Comments on: The RE Benchmark in A&W

By: Geoff Sherrington

Geoff Sherrington — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 10:34:57 +0000

Re: McCall (#179), I have failed to post on RC 3 times in 2 days. Didn't even make the moderator review stage. Just censored. Closed minds, not wanting to learn. Usefulness has reached expiry date. RC removed from Internet Favorites. Forever. Amen.

By: Geoff Sherrington

Geoff Sherrington — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 10:30:15 +0000

Re: Dano (#29),

If you raise Leni Riefenstahl, you have to accept that she was one of the most creative artistic minds of the last century, performing on a scale and with quality seldom matched. If you can, leave aside that she worked for the wrong team. I do not condone it in any way. Her post war work contains some incredibly beautiful photography, especially underwater, and no strong references to the dark period earlier. Serious photographers studied her various phases long before Wikipedia appeared. She can take her place today with the best of photographers.

In a strange comparison, Michael Mann has also produced ground-breaking work and has been successful in its dissemination. So maybe one needs to work to understand two similar minds, both of which have had periods of intense criticism. (One cannot be a good foil to a mind one cannot comprehend).

It’s a shame that Michael Mann picked the wrong team too. Perhaps he is now heading for phase two, being tranquility and work of beauty and importance that does not allude to the dark past. There is still time.

Leni lived to 101 years.

By: TCO

TCO — Sun, 11 Jun 2006 04:57:14 +0000

You might want to put a bit more security there, Greg. I can get to the root directory and see all the files that you have there.

By: TCO

TCO — Sun, 11 Jun 2006 04:46:36 +0000

I didn’t see where you tied it all together, but the simple equations were very helpful to start thinking about it.

By: Greg F

Greg F — Sun, 11 Jun 2006 03:16:08 +0000

I still have not seen a good overview written on the issues of standardization (dividing by the standard deviation) and how one can think about if it is right or wrong.

TCO, my thoughts on it are here.

By: TCO

TCO — Sun, 11 Jun 2006 01:47:57 +0000

I still have not seen a good overview written on the issues of standardization (dividing by the standard deviation) and how one can think about if it is right or wrong. Steve talks about it a lot, but tends to only raise concerns and such (little one-sided) rather then explaining the issue overall. Intuitively, one can imagine a “thermometer” that might be very accurate in the sense of linearity and repeatability but with small displacements from the average. So maybe there are times when it makes sense to use this (or maybe each proxy should be individually “trained”…but does standardization do this in effect?) Huybers brings this up in a very common sense manner when talking about proxy types in his comment. But maybe there are also times when it’s wrong. When we’re compensating for results that should be recorded as low variation. I would really like to see a step back overview type post. Given all the discussion of the concerns, it seems that we should know enough to describe the issue from the top down.

By: jae

jae — Wed, 29 Mar 2006 23:35:12 +0000

No, Dano, like I said, I think it is a total waste of time. I think Steve’s work is showing just that. Moreover, as I have believed all along, there is just not enough of a scientific basis for even attempting to use tree rings for temperature proxies. Even if certain trees “record” temperature, I don’t see how you would determine which ones do because of all the confounding variables. Moreover, there does not appear to be a linear relationship, even for the “good” trees. If the theory looks so unpromising from the outset, it’s sure not worth pursuing. That’s my conclusion, but I doubt that it would do any good to “submit it.”

By: Dano

Dano — Wed, 29 Mar 2006 23:17:51 +0000

302:

Are you finally conceding that tree ring temperature proxies are a waste of time? I doubt it, but that should be the conclusion.

Write up your conclusion, then, and submit it.

What you can do in the meantime: test our your hypothesis somewhere. You could go to a dendro listserv and see what happens when you make your overturning-conclusions-from-folks-who-do-this-for-a-living claim.

Good luck!

Best,

By: jae

jae — Wed, 29 Mar 2006 21:39:16 +0000

c. Temp is not extracted directly from tree rings, no matter how hard you flap your arms.

Are you finally conceding that tree ring temperature proxies are a waste of time? I doubt it, but that should be the conclusion.

By: jae

jae — Wed, 29 Mar 2006 21:31:19 +0000

Dano: Your responses are so arrogant and offensive. You apparently have a real anger problem and lack of social skills. Was it due to poor toilet training?