Today’s hearing in Congress will be sound-only (for some reason), although it might be visually on CSPAN3 (check your listings)
The speakers will be:
Michael Mann
Edward Wegman
John Christy
Ralph Cicerone
Stephen McIntyre
Jay Gulledge
As soon as the link is available, I’ll post it up.
Climate Audit 
277 Comments
Hey, Mr Barton, go kick some IT posteriors; we want video !
The CSPAN schedule say the Bolton Hearing will be on CSPAN 3 at 9:30
I don’t mean this as a derogatory staement but as far as I can determine none on this list have degrees in climate or meteorology. I realize the focus is the validity of the statistics used in Mann’s methods and to show that the scientific underpinning of his work is invalid is important. I fail to understand what Cicerone or Gulledge can add to this discussion – they are not statisticians or experts in climate. I hope somebody draws attention to the fact that Mann used his work to ‘convince’ the world governments that warming was due to human addition of CO2 and that it is the only evidence of a human signal.
Partly on-topic, partly off-topic: If you have not already done so, you should look at the excerpts from the hearing as chosen by TechCentralStation:
http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=072606G
http://motls.blogspot.com/2006/07/climate-science-in-house-and-democrats.html
It’s quite a difference between the morally and scientificially perfectly stated comments by Steve McIntyre or Hans von Storch or Edward Wegman (Al Gore’s voter) on one side, and the comments by the Democratic representatives, especially the female ones, on the other side. 😉
RE#4, WOW, that Rep. Stupak is a psycho. Why does he ask questions for which he doesn’t want to wait to hear the answers?
This cracked me up: U.S. Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Wash.: “Can you recite for us the first three laws of thermodynamics?” Are these people serious?!?!?
I just have trouble believing that Mann is actually going to be there sitting next to Steve M. Wait, let me guess… Mann will be on the first panel, and everyone else will be crowded into the second panel that will convene after Mann has left.
Why on earth does this CSPAN thing have Prime Minister’s Questions on it ?
#3 : Dr. Ball, you state:
I’m sorry, but it IS a derogatory statement.
For me one of the most interesting aspects to the hearing will be whether or not Mann is entirely honest. Mann will be testifying under oath; so any dishonesty would constitute perjury. Hence I am certain that Mann will remain honest.
But, if anyone spots something suspicious, let us know!
I doubt that Mann knows how to be straightforward.
I’m wondering if Mann’s attourney will be there whispering in his ear after every question is asked, and how often he will simply refuse to answer a question based on this whispered advice.
Re #9, as you can probably tell from previous government investigations, “perjury” is notoriously difficult to prove. It’s not just lying, but intentionally lying regarding pertinant information. Even then, it’s easy enough to obsfucate what you say that proving perjury generally isn’t worth the time, effort, or expense.
However, my guess is Dr. Mann will simply state that they believe their results to be correct, that the people who disagree with them are mistaken, and thus whether or not he is actually lying will be moot.
What is more dangerous is the apparent stupidity of certain members of the committee as displayed by the quotes in post #4. Bad science is bad enough. Bad policy based on bad science and/or ignorance is much, much worse.
12. Mann is very good with weasel words. He probably doesn’t need a lawyer whispering in his ear.
#8 you forgot to paste this part:
“Cicerone received his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he was a varsity baseball player. Both his master’s and doctoral degrees are from the University of Illinois in electrical engineering, with a minor in physics.”
Dr. Ball didn’t misspeak. He doesn’t have a degree in a climate science nor mention of geolgy either (that isn’t good in my book at all) I wonder and it’s not because I don’t doubt he earned all of those positions and awards some how. However the mention of “green house” , and UCI (my neighborhood) in his resume coupled with the dates/yrs of it all makes my spidey sense go …hmmmmm.
Does he believe in the Hockey Stick?
I am not aware of his previous stance on the “the current state of climate change and its impact on the environment and human health, requested by President Bush.”
#8 I did not denigrate Cicerone’s qualifications or his awards. I stand by my statement, neither Cicerone nor Gulledge apparently have degrees in climate or meteorology. Atmospheric chemistry, biogeochemical processes, are only one small part of the entire complex that is climate.
I have noticed that few, if any, of the famous meterologists are rabid AGW fans. They understand the variability of climate.
Right. Cicerone does not have a degree in those fields: he has simply made fundamental contributions to the fields.
I am reminded (hyperbolically) of the great Harvard Professor and acknowledged preeminent Shakespeare scholar of his day, George Lyman Kittredge, who when asked why he did not have a PhD, answered, “My dear… who would examine me?”
#17
Funny how certain thinking is emabraced at times when approprite only. What kind of person does this?
Using these same thoughts, let’s all express how we feel about McIntyre and McKitrick; and their contributions to the field.
Or will Mann choke while addressing these two men by their real names because he really wants to say “those two Canadians” during the hearing?
LOL
Re#17:
Well then he fits right-in. After all, Mann doesn’t have a degree in climate or meteorology, either.
rocks, you may or may not have noticed – but I’ve been here for a while listening to what McIntyre has to say. This trick of attempting to discredit what I say by attributing to me things others have said, is getting really tiresome.
Geting some voice fragments; too bad there’s no video! I hope the ratio of panel talk to US Rep talk is higher than in the previous hearing, but it’s only a faint hope…
Ad hominem is fallacious whether directed at SM, MM, Cicerone, or anyone else. What matters is the truthfullness of what is said, not who is saying it.
Playing ‘Youre not a climate scientist’ is the RC/Hockey Team game. Has no place anywhere, least of all here.
Why is it an “ad hominem” to make a statement of fact – whether or not somebody has a degree in a certain field?
I think you’re abusing that term. We know Mr. McIntyre is not a climate scientist. Nor is Mr. McKitrick. Pointing that out doesn’t slander them in any way. We can debate whether or not having a certain degree is necessary for this investigation, but that’s a seperate issue, surely?
The show is running on C-SPAN3 now: http://tinyurl.com/55lrb
re: 23
AD hominem is indeed a misuse. The appropriate word would be nonsequitor. The crux of the matter is not climatology and climatology methods but pure data analysis. Mann & Co. are apparently unqualified to perform said analysis in a rigorous scientific manner.
It is reasonable to believe that making that ‘statement of fact’ in this context will be interpreted by its readers as a criticism of his potential contribution to the debate. If this interpretation is not intended, then that needs to be clearly stated as such, and the alternate reason for mentioning this ‘statement of fact’ needs to be given.
If the critical interpretation is intended, then one might follow up with explicit statements of this intention, such as ” I fail to understand what Cicerone or Gulledge can add to this discussion – they are not statisticians or experts in climate” or “my spidey sense blah, blah.” Oh look, that is what the posters here did.
I’m listening to some bonehead Democrat (forgive the redundancy) opening the Whitfield hearing by ‘making the startement of fact’ that Wegman has no degree or experience in paleoclimatology. I understand exactly what he was intending by making that ‘statement of fact’, and it is clearly ad hominem though he didnt make it explicit as above. RC/Hockey play. No place here.
JJ
Re #24
Excellent – thanks, Don.
Re:#24
Yes, thanks! It’s great to get video to at least help keep the players straight.
Waxman is fighting for his electoral life.
He will be made a laughing stock if he has to withdraw The Safe Climate Act of 2006 (H.R. 5642) sets targets and requires the actions that will be necessary to avoid dangerous, irreversible warming of our planet.
I just put it on. How did Rep Stearns get elected?
It seems he’s even reading from a pre written statement and can’t spit it out.
Though it is possible he’s reading from notes he wrote while there.
I’m really glad I don’t live in Illinois …
Shakowsky is a complete idiot, but even she is not seeking to defend Mann.
God gosh I can’t take it when the warmers speak I have to leave the room. Rep. Jan Schakowsky…sheesh!
Are the people of Illinois deranged?
The oceans are a CO2 sink. We’re talking about 2 parts per million per year.
Bass of NH reminds me why I’ve always thought NH would be a nice place to live.
Oh good – they’re showing charts. Those look really great on my audio feed.
Re #37, Nanny
Nanny – there’s a video link – see #24 above
First time I’ve heard Mann talk. He comes off quite well — good speaking style.
“Bass of NH reminds me why I’ve always thought NH would be a nice place to live. ”
What the Northern HEmisphere? (Sorry it always drives me crazy when Steve M talks about NH sites cuz I think he’s talking about here)
But anyways. Don’t you dare come up here. We’re all full up we’ve posted snipers on the border aiming for anyone with a U-Haul.
“Live free or die” baby!
I think I missed something, did Mann say he was leaving?
Mann is a damn liar. He said that ALL reconstructions show a hockey stick. I know of at least one very trustworthy study, published in a peer-reviewed journal, that shows beautiful cyclical patterns. I posted it recently, and if Mann is not aware of it, he ain’t reading the literature. I am sure there are many other studies, also. I hope they arrest Mann for perjury.
Per, I am watching and hearing here:
http://tinyurl.com/fs8tt
the Cspan page has a Windows Media Player format, no need for Real Audio/Player !
I noticed Mann kept saying the Northern Hemisphere was warming, not the “whole planet is warming”.
It is interesting to note how all the Demos get all emotional and constantly use the logical fallacy of appealing to authority. The Republicans, on the other hand, are asking for more FACTS.
I find you folks on Climate Audit a curious bunch:
1. Lots of comments about how ad hominem remarks are wrong, unjustified, distractions from the truth, etc…and lots and lots of ad hominem attacks. Is this site moderated?
2. Lots of insistence on scientific rigour and honesty…and constant use of any evidence thereof, such as the IPCC reports, as evidence of a *lack* of scientific integrity. How can you reconcile that very few scientists (and a lot of non-scientists) claim the IPCC and other reports are the result of a conspiracy or groupthink? Some evidence to this effect would seem justified.
Seems like the politicians are the rabid group here and the common doom stories from usenet seem to be quite common. The scientists seem civil enough.
Have you ever visited RealClimate?
re: 46
Being one of “the meek” is not necessarily the same as being a sheep. If CA does anything it allows for questioning of conventional wisdom, a right smart scientific principle if you ask me and one that should fall well within the realms of agnosticism.
Re:#46
1) It’s not really moderated unless things get out of hand. Unlike RC, Steve prefers to avoid censoring scientific arguments. If you read the site a bit, it’s pretty clear which posts contain science and which ad homs, so it’s easy to ignore the latter.
2) IPCC reports are only literature reviews — the IPCC requires the compilers not to perform any independent analysis of the papers’ conclusions (such as asking for supporting data), on penalty of expulsion from the process. I don’t see what positive evidence of scientific rigor you can draw from that. Got any other examples?
The Democrats show poor understanding of the science. They obviously automatically link the increasing amount of CO2 to an ever increasing global temperature, which they want us to believe will make the whole system spin out of control.
What I have understood till now is, that a doubling of the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere will max. give an increase in temperature globally of 1 degree Celcius on average. So what the Democrats have on display right now is scaremongering at it´s worst!
It´s close to 10 pm. here, but I´m shure gonna watch this hearing til the end.
Hans Kelp
Re#46 Watch and learn
Mann has not defended his 98 99 papers at all. These are the only ones which have been independently audited. He was wrong then, and public policy based on those reports would be wrong.
SteveM has raised numerous problems with all the subsequent Mann clique reports in total.
SteveM was correct about the mistakes in Mann et al 9x, and it is wrong for people to try to prevent a real audit of all the subsequent papers.
“I find you folks on Climate Audit a curious bunch:”
Existance of independant thought got ya stymied, huh?
“1. Lots of comments about how ad hominem remarks are wrong, unjustified, distractions from the truth, etc…and lots and lots of ad hominem attacks. Is this site moderated?”
Actually, very few ad hominem attacks on this site. Thus little need for comments about how they are wrong. This thread being a rare example.
RC, on the other hand, uses ad hominem as its organizing principle. Right down to the name they call the site.
“2. Lots of insistence on scientific rigour and honesty…and constant use of any evidence thereof, such as the IPCC reports, as evidence of a *lack* of scientific integrity.”
You’re funny! Considered making a career of it?
“How can you reconcile that very few scientists (and a lot of non-scientists) claim the IPCC and other reports are the result of a conspiracy or groupthink?”
Science isnt a popularity contest. The number of people who believe in something is irrelevant to the truth of that something. If you believe otherwise, there are many fine Catholic churches wating to serve your needs. I understand that they currently hold the ‘we have the most believers’ record, so by your method of assessing it, they must be right.
JJ
Brian,
There are a number of people on here that don’t, or are not capable of only taking about the science, so they argue semantics, or religion, or whatever. Some of the regulars are frankly pretty tired of it and sometimes they do get frustrated and tee-off on one of the trolls. It happens; people are flawed. Get over it. I think you’ll find that if you engage honestly on the science and math (especially the math since that’s Steve and Ross’s forte) that you’ll get better responses.
So, how would you like to discuss the decentering issue in MBH98 and how it affects the NOAMER PC1 and how that effects the other studies that use it? Or maybe you’d like to talk about the bogus confidance intervals? Or maybe you’d like to talk about why the GCMs are useless for predicting future climate past a year or two? Give it a whirl, you might enjoy a real debate.
Anyone know if CSPAN3 will return to the hearing after the break?
Apparently you do not understand the difference between an ad-hominem and an insult. Yes, Mann et. al. are regularly insulted here, but it is after years of listening to his nonsens that many just can’t help it. An ad-hominem, on the other hand, is when you refute an argument based on an insult. Like Mann repeatedly referring to M&M as “those two Canadians” or saying “they aren’t climate scientists therefore they must be wrong.” Both are ad-homs (the first is actually “poisoning the well”) and both are logical fallacies. I.e. if an argument stands on its own merit, the character of he who made the argument is irrelevant.
Certainly, and rogue comments are often deleted. Contrast that with RC where real questions are deleted simply because they refuse to acknowledge the descrepancies in their arguments and the failures in their methodology.
Mark
Sheesh. Don’t be curious about us. Be curious about the data.
Dang it, CSPAN is favoring Snow’s remarks over the hearing (of course, they are more important).
Re #46, Brian Gordon
An ad hominem attack is not just a matter of being rude; it is saying “that man is [bald/bearded/Canadian/something else irrelevant], therefore all his arguments are wrong”.
You might find examples of the former; I think not so many of the latter.
Go away and read the site some more. You will begin to understand.
Does anyone have anything coming in about the hearing? (audio/video).
Re:#58
Nope, they’re going back after the break. 🙂
I’m not getting anything on the Congress link.
The audio is dead for me, and the video is Tony Snow. Anyone have a new link?
Perhaps Manns “done a runner”.
By the way, what about Manns excuse for not attending the last hearing, he had to stay at home to look after the child while his wife was away at a conference.
I guess if it’s a choice between the wife attending a “conference”, or the husband appearing before Congress, the conference wins?
RE: #44
The Northern Hemisphere is typically considered by most sides of the global warming debate to be an accurate representation of the earth’s climate as a whole – the problem being the Southern Hemisphere data is not considered robust.. I am inclined to disagree with this approach, but I am neither a climatologist nor nor a tatistician (self-imposed as-hom, nonsequitor, or your prefered term) but an economist by training, so my statistical analysis are prone to predicting the one thing you may be sure of won’t happen 😉
I have looked at the Southern Hemisphere temperature reconstructions from MBH98, and the graph actually shows a recent DOWNWARDS trend in temperature. Again, however, this data is not considered robust by most.
Quick correction: reconstructions from Mann 03, and based on 40 year average. You can check out a graph I threw together at http://www.article58.com/?p=38.
Big problem in the SH is lack of data, being less populated, and the majority being water, compared to the NH.
Justin: that IS a very interesting observation. Maybe it isn’t noted because it doesn’t help get more research grants…
On audio now
Video aswell.
Nice graph.
I think if you look around the site you will find ample evidence that Mann’s data selection is flawed, and his results were not “robust”.
re 66. It’s informative to look at the UAH data for each hemisphere here . They are quite noticeably different (even if you consider the underlying data inaccurate, there’s no reason I can think of for a hemispheric bias)
Did Ciccerone say 2.5 watts per square meter?
From an increase in 2 parts per million CO2?
Comment to nro. 65.
— ” Manns excuse for not attending the last hearing, he had to stay at home to look after the child while his wife was away at a conference.” —
That’s a really good excuse !! I would defend Mike for that. We don’t know what his wife is doing, may be she is doing honest science (unlike Mike)? I hope that what happens is Mike is thinking of honest science in this case. I really hope that !! ??
I wish Steve could cross-examine this Gulledge character. He’ll cream the twit …
Waxman’s first Q to Mann appeared quite staged and planned. A set up.
They all appear to be setups. Mann just claimed that “we KNOW the answer – we have the simulation!” in reference to comparing reconstructions to simluations. I had to laugh.
See that staffer over Waxman’s shoulder ? See Mann ? Look familiar … ?
I’m sure it is all positive if Mann are looking after his kids. He has already proved that he can tell beautiful fairy tales without producing any source material or methods.
Waxman and Mann: absolutely nothing on the entire planet is so ugly as ‘scientists’ and politicians in cohorts.
re #81, toooo right, that’s why many of us dislike what Rp Barton has been up to…
But Dr. Mann, the CODE is EXACTLY what you did, the algorithm is just an outline of what you did.
re #82
I agree that Rp Barton’s intentions may be suspect (to whatever degree you like). However, if the U.S. government – and hence the U.S. taxpayer – is going to support further global warming / climatology research, I think it is fair for the U.S. public (via our representatives) to see the results of the research in a public forum and decide whether or not future funding is warranted.
I abhor ad hominem attacks and was not trying to make one. Obviously some chose to read that in to what I wrote. I suspect that is a combination of my failure to make my point clearly and the prediliction of those reading the material. The point I was trying to make and maybe didn’t spell out clearly enough is if you don’t understand the larger context or concepts you are less likely to understand how your small specialized piece fits or doesn’t fit. I suggest this is why Mann had to discredit the cumulative research from thousands of different sources confirming the existence of the MWP and LIA in order to make his one specialized little piece dominate. What supports the McIntyre/McKitrick replication of results wasn’t just that it produced a different curve, but that it was confirmed by that vast body of evidence.
Re #84 sounds reasonable. I’m not aware of any secret research going on though – obviously. Is there any secret resarch going on do you know?
Please Peter Hearnden!
The secret science is produced by Mike !!!
We don’t knoe the data or methods !!!!
Re #87
Didn’t mean to suggest their is X-file-like secret gov’t research going on 😉 What I am suggesting is that if the U.S. taxpayer supports research, he should have the right to analyze, scrutinize, and question the research without having to be involved in small, technical forums (hmmm, sounds like some blogs I know!). Probably the best way to do this is via Congress, which (supposedly) represents the taxpayer.
Not that I deny that it isn’t an ideal scenario.
Too many folks to respond to individually; my apologies. The pieces I can remember:
1. Am I ready to discuss extremely complex scientific climate and other data? Not unless I go back to school for many years, and I would guess the vast majority of people are in the same boat. What’s your point? Most of us must rely on the scientific expertise of others for our knowledge about climate. That is why I come to sites like RealClimate, ClimateAudit, or junkscience; to see what experts have to say. Like everyone else, I have to wade through the lies and obfustication to figure out what’s real. Which is why I lean toward accepting only peer-reviewed science. Which is why I don’t spend much time on either of the latter two sites.
2. I know what an ad hominem attack is. Calling a site RealClimate is not an example of one. #53: “RC, on the other hand, uses ad hominem as its organizing principle. Right down to the name they call the site.” I find the RC scientists’ responses are often curt, especially to people who spout scientific opinions not based on any quoted facts – much like I found my professors….
3. This one strikes at the heart of the issue, perhaps: “IPCC reports are only literature reviews “¢’¬? the IPCC requires the compilers not to perform any independent analysis of the papers’ conclusions (such as asking for supporting data), on penalty of expulsion from the process. I don’t see what positive evidence of scientific rigor you can draw from that. Got any other examples?”
Ok, so the IPCC was a literature review. What’s your point? It was a review of many separate lines of research by dozens – hundreds? – of scientists working in many different countries in many different organizations. I gather you are claiming that the scientists who did the original research are corrupt or just wrong, as is the peer-review process? Because, if the IPCC scientists had engaged in a massive manipulation of results, I imagine some of those scientists would have spoken out. Unless, of course, they’re all corrupt…
#5 This cracked me up: U.S. Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Wash.: “Can you recite for us the first three laws of thermodynamics?” Are these people serious?!?!?
Serious he was or not, I had a big laugh ! And I assume he was best in class from the Dem ranks sent there to grill those bastard skeptics. Giga lol !
c’mon Republicans, don’t lose focus
Re: #85 from Tim Ball: “…this is why Mann had to discredit the cumulative research from thousands of different sources confirming the existence of the MWP and LIA….”
Tim – my understanding is that the scientific consensus is that the MWP and LIA did both occur – nobody is disputing this. Further, neither of these has anything to do with the current consensus view on global warming. That is, the MWP and LIA were not caused, as far as anyone can determine, by human CO2 emissions.
When people attempt to discredit the IPCC reports, are they not doing the same thing you accuse Mann of doing?
c’mon Wegman, stop being defensive
Does anyone know if there is a blog like this one concerning coral reef proxies?
Re #90 – last paragraph – yes they did review, then “they” picked Mann’s hockey stick – Mann being on the committee doing the picking.
So the review was token like some of the setup questions for Mann today. Now they are pretending there were “independent” reviews of Mann’s work.
re: #90
Oh get real! (I suppose I should leave my response at that as it illustrates the point)*. Calling your site “real” climate implies that others are giving you “fake” climate. And that’s the ad hom.
* reminds me of the joke about the fellow who gave a lecture about double negatives. He said at one point that a double negative always gives a positive, but that a double positive never gives a negative. To which a wit in the audience replied, “Sure, Sure!”
I like the lady from Tennessee …
Has someone been coaching Wegman? Much better this week.
Brian,
Any discussions on new emerging science are going to be contentious at times, but that’s not all bad as long as bomb-throwers are not allowed to dominate and shout-down everybody else. Open debate of the type you see here is much perferred to that practiced over at RC where any real questioning of the party line is stiffled.
I can also understand why most people have to trust the scientists because they either can’t or don’t have the time to analyze the science. That’s OK, but be careful who you trust and always remain a bit sceptical especially when new claims are made that overthrow the old wisdom. I’ve still got doubts about string-theory, gravity waves, black-holes, etc., and they are on much firmer footing than AGW. And when statistics are involved (like with ALL temperature reconstructions) what are the confidence intervals? Remember, when statistics are the basis of the evidence for or against something you never get 100% certainty, so it’s important to ask yourself “how likely is it that they are correct?” Sometimes 60% is just not good enough, especially when billions of dollars and millions of lives are at stake.
Re #97 and calling a site ‘climateaudit’ doesn’t imply others aren’t auditing/honest??????
Wow – more Blackburn, please !
#102, yeah, she’s cute !
Funny how all the snipes start showing up when things get heavy and honest.
Re 101, Peter Hearnden
If anyone did do an audit, they obviously didn’t do it very well, as they missed the errors which Steve found, and which Wegman confirmed.
BG,
“That is why I come to sites like RealClimate, ClimateAudit, or junkscience; to see what experts have to say. Like everyone else, I have to wade through the lies and obfustication to figure out what’s real. Which is why I lean toward accepting only peer-reviewed science. Which is why I don’t spend much time on either of the latter two sites.”
Peer review is not a determinant of truth, even when it is performed to spec. And it often isnt performed to spec, at which point it can become an absolute barrier to truth. And when used as you and the RC hockey team do, it is fallacious.
“2. I know what an ad hominem attack is. Calling a site RealClimate is not an example of one.”
Yes it is. The premise is that they are to be believed because they are ‘real’ ‘working’ climate scientists, the necessary implication being that others who are not climate scientists (or who are retired climate scientists) are not to believed for that reason. That is ad hominem.
And ‘those (Canadians, skeptics, oil industry stooges, etc) arent climate scientists’ is the chorus sung between every verse over there. The organizing principle of that site, from its name down to its editing policy, is ad hominem. They are the high priests of climate, and their gospel is the ‘real’ one.
“I find the RC scientists’ responses are often curt, especially to people who spout scientific opinions not based on any quoted facts -”
Which is pretty much the only ‘dissenting opinion’ they permit over there. They heavily censor discussion on that site, limiting dissent to what they consider to be ‘weak’ arguements that they can throw one of their dismissive pat answers at. That is emphatically not done here.
“Ok, so the IPCC was a literature review. What’s your point?”
That it is a literature review, not an examination of the validity of the literature.
“It was a review of many separate lines of research by dozens – hundreds?”
One hundred wrong studies are just as wrong as ten wrong studies.
“I gather you are claiming that the scientists who did the original research are corrupt or just wrong, as is the peer-review process?”
Peer review can be corrupt. But even when it is working at 100% of its intent, it is not an audit. Incorrect data, methods, and results frequently make it thru the cursory examination that is ‘peer review’. Meanwhile, unpopular hypothesis and results are often shut out. Any number of recent and historical scandals demonstrate this. Mann’s misuse of stats, the $#!^storm that M&M endured from the ‘climate science community’ for their questions, Korean cloners, etc, etc. Peer review is a publishing tool, not a determinant of truth.
Reliance on peer review is trust in other people to tell you the truth. Once again, there are plenty of ecclesiastical establishments available to provide that type of truth. Many of them push AGW. Perhaps you are in the wrong place.
JJ
This guy Inslee definitely has a psychatric problem.
Are many of American politicians like this ? Pathetic !
Uh, the data presented here have been, and continue to be, peer reviewed. Also, are you serious that you think only peer reviewed science is worthwhile? Given the obvious failures with peer review w.r.t. Mann, et. al., this seems a silly assertion. Peer-review or not, if the science is flawed it is flawed, and if it is valid it is valid.
Also, does your above statement imply that this site is composed mostly of “lies and obfuscation?” If so, then maybe you should go back to school, because it is even more obvious that you are not qualified to make such an assessment about the science discussed herein. If not, then I withdraw the comment.
Many of us in here are actually rather adept at the science/math we discuss, btw.
Mark
When is someone going to ask Mann about his bogus “centered” reconstruction that includes Bristlecones and selects PCs by telekinesis?
I’m listening now. Any way to get the older testimony (prior to 1830 EDT)?
That’s two questions Mann’s dodged I’ve seen, but I came in late after the break.
Re #103
Yup, and sharp – asked the right questions
That’s a bunch of bunk. They are both regularly referred to as a North American phenomena only, i.e. not global. In case you didn’t notice, the whole concept of the Hockey Stick was removing the MWP and LIA from the climate history. This is the basis of the entire RC site.
No kidding. That’s the whole point. The climate did those two ALL ON ITS OWN! So, the question becomes, how exactly can you claim that current trends are anomalous when we have two very distinct, known, patterns that happened without the benefit of human intervention. Catch-22 for RC. Admit to the MWP and LIA and suddenly claims of “unprecedented rise in temperatures in the 20th century” get reduced to “natural variability in temperatures.” There’s no pet project to defraud the public with anymore.
Mark
The politicians on both sides are idiots on the science. However, Cicerro is a worm on the models. He thinks they are good because they are an acheivement over previous. But they suck. We don’t ujnderstand the system. We don’t have tested predictive power. He’s a butt-worm for not fessing up to that. F***ing post-normal scientist.
You must be drinking again, TCO. Politicians are supposed to be idiots on the science. I don’t think it is possible to be both smart and electable in the same package unless you are a lawyer, in which case you are more than likely a worm (not all lawyers, just electable ones).
Mark
Oh…and JohnA: your sidebar (show 5 threads at a time thingie) is messed up and has been for a time. There is some flaw in your algorithm. Has been.
I want to butt-crunch the worms. Take an M-1 rifle and butt-smack them.
Now, Inslee with his sermons & craps again. Sigh ! Keep a bullet for him TCO.
TCO We who like rocks live through you vicariously (sp?).
LOL
Inslee is going for popularity , and this is a photo op!
Hmmph. Could have been better. They should have let Steve skewer that Gulledge character. And more from Blackburn nailing down Mann.
Bit of a missed opportunity.
I didn’t even get to hear Steve. They were all a bunch of tendentious morons who don’t believe in Admiral Rickover type accountability. Want to grab them and slam them into the bulkhead.
Oh, I get it, you’re a conspiracy theorist. By which I mean you know there is a conspiracy (well, don’t all conspircy theorist know there is a conspiracy by definition!).
I predict your view is unmovable and that 3C by 2100 would leave you still claiming nothing is happening. But, since neither of us are likely to be around then, you’re in that happy position of being able to accuse without having to face the music.
It’s over.
My general feel is that no one hit it out of the park with respect to nailing Mann. I think he slithered away, to mix metaphors further. His head was on the chopping block without the immunity idol, but he didn’t get voted off at tribal council. etc…
Too bad no one could corner him on his bad science wrt the “centered” reconstruction.
Well I never thought that there would be blood on the carpet. But a butterfly or maybe its an eagle has flapped its wings and it will eventually have an effect. Not soon maybe but replication will become mandatory and the Manns and Jones will quietly comply. Also I wouldn’t be expecting glittering careers for W & A.
#122
“””Oh, I get it, you’re a conspiracy theorist. By which I mean you know there is a conspiracy (well, don’t all conspircy theorist know there is a conspiracy by definition!).
I predict your view is unmovable and that 3C by 2100 would leave you still claiming nothing is happening. But, since neither of us are likely to be around then, you’re in that happy position of being able to accuse without having to face the music. “”
Hello, what was that?
Labeling people together with predicting their future based on no facts?
Techniques we should use in order to create a better world?
Personally, I’d rather fry then live under those circumstances.
#123 I disagree ! Wegmann hit real hard, saying that Mann didn’t reply Blackburn’s questions about independant peer review.
And I don’t find any Dem defending Mann’s hockey stick, maybe they don’t know how, maybe they don’t want to.
BTW, I just jumped on the last miles of the train and didn’t know how it started. I’ll review this later on.
#93
I am not trying to “discredit” the IPCC reports, I wrote them off a long time ago as I watched the machinations over all previous reports, especially the SPMs, right up to and including the current ‘preparations’ for AR4. I have believed for some time that they are so compromised that the entire procedure needs to be scrapped and a more open and less political process set in place. Of course, this won’t happen because the issue of climate change is far too politicized.
The hockey stick not only disputed the existence of the MWP and LIA but also eliminated them completely. Now you say nobody is disputing their existence. Apparently Mann’s major objective was to show the 20th century was warmer than the MWP and thus by implication a result of human produced CO2. He failed. The larger question is if the warming of the 20th century is due to human additon of CO2 what caused the MWP?
Further to my earlier comments about Cicerone, I now know from listening to his testimony that he doesn’t know what he is talking about with regard to climate. I also notice they all miss the point Lamb made many years ago, which was debated at great length at the time, namely that the onset and cessation of the MWP and LIA were not synchronous and occurred with different intensities based on regional conditions.
Well… fascinating ( it’s just coming up to midnight in the UK, so I may be in TCO late night mode). I like to imagine I can listen to that sort of stuff in an un-biased way, and I can claim with absolute honesty no interest in US politics, but the pro-warming arguments just aren’t ringing true. There’s an awful lot of reliance on arguments over correlation with no particular evidence of causation, an awful lot of stuff over ridiculously short timescales and a general air of “we done wrong so we are all doomed” which seemed to me to be more religious in nature than scientific.
More and more I am reminded of some of the definitions of pathological science:
Time for bed, said zebedee…
Funny, but I never said there was a conspiracy. Agenda easily explains unwillingness to comply with strict scientific methodologies. Agenda does not require conspiracy. But you, of course, need a way to discredit my thoughts and calling me a conspiracy theorist fits nicely, doesn’t it?
Pretty bold assumption there. If you pay attention, you’ll notice the difference between the two camps is that the one I stick to says “show me the science” where yours says “the science is done.” Nowhere have I ever stated that the AGW hypothesis is not possible. It’s merely one of many possibilities, actually.
Nor have I ever stated that “nothing is happening.” Warmer seems to be a given, Peter, though the magnitude is certainly questionable. The attribution to anthropogenic causes is what I debate.
I’m in this “happy position” purely because of Michael Mann’s lies, not because I won’t be here in 100 years. Lies, btw, that are on record. Well, either lies or outright incompetence. Either is enough to discredit his work.
BTW, if the solar theory is correct, it won’t take till 2100 for us to find out. Also, even if it does keep warming, that is STILL not an indication of anthropogenic forcing. I think your (lack of) understanding of statistical variability is apparent with this statement.
Mark
#122
Your prediction is about as valid as the bad results that come out of the current GCMs. IOW, pretty much worthless.
Even assuming that a 3C increase did occur, that still doesn’t mean it was caused by increased CO2 in the atmosphere. So there would be no reason to hide.
#101
People conduct audit’s to ensure that their results are correct. There are two possible outcomes. They are correct or they are incorrect. Naming a site audit doesn’t imply that others have or have not audited. It implies that is the focus of this site. Not the same thing as using the word Real.
great theatre, very notable for the respect the representatives displayed to their witnesses.
Mann’s written testimony is very powerful, much like his assured and personable oral testimony. Evidence of quite a few very helpful questions.
I didn’t see any “gotcha” moments, or blood on the carpet. However, I am quite certain that this will be subject to dispassionate and close analysis. The wegman report said that the decentred PCA was wrong; and Mann had no answer to that. Criticism of the bristlecones; and mann didn’t answer. Indeed, Mann even chides the committee that the “narrow focus” of the wegman inquiry “misses the point” !
However, he does make some tangential points; that other people get the same result; that the decentred PCA “doesn’t matter”.
I don’t know what the next step of the committee is; it may not make any determination.
I wonder if steve and mike are having a drink together right now ?
cheers
per
re #127
I think what BG (#93) is trying to say is that Mann’s almost featureless graph DOES include both MWP and LIA and hence that what we are experiencing now is truly, frighteningly, unique. (Don’t worry if there’s not much green in Greenland right now, that’s a myth).
There’s a sort-of-similar argument that if we do prove that medieval climates were warmer than present, then that just shows how acutely dependent we are on CO2 levels – the only variable that controls climate – and that hence the computer models wildly UNDER-estimate future climate change.
I’me really going to bed now. 12.35 in UK.
Re:#90, section 3
In your original post, you asked about “scientific rigor.” A literature review is NOT scientific rigor, but rather harkens back to Scholasticism. Peer review is not normally rigorous scrutiny; its true worth is more as a judgement of plausibility.
Practicing scientists in my field of biology know they need to go over the actual data/methods of anything important for their work (that is, anything whose correctness is important to them). Plenty of things published after peer review turn out to be wrong (not including those that are intentionally falsified).
Yes, it was a literature review; nothing more.
No, I’m claiming some of the work is not proven (perhaps more than “some” in paleoclimate reconstructions, based on the NAS panel’s guidelines). As pointed out above, peer review tends to ensure papers are “plausible” rather than rigorously examining them in detail. Certainly, most or all of the authors did not intentionally publish “not proven” papers. The paleoclimate reconstruction field seems especially susceptible to this, due to massive re-use of questionable proxy data without detailed examination of that data, and due to a lack of consultation with statistical experts.
For a past example, look into the history of research on ulcers. Hundreds (probably thousands) of scientists for decades believed they were due to physiological processes rather than infections. They were not corrupt. There was no big conspiracy to “cover up” anything. The papers were peer-reviewed. Literature reviews were done. Yet, they were all wrong. Interesting story — worth a look.
Now that the NIH panel report has shown that probably tens of paleoclimate reconstruction studies cannot be relied upon because of improper statistical methods and/or improper proxy use, wouldn’t you agree that all of the current studies in the field deserve rigorous scrutiny? Unless, of course, you’ve got that example of “scientific rigor” that I asked about before.
Didn´t any of you notice that Mann tried to defend his first “Hockeystick” in the IPCC 2001 as actually just being ment as a cartoon? I could´nt believe my own ears when he said that. Maybe I got it wrong ( I was just about to loose a fine bottle of red wine onto the floor so I lost hearing concentration for a second ( I caught the bottle.. ).
Never before have I attended a live session including Michael Mann. From today on
I consider Mann the kind of guy who can keep a kettle boiling without water in it
just by talking and talking and talking….!
Hans Kelp
Yeah, in the end, I think Mann doesn’t get the point. Insanity can be seen as repeatedly executing the same process with a known output and expecting different results. Michael Mann would have us believe that he has been proven by (not) independent repetition of his flawed method using flawed data. It would be insane to think that each iteration could potentially result in a different answer, one that has been shown has an a-priori known conclusion.
Also, it is funny to note that Mann uses as validation of his theory the thought that others get the same result. I wonder, are his conclusions based on his own work, or the others’?
Mark
Well I am not totally satisfied with the hearing but I guess that is to be expected.
The one single thing I struck me was the obvious (to my mind) collusion between Waxman and Mann. I can’t prove that of course, but Waxman threw some obvious lob balls out there regarding Wegman’s report (like he knew where to look for them) and Mann rather too quickly knocked them out of the park.
re #136
Yes. I’ve been an expert witness in a court case. OF COURSE you agree your testimony with the lawyers on your side. Get real.
If I had to score this, I would say that Mann lost on essentially every substantive point yet walked out without much damage. He is very smooth despite his aggressive manner, and was able to brush off the technical criticisms (which he apparently finds insignificant compared to, say, taking care of his daughter).
It would not have been in the Republicans’ interest to be seen beating up on a scientist — even when the scientist is wrong or lying — but I bet they were tempted.
One final thought: The staffers on the D side did an excellent job this time. Mann was ready for every one of their questions. However, the R staffers could have doen better. For example, I cannot imagine why they did not tell John Christy that he would be asked to comment on the report and on various papers. Hearing him say that he was not familiar with such apparently essential documents made him look bad. The general rule is that you don’t ask a friendly witness to answer a question unless the response has been prepared in advance.
Re 134: The cartoon was referring to the schematic in the 1990 IPCC report not MBH 1998, and was accurately described as such…
#134, Hans
You mis-heard. Mann and one of the others (Cicerone?) referred to the figure in the 1990 IPCC report as the ‘cartoon’. This is the figure which shows and therefore acknowledges the existence by the IPCC (back then anyway) of the MWP and the LIA. So Mann is still denying the existence of the MWP and the LIA or at the very least its significance to the current debate i.e. that the current increases in the observed instrumental surface temperature records are not necessarily exceptionally and therefore that the IPCC 1991 TAR claims that the 1990s was the warmest decade in the millenium could be wrong.
My personal impression was that the Waxman/Mann interchange was definitely far too slick (and over-rehearsed). Perhaps this is what Mann was really up to last week?
Does anyone know where the figure squoted by Barton come from that it would take 1 TW of non-fossil fuel (he actually said nuclear) generation to reduce CO2 levels i the atmosphere by 10%?
KevinUK
I have been silently reading this site for a couple of months. I am an Engineer, which means I have at least studied geology, chemistry, sanitary engineering, thermodynamics, physics, mathematics, statistics, fluid dynamics, and economics. I have used computer modelling as a tool to simplify reality and predict outcomes in many of these fields. I may not know a lot about climate, but I am not a stupid person, I can learn, and the subject is not over my head.
If the participants here will oblige, I would like to know an answer to a few interrelated questions:
1. If the science being practiced in the climate field were all that were required to market pharmaceuticals, would any of you being willing to take your prescriptions? Why or why not?
2. Since I generally accept modern geologic theory, I accept that glaciers have been receding for over 10,000 years. Is there any reason for me to believe that the trend should change in my lifetime?
3. Since I accept that the earth has experienced multiple cycles of ice ages and warm periods, I reason that there must be inflection points, and therefore the math cannot be linear. Is there any reason for me to believe that current science has a detailed understanding of one or more of the past inflection points between warm periods and ice ages? If the answer is no, is there any reason for me to believe that current scientists can explain or predict the next inflection point? Based on that answer, if current science is weak on inflection points, what reason is there to believe anyone has a detailed understanding of the portions of the graph that lie between inflection points? Based on that answer, why should I believe that weather changes would be irregular if large fluctuations and reversals were to occur in the midst of a long term trend?
4. What systems and methods have been adopted to remove the doubts presented in the previous questions?
Finally, I read somewhere that Einstein was once told that about 100 German scientists had reached a consensus that his work was wrong. His comment: “Why 100? All it takes is one.”
Hans, Mann was talking about the schematic in the 1995 IPCC report.
I watched the couple of hours after the break, and it was very interesting. To an extent I thought the witnesses were talking past each other a lot.
Of the politicians, Barton seemed to be the sharpest. His main point was that “doing” something about GHGs was going to cost a lot, and he wanted to know about the uncertainties underlying the science.
I think this is Steve M’s great contribution to the debate. He took a close look at one aspect of the science, and it was shown wanting. This raises the question “how good is the rest of the stuff”. I don’t know the answer to that question. Probably it’s variable, but I’d be surprised if it’s as good as Cicerone represents it.
If this rather cumbersome process introduces more accountability into climate science it will be a very good thing.
Mann acqitted himself pretty well, not saying much, but saying it eloquently. Poor Christy was ambushed by a letter someone at RSS regarding his alleged reluctance to share code. But he made a good contribution to the discussion of uncertainty. Cicerone should be played by George C. Scott in the movie. Wegman is wooden, but made some really telling points about peer-review and especially the need to include statiticians in climate science (Mann said “climate is the statistics of weather”).
Steve M. did his hockeystick thing. One of the unfortunate things about MBH is that there is so much wrong with it, that the criticisms become confused. Mann was happy to play the game with the centering issue, because it “doesn’t matter”. And it doesn’t, if it wasn’t for the bristlecones. I hope that Steve’s next paper will be about bristlecones and the paleo reconstructions. As Wegman pointed out, most of the post MBH reconstructions include the bristlecones, often in the form of Mann’s PC1. The question is a very simple one – what do these reconstructions look like with and without the bristlecones/foxtails. Answering it looks like a lot of work.
PS Plaudits to Steve for putting his hand up when asked “does anyone disagree that it’s unequivocal that recent warming is unprecedented?” Everyone should have put their hand up. There is no way to know for sure. For this he earned a rebuke from Shakowsky about his academic qualifications.
Re:#140
It was from Christy’s earlier testimony. Christy pointed out that worldwide energy generation is 10TW, so to reduce CO2 emissions (not levels) by even 10% would take 1TW of new non-CO2-generating baseload (so not wind, not solar), which pretty much means nuclear, unless you want to put up hydro dams. He continued that 1TW = 1000 1GW nuclear plants, so the difficulty (i.e. costs) of making even a small difference is substantial.
1. No. Emphatically, no. Because I’m not confident a floor-ceiling error bar on success rate is worth risking my life over.
2. No. Glaciers change size even when it is too cold to melt, for that matter.
3. No. No. None. Don’t.
4. Principal Component Analysis and Regularized Expectation Maximization. Unfortunately, those methods are being used incorrectly AND with bad data. So, I guess none would be the proper answer.
Mark
a couple nits to address from reding through this thread:
“there’s no reason I can think of for a hemispheric bias” – Remember that antarctica is high altitude and smack on the pole and has major imapcts on southern hemisphere heat thansport toward the pole, and that ther is a lot more ocean in the southern than in the northern hemisphere. Lots of reason for one hemisphere to react differently in temps from the other.
—
‘greenland isnt very green now.’ Greenland NEVER WAS very green. Norse habitation was restricted to two small areas on the southern coast, with a max population on the close order of 5,000 people. Growing season was about 3 months, and marginal to grow enough to get through the long non-productive season. Cattle were penned inside in small pens for 8-9 months of the year (and those cattle were the smallest known anywhere in europe), goats and sheep for 7-8 months of the year, and some combination of marginally shortened or foggier growing season or marginally longer winter regularly caused many of the less prosperous farms to lose all their livestock in a winter. This was regular enough that restocking from the very few more stablecentral farms was built into the social order. And that even with all that, seal meat from the several-week sealing season constituted a majority of meat intake for the majority of the population.
AND those same small areas ARE quite green now – I’ve posted pics showing this.
——–
Finally, everyone claiming that without the “hockey stick” as derived in mbh 98-99 is the only evidence for warmign outside bounds of the last thousand to couple thousand years, should go and carefully read the NAS report again – because the NAS report says somethign quite different.
Some further observations and comments.
Mann sadly was somewhat more eloquent than the others and so came across better to anyone who hasn’t researched this whole issue. Steve came across well during his testimony but wasn’t (I did miss some of the CSPAN broadcast) asked to give his opinions during the Q&A session.
I was totally unconvinced by the IPR excuse for not releasing the source code and I enjoyed Sputak’s remark about the ‘ice age’ of the Fortran IV code (Mann said it was actually Fortran 77). I develope software for a living now and used to be a nuclear physicist and have written plenty of Fortran code for complex mathematical models including transient analysis of reactor trip faults. His code has no commercial value (to Mann at least) but its application has already had huge financial implications yet as I understand it still hasn’t been fully released even to Wegman? Yet he claimed at least twice during questions that his work (MBH98) has been peer reviewed over the last 10 years. I’m sorry but that is just a down right perversion of the truth – his work cannot and never can be fully scrutinised until his source code has been fully disclosed and examined with a fine tooth comb.
KevinUK
JCSPE,
I recommend reading the recent NAS report as a reasonable starting point – its focus is quite a lot narrower, but it is a recend and reasonably comprehensive review within its bounds.
Thanks Armand
I didn’t tune in until Steve testimony so missed that bit. And sorry about my earlier typo I meant 1995 and not 1990.
KevinUK
# 141 wrote:
1. If the science being practiced in the climate field were all that were required to market pharmaceuticals, would any of you being willing to take your prescriptions? Why or why not?
2. Since I generally accept modern geologic theory, I accept that glaciers have been receding for over 10,000 years. Is there any reason for me to believe that the trend should change in my lifetime?
If Q # 1 refers to to the use of CM’s to design and test drugs, WITHOUT testing the new drug on living beings, i.e. animal testing and the like?
The answer is an emphatic NOOOOOOOOOO! CM’s are great calculators and sorters of data, but are only as good as the data given to manipulate. Despite our vast knowlegde of the human body and its processes, there is still way too much unknown physiology and chemical comlpexity to be able to substitute CM’s with real world, conrtol group biological testing.
Q # 2. Can’t say. But, since I’m a Geology school drop-out — Damn You Calculus! — I know a little about paleogeologic records, and given that glaciation is a temporary feature to begin with, plus given that the dirt my house is built upon was deposited here via the melting glaciers in the Sierra Nevadas (Yeosemite) and filled in the San Joaquin valley some 40 – 60 mil years ago, I’m kinda glad glaciers melt.
Steve should not dick around with this crap so much (and I mean it and I’m not JUST drunk). He should be publishing real science papers. [snip]
The thing that gets me about this witholding of source code is that, as far as I can tell, the source code IS the methodolgy. At least a large part of it anyway. Every line of code is a piece of the methodolgy. If a line of code is withheld, then it’s the same as witholding one’s methodology. That can’t be allowed, can it?
Not posting drunk can be an excellant rule, TCO.
Publish, publish, publish. [snip]
Not driving drunk can be an excellent rule.[snip]
Thanks TCO you have made a decision for me. I realize from your most recent comments and the entire tenor of this blog that climate science is in worse shape than ever.
I am done.
[snip]
TCO – I’ll recommend a yellow card to Steve on his return
Tim,
When John A or SteveMc return, they will like moderate this forum – or even delete it. They have a policy of “yellow cards and red cards” to be issued and which will get people kicked off. Much of that policy seems to have been blown through by certain posters today. This thread has degenerated into drivel, I’m sure my well meaning people with passionately held perspectives but rather pointless drivel. I generally read the comments for serious discussion and to learn more about statistics and issues in climate science. Today, though, there is a good amount of commentary that would be useful to learning about psychology and sociology, I’d guess.
#155 and #157
Hey. There are many thoughtful posts in this topic. I wouldn’t judge the “tone” or everyone’s mental state from the last couple comments especially when it’s been free speech all day long without moderation. And holy cow, people can vent. I for one am angry that AGW is taught to my kids as FACT and taught hoping they develope an emotional reaction too. Even taught that mine and my husbands thoughts on this are wrong. Even when my husband works in the environmental field and is a scientist, with a back ground in geology!
I wouldn’t judge a blog by the commments only and SteveM did something amazing today and last week. I applaud him! Who can say that they made government take notice of something such this important.
Please don’t ruin his work with sweeping judgements like that about the blog as a whole late at night either!
welirocks: Regarding your posting 158 – on the contrary, I think this thread serves as an excellent example — an example to Steve (when he returns) that, if you wear large boots and aren’t too careful where you tread, you tend to pick up things that are a bit smelly and pretty embarrassing!
Lee writes:
Hey, at least the NAS report used more than one dendro study. For the other phenomena like glaciers they only used one. Which had their own hockey sticks. It was laughable, the NAS was in the Carbon Credit lobby pocket. Of course if you aren’t, the grant money slips away.
#113, not #123…
Hockey Stick or no Hockey Stick, the bottom line is the GCM provide a poor fit to bad data.
Let’s talk about something different – how abour “cooling Antarctica”? See:
Re 164: Very distorted article. But don’t take my word for it; check the data yourself.
Re: #149 “…CM’s are great calculators and sorters of data, but are only as good as the data given to manipulate.”
As someone who has done a lot complex mathematical modelling in the past, I can tell you that mathematical models (often embodied/implemented in the form of computer programs) in addition to only being as good as the data fed into them are also only as good as the equations (and their coefficients) programmed into them. More often than not they HAVE to be ‘tuned’ using empirically derived parameters (this is a euphemism for ‘frig factors’) in order to get them to agree with experimental observations/measurements. They are all too often (as is the case with GCM’s) used to make predictions well beyond the scope of their proven validity and again as is the case with GCMs little mention is ever made/acknowledgement made by those who develop/apply them of their inherent uncertainty and sensitivity to initial conditions/assumptions. What always used to bemuse me when I was in this ‘game’ was when people would compare one model (computer program) with another and because they agreed to within a certain tolerance claim that both models had therefore been ‘validated’. I often wonder how many of the people I was involved with back then in the nuclear industry moved on to the ‘climate industry’ – it looks on the face of it that some of them probably did.
KevinUK
Kevin: in your posting 165, you said “very distorted article. But don’t take my word for it; check the data yourself”.
(a) Are you referring to the New York Times article or to the Nature article (both having the same author)?
(b) Have you “checked the data yourself”? – i.e. the historical Antarctic temperature data – if so, please tell us what you found.
#151
nanny_govt_sucks, you are spot on. The code IS the embodiment of the methodology. Mann KNOWS this which is why he has refused to fully disclose it as it will reveal his methodology (warts and all) and everyone will then see that ‘the emperor has no clothes’. If the code had been released years ago then the ‘centering’ issue and ‘novel use of PCA’ would have been obvious and Steve would not have had to put in so much effort to reveal the truth behind the politics.
I sincerely hope that Wegman’s recommendation (highlighted by Rep Blackburn at the hearing) is put into practice. When so much is at stake (e.g. is building 1000 new nuclear power stations really the right thing to do – and that coming from a nuclear advocate?) then the data and methodologies that underpin enery policy making decisions (funded by the taxpayer) MUST be fully disclosed and rigourously vetted by INDEPENDENT review before publication.
KevinUK
Apart from one article in the Wall Street Journal (July 16/06) and another in The Australian (July 19/06), the mainstream media has been remarkably silent on the July 2006 Whitfield hearings, during which Michael Mann’s famous “hockey stick” was irrevocably broken by the Wegman report and the US NAS study.
I am reminded of last year, when Tony Blair’s comments (at the Clinton summit) that the Kyoto Protocol was nearly dead were given no play in the press until 10 days after the event. Major new stories should be reported immediately, but when a leftist sacred cow (like Kyoto) is skewered, there is a shocked silence until a proper spin can be prepared.
The pro-Mann spin seems to be developing, as reported in Realclimate: the lack of centering does not matter to the result.
Next fearless prediction: When the MSM finally gets around to publishing this story, most papers (Canada’s National Post and Calgary Herald will be exceptions) will spin the story into a tale of persecution of poor Michael Mann, and how the Wegman and NAS reports do not change Mann’s conclusions.
As I did with last year’s Tony Blair Kyoto remarks, I’ve posted the Wegman report on Samizdata in the UK.
Regards, Allan
#161 Peter,
I didn’t miss anything. After watching the hearing my husband said whether Mann is doing it on purpose or he’s just blind to his own manipulation of the data, there was and is something terribly wrong with this whole thing. As a scientist my husband said that he would want “300 reviewers to look at his work. Bring it on! Anyone and All, publish means public!” Not the opposite. “Two Candians” have put a stop to alot of this crap being spread about via the climate community! As if science was an elite organization above the commen person, it is not.
So calling it fraud, or lying may be wrong to you, but that doesn’t matter because the work is wrong! Science isn’t this Mann or that man or woman, science is the data. Unfortunately your kind of comment is more commen than not. I see warmers labeling people all the time and predicting the future for them based on flawed work. I happen to know many peope, all with different political tastes, from all around the world and the USA who also agree with us and don’t like this one bit.
Read #168 .
Re #167: Sorry, the NYT article in the attachment. And yes, I have checked the data myself. They are public domain – see for yourself and draw your own conclusions, Jim. I could be an agent of Exxon after all! They/We are alleged to lurk behind every, er, Bush.
There is an article in the DER SPIEGEL. Its a total desaster for Mann and his clique.
Even Von Storch and Cubasch are arguing strongly against the Mann System, the IPCC and the reviewing policy of NATURE and SCIENCE:
http://forum.spiegel.de/showthread.php?p=524774#post524774
RE #141
1. If the science being practiced in the climate field were all that were required to market pharmaceuticals, would any of you being willing to take your prescriptions? Why or why not?
I wish the science used in the pharmaceutical field was as rigorous and unbiased and as what exists in the field of climatology. As a physician I almost never prescribe recently approved medicines because I’ve seen time and again meds side effects become obvious only in post marketing studies. The acceptance of the pharmacy industries biased studies and the denial of climate science is completely a money driven corruption of science. I’ll take the climate scientists pill anyday over that offered by the pharmacy industry.
2. Since I generally accept modern geologic theory, I accept that glaciers have been receding for over 10,000 years. Is there any reason for me to believe that the trend should change in my lifetime?
The evidence suggest that glaciers have recently been in relative thermal equilibrium through most of the recent holocene with rapid melting over the last 150 years. Half of Glacier National Parks glaciers are gone and most if not all will be gone shortly. This is not just a continuation of a 10,000 year trends. They have been in relative thermal equilibrium for thousands of years.
Put another way. If the current melt rate was normal for the last 10,000 years these existing small alpine glaciers of the world would have long been gone before today.
3. Since I accept that the earth has experienced multiple cycles of ice ages and warm periods, I reason that there must be inflection points, and therefore the math cannot be linear. Is there any reason for me to believe that current science has a detailed understanding of one or more of the past inflection points between warm periods and ice ages?
Sure! Much evidence suggest that CO2 and other ghg’s have a major influence in the swings from warm to cold periods. The current level of CO2 is much higher then any other time during the Holocene.
4. What systems and methods have been adopted to remove the doubts presented in the previous questions?
Sure it’s called peer review and includes critiques like those presented by M&M. But ultimately this whole website and discussion will end up being a very small footnote in the annals of climate change and the effects it’s having and will have on real people. The bottom line is that no significant evidence exist to suggest any temperature difference of more then 1-1.5 C between the MWP and the LIA. This difference occurred over 500 years and had dramatic effects on civilization.Now imagine 2-3 C of warmth above the all time high occurring in just the next 100 years.
Drug company studies during development and clinical trial have to be performed to GLP, and all the information has to be submittable to the FDA. There are criminal penalties for a breach. In climate science, Mann fought tooth and nail to avoid full disclosure of his methods, and still hasn’t released it all.
As a physician, you will know that the studies required for approval use very small populations compared to post-approval use. You will know that a 1:10 000 adverse effect can cause a drug to be withdrawn, and there is no reasonable way to pick this up beforehand.
So doing to studies to GLP, documenting them thoroughly, and having government approval is a corrupt process, but a lack of openness in methods, hiding adverse results, and lack of GLP is exemplary.
Uh-huh
per
Good heavens George! Do you really expect people to take you seriously when you make such a silly statement? And do you really believe that once a piece of science is accepted in the science community it never changes? (i.e. the equilivant of finding new side-effects in a drug) Now I agree that one must be a bit leary about new cures, no matter how carefully vetted. But to expect that a perfunctoryly issued bill of health by the other workers in a little science niche (AKA peer review) makes it safe to swallow a new science theory isn’t just wrong, it’s unhealthy.
This is complete and total nonsense. You’ve swallowed the Hockey Stick view of climate history. There is clear and overwhelming evidence of glacial advance and retreat in the last one thousand years let alone the last ten thousand.
Thats just rubbish George. Go away.
Just a reply on #173.
2) The evidence suggest that glaciers have recently been in relative thermal equilibrium through most of the recent holocene with rapid melting over the last 150 years. Half of Glacier National Parks glaciers are gone and most if not all will be gone shortly. This is not just a continuation of a 10,000 year trends. They have been in relative thermal equilibrium for thousands of years.
Put another way. If the current melt rate was normal for the last 10,000 years these existing small alpine glaciers of the world would have long been gone before today.
#answer: Glacier melt has not been stable throughout the holocene prior to 150 years ago. Glaciers advanced rapidly during the little ice age, with fear about having to move a few high alpine villages due to these advancing glaciers. Other periods of reduced glacier extend have been reported in scientific literature (e.g. Hormes, A., Moller, B.U. and Schlochter, C., 2001, The Alps with little ice: evidence for eight Holocene phases of reduced glacier extent in the Central Swiss Alps., The Holocene 11: 255-265.)
3) Sure! Much evidence suggest that CO2 and other ghg’s have a major influence in the swings from warm to cold periods. The current level of CO2 is much higher then any other time during the Holocene.
#answer: evidence suggests that a correlation exists between changes in CO2 and temperature(-proxies), which is something different than variations in parameter A being the cause of variations in parameters B. A correlation never proves a causal relation. What is causing what with regard to CO2 and temperature is still a big unknown.
Sure it’s called peer review and includes critiques like those presented by M&M. But ultimately this whole website and discussion will end up being a very small footnote in the annals of climate change and the effects it’s having and will have on real people. The bottom line is that no significant evidence exist to suggest any temperature difference of more then 1-1.5 C between the MWP and the LIA. This difference occurred over 500 years and had dramatic effects on civilization.Now imagine 2-3 C of warmth above the all time high occurring in just the next 100 years.
#answer. Peer review is not a Holy Grail, and this has since long been recognized. Peer review will remove only but the most obvious incorrect articles. Otherwise, progress in science depends on testing other researcher’s hypotheses and ideas to see if they make some sense. Which means that many ideas and hypotheses that are being published will turn out to be either wrong or only partly correct. Many examples exist, and many will continue to exist, if science is left to do its thing. Unfortunately, climate science does not appear to work this way anymore; over the last decade or so the number of “comments” published in scientific literature has been declining while the number of papers has been increasing. Apparantly being critical about other scientists work is not important anymore in climate science.
Science Policy in the 21st Century”
A speech to the Joint Session AEI-Brookings Institution
Washington, DC
January 25, 2005
“As some of you may know, I have spent the last several years exploring various environmental issues, particularly global warming. I have been deeply disturbed by what I have found, largely because the so-called evidence for so many environmental issues is often shockingly flawed and unsubstantiated.
But more troubling, to me, is the degree to which the political process seems to have captured and often corrupted the integrity of the scientific research that is used to formulate policy, and inform policy decisions.
I am also troubled by the insensible and distracting contentiousness that seems to inform so much of current political debate – especially when environmental issues are involved. As a result of this political friction – which is all heat and no light – policy is often established by way of litigation, rather than negotiation and legislation.
From these observations, I conclude that as a society we lack the tools and methodologies we need to resolve thorny science-policy issues promptly, equitably and constructively.
We’re having this trouble because we have not developed mechanisms for decision-making that we all agree are fact-based and judicious; so that the results of such processes will be generally perceived to be fair and equitable.
As a result, as I mentioned, we often resolve environmental disputes through litigation, which is neither good public policy nor a sound basis for administrative rule-making.
So we ought to establish new mechanisms for determining social policy. And I believe that in the not too distant future, we will.
Today I am going to focus on six major problems that will confront science policy in the 21st century, and then consider briefly how we might resolve each of them…”
http://tinyurl.com/mr8so
Good read.
quote: ” In addition, I remind you of the work of the late Aaron Wildavsky, who argued, in a very complicated analysis that you can find in “Searching for Safety,” that the strategy of prevention favors the elite; adaptation favors the average person. Certainly if you look at who is advocating which strategy, it seems clear that Wildavsky was right”
Most scientific papers are probably wrong.
Re #141
Back in 1976, Science published a paper by the CLIMAP project that attributed about 2/3 of the forcing of glacial/interglacial cycles over the last million years to earth’s orbital parameters – tilt and precession of the axis and eccentricity of the orbit. Subsequent work may have modified this estimate and also has identified feedback and lag effects of glacial ice as contributing to the cycles. So the historical inflection points are pretty well known within a couple of thousand years based on deep-sea sediment cores taken world-wide that looked at microfossils (diatoms, foraminifera, radiolaria, coccoliths), pollen, dO18, and sediment chemistry. The low-frequency signal has been pretty well understood for a while. The high-frequency signal (2-3,000 year cycles) has been investigated for leads and lags in the various parts of the world-ocean. Unfortunately, sedimentation rates rarely accomodate investigations of annual deposition so it has fallen to suspect proxies like tree rings to fill in the gap.
“I’ll take the climate scientists pill anyday ”
And you apparently have.
# 141 said:
I wish the science used in the pharmaceutical field was as rigorous and unbiased and as what exists in the field of climatology. As a physician I almost never prescribe recently approved medicines because I’ve seen time and again meds side effects become obvious only in post marketing studies.
Except, in climate science, with Mann and others locking up their code and methodologies, they have virtualy made it impossible to do ANY “post marketing studies” at all!
#166
“As someone who has done a lot complex mathematical modelling in the past, I can tell you that mathematical models (often embodied/implemented in the form of computer programs) in addition to only being as good as the data fed into them are also only as good as the equations (and their coefficients) programmed into them. More often than not they HAVE to be “tuned’ using empirically derived parameters (this is a euphemism for “frig factors’) in order to get them to agree with experimental observations/measurements. ”
I have read some information about the GCM’s, and not only do they include “frig factors”, but the resulting output of multiple models are then input into other models, creating an ensemble model view. The end result is one that I would not place a high confidence factor in. An error or incorrect assumption in the original input not only affects the output of that model, but also the results of any subsequent models that utilize the previous output as input into their programs. GIGO is a classic refrain from the programming world.
Re #180.
When I took a grad level climate change course in fall 1997, the 1995 IPCC report said orbital forcing was something like 95% of the forcing for glacial/interglacial cycles. Not sure if that number has changed any.
Re# 181
“I’ll take the climate scientists pill anyday ”
And you apparently have.
Comment by ET SidViscous “¢’¬? 28 July 2006 @ 9:23 am
Yep and not taking a pill can be lethal as well. Disease is all around you, the California heat wave, the burning forests, the melting glaciers…….and you refuse to recognize your illness and likewise don’t take the pill. Jesus man it’s no co-incidence that this has been the hottest half year recorded in North America……and you all think Mann’s statistical gaff some how nullifies the spectrophotometric properties of the CO2 molecule.
The fact is the science is inconvenient with many skeptics politics plane and simple. Your denial is not effecting mother nature one bit…take a walk outside….
And taking the wrong medication for a particular ailment can kill you as quick as anything else.
So let me ask you. As a physician do you look at the patient, and without confirming diagnosis prescribe drastic treatment?
There is a lot of symptoms, but it has been yet to be linked directly to CO2. I believe strongly that solar output is responsible (There is plenty of evidence for this) .
So Doc, what would be your prescription for reducing solar output?
Until last year, the “disease” was a hockey-stick, with utterly flat temperature from 1000 AD until the 1900s, when the patient got a fever. Thanks to a bit of proper diagnosis, we now know that this “disease” doesn’t exist.
99% of all statistics are made up on the spot; a month without records would be a record…
it is good to have a simple, take home message, but you must know that this is a very misleading statement. Much of the evidence for AGW comes from models, which incorporate a number of positive feedback loops. You will also be aware of the issue that much IR is already absorbed by water, leaving less for absorption by CO2. But hey; why bother with facts ?
yours
per
From what I have seen, haven’t “global temperatures” been relativley flat since 1998? Thats almost a decade. According to NOAA, this year is shaping up to be the “sixth warmest year.” Hey, it’s not a record! These things change all the time. I’m just very tired of all the alarmism and doomism.
There’s an interesting post on Roger Piekle’s Sr.’s site about how upper ocean temperatures have actually cooled between 2003 and 2005. I’m very interested to see if the trend continues.
#187
. According to one scientist, we should be injecting sulfer into the atmosphere to reduce the amount of sunlight that hits the earth.
Apparently, we should now be tinkering with things to change that which we don’t even understand.
Apparently, I need to figure out exactly how the link button works 😦
“You will also be aware of the issue that much IR is already absorbed by water, leaving less for absorption by CO2. But hey; why bother with facts ?”
Or the fact that the majority of warming, based on AGW theory, would be in the winter months. Since the Summer is already warm, and thus more humid (Why people put humidifiers in their house for the winter months), CO2 would contribute much less to summer warming. THus this current Heat wave is unlikely the result of elevated CO2 (There may be some effect, but it would be very small).
Can I ask. I Understand we are in the middle of a heat wave, but A. As the Warmers say during cold waves, “That’s weather, not climate” B. HAven’t we had heat waves in the past, I seem to recall some s I was growing up, and I believe there was reports of a particularly long and nast heat wave in 1911, before the majority of CO2 was put into the atmosphere.
In 1934 it was over 100 degrees for 21 days in July in Missouri. Was that becuase of greenhouse gases?
These hearing are more lawyering then science. We need a questioner that will get aggressive with these witnesses.
For example. What kind of evidence do you have that we are not in a temperature cycle, where the previous high was 800 years ago.
What kind of error bars can you put on your assertions that the present warming is not cyclical? Is this an impression? We here a lot of
testimony in these hearings that comes down to “they say” but precious little evidence from the warmers. Let the warmers come up with
a single pivotal study on which they are willing to hang their credibility, – with defendable error bars, that shows we are now the warmest in
1000 years, and this is due to CO2. If not Michael Mann, then give us a target or shut up. Don’t say – “they say” or “hundreds of studies say”
but give us ONE study that we can aim at, and don’t change the target for at least a few years. Where is THE definitive study. the NSF study
does not give any kind of quantative defendable error bars around a 1000 year AGW assertion. Nothing anybody can aim at. Somebody please point out to
Barton that unless the warmers give us some kind of study with this 1000 year assertion, with defendable error bars, and full disclosure of
methodology, then please retire the “everybody says” rhetoric. We need a questioner that is a little less polite and will suffer these fools with less
equanimity.
re 188:
“You will also be aware of the issue that much IR is already absorbed by water, leaving less for absorption by CO2. But hey; why bother with facts ?”
Per, as long as we’re botherign with facts, why dont you quantitatie that. What are the absorption and transmission bands for H2O and CO2? For a given increase in H2O, what is the effect on the absorptin bands for CO2?
re 189:
Joeboo, no it is not true that temps have been flat since 1998. There was an exceptionally hot year in 1998, an el nino year, with that spike on top of a continual upward trend. Year to year temps now are similar to those of that standout year in 1998. One can claim that temps have ben relatively flat ONLY if one cherry-picks 1998 as the starting year and ignores the constant trend upon which that exceptional el nino year was superimposed, and only if one ignores that 1998 was exceptional at the time compared to adjacent years, but would not be now.
George,
If I had all the symptoms of say, liver cancer, would you immediately recommend chemo and radiation therapy? Or would you order a biopsy and suggest a second opinion?
“One can claim that temps have ben relatively flat ONLY if one cherry-picks 1998 as the starting year”
And one can only claim many things about warming in the 20th century if one cherry picks the mid 1970’s or 1900 as the starting point.
But let’s go back further than 1998 or 1975. Lets use 1945 as the starting point.
Then we see that the trend start to finish is still relatively flat. (Very slight upward trend maybe .1C or .2C)
That’s the whole point Lee. Climate varies, always has always will. If you measure peak to peak you’ll get a flat line. If you measure from Trough to peak you get an upward trend, If you measure from peak to trough you get a downward trend.
and if you use moving averages over the entire available record, as oen should to avoid all this cherry picking nonsense, you see a clear upward trend.
There are legitimate disputes over whether we have (yet?) warmed into millenially unique temperatures – but to dispute that we are experiencing an upward temperature trend is just silly.
re 195
Solar Radiation
“Remote Sensing of the Atmosphere”
Light Energy and the Spectral Distribution of Radiation
I did not dispute that we are experiencing an upward trend
RE #187
So let me ask you. As a physician do you look at the patient, and without confirming diagnosis prescribe drastic treatment?
There is a lot of symptoms, but it has been yet to be linked directly to CO2. I believe strongly that solar output is responsible (There is plenty of evidence for this) .
So Doc, what would be your prescription for reducing solar output?
Comment by ET SidViscous “¢’¬? 28 July 2006 @ 12:16 pm
As a Pediatrician I look at my 12 month old babies and say, what is the likelihood of them getting the measles. I know it’s very minimal but I give them the MMR vaccine which could kill them and cost about $75. But every risk assessment shows the benefits far out way the risk. Medicine works best when we prepare and prevent rather then wait and treat after the fact. Global warming is the same. I say take the pill…it’s not that bitter. And in the process we can clean the air, end our dependence on foreign oil and take back our markets and democracy from multinational corporations.
As far as solar there’s almost no significant evidence to show it is responsible for the current warming trend and your desire to believe so is simply an attempt to avoid an inconvenient truth….again your Solar beliefs will have no effect on the spectral properties of CO2…….none…….they only serve to give you false comfort……they make you sleep better while the nights are warming.
Bottom line is if treated my newborn babies with fever with a big dose of hopeful expectations as you would recommend every now and then I’ll end up with a dead baby. So instead I’ll treat every febrile baby with a little Amp and Gent at almost no risk to save the one out of 25 that actually has a life threatening infection.
re: 173 and 185
This political troll is on record with gaia-worshipping personifications and left-entenched posts that exceed the thresholds of scientific reason. His equating the weather of the day to climate is just the latest example betrays views ungrounded in science and inseparable from his ideology — do not feed him.
correction: betraying
Re # 188
You will also be aware of the issue that much IR is already absorbed by water, leaving less for absorption by CO2. But hey; why bother with facts ?
yours
per
I think you just confirmed one of the “presumed” feedbacks……..more CO2….more warmth…more evaporation…more water vapor…more warming. ….Is that so hard to believe?
Re#196
George,
If I had all the symptoms of say, liver cancer, would you immediately recommend chemo and radiation therapy? Or would you order a biopsy and suggest a second opinion?
Comment by Paul Penrose “¢’¬? 28 July 2006 @ 1:17 pm
The biopsy is done dude and you HAVE liver cancer….do you want me to wait another tens years before we begin treatment just to see if is gonna spread? Do you want to delay treatment for a few more test? a few more opinions? Maybe you want to try macro-biotics first before going with the best peer reviewed recommendations on treatment. Maybe it’s just the sun causing your cancer and there’s nothing we can do about it anyway.
Re #197
I’m just not seeing what you’re talking about Sid
206 I don’t quite see the point. Why not post a link to a fuzzy bear, it would have as much relevance.
Muirgeo,
I’m glad you’re not my Doc. Mine does not know everything but does know what he does know. Like you say he’s done a biopsy. This isn’t something they started in 1998. Doctors have seen hundreds of thousands of cancers run their course, including a few that spontaneously went into remission. Medicine began at least 2000 years ago. They are making judgement from experience based on observations. On the other hand, we have had the capacity to know the planet is warming for less than 200 years and this is the very first case we’ve experieced. The only thing the NRC says we know with a high degree of certainty is that it was much colder 400 years ago not only than today but than it was before 400 years. They say is only plausible that we have a problem. If my Doc says it plausible that I have the big C I would be concerned but I would not be calling the kids to come and take their goodbyes.
Muirgeo,
One other thing. Would you mind awfully giving me the link to the raw station data identification, weighting and the adjustments made of them that went into the graph you link to so that we can all be sure that it is spot on?
Re 207 and 197
“Lets use 1945 as the starting point.
Then we see that the trend start to finish is still relatively flat. (Very slight upward trend maybe .1C or .2C)”
Is this statement true/honest? based on the graph I linked to? Talk of fuzzy bears all you want but your claim has been patently debunked. You needed to resort to dishonesty or misrepresentation of the data. I’ve clearly revealed this to be the case.
George,
A biopsy is solid physical evidence of a cancer – cancer cells. What’s the equivalent for the AGW diagnosis? Don’t say the reconstructions, because that’s just statistics and (weak) correlation. Don’t say the models because they are even worse. Don’t say the CO2 correlated to the recent temperature record, cause that’s, well, just correlation and not causation, of course. So where’s the hard physical evidence of AGW?
Muirgo, you did touch a very important item in #173:
The real problem with Mann’s reconstruction is exactly that it reduced the MWP-LIA difference to some 0.2 C. Which has as result that the attribution of the increase in temperature of the past century in climate models is towards GHGs/aerosols. If there was really a 1.5 C difference between MWP and LIA, then the full warming of the past century must be attributed to solar forcing (to fit both the pre-industrial time and the instrumental record), as we now live in a 8,000 years high of solar activity. That means that zero effect is left for GHGs and feedbacks and that the projected warming for 2xCO2 is zero.
Of course this is a black-and-white example. But fact is that more variability in the past (~0.8 C according to Moberg and Huang, ~1 C, based on the ~10 ppmv change in ice cores) goes at the cost of the influence of GHGs/aerosols in the models, and thus reduces future “projections” based on an increase of GHGs…
Re#209
The data is available on the web so I’ll let you look for it yourself as you and I both know you wouldn’t check it’s “spot-on-ed-ness” if I gave it to you anyway.
More pertinant would be for you to show one peer reviewed analysis of the surface data that shows something significantly different from the CRU graph. None exist. Multiple other independent analysis exsist and they all show pretty much the same thing.
Hang on Muirgeo, we’ve been all round this in the past. What’s on the web is the processed data. Give us a link that shows by grid cell which raw station data is used with what weighting and with what correction formula. What is on the web is the gospel according to Doc Phil.
Oh, and two is multiple eh Muirgeo? I’d be really happy to be my Doc’s third patient.
Re #213
George, just have a look at the solar reconstructions (especially those of Hoyt and Schatten), include an accumulation lag, due to the slow heating of the oceans and compare that to the temperature reconstructions and the temperature record…
Re 166: As a statistician I am somewhat intrigued by the fact the models have many adjustable parameters – including climate sensitivity to CO2. (Science settled?) And they still are unable to reproduce historical data that well.
As usual Ferdinand you talk sense. It’s getting hotter. Ice is melting. It gets hotter. It’s called positive feedback. The fact that for 20 years satellites haven’t noticed much difference does not exclude the possibility that it the sun got hotter before that and that what we are seeing is the long long time constant of the oceans.
#173
href=”http://psych.fullerton.edu/mwhite/475pdf/475DrugDevelopment.pdf#search=’fda%20drug%20testing%20protocol’
To your knowledge, does the above link properly describe the FDA drug testing protocol?
It is your field not mine, but I am confused by your answer. In the FDA system, I see a requirement to have independent verification, which means by definition all data and methods must be released. I see a built-in method to recognize bias/wishful thinking through the use of double blind studies, control groups and placebos. I see starting out with limited impacts and advancing to more widespread – ie. a few lab animals, small groups of volunteers, and then onto the afflicted in the general public under a physicians care. (Note that the number who will receive any one prescription is nowhere near everyone, which would be the case if politicians go hog-wild in relation to CO2 emissions.) I see follow up studies once the pharma reaches market. I also know that there are plenty of expensive lawsuits when the drug development process goes awry.
So, where is there any of this rigor is climate science? No requirement for independent verification. No system of complete releases of data and methodologies so independent verification can be completed. No double blind system of any kind. No system analogous to placebos or control groups. No incremental approaches that would limit the damage of being wrong. And certainly, no legal repercussions to those who might damage others through their inexact science.
Re #169: Alan, I though that vast conspiracy theories were the domain of radical left wingers?
Re 211: No, the models are pretty good infact. Not perfect by any stretch, but the best thing going, and only getting better. But if you still don’t like models, what are you suggesting as a practical alternative in determining if AGW is true? What do YOU propose as a testable ‘biopsy’? The only irrefutable proof will be to actually observe 2xCO2 conditions. A fascinating experiment to be sure, but there’s evidence suggesting it’s a bit risky.
219: This is all a good idea, and think the climate community does itself an enormous disservice by not being more transparent and public with their data and code. But these independent reviews, verifications etc…will require massive public investments in climate science, no? Is this what you’re advocating – more money for climate research?
re GCM models. Can anyone suggest a link where I can see the Monte Carlo outcomes for, say, 1000 GCM model runs? I have used @risk for quite a few years to evaluate forecast cash flows for projects, and have learned that the pictorial representation of the outcome distributions is very revealing as to the reliability of the results.
For example, one valuation that I did gave an NPV of $1100m, and 1SD was $54m, or close to 5%. Another valuation gave an NPC of $35m, but 1SD was $75m, or close enough to 200% of the base value. Clearly the first valuation reflects a reliable outcome (due to the fact that the project had stable revenue streams and low costs giving strong margins with low volatility of the margins), and the second a highly unreliable situation (volatile revenues, high costs, and highly volatile margins).
The shape of the curve is very important (kurtosis). Peaky distributions equal reliable. Flat distributions suggest that any one outcome is more or less as likely as any other, and hence rubbish.
BTW, in calculating the financial models above, we used standard CAPM approaches, and applied different discount rates based on Beta theory. Just goes to show what a crock CAPM is when it comes to volatile cash flows. EG, if I had the money, I could pay $1100m for the first asset, and be sure that I had a good investment. How much would I pay for the second? Not very much, perhaps $1-$2m for option value. But if the price I (or the market) would pay is so much different from the $35m CAPM result, how good is the CAPM value?
I rephrase #202:
the political troll that is Mr Muirgeo is a left wingnut. He has argued that AGW was made worse with the incumbent’s (President Carter) defeat in the 1980 presidential election (to President Reagan)! His personified embrace of the Mother Nature’s physics on another blog (or blogs?) is classic Gaia-worship.
He is here out of the perception that this is a partisan issue. He likes (and is proud of) being band from “right wing sites,” as he sings the praises of Presidents Carter and Clinton, while being critical of republican administrations. His proclaimation of daily weather events as proof of AGW are the smoking gun of his ignorance — I repeat, please don’t feed the troll cause he wants to get banned (a wear it like “a badge”).
It’s not about the science with him, it’s about the politics.
#213 “The data is available on the web so I’ll let you look for it yourself as you and I both know you wouldn’t check it’s “spot-on-ed-ness” if I gave it to you anyway.”
The data are not available on the web. Nor are the methods allegedly used for factoring out of the data such things as local anthropogenic temperature tainting effects. Much massaging of the raw data is taking place behind locked doors, before we are permitted to gaze upon the results. Like the hidden statistical contortionists performing in the tree ring circus, this too shall pass.
“More pertinant would be for you to show one peer reviewed analysis of the surface data that shows something significantly different from the CRU graph. None exist.”
One of the problems with ‘climate science’ is that people have been making a lot of assumptions, and not checking the validity of those assumptions. This is not something that you should be happily reporting. Finally, some people are begininng to check those assumptions WRT the ‘instrumental’ surface temperature reconstructions:
Here, for example
Wanna place some bets as to how long the stonewalling over those data and methods takes?
JJ
222.
I guess my thought is: “Compared to what?”
If I am about to watch a political movement try to force all of the U.S. to be like the Amish so we produce less CO2, then it is hard to imagine any cost of good science being too high.
If I am about to watch a reasoned, and adult, approach to more energy efficiency without a bunch of hysteria, kneejerk accusations and leftist takeover attempts, then I guess being careful about overspending makes some sense.
Based on what I have witnessed so far, I am willing to spend on good science because this faux-science sure looks like it could be used as fodder for the next big leftist dictatorship.
I guess I also favor increased scrutiny in this field just for the honesty of it all. In my opinion, no one is a scientist because they say so, or because their degrees or certifications read so. Someone is only a scientist if they know and follow scientific principles and methods with rigor — warts and all.
Independant verification (audit) does not have to be expensive. Steve has done that for free with MBH98, even with all the obstructions thrown up by Mann. Imagine how much more would be done if all the data and methods for every published study were freely available.
Even if it does cost more, we can always cut down on the number of studies funded and go for quality over quantity.
226: Be careful to distinguish between the vast majority of scientists who are just doing their best to interpret and explain the evidence as it appears, and the loony left. They’re very different.
And, if all the hyper-audited assessments still point to global warming existing, being human-caused, and dangerous, which is a possibility you must necessarily acknowledge, then what will you do? Out of curiosity.
227: You could be right about a complete audit being inexpensive. As an example, the complete NASA GISS and NCAR CCSM is freely available. So, what’s stopping people here from following M&M’s lead?
Your quality vs. quantity statement is vague. What exactly do you mean?
Re:211
So where’s the hard physical evidence of AGW?
Comment by Paul Penrose
More like where isn’t it.
Basically every climatological trend I can think of is consistent with global warming. And on top of that I can tink of no natural trends that explain the warming. But there is one elephant in the room.
-Surface trends; 3 independent compilations that each show the same thing
– Satellite trends
– Sonde baloon trends
– Alpine glacial trends
– Percipitation trends
– Hydrological trends
– Arctic ice trends
– Arctic river flow trends
– Pan evaporation trends
– Ocean temperature trends
– Large lake temperature trends ( Tahoe, Tanganika, Bakail)
– Drought trends
– heating day and cooling day trends
– record heat trends
– record cold trends
– snow line trends
– Lake freeze/ thaw trends
– permafrost trends
– Earthshine trends
– Spectrophotometric trends
– surface skin layer trends
– spring budding trends
– migratory trends
– atmospheriic moisture trends
– cloud trends
– increased snow accumulation over the Antarctic and Upper elevations of Greenland do to increased moisture and precipitation.
– precipitation trends
– sea level rise trends
– atmospheric shirkage trends
– stratospheric temperature trends
– sea surface barometric pressure trends
Correction:
He likes (and is proud of) being banned…
is for #224.
#227. The kind of audit of a climate model that I have in mind would be expensive. If it were up to me, I’d retain some qualified specialists to spend serious time at it. Our NAS panel was less bad than an IPCC review of paleoclimate, but it’s a goofy way to do business. What’s the point of having 11 guys do another literature review?
If all the code is available, then that would make it easier, but someone still has to do it and the type of person that I’d want looking at it would have to be paid for their time. But hte sort of cost involved is irrelevantly trivial.
If you want to do a prospectus, it costs money to open the doors. You have to pay consultants, auditors, lawyers.
Right now the climate science review process is amateurish. Since money is involved, it’s time to professionalize it a bit.
228.
On another subject a wise mentor of mine once told me: “jump off that bridge after you get on top of it.” I believe his advice applies to this situation as well.
First, at what level will we understand it? With the certainty of a physical equation? If so, the equation itself will offer the excellent guidance. For example, KE=1/2mv^2 & Momenteum=MV. So, if you want to increase kinetic energy your efforts will be much more effective trying to increase velocity than trying to increase mass because you take advantage of the squared term. However, if you are trying to increase momenteum, it doesn’t make any difference which one you choose. This simplified example describes why going off half-cocked is usually a bad idea. Put another way, behaving in an inefficient manner in a quest to be more efficient simply does not make any sense.
Also, I believe math tells me that unless we can explain the inflection points and reversals in the system no one will never actually know whether humans are a significant cause or not. Worse than that, at an inflection point the instanteous data appears static. In the area between inflections many rather insignificant trends will also appear to prove more than they actually do. The tough part is that human time is so miniscule compared to solar and geologic time that it will be very difficult to develop an understanding that encompasses entire cycles. However, by now I feel safe in stating that there will be plenty of true believers that will tell you that they know it all. Or, they will tell you it does not matter what they still don’t know because we should get on with throwing the virgin in the volcano anyway.
Another thought I am wrestling with is the certainty that GW does not equal AGW. It may just be true that the miniscule nature of human time means that we will have to adapt many times if our species is to survive for a long time. Our ancestors lived through ice ageas and we are living through something else. In a geology class I once saw a film that showed what geologic evidence tells us about North America through the ages. It has been many years, but I remember seeing Florida disappear under seas more than once, shore lines advancing down the continental shelves significantly more than once, and much of the Missippi Valley becoming part of the Gulf of Mexico as well.
The world is not static and it never will be. It is the height of narcissism to believe universal forces should stop during our life time. It is just as egotistic to conclude we are the cause without real, complete and tested proof. If we ever get there, then we may know enough to answer your question. In the meantime I will not be discarding reason in favor of panic and fear.
In terms of policy, there are some things that can be sensibly done now. In Ontario, 50% of our power is nuclear, but I don’t think that we’ve built a new plant for 25 years although we’ve re-furbished old ones. Our next plant will be nuclear. We still have some coal-fired electricity that can be displaced with new nuclear capacity.
I can see many reasons for backing nuclear programs regardless of whether you believe in climate models. Actually there’s an interesting connection between the nuclear industry and the developoment of the AGW concern which is worth exploring and I might post up on another occasion. A hint – look at the location of the Carbon Dioxide Information Center CDIAC.
Re #228: About that inflection point business, aren’t you ignoring some recent advice to read up on Milankovitch cycles? You can start with two articles in the current edition of Science. There’s quite a lot known about the causes of past climate if you care to do some reading.
233: Fair enough. Realize though, that the climate science review process is just the scientific review process but under brighter lights and with higher stakes. These arguments can be made against any branch of science, except maybe pure math. The whole system is imperfect, and I agree, in need of more independent verification.
So after an audit, how will a good model be distinguished from a bad model? It’s important to set these criteria beforehand, to guard against having the goalposts change if the score isn’t to people’s liking.
#233, Steve,
I don’t think that you can ever do a real audit of the climate models because of the limited pool of talent for the needed tasks. Where are you going to find the experts in computational fluid mechanics, atmospheric physics, etc. who aren’t either already absorbed by the GCMs or building airplanes and missiles?
I think there is a much easier test. Treat the models as black boxes. Make the model builders select a set of initial conditions that they think represent today’s climate and run the model forward 100 years. [It’s got to be forward, not backward and fitting to some known result.] Then randomly vary the conditions by a few percent, whatever the known measurement errors are for the inputs, and rerun the models. Rinse and repeat at least ten times then compare results. These are systems with millions of Lyapunov exponents, I’d bet the differences would be eye opening.
This sounds like the sort of thing Barton could reasonably ask the GCM people to do. The burden on the independent auditors would be much lower, they just would have to make sure that there is a fair test and the results were completely reported. Make a suggestion, you’ve got the access now.
#238
Same place as Al Gore (At The Holiday Inn Express!).
#230 few if any are denying that today’s summer is warmer than the winter of 400 years ago.
The harder questions, completely untouched by your trend list, is a) the relationship between today’s summer (warm period) and those of previous warm periods (1000+ years ago), and b) whether human activity has been significant and/or can significantly impact trends in the future.
The death of the Hockey Stick is quite significant in that light.
And the lack of useful GCM’s (i.e. there are zero models that have useful predictive skill) doesn’t help.
Man … wouldn’t it be great to know that Mankind has figured out how to “clamp” the climate!! All we have to do is keep the Atmospheric CO2 level at a set point and presto … perfect 70 degree days from here till eternity.
I have to agree with the previous post (23*), it is rather egotistical to believe that humans are that powerful. The next ice age will come … at least that is where I’m putting my money.
Steve … here in the US, there are a lot of us who would love to go nuclear .. but the same anti-industrial environmentalist who are toting Mann’s water with he purpose of destroying the fossil fuels industry are also leading the charge to prevent nuclear power …. go figure!
#238 – if it’s serious, you hire guys that are working on missiles and airplanes and pay them what they’re worth. I’m not thinking about a budget in the tens of thousands. I’m talking about a big expensive test with competent people that are INDEPENDENT. Climate modelers would be required to cooperate, but the verfication wouldn’t be done by climate modelers.
Maybe some preliminary scoping should be done to decide whether you really want to go through the GCMs? Kaufmann’s experiments indicate that, for the purposes of estimating global temperature, GCMs contain no information above the information in a simple linear model. My guess is that the GCMs are essentially irrelevant to the AGW argument. IPCC is so involved with being a sales brochure for GCMs that they never really evaluate whether they are relevant for policy.
236. OK. I read a few things including the following:
http://aa.usno.navy.mil/faq/docs/seasons_orbit.html
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/milankovitch.html
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/cycles.htm
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm
would you say that these are fair, albeit brief, descriptions of the state of knowledge on the subject today?
Kevin, you said in posting 171 “And yes, I have checked the data myself. They are public domain – see for yourself and draw your own conclusions.”
You are sounding evasive now. Please tell us where the data is in the “public domain” and please tell us how you “checked the data” yourself. It would seem to me that estimating a long-term trend from data that covers a huge area and is patchy in both time and space is not a trivial task – as least not something about which one would sensibly use the off-the cuff remark “see for yourself and draw your own conclusions”.
#244: Jim, look at the satellite data for Antarctica and the surface temperaturee measurements from the stations down there and draw your own conclusions. Many data links can be found on this site and on junkscience.com. What I might conclude here should be treated as hearsay. This was not an off the cuff remark; it pertains to basic research procedure. You need to see for yourself. Very sorry if my meaning was unclear or if you took offense.
This is an translation of an article from yesterdays (29. 7. 2006) SPIEGEL-ONLINE.
The translation was made by Abacho translation programm.
So it is not complete and somewhere Faulty, But You may have an impression what Bojanowski wrote. Maybe there is somebody who can make a better translation.
Interesting what Von Storch, Cubasch and Zorito are telling.
Bernd
———————————–
Rüpeleien among climatologists
By Axel Bojanowski
An investigation of the US congress castigates squalid work of climatologist’s star Michael Mann. Besides, also the UN-climate advisory board and important professional magazines get in disrepute: Undesirable results – for the science inalienably – would be suppressed. It was quite quiet in the hall of the House of Representatives when Michael Mann of Pennsylvania seized State University the word. Yesterday under oath the climatologist had to defend his famous hockey stick curve before politicians and scientists. The graphic arts which owe her name to her form should describe the temperature development of the last millennium. However, Mann’s scientific opponents – yesterday likewise in the hall – had proved that the curve is faulty. Mann should justify himself for his controversial approach, nevertheless, remained taciturn. Besides, the reproaches of his opponents shake the climatology in her basic parties. Joe Barton, the chairperson of the energy committee in the House of Representatives, is a taut conservative and advocate of the climate policy of George W. Bush. He allowed to check the work of man of two committees: in the eyes of many scientists a bloody-minded action. However, the consultants were famous climatologists and statisticians of the Nationwide Academy of Sciences (NAS). With the yesterday’s showdown in the congress central statements of the last report of the UN-climate committee IPCC got with the hockey stick curve also in the criticism – the hockey stick graphic arts are illustrated in the IPCC report completely in front. Responsibly for the prominent order of the curve her originator himself was – Michael Mann was a leading author of the report. With the IPCC there rules ” lacking control “, now the NAS experts reprimand. The problem would not be repaired, mine some Klimatologen. Also next IPCC-report which appears in spring, 2007 suffers from the dominance of certain research groups, said the IPCC author Ulrich Cubasch of the Free university of Berlin to SPIEGEL ONLINE.
Confirmed group Also technical periodicals see from the test committee NAS her most important property questioned – her objectivity. Studies, in particular that of Mann, would not necessarily be checked before the publication in professional magazines ” independently “, one says in the expert’s report. Professional magazines usually allow to examine from two or three experts whether a submitted work is good for the publication. However, in the narrow circle of the Palàƒ⣯klimatologen which investigate the climate of the past the works of Michael Manns with high likelyhood on the desk of a good friend would land – he has written with 42 colleagues together studies and forms with them ” a clique “, now reminds the test committee. Some from the group look after the Internet platform “Realclimate.org” which reports about climatology. The German scientist Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam institute of climate results research from which the Federal Government can be discussed in the matter of environment protection also belongs to it. Some environmental federations and media were of use “Realclimate.org” up to now as an objective scientific spring, although the contributions are mostly written in own thing. Recently was to be read there, the “hockey team” – were meant the supporters of Michael Mann – has gone with “2:0” to guidance. Till this day the group of defects in the Mannschen denies climate curve. “Bouncer’s methods”: Michael Mann should have tore to pieces research reports of colleagues and have intimidated editors of professional magazines. Even “Nature” and “Science” get in the shot line.
The researchers who do not belong to the group seem to have it heavier to publish studies. Several scientists reported, her works have been rejected by American professional magazines because they have been tore to pieces by an anonymous examiner unusually rough. Many climatologists are persuaded that it concerns with that controller Michael Mann. They accuse him of having intimidated editors of technical periodicals massively. Hans von Storch of the research centre GKSS speaks possibly of the Klimatologe of “bouncer’s methods” in Geesthacht who was heard the last week before the House of Representatives. Even the flagships of the science literature, the journals “Nature” and “Science”, hard get in the criticism. ” Both magazines incline to prefer studies with appeal to the public “, said Stroch to SPIEGEL ONLINE. Only so is explicable, why the “hockey stick curve” in spite of all her defects could be published.
The influence of the person is certain – his magnitude as the newest victims of the professional magazines do not see themselves the put a tread German Klimatologen Gerd Bürger and Ulrich Cubasch of the Free university of Berlin whose criticism of the hockey stick curve was rejected at first by respectable “Geophysical Research Letters” (GRL). The criticism of the anonymous GRL consultant would have been ” under the waistline “, said Cubasch. Now the work appeared in the less weighty on-line magazine “Climate of the Past” where studies are not rejected, but the criticism of other researchers is rather observable – among the rest, the unusually bad slating of an anonymous author from whom many mean, it concerns man. The hockey stick curve stands for a long time in the criticism. Probably nothing makes clear the climate change caused by the people virtually these graphic arts; numerous talks and films fell back on them. However, the climate should also have swayed earlier stronger than man’s curve to faith does, conclusions also fall on the strength of the human influence heavier. The fact that there is this influence in general, the majority of the hockey embroidery critics also does not doubt. Nevertheless, his magnitude is controversial. The thesis represented in the last IPCC report, the past decades would probably be the warmest ones of the last millennium, is booked according to the NAS examiners enough. With being enough security can be merely found out that the temperatures are higher nowadays than during the past
The hockey stick graphic arts got their first heavy blow in summer, 2004 when the Canadian researchers Stephen McIntyre and horse forced McKitrick Mann to a correction in the science magazine “Nature” in which he put away craft mistakes. Till this day Mann cannot prove completely which data he has used for the work, now the examiners of the NAS criticise. The study is not reproducable, she is done ” bad science “, yesterday explained the statistician Edward Wegman who was involved leading in the check of the NAS. Other research groups proved during the last two years that man’s method inclines to level temperature variations – the ” clutch of the hockey stick ” suggests for the Middle Ages a too steady climate. Now the NAS report confirms the criticism. The insecurity of the temperature curve has been underestimated, the basic data partly unsuitably and the arithmetic method by M Mann faultily.
Yesterday showdown of the opponents before the House of Representatives came it to the meeting of the opponents. Under oath explained Michael Mann, any mistakes in his study would have on the whole statement of his curve no big effect. Besides, other groups of similar temperature curves would have developed. This is surprising a little, nevertheless, the reconstructions been based partly on identical data, replied the Canadian Stephen McIntyre. The fact that the quarrel of the climatologists would escalate, had stood out. ” The way of speaking has become rough “, said Uwe Mikolajewicz of the Max-Planck’s institute of meteorology to SPIEGEL ONLINE. This lies with the strong politicisation of the subject: On one side so-called climate sceptics in spite of numerous counterpiece documents often try in dogmatic way to sow doubt about the thesis of the global warming. On the other side climatologists ” with quasi-religious broadcasting consciousness fought for the rescue of the world “, thinks Cubasch. Who expresses itself more differentiated, it counts fast than Nestbeschmutzer. The pattern also reached with the yesterday’s hearing: Politicians of the oppositional democratic party got angry, the control of the climate studies has merely been carried out to bring the thesis of the global warming in disrepute. ” The suspicion, to the climate sceptics in the hands to play, may not lead to simplify the complex state of affairs “, contradicts from stork. The IPCC has failed in his report to provide the complexity of the matter, means of the Klimatologe John Christy of the University of Alabama. The rightly flamed up criticism of the hockey stick points what simplification and self-censorship led to, Storch thinks: The research loses to credibility. From the affair one must learn, said Eduardo Zorita of the GKSS to SPIEGEL ONLINE. The general public is able to handle with complicated details and the inevitable insecurity of the results.
# 246
© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2006
Alle Rechte vorbehalten
#237. Bob, when science is applied , you then have a process usually involving engineers, which typically doesn’t get written up in academic journals, which isn’t “original” in an academic journal sense, although there’s a lot of originality involved in getting things to work. If I were making up a “red team” or “tiger team” to test climate models, there would definitely be some engineers involved. They have a different way of doing things than academic scientists that I think would be relevant. Before I tried to write specs for a major review, I’d spend some money on some fresh eyes doing scoping the problem.
On GCMs, my hunch is that they are irrelevant to scoping the CO2 problem. They are academically interesting to work on and they justify their budgets by referring to AGW. But if the argument doesn’t work in 1-D or 2-D, I doubt that 3-D makes it work. Now that I think of it, that would be an interesting question to ask a NAS panel.
#248. I don’t think Hansen at NASA uses GCMs and has produced some of the most accurate predictions. He also claims recent warming has been due to GHGs other than CO2 and that burning fossil fuels has not increased temperatures. I don’t understand why they don’t bring his results up all the time when people start demonizing CO2 as they did in the committee meeting. Confusion around which gas(es) are responsible would really through a spanner in the policy works, but it critical to get right for effective management.
Steve,
Just as data manipulated by Mann suffers in the translation, so does translating from german into English.
“Stephen McIntyre and horse forced McKitrick Mann …”
Do you have a horse? Did mann write the translation software in this instance. Is he claiming that its source code cannot be disclosed due to IPR?
KevinUK
re: 249 “I don’t think Hansen at NASA uses GCMs
That is not accurate, as Dr Hansen was among the first to use models (dating back to the 70s), and has been in the thick of them ever since. This is from “The Global Warming Time Bomb”, ref 13 at the end:
“His primary research for the past 25 years has been on studies and computer simulations of the Earth’s climate, for the purpose of understanding the human impact on global climate.”
As I’ve pointed out elsewhere, Dr Hansen’s visible and controversial (and sometimes wrong) public proclamations would necessitate that he be among the first to have his GCM methodology audited. I believe Dr Gavin Schmidt also reports to him directly, or at least in some part of the GISS org-chart. My bet is also the Dr Hansen will be among those protesting the loudest, if/when the Congressionally-initiated audit of GCMs get started.
#248, Steve: No problem with engineers being involved in an audit. If for no other reason, they’ll bring a healthy dose of pragmatism to the table and will appreciate the simplifications and tradeoffs required in modeling something so complex.
The question remains: a priori, how will a good model be distinguished from a bad one? This doesn’t require expensive initial scoping, just some justification on your part for why the GCM’s are flawed. Right now, it just looks like you don’t approve of GCM’s because you dislike their output.
I apologise, I don’t follow the rest of your argument about irrelevance or dimensionality. What doesn’t work in 1-D or 2-D? Is it computer models in general that aren’t ‘relevant’ as a subsitute to a controlled lab?
250: Hansen can’t be that concerned about an audit. All the GISS source code is freely available on their website. Anyone here, if they feel qualified, could start having a look.
#237 Bob, you asked me about my thoughts on the moving target problem, and Steve Bloom sent me off to do some reading. I only did a brief overview and I have miles to go to get any detailed knowledge. However, I am thinking about claims I read that Antarctic ice cores prove CO2 concentration cycles passing through entire ice age sequences and recent air sampling proves modern CO2 concentrations are now much higher and have steadily increased over recent decades. If true, I can see why some honestly feel the need to panic. (I am not ready to add causation/correlation uncertainties to my thought process yet, but I will.)
In post #228 you asked me what I would do if AGW is true. In honor of Steve’s trip to the hill, “I would like to revise and extend my previous remarks.” It turns out the list is incredibly long, covering all the basic needs for drinking water, food, shelter, energy, transportation, and countless other issues. It is probably exactly the same list I would have if we were facing an ice age instead.
Given the mammoth scope and the magnitude of the problems, my biggest prayer would be that my efforts were not being wasted on silly policies built on junk science.
How would you answer your own question?
#250. You are right. I was confusing his earlier work on 1D radiative transfer models he says were actually used by the IPCC here.
#242, Steve
I have to disagree, I don’t think you’re going to get anywhere by reviewing the innards of the GCMs, they’re far too complex and you’d be tied in knots forever arguing whether the physics/chemistry/biology assumptions are correct not to mention the complexity of the arguments about the stability and accuracy of the pde solvers. It would go on and on with no resolution.
The best and simplest approach is do what I suggested, run with a bunch of initial conditions that are close together in a physically reasonable sense and see what comes out. There are never any error bars on these things, let’s find out what they are. If the experience with climateprediction.net is representative, they will be very large. Even without the bug that ended the computation, there were lots of predictions that started to go negative at long times. I’m guessing from what I saw of the climateprediction output that the real errors on the GCMs are at least +- 10 to +-20 degrees at one hundred years. Not very impressive if you’re claiming a 2 to 5 degree rise.
It’s also something that everyone can understand. If a discussion of PCA makes people’s eyes roll, they’ll be running for the exits once the discussion of stiff nonlinear partial differential equation solvers begins.
The area that does need a very thorough audit is the surface temperature record. It is just abnormal science that the satellite data, coming from a calibrated scientific instrument with near 100% coverage of the earth, gets trashed constantly, but but the heterogeneous error prone surface measurements covering maybe 15% of the earth are the gold standard. It’s nuts.
In addition to #255,
One of the key points in the extent of the warming “projections” of all climate models for the (near) future are aerosols. There is a huge offset between the cooling effect of aerosols and the warming effect of GHGs (see the graph at RC ). In all cases necessary to explain the 1945-1975 cooler period with increasing GHGs. Thus if the effect of aerosols is overestimated, the effect of GHGs is overestimated too. And there are several indications that the effects of aerosols are overestimated. See my comments here.
As indicated by some others here, the next battlefield may be aerosols, as these may hide a warming (“much worse than expected”). The first indication is already there: the 13th July Science online article estimates an overall 5% increase in cloud cover due to (mainly sulfate) aerosols. This should be observed in areas with decreasing aerosol load (North America and Europe) as decreasing cloud cover and over areas with increasing aerosol load (S.E. Asia) as increasing cloud cover. But it isn’t…
The “aerosol cooling effect” is a piece of really low hanging fruit. The areas that produce aerosols (China, SE Asia, Europe) show warming in recent years, and areas that cooled from 1940-1975 were not necessarily regions where aerosols were supposed to have any discernable effect (the Southern Hemisphere). I think it is only because of GCMs that this effect is trumpeted. Observations easily disprove it.
Generally, temperature predictions, by whatever method, need to be physically verified.
From what I read here and elsewhere, we really do not have the means by which to do that, so the issue reduces to counting how many angels could be fitted onto a pin head.
But then we mining types have never been guilty of subtleties.
Climate models – all predict warming by being based on the assumption that increased CO2 means increased temperature. It is inbuilt into the computer model.
Where is the physical evidence that increased atmospheric increases in CO2 lead to increased temperature?
Re#257 and others (aerosols),
Is there anyplace that shows historical particulate emissions? I even noticed the first comment on one of the RC threads was this exact question, yet there was no response.
I can accept the possibility that “aerosol cooling masked global warming” and that legislation such as the US Clean Air Act could have helped allow this masking to be removed.
However, what I cannot understand at the moment is why this mask didn’t appear until the 40s – right when man-made GHG emissions skyrocketted. It seems to me man-made GHG emissions and man-made aerosol emissions would’ve been going pretty-much hand-in-hand from the onset of the Industrial Revolution. If anything, I’d expect particulates to have been higher than GHGs for the entire period. So how is it that the aerosols only started masking global warming in the 40s, and not sooner?
C-span has archived this hearing, though I’m not sure for how long. It is currently available from this page, but will roll onto the next page soon.
Re#230:
And that’s part of the problem. If it’s too hot/cold, too wet/dry, too windy/calm, current too strong/weak, etc – whether a “climatological trend” or a single event – it’s “consistent with global warming.” If a glacier is receding, it’s “global warming.” If a glacier is advancing, it’s “increased precipitation, consistent with global warming.” And this extends to things outside of weather/climate, such as too many/few of an animal species, too many/few of some smaller organisms (insect, plankton, bacteria, etc), etc. If it’s good news, it’s “good news” – but good news that could being ruined global warming. If it’s bad news or potentially bad news, it’s “consistent with global warming.” It has become a catch-all phrase. It’s not longer “the devil made be do it,” but instead, “global warming did it.”
I’m reminded of the model runs for the 21st century for the US a few years back using the Canadian model and the Hadley Centre model. Both models predicted widespread warming in the US, although they differed on the severity. Both models seemed to typically agree on the overall precipitation trend for the nation, althought they differed in some areas in magnitude and sometimes sign. But at first glance, the models seemed to generally agree on the effects of global warming in the US in the 21st century when looking at these two areas. But the combination of these two elements comprised the trend in soil moisture content for the US in the 21st century, and guess what? Widespread disagreement. Here, the impact of predicting warming of a different magnitude, or precipitation of a different magnitude or sign was amplified. Basically, you could look at the majority of the US nation in the 21st century and say that both decreased or increase soil moisture content for a given region would be “consistent with global warming.” And that’s just using two of the most popular, well-regarded GCMs. It’s not too difficult to imagine that incorporating the results all of the available GCMs would cover practically all bases and suggest basically any possible climatological trend is “consistent with global warming.”
One could also say that, “Basically every climatological trend I can think of is consistent with emergence from the Little Ice Age.”
Re #261 fFreddy
Thank you for your information regarding C-span. I´ve just downloaded the session .It works fine. More in case someone would like to give it a closer look!
Hans Kelp
#259
It has to, that’s straight up radiation physics.
What’s not required is the magic water vapor feedback loop that’s supposed to amplify the effect of the extra radiation trapped by the addition of more CO2 to the atmosphere. A slight decrease in cloud cover or albedo would also heat the oceans, indeed would do it much more efficiently since it would be by way of visible and UV light, and add more water vapor to the atmosphere producing more warming.
Regarding this thread and the AGW issue in general, those who have not already done so might want to look at Gavin’s review of Michael Crichton’s “State of Fear”(http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=74). You each may draw different conclusions of course but in my opinion Gavin was barely able to land a glove on Crichton. This for me is quite telling: Gavin is the very best the Warmers would have sort this sort of assignment.
262: The more a theory forbids, the better it is.
re 260:
EPA US sulphate emissions (and US temperature)
emission values on the left, peaked in the ’70s
Hans, is there a link for the original data you used to generate your chart? The best I could find on the USEPA’s website was starting from the 1980s.
I stumbled across a historical estimate article along the lines of what I was looking for, concerning sulfur emission estimates here. Looking at items such as Fig 3 make it hard to justify the claim made by some that particulates masked global warming in the 40s-70s in a net manner but were outweight by GHG emissions and/or natural variation outside of that time period.
RE 268:
Hans, just eyeballing that chart shows a positive corrolation of sulfate emissions w/temps. Just the opposite of the cooling hypothesis.
#270. beng, look at the scale on the left-hnad side. Hans has inverted SO2 emissions for graphic purposes.
RE 270,271:
My bad.
Looking at 269’s link seems to show somewhat different US emissions totals/trends than Han’s graph, tho.
I don’t have the original url for the EPA data so I’ll link to my Excel spreadsheet
M. Jankowski (#269), H. Erren (#273): If you are interested, I have data on SO2 emissions for the US from 1900-2003. If you post your e-mail address, I can send you the data some time tomorrow. However, I would be a little leary of using such data as a proxy for sulfates for a variety of reasons some of which I vaguely recall having set forth a long time ago in: I.M. Goklany & G. Hoffnagle, “Trends in Emissions of PM, SOx and NOx, and VOC: NOx Ratios and their Implications for Trends in pH near Industrialized Areas,” J. of the Air Pollution Control Ass. 34: 844-46 (1984). First, early in the twentieth century, the sources that emitted SO2 also emitted a lot of particulate matter (PM)in the form of soot, partly combusted carbon, and ash. That should have scavenged some of the SO2, particularly since some of the ash is alkaline, and these SO2-contaminated particles would have been deposited relatively close to the sources (see footnote 1). Over time, PM emissions were reduced, and this scavenging phenomenon should have diminished, and sulfate production should have increased. Second, initially chimneys were not very tall. They were probably just tall enough to clear the adjacent building (in stationary sources). By the late fifties and early sixties, these structures became taller (in order to disperse pollutants over wider areas and, thereby, reduce the ambient pollutant concentrations). The increasing heights meant a greater residence time in the atmosphere and, therefore, a greater opportuntity for SO2 to be converted to sulfates (which reinforced the effect caused by a reduction in scavenging by PM). Moreover, early in the 20th century, the majority of emissions were from sources that were relatively close to the ground — residences, commercial establishments, railroads, and, of course, industry. Coal fired power plants were barely getting established. However, over the next few decades, the latter dominated SO2 emissions as the other lower-level sources (except industry to some extent) switched to alternative (and cleaner) sources. In addition, motor vehicle emissions were miniscule in 1900, and grew steadily till around 1965, after which they began to drop. The cocktail of pollutants coming from these sources, I believe, would have changed — for lack of a better word — the “chemical reactivity” of the atmosphere, and therefore the rate at which SO2 would be converted to sulfate. Finally, I suspect increased use of ammonia (for ag) should also have had an effect on that reactivity too, as might have the increased forestation of the US (because trees release VOCs which also affect the reactivity).
Footnote 1: In addition to the scavenging property of ash, carbon from granular coal may be used as “activated carbon”, a great gas adsorber.
Mainstream Media Watch: Re posts #169, 172 and 220:
Did another search tonight on Google – used the words “Wegman” and “Mann”.
In my prior post #169, (#220 suggested I was being paranoid), I noted only the Wall Street Journal and The Australian had written articles on this important issue. Post #172 kindly pointed out that Der Spiegel had also done so – my thanks. My Google search today added only one more article – in the Kodiak Daily Record.
Clearly an avalanche is developing (but VERY slowly) in the mainstream media, with all the liberal papers rushing to cover this story. We have now surpassed the ten-day MSM silence after Tony Blair killed Kyoto at the Clinton summit. A new record in news non-reporting ahs been achieved!
Remember #220 (Cameron):
“Just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you!”
Best regards, Allan 🙂
In my Google search (#275), I also came across several pro-AGW blogs that claimed that Michael Mann was being persecuted by big bad government (no doubt supported by big bad oil interests). I thought Mann was treated pretty gently, considering all the trouble and expense he has caused with his bogus hockey stick.
By comparison, there truly has been an attempt by the pro-Kyoto crowd to intimidate and silence the climate skeptics in this debate. Here is something I wrote on this subject, published in the September 10, 2005 Calgary Sun, in edited form.
Drive-by shootings in Kyotoville
The global warming debate heats up
By Allan M.R. MacRae
Drive-by shootings have moved from the slums of our cities to the realms of academia. Any scientist who dares challenge the Kyoto Protocol faces a vicious assault, a turf war launched by the pro-Kyoto gang.
These pro-Kyoto attacks are not merely unprofessional – of no scientific merit, they are intended to intimidate real academic debate on the Kyoto Protocol, a global treaty to limit production of greenhouse gases like CO2 that allegedly cause catastrophic global warming.
Witness the attack on Bjorn Lomborg, author of “The Skeptical Environmentalist”. While Lomborg did not challenge the flawed science of Kyoto, he said that Kyoto was a huge misallocation of funds that should be used for more pressing needs – such as cleaning up dirty drinking water that kills millions of children every year.
In January 2003, the Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty (DCSD) declared that Lomborg’s book fell within the concept of “objective scientific dishonesty”. The DCSD announced its ruling at a press conference and published it on the internet, without giving Lomborg any opportunity to respond prior to publication.
Almost one year later, in December 2003 the Danish Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation completely repudiated the DCSD’s findings.
But such bullying is not unique, as other researchers who challenged the scientific basis of Kyoto have learned.
Of particular sensitivity to the pro-Kyoto gang is the “hockey stick” temperature curve of 1000 to 2000 AD, proposed by Michael Mann of University of Virginia.
Mann’s hockey stick indicates that temperatures fell only slightly from 1000 to 1900 AD, after which temperatures increased sharply as a result of humanmade increases in CO2. Mann concluded: “Our results suggest that the latter 20th century is anomalous in the context of at least the past millennium. The 1990s was the warmest decade, and 1998 the warmest year, at moderately high levels of confidence.”
Mann’s conclusion was the cornerstone supporting Kyoto. However, Mann has been proven entirely incorrect.
Mann eliminated from the climate record both the Medieval Warm Period, a period from about 900 to 1300 AD when global temperatures were warmer than today, and also the Little Ice Age from about 1300 to 1800 AD, when temperatures were colder.
Mann’s conclusion contradicted hundreds of previous studies, but was adopted without question by Kyoto supporters and was the centerpiece of the 2001 Summary for Policymakers (SPM) of the UN’s International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Canada’s climate change policy is still based on that erroneous SPM.
In 2003, Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas of Harvard University wrote a review of over 250 research papers that concluded that the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age were true climatic anomalies with worldwide imprints – contradicting Mann’s hockey stick and undermining the basis of Kyoto. Soon and Baliunas were then attacked in the journal EOS.
Also in 2003, University of Ottawa geology professor Jan Veizer and Israeli astrophysicist Nir Shaviv concluded that even though prehistoric CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere were often many times today’s levels, CO2 had an insignificant effect on Earth’s temperatures. Veizer and Shaviv also received “special attention” from EOS.
In both cases, the attacks were highly unprofessional – these critiques should have been launched in the journals that published the original papers, not in EOS. Also, the victims of these attacks were not given advanced notice, nor were they were given the opportunity to respond in the same issue. In both cases the victims had to wait months for their rebuttals to be published, while the specious attacks were circulated by the pro-Kyoto gang.
Scientists opposed to Kyoto have now been completely vindicated.
Ross McKitrick of the University of Guelph and Steven McIntyre conducted a detailed audit of Mann’s hockey stick, and found fatal errors including severe data selection biases and methodological mistakes. McIntyre and McKitrick even showed that hockey stick graphs could be produced over 90% of the time by loading any set of random numbers into Mann’s computer code. Just call it “Mann-made global warming”.
Few scientists now accept Mann’s hockey stick. Climate researcher Hans von Storch further criticized it in Der Spiegel in 2004, calling it “rubbish”.
Meanwhile, our Ottawa brain trust has just announced that CO2 will be declared a toxic substance under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. Is their next move a tax on cow and sheep flatulence, as was tried in New Zealand?
Or will it be a new National Energy Program, another pillaging of Alberta?
The United States House Energy & Commerce Committee has launched a full investigation into the IPCC’s bias and incompetence, and the entire Mann hockey stick fiasco:
The truth is there never has been any solid scientific evidence in favor of Kyoto. From the beginning, Kyoto has been politically driven, replete with flawed science and scary scenarios for which there is no evidence.
The pro-Kyoto gang should finally admit that their pet project actually hurts the environment – Kyoto is a massive waste of scarce global resources that should be used to alleviate real problems, not squandered on fictitious ones.
Allan M. R. MacRae is a professional engineer and investment banker based in Calgary.
Re #268 (Hans Erren’s chart of inverted U.S. SO2 emissions v. U.S. temperature)
Hans:
This looks very interesting — it looks like inverted SO2 emissions explains very well the temperature trends of the last 60 years (the cooling trend from 1940 to 1970 and the warming trend from 1970 to 2000).
Do you know why the post-1970 temperature trend is attributed to CO2 emissions rather than to SO2 emissions?
Thanks in advance.
RE #268 plot of EPA US sulphate emissions and US temperature:
Sorry to be difficult, but how can US SO2 emissions and US temperature be significant, unless you are claiming the the US data is a proxy for the global data? Is this the case? Can you support this hypothesis based on global emissions and temperatures?
How do US SO2 emissions compare quantitatively with the SO2 emissions generated by volcanoes such as El Chichon and Pinatubo?
It is apparent from the volcanoes that SO2 has an effect on climate – but let’s first quantify the industrial SO2 emissions versus the natural ones.
On another topic:
Fearless prediction (OK, call me crazy, but I think that strange glowing ball in the sky may have some influence on Earth’s climate):
Solar cycle 24 will run from 2007 to ~2017, and is expected to be a warm one.
Solar cycle 25 will start in ~2017 and peak in ~2022 and it could be a very cold one.
Further to my post #278:
El Chichon injected ~7 million tons of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere.
Mt. Pinatubo injected ~20 million tons of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere.
Global annual SO2 emissions were ~71.5 million tons in 1990 – while USA emissions have dropped since then due to better pollution controls, I expect global emissions (from China, etc.) have risen. I further expect that much of the industrial SO2 precipitates out of the atmosphere quickly as acid rain, etc. whereas the volcanic SO2 is ejected high into the stratosphere and has a much greater impact on climate, on a ton-for-ton basis. No conclusion can be drawn based on these few datapoints, but there must be some worthwhile literature on the subject – additional information would be welcomed.
Regards, Allan