Nick Stokes’ Moyhu
That has been a point of discussion. The graphs are drawn at a scale that makes it impossible to tell what it’s showing over a few decades. I have found the arguments that conclude that the uptick is an outcome of the analysis compelling. The data as presented after redating supports that conclusion.
The conclusions that can be drawn from the comparison of recent instrumental data with the paleodata are a separate issue. One may compare the empirical paleodata with recent observations and one may compare also with projections to the future. The authors have done that as well in some discussion of the results, but their graphs don’t present such a comparison as far as I can judge. Neither should they put the instrumental data to this graph. In particular they should not add there anything without telling exactly, what they have done and how they have aligned the scales.
It’s so crowded over there (sarc). Can Moyhu accomodate more than a half dozen participants?
Pekka , the uptick is irrelevant to the analysis (btw there is a good conversation on this over at Bart’s with Bob Brand carrying the load) just as the blade part is irrelevant to the hockey stick proxies. That is the instrumental record. What is important is how the proxies form the seat of the wheelchair giving us a temperature record that is free of the need to calibrate against instrumental records.
The nonsense about the thesis not having 100% of the information in the paper is just that. A couple of years have passed. Science lurches forward, or perhaps McIntyre and Watts hallucinate that Marcott should have used his time machine to go back and change the thesis.,
Herr Rabbett, let’s assume you are correct (which you are most assuredly not), then I call on you to announce a full scale retraction of all of the hysterical press releases by the authors, the NSF, the journal, as well as the MSM. Willing to do that, eh Rabbett.
Eli
I fully agree that the uptick is irrelevant for the scientific content of the paper. Thus cutting it off had not reduced that scientific content (but might have had an influence on getting it publish in Science, who can be sure of that).
To me this is just one more example on the principle that scientific papers should make it very clear, what their real outcome is. A paper may contain additional speculative comments on the further relevance of it’s new results, but such comments should be kept well separated.
I know from own experience from distant past that violating that principle may be helpful in getting the paper published in most prestigious or most widely followed journals (in my case Physical Review Letters was more widely followed than full article Physical Review. Some questionable overstatements helped in getting papers to PRL, as I learned from a somewhat older colleague). Even so I disliked the overstatements then and I dislike overstatements and unjustified additions to the papers now.
Eli
The biggest problems with the “blade” were that it spliced “apples” onto “oranges”, after first deleting the “oranges” that were trending the opposite way from the “apples”.
Ouch!
Then, of course, there were the statistical problems with the shaft, exposed by McIntyre and McKitrick, confirmed by the Wegman committee and then validated by the NAS panel under oath.
IOW it was a total piece of junk, blade plus shaft, as is the IPCC AR4 claim of unprecedented late 20thC warmth for 1,300 years, which rests upon it,
To attempt to breath life back into a piece of this corpse is folly.
It’s dead. Let it R.I.P.
Max
Pekka, the problem with Marcott is a little more complicated, because the within the confines of the paper, all is well. The trouble is that the author then held court with the press, and said things that weren’t in the paper, and weren’t supported by the paper.
So all is more-or-less well with the paper itself, but not with the misleading and unsupported statements made to the media. You can exonerate the paper until you’re blue in the face, but it doesn’t deal with the misleading statements made to the press separately.
> spliced “apples” onto “oranges
I’d rather splice apples onto apples.
But would I really be splicing, then?
Good suggestion, rabbette. Go to Nicky “Racehorse Haines” Stokes, for the best look at the data and the issue from an impartial perspective. You people are rally funny.
Some bunnies, not Eli to be sure, would suggest that Don use a spell checker. Eli postulates that the problem lies deeper.
Eli Rabid, forget about Stokesy. Go with McIntyre – he is more competent than the top ten “climate scientists”, even with half his brain tied behind his back. You’ll look less foolish later on.
Bob,
Steve McI is smart and he studies seriously the issues he chooses to study. Those issues are, however, not necessarily the most important ones for climate science as a whole. Therefore following only or mainly CA may be seriously misleading.
I would expect that Steve Mci is perfectly willing to accept that this may be the case. That’s at least my impression from what he’s writing. He wants to understand issues of statistical analysis in climate science papers based on the intellectual interest of those issues. (That applies to his present work. Other factors may have been more essential years ago.)
Andrew holds grudges.
Not me, but some other Andrew.
Andrew
I do not.
Andrew
@pekka
You say
‘Steve McI is smart and he studies seriously the issues he chooses to study. Those issues are, however, not necessarily the most important ones for climate science as a whole’
I disagree. The most important thing for me about McIntyre’s work is that – almost wherever he looks – he finds and documents evidence of ‘shoddy work’ among people who really should know better.
It may well be that insiders do not find his subjects to be particularly relevant to their day-to-day work, but as it shines a piercing light on the field of climatology as a whole, it is way more important overall than today’s talking point du jour or tomorrow’s new reconstruction with or without a hockey stick or whatever else is grabbing the climatologists attention at any point.
And the most important thing that he reveals is not there. It is noticeable by its absence.
Every time he shows up ‘sharp practice’ – obvious even to those with the meanest of scientific understanding – there is a deafening silence from fellow practitioners. Occasionally they are motivated to produce some sort of defence against his searing gaze, but mostly we just hear nothing at all. No condemnation. Nobody having the guts (or desire) to say that the work is wrong or incorrect or should be withdrawn. Just an omerta worthy of the mafia.
For those of not in academe, we view this phenomenon and wonder why they tolerate the few rogues that break the rules. Or stretch the rules to breaking point to accommodate them.
For those of us with professional training in other fields, we most emphatically do not want bad apples in our profession. Their bad work taints us all and makes all our lives more difficult. We do our best to get rid of them.
But climatology is different and the cynic might come up with all sorts of hypotheses why they are tolerated. And none of then reflect well on the field.
So follow McIntyre and McKitrick and Jean S and Keenan and omnologos and Eschenbach and all the others skilled in showing up the dodgy practices of climatology.
And when they all run out of subjects to write about – and when fellow climatologists start to condemn rather than condone the rogues – you an be sure that it is a field full of reliable work done with integrity.
Holding your breath while waiting for this to happen is not recommended.
People may do shoddy work on main issues, but they do much more shoddy work on side issues. This paper is a obvious example of putting less care to issues that are not at the core of the research being done. The paper is about temperatures of holocene, not about 20th century.
Latimer Alder
+100
Pekka Pirila,
You have just provided another example of the orthodoxy trying to defend the indefencible.
Latimer @6.18: it is for such reasons that many like me who haven’t the capacity to be fully across the science have no faith in warmist claims: so much work has been shown to be shoddy, faulty or plain wrong, but the proponents just circle the wagons and blaze away at McIntyre et al. (Not THE Al, unfortunately). Reasonable people are reluctant to accept the claims of such a group, addressing which have had and will have far-reaching negative consequences. If climate scientists en masse were wedded to integrity, they would whole-heartedly embrace McIntyre and respond positively to his work. Then we might give them more credence.
@pekka
‘People may do shoddy work on main issues, but they do much more shoddy work on side issues.’
You illustrate my point.
I’d like my climatology to be done to a high standard throughout. We pay you guys good money and give you satisfying careers. In return we’d like good quality work.
But you seem to be quite unconcerned that that lots of it is shoddy. You condone rather than condemn the poor stuff.
And then you and your colleagues get annoyed that we have the effrontery to ask awkward questions about the work and the conclusions rather than just accepting everything you say without reservation.
I doubt if I’m alone in putting ‘Trust us, we are climatologists’ in the same category as ‘The cheque’s in the post’, and ‘I’m from head office, I’m here to help you’ . For the avoidance of any doubt, this is not meant as a compliment.
It’s a bit hard to cast Nigel as Diogenes of Sinope although there is some resemblance.
Pekka,
First off, the 20th century is part of the Holocene. There is no valid reason to exclude it from the rest of the record.
I do not understand why you consider Marcott et al paper to add anything to our understanding of the Holocene. Any perturbations in the record have been averaged out. It might be of value to conclude the 8.2 ka event only impacted the NH. It is of little value to suggest it never happened.
Do you believe this work would have been published in Science if it had only included the Holocene up to the 19th century? If yes, why?
I really cannot say whether the results of the paper were of wide enough interest for getting published in Science. What’s certain is that the uptick in a couple of figures did not add to the merits of the paper.
Don
Eli is right, I think you meant to say:
‘You people are really furry.’
Tonyb
:-) :-) :-)
Ear! ear! to that.
So can Ms. Rabett
Or “You people are really fuzzy.”
Or at least your logic is.
Helps when the issues are difficult.
In the search for an honest man – avert eyes here ^
Oh, no! The effete rabette, who refers to himself as Eli, is going to ding us for typos. Do you wear your ears, when you are lecturing your hapless students?
Elmer Fud is giving the waskilly wabbit bofh bawwels.
Will he choose to provide his advice on spelling before or after he has mastered the first person singular?
If after, then I think we need be in no urgent fear of correction.
If before, then the relevant text is Matthew 7.3
‘And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?’
Eli finds agitating bags of wind good sport.
Eli isn’t capable of more challenging sports.
The waskilly wabbit finds breaking wind good sport?
(Didn’t know wabbits had it in them.)
Eli will be kind to manaker.
Look on the bright side. While it WAS a doctoral thesis before it was a paper in Science at least it WAS NOT a press release before it was a Science paper.
Not formally. But practically, it actually was.
Look folks.
Rud Istvan has just demonstrated beyond anyone’s doubt where someone has “put some lipstick on this pig” before publishing it.
Editors do this (in order to increase sales or get some desired point across).
Authors usually know about it and agree (why not, especially young authors who seek acknowledgement and recognition from the system?)
Did the “lipstick” end up giving a false picture of the “pig”?
The evidence cited by Rud appears to show it did.
So it was data manipulation.
– Why was it done?
– Why did the authors agree to it (assuming they did)?
These are the remaining unanswered questions.
Max
Some questions don’t need to be “answered.” As the scorpion told the frog, that is simply their nature.
There have definitly been two recent periods of atmospheric warmimg: 1910 – 1940 and 1970 to 2000, although the second was an oceah transport delayed version of the first. One of our contributors did succeed in eliminating the first by heavy smoothing of the time series and others may have done the same. It is easy to eliminate a real event by heavy smoothing and justifying that by saying it was noise.
Mosher said with a straight face:
It was the beginning of the interglacial. For many of those years it would have been impossible to be as warm is it is today. We are still in an interglacial period and are leaving the last glacial period further behind and with it the cold of that time. But since you don’t seem to like the current global temperature (what is it, btw?) what should it be or would it be had human kind suffered complete annihilation by runaway prion infestation and why would that be better than what it is given humans are here and doing well?
Include in your math the fact that even without human contribution, the rate of natural CO2 growth would have brought us to the current level not terribly far into the future and then beyond Hansen’s tipping point not long after that.
We will ignore for the purpose of this discussion that such natural catastrophic instability has been going on for millions of years and will continue.
we are close to be as warm or warmer than it has been in the past 12K years.
That is why there are about 7 Billion of us. Unfortunately, our number will reduce when the cooling solar cycle starts.
We must be greatfull to the current grand maximum.
Another skeptic convinced that he can predict the climate.
Naw, Steven, but his guess is as good as that of the IPCC, who also are “convinced that
he[it] can predict the climate”Max
dp, if the same method was used for the past 800k years and included sst paleo, we would be as warm as it has ever been in the past 800k years. It is warmer because it is not an ice age. It can’t help but be warmer.
The question has always been how much warmer and much warmer can we realistically expect? Once you reach the top, it is hard to get much higher.
@Pekka Pirila
You say
Steve McI is smart and he studies seriously the issues he chooses to study. Those issues are, however, not necessarily the most important ones for climate science as a whole
But neither are the issues the climate scientists choose to study the most important issues.
The climate scientists study temperatures and trends and statistics and photons and energy balance and butterflies and how climate effects the sex of apes and a whole host more as listed in this “A complete list of things caused by global warming”: http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm .
It’s all a great big “So What? because climate scientists, in the main, do not study what is important for informing policy. And the work of the few who do, is biased by their ideological beliefs – e.g., advocating irrational policies to justify mandating and subsidising renewable energy and imposing carbon pricing schemes. The work has not been done to justify the policies advocated by the CAGW orthodoxy.
Importantly, climate scientists are not interested in doing the work that is relevant so the work is not being done.
For consistency I would say lets treat this like we did the mistake found in the paper co-authored by Anthony Watts last year.
Ie lets just ignore it. Chalk it up as a mistake. There’s no need to retract anything said, or to question whether the mistake was due to incompetence or dishonesty.
lolwot, I agree, but that means not citing it and not using it to play up to the media. The problem with mistakes in the big glossy magazines tend to be the gifts that keep on giving.
Right lolwot, just a mistake, They made a mistake when they contacted all the usual journalists who could be counted on to write frightening articles about hockey sticks and the warmest this, and the unprecedented that, and the imminent threat to civilization as we know it.
“Lead author Shaun Marcott of OSU told NPR that the paleoclimate data reveal just how unprecedented our current warming is: “It’s really the rates of change here that’s amazing and atypical.” He noted to the AP, “Even in the ice age the global temperature never changed this quickly.”
Ooops. Marcott just made a mistake when he failed to communicate to the fawning media that the hockey stick effect was not robust (by his own admission)…And that doesn’t even begin to touch his many errors within the study.
It’s all a mistake. Sorry. Sorry for the inconvenience. Never mind.
Sorry.
Even after writing the above, I’m still shaking my head. I really think most of you guys are full on bonkers. There’s not an alarmist on this site who wouldn’t make an interesting case study in psychopathology.
The disturbing aspect to me was the NSF grant officer going out in public and hyping the invalid conclusions to the media. It made the incentive structures operating all too naked.
Lets look at the differences.
1. The issue was an oversight, failing to look at both RAW and TOBS.
2. The oversight was noted and Zeke and I were thanked, publically THANKED for pointing out the oversight. They said our names.
3. Nobody questioned zekes motives or my motives in looking for errors.
ITS WHAT WE ARE SUPPOSED TO DO! mcintyre is SUPPOSED to look for errors, and science is improved when he finds them REGARDLESS of whether they are material or not. he should be thanked, acknowledged and thats the end of it. What part of THANK YOUR CRITICS dont people get.
4. Anthony, McIntyre and I still talk about the paper and I look forward to seeing it published. My my grown men can disagree and still talk. Why
cant marcott simply call Steve McIntyre and explain what he did. Crap, I get emails from all around the world from folks asking me about BEST.. I dont do oposition research on them, I try to answer their questions even though I consider the code to be answer enough.
As far as I see it some folks in climate science have missed a grand opportunity to enlist the help of a very sharp man.
Steven Mosher | March 20, 2013 at 11:00 pm |
Rud Istvan is, without question, one of the sharpest businessmen to have expressed an interest in climatology. He’s no Steve Mosher, but he’s sharp.
It’d be great if the back-and-forth continues, and especially agreeable if it went forward with courtesy and goodwill.
Anyone care to try to broker that engagement?
mosher –
Some observations.
Stevie-mac attributed tribalistic statments to Marcott when (as least as I’ve seen, and I’ve asked) the evidence isn’t there.
Anthony and others big-time hyped a flawed paper.
There was hostility from the “skeptic” tribe to the criticism of Anthony’s paper.
There’s no shortage of bad form, lack of charity, and tribalism on either side of the divide.
> As far as I see it some folks in climate science have missed a grand opportunity to enlist the help of a very sharp man.
Truly “reading the blog” might even have sufficed.
Steven, global warming crusaders don’t want the science improved. They want it accepted at face value. If there’s any improving to do they’ll improve it themselves.
The Marcott debacle is a demonstration of corruption in climate science. It’s not a mistake. It’s a deliberate deception. Marcott’s doctoral thesis is the unbuggered paper. The Science piece was that thesis unscrupulously manipulated to produce a propaganda piece and Science magazine was a willing accomplice.
Mosh has been involved in an impressive data mining effort, and one on which I have been analyzing on my own.
I am curious about the climate sensitivity used on the simple model fit used here:
http://berkeleyearth.org/results-summary/
I have a feeling it is using a 3C sensitivity for doubling of CO2.
Steven Mosher- You have my standing ovation for this post.
WHT –
I have a feeling it is using a 3C sensitivity for doubling of CO2
Yes. Using BEST’s recommended Beta value of 4.47
4.47 * ln (2) = 3.1C
blueice2hotsea, I don’t think it really makes sense to do that calculation. BEST used CO2 as a proxy. People talk about the sensitivity of CO2 as CO2 rather than CO2 as a proxy. Conflating the two doesn’t make sense, and that’s what happens when you do a calculation like yours.
Of course, BEST was asking for confusion when they did the same calculation and compared it to other sensitivity estimates for a doubling of CO2. That begged for confusion. It also rendered their results basically meaningless as they didn’t discuss CO2’s relationship to what it was proxying. A person could figure out that ratio, multiply BEST’s sensitivity by it then consider the issue of timing (transient versus equilibrium sensitivity)… but why should someone have to go through that just to be able to get a meaningful result from BEST’s paper?
Then again, their curve-fitting sucks anyway. Their manual manipulation of their volcanic record to add a volcano is understandable (though their failure to disclose it is not), but their failure to do any testing of their fit is not. The most obvious example is their volcanic fit is highly dependent upon the period used. You get a dramatically different value if you exclude earlier years from the fit. That’s troubling as those earlier years have more uncertainty than the newer ones.
Personally, I think if adding less accurate data causes significant changes in your results, you should question your results. BEST’s fine statistical team apparently doesn’t even think about the matter.
Brandon
“however, nearly all such forcings follow a similar time evolution, and because our fit is so simple (a linear superposition of known curves) there was value in keeping the number of parameters small. For the analysis that follows it is not meaningful to distinguish between anthropogenic forcing that has similar time histories (We tried, for example, including a historic term for methane; the resulting fit was virtually identical, and the data was insufficiently precise to determine the relative components of CO2 and methane).”
In english that you might understand: we fit combinations of all forcings.
it did not improve the fit. C02 is a proxy for all forcings. adding variables that dont improve the fit is not a good thing.
WRT the correction of Gao. That small correction is clearly called out in the supplementary material http://berkeleyearth.org/xls/forcing-comparison.xlsx
Many folks try to put too much weight on this particular result
we write:
The temperature “forcing” of volcanic aerosols is a complicated function of latitude, altitude, season, and particle size; see Kelly et al. [20]. However, the fit presented here can provide a rough estimate. We observe a response of -1.5 ± 0.5°C per 100 Tg of atmospheric sulfate emitted. The 95% confidence interval quoted here is primarily influenced by the uncertainties in the temperature data; however we also allowed the magnitude of each eruption to have a 1-sigma error of ± 15%. A more sophisticated analysis of the forcing and the details of the climate response may be able to improve upon the crude estimate offered here based solely on the linear combination fit.
“In the simple linear combination, the anthropogenic factor, log (CO2), has a weight equivalent to an effective response of 3.1 ± 0.3°C at doubled CO2 (95% confidence). However, this parameterization is based on an extremely simple linear combination, using only CO2 and no other anthropogenic factors and considering only land temperature changes. As such, we don’t believe it can be used as an explicit constraint on climate sensitivity other than to acknowledge that the rate of warming we observe is broadly consistent with the IPCC estimates of 2-4.5°C warming (for land plus oceans) at doubled CO2. The purpose of the anthropogenic term is merely to show that our extended temperature reconstruction is consistent with an anthropogenic explanation, and not to try and detangle the details for those changes. However, more detailed studies of how our land-surface temperature history compares to the various forcing and expected responses should ultimately help constrain parameters critical to the understanding of climate change.”
Let me see if I can explain what that section of the paper does from my perspective. The question comes “is the data before 1850 any good?”
I know of a few ways of checking that, the easiest in terms of the scope of the paper was to check for consistency with other known science.
1. Is it consistent with the volcano record
2. Is it consistent with what we know about sensitivity
There are some other more sophisticated ways t
o approach the problem, but within the scope of the paper those simple questions could be answered.
For some people this consistency amounts to proof that humans caused the warming. To others, that science is true independent of what we show here.. icing on the cake as it were.
Thats why Muller could look at it and be surprised at the fit and other folks like me say “hey we knew that”
Of course if you dont believe in C02 effect then this consistency will be proof of nothing.
Isnt that funny how the same evidence can be seen so many different ways
Steven Mosher:
Why are you saying this? Despite the implication you make (“english that you might understand”), what you say is perfectly in line with my descriptions of BEST’s work. It seems you’re insulting me for not understanding something because you don’t understand what I said!
This is at least the second time you’ve done this on this very issue. I pointed out the same thing before. Your response? Non-existent. You consistently misrepresent me in a mocking tone. It’s stupid, and it makes responding to you seem like a waste of time.
Heck, the only thing I’ve actually said that you responded to was the issue about the modification to the Gao record. That’s remarkable given how much you wrote.
If you want to have a discussion, quote my words and respond to what they say. Otherwise, don’t bother.
BrandonShollenberger –
Yes. Thanks for the correction.
BEST is using CO2 as a proxy for total anthropogenic radiative forcing, which they estimate to be about 10% greater than CO2 alone.
So, how do you feel about guessing 2.8C as their CS “estimate”? (1.68/1.84 * 3.1)
Or perhaps Steven Mosher will help out here.
I guess I should respond to the Gao point. Mosher claims a modification “is clearly called out in the supplementary material” for his paper. The problem with this is twofold. First, the file he links to says the correction is made “per Gao et al.” There is no reference given for who Gao et al is. That might seem like a pointless comment since Gao et al are referenced by BEST. It isn’t. Comments Mosher and Zeke have made indicate that reference is actually false. They say the correction comes from Gao, a single author of the paper, in personal communication. That is not Gao et al.
Second, there is no link to the supplementary material in the paper. There is no discussion of it in the paper. There is no indication it even exists. There is no way a person would go from the paper to that file and see the change “clearly called out.”
But what if one goes to the Papers page of the BEST website? There is no discussion of the supplementary material there. How about if you follow the link the site gives for the paper? There is no discussion of the supplementary material there. In fact, when I follow that link, I don’t even get directed to the paper. All I’m shown is a page with two other papers listed.
Is it possible to find the supplementary material for the paper? Yes. Is it possible to find out about the “correction” they applied to the record? Yes. Is it something a reader could reasonably be expected to do? No.
This is a minor issue compared to the complete lack of testing by BEST on their curve fitting (they didn’t not even do basic in-sample testing), but even on it, BEST does a bad job.
Blueice2hotsea, “So, how do you feel about guessing 2.8C as their CS “estimate”? (1.68/1.84 * 3.1)”
Since they used CO2 as a proxy for all forcing, it shouldn’t change the sensitivity, just the beta for CO2 doubling. As best I can tell that constant isn’t, it is temperature dependent and the temperature it is dependent on is the source of the estimated DWLR. That is why I find the shift in diurnal temperature range so interesting.
Wow. Things just get better. I found a correct link for the paper we’re discussing. It has a link for the paper titled, Supplementary File. The link goes to a totally different file than Mosher provided.
The “correction” may have been “clearly called out” in one file, but it’s difficult to imagine how a reader of the paper is expected to find that file.
Oops. Steven Mosher did reply. And it would appear my 2.8C guess is also wrong as BEST is land-only.
Anyone have a guess as to what 2.8C land-only implies for global CO2 sensitivity?
No takers? Ok here’s a naive estimate.
Assume a 2x land sensitivity (during satellite era) and 29% land weighting:
2.83 * 0.29 + 1.41 * 0.71 ≈ 1.8C
As Cap’n Dallas pointed out, sensitivity is temperature dependent. So 1.8C would be an instantaneous BEST guess subject to annual revision!
As always, if I am a fool, then let Socrates speak. thanks.
blueice2hotsea, I’d have to check the data to see if your 10% estimation is right. Assuming it is right, we have to consider several things when looking at the 2.8 value. First, as you point out, BEST is land-only and we generally talk about global sensitivity. This will likely bias it high.
Second, BEST’s result is not for an equilibrium sensitivity. That means it will be biased low. Third, land’s response function is different not just in size, but in time. Since it will respond faster to a change in forcing, a transient sensitivity for it is not directly comparable for one of ocean or land+ocean.
It’s difficult to go from BEST’s results to what you’re discussing, and that’s without even considering the uncertainty in the forcing history. I wouldn’t care to try it.
By the way, I stepped out for an hour to eat dinner. You’re so impatient!
Chewie ought to chew on this blog post I put together:
http://theoilconundrum.blogspot.com/2013/03/stochastic-analysis-of-log-sensitivity.html
The land temperature record is exceedingly important. People like Chewie that don’t have much experience with physics seem to think that heat is something that can naturally organize itself. Not so — what we are seeing with the land temperature records ala BEST is the effect of the fast-transient of the climate sensitivity. This is the value that the slower ocean will eventually reach if we can wait long enough.
The physical analogy is that you have a computer chip, but the chip doesn’t have a heat sink attached directly to it, but instead is coupled through a relatively poor thermally conductive path to a huge heat sink. The huge heat sink doesn’t matter as the path is preventing the heat from dispersing as fast as it can, so the land always leads the way. I consider it less useful to look at mixed ocean and land signals.
Brandon,
You are welcomed to write a comment and explain how you were befuddled. The paper in Chief does not comment on fixing the Gao record. That’s called the edit room floor. The correction is called out in
the data pages we supply for interested folks. the paper directs people to the web page. When people cant find things they write me. Sometimes they even urge college students to write in their place.
You have the data. The equations are all there. No FOIA required, no tedious back and forth, I’ve pointed you at this before.
Here is a hint. You are no steve mcintyre.
Thanks Brandon.
The correction to Gao et al, somewhat insignificant, came from a correspondence with several people, among them Gao.
1. the mistake made was acknowledged
2. They thanked us.
3. We had a choice
A) use data that was bad, provable bad. In which case you would bitch
B) wait for Gao to fix it and write a paper.. maybe never
C) fix it per his instructions, which we did.
4. We had an obligation to disclose this fix. That obligation is met. Not to your satification, but life is not burger king and you dont get things your way. had it been substantial, it would merit a sentence in the paper.
5. a series of communications between a few people resulted in a fix. ‘Gao et al’ doesnt describe that very well. I’ll change that for you if you like.
Webster, You have to know where you start before you can know where it is going to go.
Since the Antarctic is thermally isolated, you have a larger southern sink than northern sink. Since CO2 does not add mass to the atmosphere, the warming in the NH at peak levels tend to relieve itself to space via SSW events. Now if you can figure out how much of the warming is due to CO2 and how much is due to longer term natural ocean “sloshing” around, then you can come up with an educated estimate of impact due to CO2. Without knowing the initial conditions, you are mathturbating.
” The dominant forcing factor appears to be precessional insolation; Northern Hemisphere summer insolation correlates to at least the early to middle Holocene climate trend. Spectral analysis reveals centennial-scale cyclic climate changes with periods of 1220, 1070, 400, and 150 yr. The record shows good correlation to East Antarctic ice cores and to climate records from South Georgia and Bunger Oasis. However, the record shows out-of-phase behavior with regard to climate records from the western Antarctic Peninsula and the Peru-Chile Current; such behavior hints at a climatic divide through Patagonia, the Drake Passage, and between West and East Antarctica.”
Since I was just comparing a few Atlantic Paleo reconstructions.
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-Z63aHQbkBew/UUy2UAR1mnI/AAAAAAAAHio/p66RH0n6ODQ/s887/Atlantic%2520SST%2520reconstructions.png
The Nielsen et al. is in red and has been climbing since 2500 BC, The Ruehlemann tropical has been climbing slowly since 9000 BC while the Bendle sub atctic has been falling since from 8500 BC. There are extremely long internal lags due to the vast thermal capacity of the oceans and the asymmetrical distribution.
You really should check out some of the GFDL papers.
Steven Mosher:
Because I participate on blogs and have engaged with people involved in the project. If not for that, I wouldn’t have them. You’ve consistently promoted certain standards about providing data and code with papers that BEST has not met with this paper.
On what basis do you say it was a mistake? The Gao record does not reflect a particular volcano. That’s true. However, Gao et al attributed that to a flaw in their data, not a mistake. Calling that a mistake misrepresents the issue in a way that hides a problem.
I would not “bitch” if you had used the Gao record as provided. You’re making this up. You are flat-out fabricating claims in order to portray me in a negative light.
As I’ve discussed, there is no traceable connection between the disclosure and the paper. There is no way a reader of the paper would be directed to the disclosure. The fact one can find a file on the BEST website does not make it adequate.
By the way, you should be careful saying BEST had a choice. Shoddy information sharing aside, BEST chose not to do anything resembling adequate sensitivity testing for their curve fitting. As I’ve discussed (and shown elsewhere), its fitted parameters are not remotely robust. And depending on the period used to calculate the fit, the modification to the Gao record can make a significant difference.
But you guys chose not to do simple testing for issue like that.
Brandon
‘which case you would bitch
I would not “bitch” if you had used the Gao record as provided. You’re making this up. You are flat-out fabricating claims in order to portray me in a negative light.”
###############
Brandon. it is pretty clear that you havent read Gao.
They clearly state that the record was missing the volcano in question. They clearly state the value one should use. We cite Gao et al for a reason. That is the source of the correction. Of course to confirm this we communicated with them.
1. The correction is called out in the text of Gao.
2. You never checked that.
3. We checked that by writing to him.
4. We corrected the file PER HIS INSTRUCTIONS, we noted the correction in our datafile and supplied the reference: Gao et al, And I’ve told you we also communicated with him. Thats called double checking.
So, when you get around to reading Gao, you will see that you are no steve mcintyre.
Steven Mosher:
Fascinating. You figure I what, downloaded it to my computer just for fun? I can’t prove I read it, but I can take a screenshot showing when I downloaded it. Oh wait, you’re just saying this as a lame way to try to discredit me. It’s funny as you said this about the paper:
Gao et al did not say this. Their paper doesn’t say there was a mistake made. Their paper offers a very clear reason the El Chichon volcano doesn’t show up in their record, and it has nothing to do with a mistake. I’ll quote Gao et al:
It was missed just due to a limitation of their data. There was no mistake. You’ve completely fabricated that claim. You fabricated a claim about a paper while claiming I clearly didn’t read the paper.
I clearly did read the paper. That’s why I represented it accurately. That’s why I didn’t spread misinformation about it. That’s why I didn’t accuse people who discussed it accurately of not reading it.
I may be “no steve mcintyre,” but I’m a hell of a lot closer than you.
By the way, Gao et al did not “clearly state the value one should use.” They didn’t even say their record should be modified. All they said is they tested an approach with a different record because El Chichon was missing from there’s:
This doesn’t say any modification should be made to their record. It certainly doesn’t “clearly state the value one should use” for the El Chichon volcano. In no way does Gao et al support anything Steven Mosher is saying.
Mosher attacks me and defend BEST with what is tantamount to lies. I hope the other members of the BEST team are better than this.
brandon –
Just curious – do you think there is a substantive difference between lies and and what is “tantamount to lies?”
If you think there is, then is the difference similar to the (apparently you think substantive) difference between ad homs and “you make no sense” or “you’ve offered falsehood after falsehood” or “you also hand-wavingly offer” etc.?
Heh, Joshua is ‘tantamount to pertinent’.
==========
Joshua:
Definitely. I’ll offer a parallel from criminal prosecution. Unintentional homicide is usually not considered murder. Because of that, it carries a lesser sentence. There are exceptions though. When the defendant’s “depraved indifference” causes a homicide, he or she can be prosecuted for murder.
The idea behind that is unintentional acts can be as bad as intentional acts in some cases. In Mosher’s case, he may not be aware that what he says is untrue, but he shows extreme recklessness and indifference in regard to the validity of what he says. That makes his behavior as bad as lying, but it doesn’t mean he knows what he says is false.
An ad hominem uses an attack against a person to discredit an argument the person makes. Each of the quotes you offer (I believe) comes from comments I’ve made. In those comments, I did the opposite. I took a response to an argument the person made and used it to discredit the person.
In other words, I did the exact opposite of an ad hominem argument. I don’t see that as being similar to the the difference “between lies and what is ‘tantamount to lies.'”
Brandon –
So, what you’re saying is that there are two basic possibilities. Either he could be acting extremely recklessly and indifferently to the validity in his opinions – effectively the equivalent of lying (tantamount to lying) or he could be outright stating opinions that he knows to be false.
So let’s look at what you say next:
So if I understand you correctly, you think that saying that Mosher is either (a) reckless and indifferent to validity or, the equivalent of lying or (b) stating opinions he knows to be false (i.e., lying) is not “tantamount” to trying to discredit his arguments by discrediting him as being being reckless and indifferent to validity or knowingly making false statements?
Now in response to that argument, I might be inclined to say either: (1) that argument makes no sense, or (2) you make no sense. I would consider either to be “tantamount” to an ad hom (i.e., the effect is the same as an ad hom).
As such, I will simply say that I disagree with your analysis. In my view, saying that someone is either reckless and indifferent the validity of their arguments (i.e.,the equivalent of being a liar) or knowingly stating outright falsities (i.e., a liar), is certainly “tantamount” to discrediting their arguments by attacking them personally.
As an aside…
I am confused by the syntax of that statement. Whose “response to an argument the person made” did you use to “discredit the person?” Your own response to their argument?
Seems to me there could only be three possibilities: (1) you used your own previous “response to an argument the person made” to discredit that person, (2) you used a third person’s “response to the argument the person made” to discredit that person, or (3) you took that persons own response to their own argument to discredit them?
If the third choice is the one you were describing, could you explain how a person would respond to their own argument? If it is the second choice, could you identify the third person involved? If it is the first choice, then could you explain how you used your own previous response to that person’s argument to then discredit that person?
brandon –
Re-reading that statement, it occurs to me that maybe you meant to say “I took a
response toan argument the person made and used it to discredit the person.Nonetheless, I am still confused by the argument that you aren’t seeking to discredit a person’s argument through the (acknowledged) act of (as least in your mind) “discredit[ing that] person.”
Brandon – consider the following approach to debate:
You make arguments that make no sense. In fact, you just made an argument that makes no sense. In fact, the argument you just made is proof that either you make arguments that show you to be reckless and indifferent to logical validity (tantamount to lying) or you that you lie.
And compare that approach to one expressed in the following:
Brandon, I disagree with your analysis and here are the reasons why…..
What is the effective difference between those to approaches to debate?
Joshua (edited to simplify):
Correct. I discredited his arguments. I then used that to speak about him. I built upon the problems with his arguments to make a point about him.
I have no idea how you think your (1) here is even close to ad hominem. Saying an “argument makes no sense” is attacking the logic of the argument. It’s not using anything about the person making the argument to discredit the argument. How do you define ad hominem?
I guess I should have said “my response” instead of “a response.”
Given the first “approach” is a gross caricature of what I do, there are many effective differences. It’d be pointless to list them as it’d be arguing a strawman. You didn’t even include an ellipsis to indicate reasons were given in the first approach like you did in the second.
Do you really think your portrayal of the first approach is fair? If so, I don’t think there’s any way we can hope to make progress.
lolwot
IOW “fuggibaboudit”.
Good advice.
Too bad IPCC did not follow this advice in AR4 after the Mann “shtick” had been scientifically discredited.
These studies, even when they are shown to be flawed, live on forever (if they convey the desired message – and this one, like the Mann “shtick”, does, in the eyes of IPCC).
Max
One that was actually published or the one he is still working on. Serious question.
lolwot,
So if this were poker and you caught the other guy cheating, you say, ok past is past, we can ignore it – after he has taken your money?
You do not get the opportunity for the public spotlight and then afterwords quietly acknowledge to a tiny circle of friends that you were in serious error.
You know, a real follower of the sport of hockey knows a referee who blows the whistle too often just gets in the way and ruins the game for everyone, while generally resulting in more fights.
All this hyperventilating over-the-top point-missing microanalysis, true or not, seems a bit unhealthy, and certainly to be feeding into the unhealthiest tendencies of some denizens.
And what, in sum, do we see wrong with Marcott’s Science article? It differs from his thesis?! So what? That’s common practice.
It employs ambitious methods to link the paleo proxy and model and instrumental trends in a single informatic?
What is wrong with informatics? It’s the single largest trend on the web, after Twitter. How do we know this? Well, there’s informatics showing it.
Rud Istvan, you’re better than to waste your time seeking to critique a mere informatic, as if it meant anything that wasn’t already patent from a hundred studies. Produce some new research. Get it peer reviewed. Published.
Y’know.. like science.
BartR, I agree. Really, we should ignore 99% of the climate science stuff and get back to doing business.
captdallas,
Unfortunately we cannot afford to ignore 99% of the climate stuff because they are using it to justify government interference in our business.
However it does look like we should ignore 99% of what Bart R is posting because he made it abundantly clear that he is unfamiliar with Marcott et al, climate science, the peer review process and the game of hockey.
In peer review, the people doing the reviews are called referees. If they blow the whistle too often it prevents a paper from being published. If they don’t blow the whistle, all kinds of cheap shots get into the journals. A person or team wins the game if their paper gets published. It’s a major league game if it is published in Nature or Science. If they are lucky they will get written up in the sport pages.
In hockey, referees are trained and certified to ensure a certain standard in game play. In climate science the referees are not necessarily familiar with the subject, have strong opinions about who may be allowed to win and on occasion promise to change the peer review process to ensure some people will not get published.
Steve McIntyre et al are not in the game. They are like commentators reviewing the game as it was played and pointing out the penalties not called by the referees thereby throwing the game. At least Marcott et al allowed their game to be videoed for review unlike Mann et al who still won’t even release the verbal play by play. The video doesn’t show all the corners all the time, so it’s still not totally clear what went on.
It is clear that Marcott et al were offside numerous times moving the data back and forth across the blue line without a word from the linesmen. Any goals points they might have scored were all kicked in after a hand pass.
And just in case Bart R is reading this… Marcott et al did not create their blade using the modern instrument record. They did it by moving individual data points in individual proxy records until a blade emerged out of the dross
Jeff Norman | March 24, 2013 at 2:59 pm |
However it does look like we should ignore 99% of what Bart R is posting because he made it abundantly clear that he is unfamiliar with Marcott et al, climate science, the peer review process and the game of hockey.
Did you want to list other things I’m unfamiliar with, or did you want to go back, read what I actually said, and compare it to what you got out of it in your haste to commence ranting?
Am I familiar with Marcott et al? I’m familiar enough to have dismissed the last 120 years of the infographic in question as entirely unreliable without further development or resolution of apparent discrepancies, and to understand you can tell nothing about the frequency of sub-century spikes directly from millennialy smoothed ensemble averages. But you clearly missed that, as it wasn’t the first thing your eyes fell on. Also, Marcott’s so new to published papers, it’s impossible to track citations of his work directly — though I expect this paper and follow ups will explode very quickly with adaptation of his methods. You might want to check the citation index instead of Marcott’s thesis advisor.
I don’t pretend to know anything about climate science. My entry in the denizens page says so. So what? Other than that of the two of us, I’m the one not pretending it all over the interwebs.
You might be interested to learn I am not a fan of the current peer review process. I’ve been saying so for many years. It’s not transparent, it’s inefficient, it encourages lax and deceptive practices while slowing the progress of research and of communicating findings. There are ample better tools for publishing science than are used by Science. How did I form this opinion? Certainly not by guessing about it from outside the process.
And I learned to skate before the age most toddlers learn to walk, from a former professional hockey player, my father. Though I don’t pretend to any particular affiliation with the game.
In peer review, the people doing the reviews are called referees. If they blow the whistle too often it prevents a paper from being published. If they don’t blow the whistle, all kinds of cheap shots get into the journals. A person or team wins the game if their paper gets published. It’s a major league game if it is published in Nature or Science. If they are lucky they will get written up in the sport pages.
See, the logic of analogy is a funny thing.
You extend the analogy you’re handed, instead of confusingly supplanting it with another near analogy straw man and arguing that one. Your analogy is pretty and all, but it’s not the analogy Rud Istvan argued and I responded to.
Get your head in the game. This game. Not the one you wish you were playng.
In hockey, referees are trained and certified to ensure a certain standard in game play. In climate science the referees are not necessarily familiar with the subject, have strong opinions about who may be allowed to win and on occasion promise to change the peer review process to ensure some people will not get published.
We’ll never know what referees Science used for the Marcott article, on the balance of probabilities. Only the publisher knows all the referees, and they’re contractually and conventionally tight-lipped about identities, generally. If you find out who the real referees on the Marcott paper were, by all means let us know.
The referees are unlikely to be the same as his thesis advisor, and are likely to be in large part responsible for the differences between the thesis and the paper as published. Which would likely be the product of the referee’s expertise — which we can deduce is not small, to have led to such a significant (and so far as we can tell, correct) change.
Steve McIntyre et al are not in the game. They are like commentators reviewing the game as it was played and pointing out the penalties not called by the referees thereby throwing the game. At least Marcott et al allowed their game to be videoed for review unlike Mann et al who still won’t even release the verbal play by play. The video doesn’t show all the corners all the time, so it’s still not totally clear what went on.
Rud Istvan blew the whistle. He dressed himself up as a referee in a lawyerly bowtie, not as a commentator. He aligned himself with a team of McIntyre et al. This is not what commentators do. This is not what referees do, either, but it’s the analogy Rud imposed.
It is clear that Marcott et al were offside numerous times moving the data back and forth across the blue line without a word from the linesmen. Any goals points they might have scored were all kicked in after a hand pass.
What is ‘clear’ to you is all speculation, so conjectural and ill-supported as to be more defamation and malice than commentary. The conclusions ‘deduced’ by McIntyre, Istvan & team are anything but reliable, and while the situation needs resolution, it isn’t going to be resolved in a brawl.
And just in case Bart R is reading this… Marcott et al did not create their blade using the modern instrument record. They did it by moving individual data points in individual proxy records until a blade emerged out of the dross
The premise is exactly right. Marcott et al’s blade is a product of Marcott et al’s methods; that doesn’t exclude however that the modern instrument record played no role.
There are any number of legitimate ways to procure a blade in a curve. None of these are being considered in this witch hunt.
Well done, barty! You should get the CAGW Obfuscation Prize, this month.
Maybe more like an infomercial. Sham Wow comes to mind.
Except the sham wow shammy is functional.
Rupicapra rupicapra leaps from peak to peak of the rugged Carpathians.
===============
kim
help me out here. Would the last 15 years of this qualify as a hockey stick?
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/
tonyb
Yikes, tony, we aren’t cooling are we? For how long is this supposed to last?
=========
Kim
As its cooling so quickly does that disqualify it as a hockey stick? Perhaps its a cliff?
Imagine that there is a counter line going up as quickly as the official Met office figures (i.e Real world, not some imaginary global temperature) are going down. That would represent our energy costs in the UK. A potent mix-sharply dropping temperatures and sharply rising energy costs.
tonyb
If this was merely about the science,” y’ know “like [empirical] science,” you might have a point.
It’s about the corruption of science. It’s all in the Climategate emails, if you care to read about it.
“Informatics:” is that anything like propaganda?
pottereaton | March 20, 2013 at 10:42 pm |
“Informatics:” is that anything like propaganda?
I’m delighted you ask.
http://academic.cuesta.edu/acasupp/as/404.htm
While there’s a plausible charge of card-stacking in Marcott and certainly false (or exaggerated) analogy, Istvan (who called Marcott’s paper propaganda) has demonstrated nearly every technique of propaganda in his critiques.
Propaganda Techniques Score — Marcott:2; Arts of Truth: 7
Likewise, Errors of Attack, Faulty Logic and Weak Reference —
Marcott 3; Arts of Truth 10
More to the point, while Marcott’s Science article does appear to have some qualities that may pull it into the range of propaganda (and some in the media will certainly propagandize it far more than has yet happened), Rud Istvan’s postings and followership is so far over what would be commonly seen in writing as to be demonstrating tendency toward demagoguery:
http://www.drw.utexas.edu/roberts-miller/handouts/demagoguery
Polarization. Ingroup/outgroup thinking, slipperiness on crucial terms, “god and devil” terms, scapegoating, simplicitism, motivism, double standard, personalization..
Worse, this is basically an emprunt from CA.
BartR: thanks for the links on propaganda, but I asked you about “informatics.”
Here’s what I in my ignorance assume to be an informatic (you are the first person I’ve run across that uses the term as a noun, but I assume that is because you are trend-setter) that might shed new light on the assertions in your post above:
http://climateaudit.org/2013/03/19/bent-their-core-tops-in/#comment-406486
Note that McIntyre links to important posts by Tom Curtis at SkepticalScience.
> Note that McIntyre links to important posts by Tom Curtis at SkepticalScience.
Not without a sideswipe to “Mann and his associates”.
Thank you, Steve.
An informatic, formation from information + graphic, plural informatics; as distinguished from the field of informatics.
Also called infographic or infographics.
http://visual.ly/
BartR: I see. Iow, it no longer has anything to do with science and the proper application of the scientific method. It’s all about the presentation of information to achieve the desired effect.
That’s what I thought.
pottereaton | March 21, 2013 at 1:21 am |
Well, it’s not a traditional time series, and it hasn’t used commonly accepted tools of analysis that are well understood by the scientific community to produce a reliable foundation for further work, so as an ensemble it is more infographic than anything else.
And isn’t every purposeful communication presented to achieve a desired effect?
Bart R,, I already did what you suggest. Which is why I now have time to fool around with the likes of you.
Two fundamental, and several complementary, patents on improved energy storage materials for DLC Caps. Most recent British research says enabled market will be $11 billion by 2022.
New from first principals theorem calculating Helmoltz layer energy storage behind the patents, leading to new RC constant and energy/power density insights. World scale pilot line making the materials commissioned in Austria last October.
You should have Googled me and that before asserting your embarrassingly wrong ad hominems.
You would benefit from studying my ebook, The Arts of Truth.
You are as wrong as Marcott, just more easily proven so.
Disregards
Rud Istvan | March 21, 2013 at 12:46 am |
You mistake me. Your name was known to me long before your first post here. No Google required. I was, and remain, a fan of your accomplishments and acumen.
More to the point, why are you wasting time with me? Mosher’s put his finger on the pulse of a much better question, which is the opportunity to improve Marcott’s work.
With or without Marcott’s collaboration, you could be the next Muller, if you undertook a project like BEST for paleo-proxy informatics with that time you have to fool around.
And wouldn’t that be better than this, frankly, beneath you effort?
And why wouldn’t Rud publish books and promote his schtick in a technical sense of the word?
Y’know… like business.
Bart
You can’t be serious.
What happened here appears on the surface at least to have been a willful manipulation of data in a scientific report by an editor of a venerable scientific publication in order to sell a questionable preconceived notion (i.e. that it is unusually warm today in at least the past 1300 years or so – or even the past 10,000 years).
You pooh-pooh this as nothing, concentrating on the Marcott study, itself, which you agree “does appear to have some qualities that may pull it into the range of propaganda”.
Then you attack the “whistleblower” (or rather the person, who has gone out of his way to expose not only the errors in the study but also the editorial manipulation of the report by the Science editor).
Sounds to me like you are saying “the ends justifies the means” in climate science.
I disagree wholeheartedly.
Max
manacker | March 21, 2013 at 1:26 am |
Sadly, we’ve experienced in the past that what things sound like to you don’t always match what they are.
You have to go a very, very long way around the facts to call it questionable or preconceived that the current level of global temperature today is warm relative to the later part of Marcott’s reconstruction. Sure, it relies on consensus views outside of Marcott’s thesis, and it’s lamentable more clarity and better supporting citations weren’t used. And sure, by all means, call them on those problems.
You can also question the way Marcott et al jammed the ensemble into current times. I certainly think it bears more exploration and examination to prove the reliability of this approach.
The thing with whistles in hockey, the referee is supposed to be on equally courteous and dispassionate terms with both teams. Otherwise, it just brings the game into disrepute. When a referee does violate this creed in hockey, he certainly is not granted the whistleblower defense by the people in the stands, the players, or the people who run the league.
The traditional thing to do in science in such cases is to make your views known — tactlessly and bluntly — and produce better science in the field. It isn’t to let the referee run players into the boards and start brawling.
Rud Istvan’s response is only slightly over the top, in the two topics he very generously and quite capably delivered. The follow-up and followership? That appears more than slight.
And it is a waste, because so much better could have been done without the outrage and agitprop.
Bart R
Rud Istvan did a good job a) analyzing Marcott et al. and pointing out some problems in this study, and b) digging into differences between the “Science” article, which got published, and the paper by Marcott et al. prior to editorial revisions.
In this thread the subject is the latter.
I found it very interesting that additions were made to a scientific paper in order to add new conclusions, which were not evident in the original paper.
Didn’t you?
All the fancy wording, side-stepping and waffling on your part do not change the fact that something “smells” here.
If there had been no Climategate revelations, no exposed exaggerations and lies in AR4, no prior Mann hockey “shtick” fiasco, and none of the other ballyhoo and propaganda surrounding the IPCC CAGW pitch, I would have said, “OK, bad stuff can happen, but it is an unfortunate exception – let’s forget it and move on.”
But, as has been pointed out in poll surveys in the USA and elsewhere, many people no longer have confidence in climate scientists and their work (a US poll showed that close to 70% of the respondents believed that climate scientists are fudging the data).
So this kind of thing becomes:
“Omigosh! Not another bogus climate science report intent on bamboozling the public into believing we will have catastrophic warming unless we submit ourselves to a carbon tax!”
Can you see the problem here, Bart?
It is one of a general loss of confidence and trust, in some cases even outrage that scientists on the direct or indirect taxpayer payroll are trying to bamboozle the very people that are financing their work, so that any incident like this one becomes just more fuel on the fire.
The “loss of trust” issue, and the culpability of the IPCC “consensus process” have been discussed on this site on earlier threads. These are real issues, Bart.
I believe Rud Istvan’s posts, as well as many of the comments here and on the earlier thread, mirror these concerns.
This is not intended as an attack on you, Bart, but rather as an explanation how others perceive this whole issue, so you can better understand their motives.
Max
manacker | March 21, 2013 at 2:20 am |
You’re caught in a trap.
You can’t get out.
Because you’re snared by demagoguery.
Why can’t you see.
Promoting polarization so plainly.
When you smell imaginings this way?
We can’t get anywhere.
With propagandized minds.
And we can’t do Science.
Ingroup/Outgroup rationalizing.
So if old facts we know.
Get used in new ways.
Would you still post such personalization?
So here we go again.
With over-simplification.
You can’t tell WUWT’s made up from what’s Science.
So don’t demonize.
Dry the alligator tears from your eyes.
Stop accusing people of plots and lies.
When Max you know.
This double standard’s gotta go.
And Fallacies too, yeah. Yeah.
Bart R
Elvis lives?
Phew!
Max
Latimer Adler at 6:18:
10 out of 10. Nadia Comaneci and all that.
———————————————————
lolwot wrote @ 7:46 citing Watt’s paper as a comparison: “Ie lets just ignore it. Chalk it up as a mistake. There’s no need to retract anything said, or to question whether the mistake was due to incompetence or dishonesty.”
McIntyre didn’t ignore it. He expressed his displeasure at having been talked into getting involved. One of the few mistakes he’s made when it comes to sorting out the truth in climate science papers.
People will not read this paper nor do they care about the Holocene, they are told this paper shows recent unprecedented warming that supports the need to pass laws to curb CO2 output.
No one in the “science community” seems curious as to why this “uptick” was rammed into this paper for apparently no reason?
For all the expertise here, most here seem easily manipulated or indifferent and the fact that they can’t see it is the most worrying thing.
Pekka Pirila, you say:
“People may do shoddy work on main issues, but they do much more shoddy work on side issues. This paper is a obvious example of putting less care to issues that are not at the core of the research being done. The paper is about temperatures of holocene, not about 20th century.”
———————————————
What you don’t see is that this papers entire “purpose” is now the “uptick” and it will be used solely for this purpose. It IS now all about the 20th century in its new capacity.
The fact that it will not be challenged in the community because it “doesn’t affect the thesis” is really quite ingenious.
> [U]se it to validate Holocene-spanning GCMs.
This ought to satisfy Latimer.
His appreciation of models knows no bound.
Correct. Why is it ok to exaggerate ones own work and trumpet things in the media that are not actually the true conclusions of the paper?
I agree with and want to expand on Manacker’s reply to Bart R. above. Aside from the suggestions that there was a strategy to get rid of the medieval warm period and hide the decline – the most serious revelations of Climategate to my mind were that dozens of scientists thought Mann’s work was crap. But no one said a word publicly and they allowed the hockey stick to be used by the IPCC and in the media until it was quietly disappeared. This is why outsiders feel the need to police the field as those who should be are not.
And I say this as a PhD scientist myself who publishes (at the more leisurely u-grad rate) fairly regularly. Although some get annoyed when Feynman is quoted (or in this case paraphrased), in his essay on Cargo Cult science, he points out that one should always be the worst critic of their own work and it requires a particular kind of honesty at always looking at your own data in the worst light. I had an experience with this recently where there was a strong temptation, particularly by a co-author, to overlook some studies in the literature that seemed to not support our results. But since it was not the exact same system and we thought the work was poorly done we were tempted to ignore it. (This paper already had 50 references and was long and we could not keep expanding it). But I felt we should try to address it briefly. When I looked into it, I found the most interesting thing that actually supported my main conclusions in the best way possible even though on its face it had seemed the opposite. Any way, even if it had not supported my conclusions, I agree with Feynman that one is obligated to show one’s work completely, not whitewash it.
Bill | March 21, 2013 at 8:47 am |
I get the impulse to jump on the bandwagon — after all, it’s a technique of propaganda to exploit bandwagon jumping — and pretend what’s going on here is palatable to Science.
What does happen, has happened, in the past with articles like the one Science published is not so very different in a number of ways from what Rud Istvan, Steve McIntyre and others have done in blogs – bluntly point out deficits, tactlessly remark on flaws and fault, explore unreservedly whether any facet associated with an article or paper weakens its arguments. And that’s all great. It _should_ happen, and everyone who does that ought, as Steve Mosher points out, be thanked for their service to the publisher and authors.
What doesn’t happen is a campaign of demonization, simplicism, god/devil wording, double standard, fallacy, personalization, and every other technique of demogoguery run amok.
Look objectively at what’s been posted in Rud’s two topics and the comments below, and tell me you don’t find these behaviors in a way and to a level that does science no good.
These are mere concerns.
We ought to be thankful for concerns.
Open your heart, repeat after me:
“Thank you for your concerns.”
When it comes to my betting proclivities on preordination, I go with thermometers, and not the unlikely sinkhole otherwise known as the divergence problem.
Perfected proxies will have a blade. The flunkies don’t. By the time this is resolved, nobody at all will give a chit.
My favorite reconstruction.
jch
Just got back from the met office where I read that tree ring study relating to CET that you referenced.
I am not sure i see the point of the study, the most interesting thing is a graph showing reconstructed and observed temperature from 1830 to 1970 and precipitation reconstruction.
There are numerous periods when temperatures don’t calibrate at all, a few years where its roughly right, but is especially poor from 1925 to the end.
There is a note that rainfall reconstructions are noticably less satisfactory for very wet years-which has also been commented on by other tree ring observers.
Having sifted through thousands of observations again today from 1210Ad to 1450 AD i can only say the rainfall reconstruction is thereore virtually worthliess as boy was it very wet very frequrently! Also what a lot of extreme events there were- droughts, tempests, heatwaves, floods, you name it and it was far worse back then than today
tonyb
@bart r
Please provide specific examples of the failings that you claim are present in Rud Istvan’s commentaries.
I re-read them carefully and see no
‘ demonization, simplicism, god/devil wording, double standard, fallacy, personalization, and every other technique of demogoguery run amok.’
And the subsequent remarks by many commentators provide some robustly expressed criticisms, but nothing out of the ordinary for normal discussion among adult people with strong opinions who are capable and accustomed to expressing them. Maybe in acdeme there would have been more honeyed words, but that is merely style, not substance.
And it was the authors themselves who chose to leave the academic confines. They chose to issue a press release, conduct media interviews and gain headlines for their paper all around the world. They were not obliged to do any of these things. But they did them and in so doing they voluntarily stepped into the more vigorous discourse of the real world.
If they find the heat of this arena too much for them, perhaps they will choose to keep out of the kitchen next time.. Or realise that they can’t have their cake and eat it.
If they want the publicity and the kudos, the vigorous, robustly expressed scrutiny comes too.
Thank you for this request, Latimer Alder!
Answer Rud Istvan publicly embraced willfully ignorant denialism with “Nope. Nada. Nein.”
Ouch … Rud grossly fumbled that one … what is your next request, Latimer Alder?
Fan
Latimer asked you a specific question;
“Please provide specific examples of the failings [of] Rud Istvan’s commentaries.”
You don’t seem to have actually answered with the SPECIFIC failings. Perhaps you can enumerate them?
Whilst you are about it can you point me in the direction of Dr Hansens paper on rising temperatures since 1690? As you know Giss was only a staging post and not a starting post for rising temperatures and I am sure he will have addressed this reality. Thank you
tonyb
Regarding Rud Istvan’s failings Click the link, read, and think!
Regarding Hansen’s recent articles perhaps you have in-mind Climate Sensitivity, Sea Level, and Atmospheric CO2 … or references therein?
If you’re exclusively seeking to cherry-pick minor flaws, that focus is itself trait #13 of denialism, eh TonyB?
Ooops free-as-in-freedom Hansen linky!
![\scriptstyle\rule[2.25ex]{0.01pt}{0.01pt}\,\boldsymbol{\overset{\scriptstyle\circ\wedge\circ}{\smile}\,\heartsuit\,{\displaystyle\text{\bfseries!!!}}\,\heartsuit\,\overset{\scriptstyle\circ\wedge\circ}{\smile}}\ \rule[-0.25ex]{0.01pt}{0.01pt}](https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5Cscriptstyle%5Crule%5B2.25ex%5D%7B0.01pt%7D%7B0.01pt%7D%5C%2C%5Cboldsymbol%7B%5Coverset%7B%5Cscriptstyle%5Ccirc%5Cwedge%5Ccirc%7D%7B%5Csmile%7D%5C%2C%5Cheartsuit%5C%2C%7B%5Cdisplaystyle%5Ctext%7B%5Cbfseries%21%21%21%7D%7D%5C%2C%5Cheartsuit%5C%2C%5Coverset%7B%5Cscriptstyle%5Ccirc%5Cwedge%5Ccirc%7D%7B%5Csmile%7D%7D%5C+%5Crule%5B-0.25ex%5D%7B0.01pt%7D%7B0.01pt%7D&bg=ffffee&fg=ff0088&s=1&c=20201002)
@A Fan of More Discourse
Since your response to requests for specific examples is merely handwaving unspecific generalities and vague broadbrush links to vague broadbrush complaints about abstract philosophical constructs, I’ll assume that this is yet another to add to the long list of subjects on which your monotonous ‘discourse’ includes no worthwhile content.
Latimer Alder, you have yourself not (as yet) addressed the key question: Is it scientifically plausible that the Hockey Super-Stick is real?
To Rud Istvan’s credit, Rud did *NOT* dodge and/or quibble in regard to this key question!
Good on `yah, Rud Istvan!
fan
no, you still haven’t answered the question about rud’s specific failings. please do so. Its a perfectly civil question originally posed by Latimer..
no, you still haven’t linked to anything that demonstrates Dr Hansens research on the 300 year warming period that turns giss into a staging post for rising temperatures and not the starting post.
tonyb
And JCH’s favorite reconstruction
Meets an army of crickets.
The favorite reconstruction of JCH was keen in my book.
I had to look up the original paper and found out how incredibly well they did on calibrating the proxy to instrumental temperature.
I think climatereason asked what’s the point. I assume that was a self-directed question as it implies that climatereason is wasting his time with impossible to calibrate subjective and qualitative data.
Latimer Alder
+1
JCH
Yep.
I also go for thermometers over paleo-reconstructions.
And, when the two show no overlap, I toss the paleos into the garbage.
Er.. that’s not only the last part – but the entire paleo study.
Is that the way you see it, too?
Max
Willard
There’s a typo in your last comment
That’s spelled “critics”
Max
webby
it wasn’t me who asked what was the point
tonyb
Latimer Alder | March 21, 2013 at 12:39 pm |
Probably shorter for both of us if you look at the plentiful examples of unselfconscious polemics, propaganda, fallacy and demagoguery in the posts of A fan of *MORE* discourse, and see if they remind you of anything in Rud Istvan’s replies.
Rud’s main posts, the topics themselves, are a bit more between the blue lines. (That’s hockey jargon for ‘less extreme’.) Therefore, it might be easier to start small. Perhaps look for examples where he allies himself with a team, as a hint.
But with A fan of *MORE* discourse, you don’t really have to worry about subtlety or nuance masking the agitprop.
Also, it may help that A fan of *MORE* discourse, isn’t on your side, which tends to improve objective distance.
> Perhaps look for examples where he allies himself with a team, as a hint.
Starting with adjectives might also a good idea, for instance:
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2013/02/06/lewandowsky-strike-two/#comment-92030
Tony “I am not sure I see the point of the study” claims he didn’t say that.
Too objective for climatereason apparently.
He qualitatively didn’t say that. Quantitatively he did.
Webby
To a specific study cited by another blogger, which climatereason (Tony B) has recently read, he writes to this blogger:
To which you respond:
To which Tony B corrected you with:
In true form you become “a bit loose with the truth” when you respond:
But truthfully he didn’t say that (or even imply it).
Stop your bad habit of making stuff up, Webby – makes you look untruthful and silly.
Max
I’m not going to pay attention to a serial data manipulator, so Max you may as well go away.
I don’t see the point of what climatereason is doing. I see the point of the study that JCH linked to as it has revealed an accurate approach to calibrating proxies.
Webby
A lesson your momma apparently failed to teach you was that repeating an untruth many times does not make it true.
(Lenin and Goebbels thought otherwise, but their day passed.)
After falling into that trap again (a serial prevaricator?), you add:
Now, I realize that this is NOT the same as you ASKING me what the point is of what climatereason is doing, but I’m going to tell you, anyway (as I understand it).
As can be seen from the studies being discussed here, there is a lot of ballyhoo, plain ignorance and some outright skullduggery in paleo-climate studies attempting to demonstrate that current warming is unusual. Flawed statistical methodology, fudging the data, “hiding the decline”, editors adding the “blade” of a hockey stick to make current warming appear greater, etc. are all parts of this.
Yet there are historical records, which can give us far better information than these subjective interpretations of dicey proxy reconstructions.
But digging this information takes time, and as Tony B writes, there are no big research grants for this type of work, as opposed to the paleo stuff, which is supported by the multi-billion dollar big business called “climate change”.
So Tony digs through various historical publications, hoping to find reference to particular climatic conditions, crop records, sea logs, charts or records, etc.
This seems to me like painstaking work.
But I can see that it is a vital piece of the information we all need to know about our planet’s past climate, so that we can better understand our present climate plus any future trends we might encounter.
Too bad you have trouble understanding this or its importance in the overall scheme of things (maybe it’s just not nerdy enough for you)..
I do, and I say “hats off to Tony – bring us another interesting post”.
Max.
MAX
thanks for your comment.
I spent another full day at the Met office library yesterday going through the copious historic records available there. In particular I am seeking informsation to estend my CET reconstruction back from 1538. To do this I am trrying to discover the transition point betweeen the MWP and LIA as that would fill in a large part of the gap betwen 1538 and 1000AD my eventual goal.
That enables me to write ‘The Long Slow Thaw Part 2’ which will continue the comparison of thousands of observed weather references taken from each part of the year, with those of a few tree rings that send out any sort of signal only during the limited growing period.
To this end I hope to get translated an untranslated from Latin/French diary of conditions from 1350 to 1450. Its called research which point Webby doesnt seem to get.
One of the probable reasons for the dislike of history by certain people (despite cross referencing with scientific papers) is that it presents a different picture to the official viewpoint.
What comes over loud and clear from numerous commentators is that there were far more extreme events of every kind in the pre 1538 period than occur today. It wa a good year that didnt have some sort of extreme event. The most notable feature is the prodigious amounts of rain that fell for months on end, often causing well authenticated famine and destruction of mills, houses and bridges. For example one reference to famine is cross authenticated by records I discovered at Exeter Cathedral which lists the amount of corn/money given to the poor to alleviate famine.
Incidentally the first frost fair on the Thames I can find dates to 1309 (not the 1600’s) but then the weather picked up substantially.
tonyb
@bart r
In answer to my request for specific examples of
‘ demonization, simplicism, god/devil wording, double standard, fallacy, personalization, and every other technique of demogoguery run amok.’
in Rud Istvan’s remarks, I expected a simple catalogue of RI’s remarks that we could then judge.
Instead you write
‘Probably shorter for both of us if you look at the plentiful examples of unselfconscious polemics, propaganda, fallacy and demagoguery in the posts of A fan of *MORE* discourse, and see if they remind you of anything in Rud Istvan’s replies.’
I did look at some of Fan’s orotund and and cryptic contributions. I saw no parallels whatsoever with Istvan’s remarks.
Fan’s ‘work’ reminded me of an alcoholic I once knew who probably had once had a decent intellect but whose brain was so frazzled he could only provide occasional flashes of coherence among the rambling .
By contrast, Istvan’s writing is clear, direct, unambiguous and comprehensible.
I fear you chose a pair of very bad examples to do a comparison between.
And I am disappointed that you have not been able to come up with a single concrete example of the behaviour that you berate Mr. Istvan for. I was hoping in particular to see some spectacular ‘demagoguery run amok’. The best I can find is this
‘Hockey is a fast contact sport. The whistle has blown on an obvious high stick foul just 11 days after Science first published Marcott’s hockey stick’
which is a neat turn of phrase but hardly enough to bring blood on the streets.
Perhaps the rest is only in your imagination?
‘
Willard, what would a skeptic say? See the MWP and the RWP? Then you would be forced to say that it is only a regional reconstruction. I don’t see where it would solve anything.
Willard, “And JCH’s favorite reconstruction
Meets an army of crickets.”
That reconstruction is one of the better ones, but it is a summer regional reconstruction. The end point is likely about right, today is about as warm or warmer than the MWP in the Northern Hemisphere, but what about the SH and the oceans? Paleo ocean data indicates that the southern oceans have warmed since the LGM and the Tropical oceans have little change at all over any time scale. There are a number of scientists that support greater ocean impact on climate including 3C to 4C ranges of natural variability in the higher latitudes.
Picking “favorites” is part of the problem.
Willard JCH, I should add that the method for combining instrumental with reconstruction looks very reasonable since the reconstructions were uniform MXD joined with regional temperature with about the same variance, so i consider it more of a methods paper than a final reconstruction of the region.
Gentlemen,
A big THANK YOU for your comments.
BartR,
Please beware that Latimer oftentimes follows the Can’t Get No Satisfaction algorithm:
http://neverendingaudit.tumblr.com/post/33362796798
A very big THANK YOU to Latimer for inspiring this very important Procrustean bed.
***
If you wish to interact with such algorithm, I suggest you provide one example at a time. The reason is that some quibbling might happen, in the line of “yes, but is it really an instance of what you’re saying?” If that happens, I suggest you provide another example.
Then another example.
And another example.
However sour the conversation will turn out, you’ll have a collection of examples.
And I will waive a very big THANK YOU for that collection.
@willard (et al)
Providing examples (evidence) of your many assertions will suit me just fine.
I trained as a chemist. And chemists are among the most practical of scientists. ‘Show me’ is one of our watchwords. As is ‘prove it’.
So when I see some bold alarmist statement, I want to see the evidence behind it. Doesn’t seem too much to ask, especially about a subject that claims to be scientific.
And the remarkable thing is how successful it is at getting weird and wacky replies.
Occasionally the questionee provides a good summary of the evidecne and a convincing argument as to why it is relevant to the subject. Excellent. They have done the work and aren’t just talking crap.
Frequently the answer is ‘Google it’ – or some variation. Not Good. They might have a half memory of something that they dreamt or a man they met in a pub told them or that they though they might have read a long tome ago. But no real understanding.
A different one is ‘distraction’. Example ‘Go and look at a Fan’s writings then tell me if you think its similar to Rud’s’. Pretty pointless exercise, which does more to reveal the paucity of evidence than keeping schtumm would have. And the contrast between the two serves to show how good a writer Rud is ..and how bad is Fan
But the most egregious is the petulant toddler (aka Violet Elizabeth Bott) response
‘No. Shan’t. You’re annoying and a pest’
British readers of a certain age will no doubt be expecting the inevitable finale of
‘And I’ll thcream and thcream until I’m thick’
Deeply unconvincing. Anybody trying to make a case needs to have the facts and figures at their fingertips.
Latimer Alder | March 22, 2013 at 5:04 am |
Let’s use an earlier reference on this two-topic discussion than mine:
Trish Roberts-Miller’s on-line essay Characteristics of Demagoguery list of twelve key features of demagogy:
• 01 polarization,
• 02 ingroup/outgroup thinking,
• 03 scapegoating,
• 04 motivism,
• 05 personalizing,
• 06 denial and/o rrefusal,
• 07 false dilemmas,
• 08 ad personum arguments,
• 09 conspiracy theories,
• 10 pandering to prejudice,
• 11 bad science, and
• 12 anti-intellectualism
(discarding the addition of #13 (quibbling), for obvious reasons) taken from ‘A fan of *MORE* discourse | March 17, 2013 at 12:56 pm | ‘ and adding to it the sage counsel and testimony of ‘Steven Mosher | March 17, 2013 at 10:24 pm |’ :
..Tom Fuller called and asked what I found. In a nutshell: “Well Tom, there is no smoking gun of any major wrong doing. But I will say this. They engaged in every form of bad behavior that they accused the skeptics of.”
And what is the point of these lists. You care about the planet. I care about the planet. Does the list get you any closer to agreement about what to do? Especially when that list can be turned around on you?
Not a good tactic to demonize your opponent.. except to build solidarity within ranks.. So add item 14: makes lists of opponents bad behavior.
So, no. I lament that Latimer Alder’s definition of proof is so narrow as to consider only lists of opponents’ bad behavior valid. I’m not going to rummage through Rud’s trash receptacles to sustain a patent case. Give a man a fish, he eats for a day; let a man figure out how to spot demagoguery for himself, he knows when his ocean resources are being plundered, his taxes are going to pay for fishing fleets, his labor to enrich fishmongers, and the fish he’s being handed a fraction of his own wealth disguised as charity by a slick marketer. Latimer, you’ve proven you can distinguish the irrelevant characteristics of Rud and Fan’s writing, which ought make the similarities stand out more, not less; you’ve shown you can sidestep entirely spotting demagoguery in both their writing, which shows a high degree of discernment on the topic, as this side-stepping is too apt to be accidental, so I cannot accept that the claim is not obvious to you.
The practical and profitable path is to build on this wonderful tool Marcott has developed, beat the flaws out of it, and use it to validate Holocene-spanning GCMs (now that we can contemplate such as technically feasible in the near future) by comparing their outputs — which modellers can make as granular as computers can handle, thereby answering such questions as how probable is it the current rise is the fastest in the Holocene period — through a filter that derives the probable curves of proxies. Or even to simply improve Marcott’s infographic curve as Muller’s BEST project improved on CRUTemp.
Building solidarity within polarized ranks of motivated cranks by pandering to prejudice, bad science, denial, conspiracy theory and ingroup/outgroup thinking? Not what I’m interested in.
I’m here for ideas.
http://judithcurry.com/2013/03/19/playing-hockey-blowing-the-whistle/#comment-304867
@bart r
You are taking an awful lot of words and some very convoluted routes before you come up with the evidence for Rud Istvan having shown examples of
‘demonization, simplicism, god/devil wording, double standard, fallacy, personalization, and every other technique of demogoguery run amok’
as you accuse him.
Let’s take a simple unambiguous one to make it easy for you.
You have claimed that RI uses ‘god/devil’ wording. Can you point to a place in his writing where he has done so?
If you can, then you have gone a little way towards confirming your accusations. But if not, (assuming that you have done a thorough search), then that part of the charge sheet must be expunged.
This is not conceptually difficult stuff. Somewhere towards the beginning of Evidence 101, I would imagine.
So there’s your simple challenge. Find a place where Rud Istvan uses ‘god/devil wording’ (your phrase) or alter your list of charges against him. One or the other.
To make it easy, he has only made the head post and eight subsequent short ones in this thread. I imagine you could read all of them in ten minutes or less.
I look forward to your answer.
Latimer Alder | March 22, 2013 at 2:41 pm |
http://www.persuasivelitigator.com/2011/03/god-terms-and-your-devil-terms-.html
God terms represent all of the words and phrases that you embrace, words that have an “inherent potency” in identifying what you support. Writing in the fifties, Weaver used the examples of “progress” and “freedom” as words that we took as unquestionably good. As you might expect, ‘devil terms’ represent their mirror image, and Weaver’s prime example of “communist,” has been replaced in our time by “terrorist” as the ultimate devil term.
You really don’t see any of this in such references to “Steve McIntyre and Judith Curry and Anthony Watts” vs. Mann?
In equating himself with some on one team, and Marcott with others on the other team?
Seriously, that goes over your head?
@bart r
Please provide specific references in Istvan’s writing which you would like to indicate to us as examples of this rhetorical device.
You are troublingly vague in providing any concrete evidence for your accusations.
I will point at this title:
> NRC’s artless untruths on climate change and food security
http://judithcurry.com/2012/03/22/nrcs-artless-untruths-on-climate-change-and-food-security/
and that will be all,
for now.
Willard
You point to another case where Rud Istvan deconstructs a “bamboozle” report by NRC from a year ago about the purported deleterious effects of future global warming (and higher CO2 levels?) on crop production, similar to his obliteration of the “super shtick” here and on the earlier thread..
This bogus study predicted 5% to 50% crop yield loss with 3C warming!
Rud Istvan does a good job of showing how silly this report is.
But one can do another quick “sanity check” on the NRC claims.
Over the period 1970-2010 we had the following observed changes:
1970
Population: 3.7 billion
Global temperature (HadCRUT3 anomaly, 10-year average): -0.12 °C
Atmospheric CO2: 324 ppmv
Global yields of major crops (million tons corn/wheat/rice): 788
2010
Population: 7.0 billion (up 1.9x)
Global temperature: +0.42 °C (up 0.54 °C)
Atmospheric CO2: 390 ppmv (up 66 ppmv or 20%)
Global yields of major crops (million tons): 1912 (up 1124 Mt or 2.4x)
In addition, global starvation rates were down significantly and (despite HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa) world average life expectancy increased from ~55 years to ~68 years (up by 13 years).
So I’d say this was a “win-win” situation for humanity (which theoretical analysts, like the NRC study, are just unable to visualize in their projections).
So thanks, Willard, for bringing up another good example of solid work by Rud Istvan to cut through the gobbledygook in these silly doomsday reports.
Max
Let’s do a quick sanity check on that
@willard
That is the best you can do? That is what all the fuss is about? A headline using the phrase ‘artless untruths’?
Wow! Colour me unimpressed. My heart rate has not changed and my blood pressure remains static I have not fainted and will not need smelling salts.
Could you not find something a bit more juicy? A little more red meat? Maybe in the refined and sensitive world of American academe this is enough to cause a flutter in the cheap seats…but we Brits are made of stronger stuff and can tolerate (and expect) a little more vigour in discussion.
> That is the best you can do?
No.
I don’t mind to play the quoting game:
Latimer will have to write more words than me.
We predict these words will be about his usual unsatisfaction.
***
Another example:
> This [alleged situation] is deeply concerning. It is an alternative form of what President Eisenhower warned about in his last speech before leaving office. Instead of a military-industrial complex, we have a UN sponsored, agenda rich government-climate research complex seeking to reorder the world.
http://judithcurry.com/2012/07/08/the-government-climate-complex/
Oliver could not have said it better.
> That is the best you can do?
No.
I don’t mind to play the quoting game:
Latimer will have to write more words than me.
We predict these words will be about his usual unsatisfaction.
***
Another example:
> This [alleged situation] is deeply concerning. It is an alternative form of what President Eisenhower warned about in his last speech before leaving office. Instead of a military-industrial complex, we have a UN sponsored, agenda rich government-climate research complex seeking to reorder the world.
http://judithcurry.com/2012/07/08/the-government-climate-complex/
Willard
You’re losing this one and beginning to look silly (trying to discredit Rud Istvan by citing earlier posts of his).
Some advice: Instead of attacking the messenger, try objectively attacking his messages instead.
(It’s a bit harder, but could be much more effective if well thought out and substantiated by a good argument.)
Just a tip.
Max
Yes, it is a subtle and nuanced thing to look hard at an author throwing a calculated shoulder however gingerly against the first domino in a polemic cascade.
Let’s look at how nuanced and subtle some of these practices may be, in a different and disconnected case:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/mar/20/response-mail-on-sunday-great-green-con-climate-change
David Rose, politely, courteously, agreeably shared a cup of coffee with his neighbor, nodding and consenting about how something had to be done about CO2 levels, and then quoted his coffee companion out of context and reversing the sense of his source’s words in a way we know he has twice (or more) practiced on our host, and more than once on others in the past too.
See, it doesn’t take a lot to go from pleasantries — such as where Rud Istvan begins by congratulating the Marcott article for being instantly famous to with mere addition of superfluous single quote marks spurning it as instantly ‘famous’. You’re reading the machinations of a brilliant writer, well-practiced in his arts; you’re obliged to be more, not less, skeptical due the sophistication of your correspondent in the sense of confirming every statement and wondering at the choice of every punctuation mark and syllable.
It’s not a hockey game if one team shows up with hockey sticks and the standard equipment and the other team shows up with whistles and referee’s uniforms making questionable calls.
Don’t just blow and handwave and make up penalties. Put your helmet and visor on, and do science.
> Trying to discredit Rud Istvan by citing earlier posts of his.
Here’s what BartR talked about:
Y U do not read?
Thanks for playing.
@willard
Your complaint seems to boil down to the fact that in writing an opinion piece on a blog, people do not use the same style of writing as in academic papers.
Well knock me down with a feather.
Such a conclusion is completely new to me. I’d never have guessed it. Let me sit down and have a nice cup of tea to get over the shock. Perhaps I could even add a nice Rich Tea biscuit as well.
In today’s other shock news:
‘I think there is a lot to be said for some aspects of catholicism. It’s definitely worth another look’ says pope francis
Shock admission from Bruin – ‘I defecate in the arboreal sylvanity’
Breakthrough in astronomy – ‘Sun consistently rises in the East’ claims man from NASA.
> Your complaint […]
I have no such complaint.
I big THANK YOU for your concerns nevertheless.
Agreed … and many further examples can be recognized by applying BartR’s denialist demagoguery recognition template:
That is a very useful denialist demagoguery recognition template, BartR!
Sorry fanny, but it looks like the denialist demagoguery is winning out over the shoddy statistical shenanigans of the alarmistas:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324323904578370531351272200.html?KEYWORDS=dueling+to-do+lists
Wendell Berry’s solid common-sense conservatism easily beats the WSJ’s short-sighted selfish marketism, eh Don Monfort?
People who personify nature are almost always making a mistake. Wendell Berry is deeply confused I’m afraid.
You are confused, fanny. That wasn’t an editorial. It was a straightforward report on the results of a public opinion poll. The public is just not that worried about getting burned up by CO2. You are losing. You are letting Mother Nature down. If you really believe that the earth is in danger, you might consider the possibility that demonizing those you want to convince is not a good strategy. But you are having too much fun as a clownish pain-in-the-ass provocateur.
LOL … PokerGuy, it’s time to “tell the truth and shame the Devil!”
PokerGuy, have you, personally, read any of Wendell Berry’s essays, fiction, or poetry?
Because Wendell Berry’s works don’t personalize Nature! Berry’s dry-eyed conservative philosophy is the precise opposite … that it’s Nature that naturalizes us humans.
Thanks for making us Wendell-Berry-conservatives smile, PokerGuy!
Fanny
Nope.
It’s not there.
Looks like your “conspiracy” phobia is working overtime. Pop a pill and calm down.
Max