Climate Audit

welikerocks

Ooops, I just looking at this article and I posted in the geologist thread I should have put here:

I don’t get this paragraph:

“Then in 2004, Thompson found additional plant beds revealed by the continued retreat of the melting ice and when tested, these proved to be carbon-free, suggesting that they might date back more than 50,000 years. If true, that would suggest that the climate in that region may not have been as warm as it is today in more than 500 centuries.

From this article:
http://tinyurl.com/q6ynb
How can that, suggest all that?

welikerocks

Sorry, don’t mean to spam, but my husband also says that plants and all kinds of things can grow under glaciers as well. If there’s a pocket of space, soil, water, light … it’s not impossible for something like that to occurr and they’ve known this for years.

Lee

re 5. It looks like Steve has been doing quite a lot of housecleaning, JMS. The entire contents of the ‘contact steve’ thread has been dumped as well.

JMS

Oh, and by the way, it is not the Quelccya “glacier” is is the Qeulccys “ice cap”. There are 3 outlet glaciers which were discussed here. The plant material find was on the margin of the ice cap, not one of the outlet glaciers. I agree that it is unfortunate that he didn’t report the lat/long of the find in the PNAS paper; perhaps you could ask him for it.

JMS

First of all, I did not get caught up in spam karma, the post was there and then it wasn’t. So either you or John A deleted it. I don’t know what else to say. Perhaps your posts here need to be audited?

JMS

Nope, Rocks, the one that got deleted. You can’t see it because it is not there. It was one where I corrected myself after looking at the table — the peat sample was reported in 1977 — 30 years before the distachia.

And Lee, I agree. Steve needs to be much more careful about the accusations he makes here if he wants to maintain any credibility at all. I am rapidly beginning to question what he has left.

Steve McIntyre

#11. Lee, I quite agree that things need to be kept separate. For crissake, that’s why you have maps in proper reports. I’ve just tried to collect some relevant information. I’m not an expert on Quelccaya; if I make some little error in interpreting this stuff, so be it. I’m quite happy to fix up any misunderstanding. But jeez, you guys are so hungry to find some little gotcha, it’s unreal. You might spend some of your energy attacking the presentation of the material by the original authors in such an incomplete and haphazard way before you start criticizing my meagre efforts to collate the information.

Lee

Steve, that frickin’ map has numbers that correspond to the entries in the table. The table has dates of collection and elevations, and the numbers that cross-referene to the sites of collection. It took me about 14 seconds to understand how it was organized. Even if you missed that, a glance at the map shows that sites of collection are widely scattered, and are not all at the glacier. And teh table givbes elevatins of colection. At the very least, comparing those two collections as if they are somehow dependent on eacy other is very careless. As in, didnt bother to understand the data being presented, kind of careless. At the least.

That is not a little ‘gotcha.’ It is a basic misunderstanding of the data behind analyzes you say shoudl ahvbe ben made, and are criticizing, in the course of making some pretty bluntly worded attacks on Thompson. If you can’t get it right when making blunt attacks, then dont whine when that gets bluntly pointed out right back to you.

Steve McIntyre

Another huge error, sorry googlers, – the plants are Distichia, not Distachia.

JMS

Yes, Dave, I am sure that I posted my message to the correct thread. It was there and then it was gone. Also the phrase in the press release said “if true”. Obviously it didn’t pan out.

JMS

Gbalella,

I completely agree with you. Steve, and most of the acolytes here know that they lost the NRC battle; contrast the their initial response to the report with their current excoriation of the same report. All I can say about Mann is that his reconstructions tend to have lower natural variability than the rest. Burger, et al (2006) tend to show this in thier flavors, where the Mann method was on the right track but did not capture the variablity found in the pseudo proxy records. In this paper he did not evaluate RegEM, but merely the “flavors” of the original MBH work. I suspect that since he basically did a do over on the original Burger and Cubash (2005) work, that they figured something was wrong with the original conclusions, so why BC05 keeps getting cited here I don’t understand. Other studies, especially Moberg, show similar patterns although Moberg shows somewhat greater variability (he used more low frequency proxies) nothing in his study really invalidates the original MBH99.

There are lots of reasons to get on the wagon and try to do something: peak oil, the Middle East conumdrum, reducing pollution, etc, etc, are all good reasons to take the same actions we need to take to combat AGW. Yes it is hard, yes it will cost money. However, we can make a dent in the problem by doing things we should have done 30 years ago, 20 years ago and 10 years ago. Instability in world oil markets and incorrect market signals based on the price of crude kept us from acting — after all, once the shocks of the ’70’s were over the classic boom/bust cycle in the oil industry took over and precluded the “market” from dealing with the real problem.

Lots more to say, but the denialists are silly for trying to prevent things that need to happen.

Dave Dardinger

re: #23

most of the acolytes here know that they lost the NRC battle; contrast the their initial response to the report with their current excoriation of the same report.

This just shows your lack of knowledge. Steve started immediately after the NAS report came out saying that he was going to come down quite hard on the panel, but that he wanted to start out thanking them for doing a lot of useful things. This is still his posture, but he’s now getting around to doing the critiques he promised from the first.

George knows nothing. You’re agreement with him is not a good sign re your judgment.

Likewise your tipping your hand as to your political positions doesn’t make it more likely that people here will come to regard your imput as objective and unbiased.

Willis Eschenbach

Re: 22, you say “The obvious fact of the current seriously anomalous climate looms …” This is typical of your innuendo that is not supported by the science. There is no “obvious fact”, there is only your claim without a single citation.

Current seriously anomalous climate? It has been warmer several times during the Holocene. For example, the Arctic has been totally ice-free during the Holocene (see http://climatesci.atmos.colostate.edu/2006/07/12/open-arctic-ocean-commentary-by-harvey-nichols-professor-of-biology/)

So what is anomalous about the current climate?

w.

John A

I’ve been searching the Spam Karma logs looking for this missing comment from JMS that he claims was made. I can’t see it at all.

Hans Erren

in fact all climateaudit blogimages do not show up

Ralph Hartley

“There are lots of reasons to get on the wagon and try to do something: peak oil, the Middle East conumdrum, reducing pollution, etc, etc, are all good reasons to take the same actions we need to take to combat AGW.”

There are no “actions to combat AGW”. If you look at the energy-use scenarios that are the basis for the climate worries (IEA; IIASA), you will find that world total generated power increases by 0.8 to 2 GW every day, depending on scenario. To “do something” that is not irrelevant, “greenhouse-neutral” power generating capacity would have to increase in this range, i.e. in the region of 1GW every 24 hours.

There is no technology or combination of technologies in existence that could accomplish such a feat, there is none to be expected in the near future, and if such a thing becomes possible in 2050, well, that’s too late, according to IPCC et al.

In my opinion as an engineer, “overlooking” this quite obvious fact is the strongest indicator that “AGW” is mainly something else than a factual discussion on how to solve a real problem.
Or “silly” (to coin a phrase). By the way, “pollution” was solved in the 1990s by catalytic converters and smokestack scrubbers. Odd how some people didn’t notice.

Ralph H.

Steve McIntyre

If I may summarize a little, neither of the Georges nor Lee nor JMS have offered any sort of plausible explanation of how the 2200-year old plant material was formed if the 5000-year old plant material has been "continuously" unde a glacier. Instead, they have argued about whether something is "peat" or "moss". Or explained the formation of 2670-year old peat at very high elevations by the ice cap.

I’m not saying that there is no explanation. Just that they haven’t provided it, nor have the provided an excuse for Thompson’s failure to report all relevant samples in his PNAS article.

Let’s discuss Quelccaya plant material please, rather than general issues like going to the moon which you can do at any time.

gbalella

Re # 24

Yeah? Well maybe so. But I was the one that brought Distichia to this board a long time ago. This little bit of objective fact seems to have cornered all your “good math”. Making all these obtuse long winded discussions on statistical minutia obvious for what they are. Fig A and lil ol Distichia is all you need Dave. They show how useless all your “good” math and “good” science are when objectivity is lacking. Anyway you keep talking about sprigs, epistemology and whistling in the dark….whatever it takes….it’s surely easier then re-writing ones whole fatally flawed ideological base at your age and with nothing but ROM available to you.

Lee

re 35:
Steve, that is a flat-out lie.

In the other thread, I pointed out that when the margin of the ice cap expands it will first cover older material and then younger material – because it is expanding over time. When it retreats, it will first uncover the younger material that it covered later, and then the older material that it covered earlier. Finding materials of different dates simply means that the margin of the ice cap moved. I said this in the other thread, so your accusations that I havent responded on that point is simply false. You may dispute that explanation – but that isnt what you did here. You claimed I made no explanation.

This process is not necessariy going to be perfectly coordinated at all sites along the ide cap margin, either.

And I have not argued about whether something is ‘peat’ or ‘moss’ – the issue is esentaily irrelevant – but I will point out here that the point was first raised by soemone else, not JMS.

Why do you find it dificult that microclimate pockets near the ice cap margin might grow some alpine peat?

I’m off for two days and probably wont have access to internet – so have at at. But try to stick to what I say, Steve, and not make false claims about what I have or ahvent said, or attribute to me discussions other people are having.

Lee

oh, one more point before I go-

Steve, there is a difference between the ice cap and the outlet glaciers. You continue, in psot 35 to use ‘glacier’ in comprehensive fashion, and that use is terribly confusing to your point, and trying to understand it.

welikerocks

My husband points out how funny some argue so logically here about these plants being good evidence for the climate in this area but if it were Viking artifacts and related plant remains being un-covered in Greenland it wouldn’t be evidence of a warmer time at all. LOL

Dave Dardinger

re: #38

I don’t understand is how they can assume so fast how old, or not how old it is without dating it.

The older methods of C14 measurement could only go back about 50ky before the radioactivity of the carbon was too low to be measured. So when such a test was done on the material it was immediately known it was 50ky or older. But it’s possible to go much farther back with mass spec. type C14 measurement, where you’re measuring the exact number of atoms of each variety of carbon and not just the particular atoms which happen to decay while you’re measuring. I’m not sure what the limits are for such a measurement but it’s at least several hundred thousand years.

Steve Sadlov

JMS – you are a complete troll. Get out of here.

Steve Sadlov

Same goes for shy$# disturbers Lee, muirgeo, and gballela. The ensemble of you are really not adding any thing here (whereas, some other true debaters from the other camps actually do add something, for example, Steve B and Ken Blumenfeld (sp?)). The firstly mentioned trolls would be permenently banned if this was my forum.

Tim Ball

The standard tehniques so well used by Gavin Schmidt are evident in this thread. Divert attention from the real issue with specious points which are accompanied by nasty asides or innuendoes which devolve into personal attacks when the initial diversion fails. Attempts to drag the argument back to the key issue simply result in raising the level of personal attacks. The argument that Mann won is ridiculous and only valid if he thinks he has avoided the original requirement to disclose his code. I can assure you I will continue to keep this point in the public eye as much as possible as well as Jones’ failure to disclose. These pieces are the sole evidence for the human signal and must be defended at all costs. I guarantee personal attacks will become even worse when we start disclosing the problems with the models because they are the sole source of ‘predictions’ that an increase in atmospheric CO2 due to human activities will result in continued and unchecked warming. Steve M; “Nil carborundum illegitimi”.

Nicholas

I seem to remember the wonderful thing about Latin is that the order of the words don’t particularly matter; the conjugation guarantees it’s clear which parts of the sentence are which no matter where they appear. (Well, I think some ordering matters, but the subject/object/verb can go pretty much anywhere).

In fact some clever people used this knowledge to write a variant of the PERL programming language where the order of tokens in a statement are irrelevant. Details are over here.

welikerocks

#45 thanks for the explanation!
#48 That’s what I am talking about! 🙂

I have a thought (for what that’s worth, lol) Could these plant samples, since they are in good condition, also be evidence of how fast the climate can change freezing a$$ cold all of a sudden and stay that way?

Jo Calder

#51

the clearly deliberate distorted alarmism that has been whipped up for funding purposes by the climate modellers

That’s a little broad brush, isn’t it? I think one can model this situation as one in which researchers’ motives are, in the main, honourable, but their activities are conditioned by multiple feedbacks between them and the media and politics. (Don’t forget Thatcher’s key role in kicking off global warming geopolitically, and the consequences for UK research policy; see Weart, if necessary.) Add in the prestige or tenure-value of a publication in Science or Nature, and the whole system goes runaway.

Steve McIntyre

Here’s an interesting link to some high-altitude archaeology where they give information on decay or rather lack of decay over long periods.

In some South American locations, there is amazing preservation. I have one friend who’s been a geologist in Chile for over 50 years and travels to the back of beyond. He told me that one time he re-visited a site in the Atacama that he’d visited about 40 years before and he said that his bootmarks were still there from his earlier trip. I didn’t ask him how he knew that they were his bootmarks – probably it was because he remembered where the samples were taken and in what order.

Barney Frank

Assuming for the sake of argument that Thompson’s finds at Quelccaya mean what he says they do, are there other sites in the Andes or elsewhere that confirm what he claims?

Kilimanjaro’s shrinking ice field seems to be largely a response to local conditions. Even if Thompson’s claims were found to be accurate do they actually tell us anything other than what happened at this one site?

Jo Calder

#60 (with apologies for continuing OT) No. At least, I know I don’t live in Market Harborough and so, tx to Leibniz, I can infer “no”.

fFreddy

Whittington’s diary was an early UK political blog that I remember chortling over, particularly the John Prescott impersonations. It was written by another Jo Calder, whose page says he lives in Market Harborough.

Armand MacMurray

Steve and others,
Not sure if this is just duplicating other available info, but Thompson has a slide show including photos of the Distichia and other data here:
http://www.esi.utexas.edu/outreach/ols/lectures/Thompson/ppt/36_files/frame.html

welikerocks

#67 I found that presentation leaving alot to be desired. And the last bunch of graphics some what disturbing for a science presentation. Graphic #82 uses a IPCC 2000 graph and #83 onward looks like they are trying to appeal to everyone on a emotional level; like a propaganda documentary.

jae

70:

I fail to understand this point. Is it your contention that CO2 levels will move into equilibrium, that CO2 concentrations do not affect warming, that negative feedbacks (or forcings) will overwhelm any warming signal from CO2 emissions, that CO2 emissions will decrease for some reason, or that the basic physics of the CO2 greenhouse effect are in error?

Who knows? The models ASSUME that some of these things (feedbacks, etc.) are important, but I don’t think we know yet. Thus, the only way to predict all these catastrophes is to use models, which are based on ASSUMPTIONS and which can’t predict the past, let alone the future. These models are computer games.

pochas

At the risk of stating the obvious: Plant matter dating from >50,000 BP, 5,000 BP, 2700 BP and presumably 0 BP all exposed at the same location at the margin of a retreating glacier. This material will decay within the next (pick a number) 500 years if not covered again by the glacier. Conclusion: The glacier will advance to cover all of these deposits within the next (pick a number) years, providing no exceptional change in climate (such as AGW).

Is this a fair assessment?

jae

72: ?? I think the basic physics of the greenhouse effect are pretty well understood, but how these greenhouse effects affect the climate is not well understood. The models try to put it all together, but they are based on many assumptions (“parameterizations”)and are unreliable. As stated in 51, the only way to demonstrate AGW is through the use of these flawed models (we can no longer rely on the hockey stick graphs to prove anything, since they have been shown to be flawed, to put it nicely). I think there is a lot of evidence that the modern warming trend is mostly, if not completely, due to a natural cycle. This is indicated by many studies that confirm the existence of such cycles (MWP, LIA, etc.).

bender

sometimes the runs show one thing and sometimes the opposite and the PR people pick the ones which suit their purposes

Mmm. Cherry pie.

Gabe C.

“This is indicated by many studies that confirm the existence of such cycles (MWP, LIA, etc.).”

The “cycle” argument is not very convincing. My bank account appears to be cyclical, but it is not guaranteed to continue without a cause (my paychecks).

Dave Dardinger

re: #78

What would these feedbacks be?

Eh? You don’t sound like someone who’s a beginner in this subject.

A) Increased cloud formation giving increased reflection
B} Increased precipitation, moving heat higher in atmosphere.
C) CO2 fertilization
D) Heat-pipe type movement of heat to the poles where it’s easier for it to escape to space.

Dave Dardinger

jae, the problem with overfitting is that if you have enough variables you can generally make any curve you want, especially if there’s some white noise in some of the variable curves. But we’re not trying to create something new out of thin air. We’re hoping to find a real signal among a few noisy variables.

fFreddy

Re #78, Gabe C.
What Dave said in #81.
Plus, I’d really like it if sprites were relevant, because they’re fun.

jae

83: Dave, thanks. Bender has explained this to me, as well. What I wonder about is this: if the curves fit the data (two separate unrelated proxies) extremely well, what is so wrong with overfitting?

jae

88: we will see…

jae

Bender: I understand what you are saying. It will be interesting to see if the curve changes much as the author brings in other (out of sample) proxies. If he has to make major adjustments, then he screwed up by overfitting. However, if only minor changes to the curves result, then he is probably on to something, no?

Steve McIntyre

There’s a nice paper by Ferson et al about the interaction between data mining, spurious regression and autocorrelation which I posted about here. Deng 2005 – see Spurious category – has more on this topic from this viewpoint.

Dave Dardinger

But, Bender, isn’t it true that you could test for overfitting by only using part of your data to produce/train the model and then see how well it does in producing the rest of the data? And even more (since the modelers could, consciously or not, pick a model they knew would do well with the additional data), you could make many runs with different data being included or not, and see whether or not the models come up with were much the same in each run or not.

Steve McIntyre

jae, if you want a pretty example of overfitting, look at the bottom figure in this post showing a fit of a sine-type curve using white noise series.

bender, you might be interested in the post linked above. I think that it’s one of my more interesting posts, although it attracted little interest. The statistical issue that it turns over – and it’s something that isn’t considered anywhere in multivariate statistical literature – is what happens when you mix one “classical” univariate spurious regression with multivariate overfitting (which is my model for MBH). It’s uncanny that such varied combinations of networks produce such similar results.

For example, combinations of, on the one hand as univariate spurious regressors: bristlecones, dot.com stocks, synthetic PC1s from red noise; and on the other hand – 21 series of white noise; or 21 non-bristlecone MBH “proxies” – tend to produce very similar reconstructions, with high RE statistics and low verification r2 statistics. This post had slipped my mind, but was probably worth doing more with.

jae

125 regressors! Now, that’s WAY out on a limb.

Gabe C.

KevinUK (#84),

I’m sorry I don’t follow your clues. I know that a widely held theory is that increased CO2 will warm the planet. I know that CO2 is increasing in the atmosphere. I know that burning fossil fuels releases CO2. What I don’t understand is how ice ages are relevant to that theory.

Dr. Ball’s statement suggested that models were the only things predicting the rise in temperature. But doesn’t the theory predict it? Aren’t the models just projecting what this theory says should happen when CO2 levels are increased?

bender

Re #100 Yes, that’s the real problem with slow-churning systems like Earth’s climate – it takes a long time to accumulate enough independent observations (and hence degrees of freedom) to make inferences about the system’s behavior with any kind of confidence. As you point out: two points is all it takes to make a linear “trend”. If your correlations stem from a noise-free monotonic shared trend then you may have very few degrees of freedom indeed to make the comparison you wish to make. (e.g. To test whether two slopes differ, you need enough degrees of freedom to estimate the slopes and to test if they’re different.)

In well-studied systems you’re relying more on mechanistic insight to give you the causality you’re looking for, but the statistically estimated responses will still be biased. (Someone earlier gave the example of a temperature-viscosity relationship.) In poorly studied systems where you have little basis for inferring causality, you’re relying on the statistics to give you that confidence. Not only are the statistics (sensitivity coefficients) going to be biased, but they may be altogether spurious.

That is where the ‘greenhouse effect’ radiation models are so critical. They’re supposed to provide the mechanistic insight underpinning the non-spuriousness of the CO2-temperature correlations. But if those models are off (and I’m not saying they are), then how sound is it to infer causality? And how robust are the estimated sensitivity coefficients?

Think about it in terms of lock-and-key. Why are keys cut to be “crinkly”? Why not just one tooth? The answer is: to avoid spurious false positives – which is what you would get if keys had only one or two teeth on them (i.e. dominated by low-frequency variability). Similarly, you want your “matching” CO2-temperature time-series to be crinkly (not dominated by lwo-frequency variability) in order to be sure that a putative correlative match is not a false positive due to a shared trend. Crinkly time-series are loaded with usable information (=degrees of freedom). Smooth trendy time-series are not.

Apologies if this sounds too pedantic.

Lee

I’m simply amazed.

I offered an explanation, Steve claimed I did not and was avoiding the issue (and incidentally attributed to me argumetns i was not involved in), I called him on taht and reiterated he [oint I amde -a nd I get called aa troll, and NO ONE respond on the topic. But I’m the troll,a dn I get accused of avoiding the issue.

Guys, STEVE RAISED THE FRICKING ISSUE!!!!!!!! Steve muddind teh issue by confusing the ice cap and the outlet glaciers, Steve avoided responing to points by claimign the were not made. Adn I’m the troll.

just amazing.

jae

104. Bender, thanks again. I’m getting old, but I still want to learn.

welikerocks

#69 KevinUK , boy that’s really something. Sheesh! I live in California so we are are in the same boat over here on this side of the pond! Taxes here are out of control.

#73 I think that’s a fair assessment. That’s why I thought these finds were also evidence of colder climate changes as well. If that makes any sense at all.

#104 I agree bender, and thank you. I appreciate your comments too.

Tim Ball

Re 101
The models are a mathematical representation of the atmosphere into which they place the assumptions of the theory that an increase in CO2 due to human acitivity will cause global temperature to rise. The models all assume a doubling of CO2 which is a simplistic unsubstantiated trend projection. I understand they are locked in to doubling so comparisons between outputs can occur. To my knowledge the models are all still programmed to have an increase in temperature if CO2 increases, essentially ceteris paribus. The problem is the ice core record shows the temperature changes before the CO2. Have any models been adjusted to include this new documented evidence? Not to my knowledge.

JMS

And for those of you who don’t understand the mid 19th century comment, the absorbtive and reradiating properties of CO2 were discovered in the 1850’s by Tyndall.

gbalella

RE # 76

My personal take is that while it’s pretty much proven that CO2 increases will result in some warming, it’s pretty small…

(X)^2 .rt(nPV)= pretty small

Was that the formula you used to arrive at this precise calculation?…Or have you finally developed your own GCM?

Dave’s Fanstamigorical GCM (place numbers here)……….results come out here ~> approximate warming do to CO2 = pretty small

This is obviously a way more sensitive calculation then stupid ol HadCM3 or CSIRO

and it does result in negative feedbacks which offset the positive feedback of increased water evaporation. (this should be obvious since otherwise water would run-away on its own.)

Show your work mister…..did you make these up?…use the back of a napkin??… use a calculator???….did you use some big math equations???….or was this the results of a …..gasp…..model?

Further predictions from DVPFOTTOMHBOTN-GCM (Dave’s very precise Fantasmagorical off the top of my (his) head back of the napkin-GCM

~net temperature increase will be modest
~ most likely a positive on net
~ will be a bit of ice melting
~increased growing seasons
~hurricane will have good PR
~Same with predicted increases in floods and droughts. They’ll higher good PR firms too.
~ Honest modelers admit that they can’t do predictions, only Dave’s DVPFOTTOMHBOTN-GCM can do predictions.

JMS

Bender, it is because it takes time for the oceans to warm, the permafrost to melt and recently uncovered biological material to decay. Take a look at this for more info.

Steve McIntyre

In an earlier post, I said that:

If I may summarize a little, neither of the Georges nor Lee nor JMS have offered any sort of plausible explanation of how the 2200-year old plant material was formed if the 5000-year old plant material has been “continuously” unde a glacier. …

I’m not saying that there is no explanation. Just that they haven’t provided it, nor have the provided an excuse for Thompson’s failure to report all relevant samples in his PNAS article.

Lee responded, with much additional editorial comment not repeated here, that he provided the following explanation of the varying dates of discovery – which I might choose to disagree, but could not say that he had not provided any explanation.

When it retreats, it will first uncover the younger material that it covered later, and then the older material that it covered earlier. Finding materials of different dates simply means that the margin of the ice cap moved. ….This process is not necessariy going to be perfectly coordinated at all sites along the ice cap margin, either.

First, he’s left out the point about Thompson’s failure to provide a proper accounting and explanation of the different plant deposits in his original article, from which the present situation arises. Each of us may speculate as to what reasons may apply, but the underlying obligation to do so lay with Thompson. The most elementary audit of information from the Quelccaya area, including Thompson’s own news releases, showed major problems with Thompson’s report. It is that type of incomplete and cherrypicking report that is a particular topic of this site. Had the NAS panel did minimal due diligence, they would have identified the same problems.

My original remark usd the term “plausible explanation” and I do not believe that Lee’s couple of sentences is, in any sense, a plausible explanation of the phenomenon. While Thompson does not provide elevations of the various discoveries, Thompson’s discveries from 2002-2005 are all said to be at the receding margin of the glacier and are presumably within 20-30 m of elevation at the maximum. The peat is elsewhere said to be 400-500 m above its present range.

Thus, if peat were growing 2200 years ago at the point where it was discovered in 2003, the temperature would have to be more or less what it is currently 400-500 m downslope. The glacier would have to recede accordingly and could not have continuously covered the point at which 5000-year old plant deposits were discovered in 2002 and again in 2005. This seems pretty obvious to me and is why, in my opinion, Lee’s explanation does not rise to “plausible”. In fairness to Lee, at least he made a go at it. That’s what the thread is here for.

But I, for one, take away from this brief survey of Quelccaya plant deposits another unfavorable impression of Hockey Team accounting practices.

Steve Sadlov

RE: #110 – Indeed. Check out what RC censored as recently as yesterday:

“Why did you censor a simple NWS Anchorage ice desk forecast? That’s pretty crass. Amazing.
by Steve Sadlov”

We’ll see if they censor my complaint as well.

Dave Dardinger

re: #116,

George,

(X)^2 .rt(nPV)= pretty small

Was that the formula you used to arrive at this precise calculation?

That’s a pretty weird equation. Is it supposed to be one I’ve heard of, or is it just something that arose in your mind after a meal of too much rich food? Is the “.” supposed to be a multiplication symbol instead of the more usual “*”? The rest seems to be some bastard form of the ideal gas law; PV = nRT with some odd capitalization. My take on it [i.e. in your analysis, my global modelization of your entire life] is that you vaguely remember a little math from the algebra you took in high-school and likewise from you HS physics course (which you mostly spent ogling the girl diagonally in front of you), and poured it out in the form of an equation, thinking it might look impressive.

As usual you’re off the mark.

welikerocks

Also here is the page I got the last image from.
http://tinyurl.com/g36qx

Paul Penrose

Gabe,
What theory are you talking about? So far all we have are a few conjectures, like doubling of C02 will cause 1-3C (or 1-20C depending on who you listen to) increase in global temperature (supposing that’s even a useful metric). Now the IR absorbtive and reradiative properties of C02 are fairly well understood, but there’s a lot more going on in the climate. It’s not like doing an experiment where you shine a light into a glass box and put progressively greater concentrations of C02 into it and measure the resultant temperature. The earth is enormously more complex and so far there’s no single theory that explains how everything interacts. There’s always the possibility that there are other processes going on that are much bigger drivers than C02, which is why the ice ages are revelant. Whatever caused those huge cycles in temperature may still be at work today and may be causing the variability that we see. Right now we just don’t have enough good data to know the difference. The problem, of course, is that it takes a long time to collect data on climate since it’s such a long-term effect. Decades are barely a blip on climatic time-scales. What we really need are centuries of high-quality high-coverage data to get high confidences. That does not mean that we can’t use the data we have now, but it’s important to understand what the limits of this data are as far as what kind of conclusions we can draw.

People like myself (and many on this blog) are not “denialists” in the sense that we are not denying that AGW is happening; we just don’t think that you can conclude it is based on the current data and underlying understanding of the physical systems involved. The “global temperature” is probably increasing most would agree, but how much, for how long, and why we just don’t think can be known at the present time. At least not with the certitude claimed by Mann and his fans.

And don’t even start me on the models. I could go on for pages, but I just don’t have the time right now. Let’s just say that I have some experience in this area and the more I look at the coupled GCMs the less I believe they can be relied on for predictions or projections or anything else other than pure research what-if type experiments.

Gabe C.

Paul,

I understand that we cannot know for certain what is causing the current warming. However, as you say, we know CO2 is a greenhouse gas. We know CO2 levels are increasing and we know the temperature is going up.

Any uncertainty in how much warming can be expected works both ways, so that an earlier poster’s comment that the warming would likely be very little is a guess.

Am I right in thinking:

1. CO2 is responsible for at least some of the warming we observe,
2. Whatever effect CO2 has will increase and intensify,

?

Steve McIntyre

#131. Let’s suppose that you extended the pirate time series before 1800 as say the 1800 value plus-minus white noise or red noise and then inserted this series in the Mannomatic. You would get a pirate hockey stick graph.

Also note that a pirate reconstruction of global temperature has a very high RE statistic.

charles

Gabe,

“Am I right in thinking:

1. CO2 is responsible for at least some of the warming we observe,
2. Whatever effect CO2 has will increase and intensify,”

#1 is correct. we just don’t know is co2 if responsible for 10% or 80%.

However, #2 is not correct. Co2 is increasing linearly and its warming contribution ~ ln (co2).

Thus what ever effect from co2 we have experienced in the past will be less in the future.

The modest warming of the last 100yrs has been a net plus and there is no reason to expect modest warming in the future (due to co2) will not also be a net plus.

Picture in your mind a tropical scene. Now picture an artic scene. The world is moving every so slightly toward the former. Is this bad?

bender

the challenge to the critics … is to NOT show the flaws of the current reconstructions or of the current models but to put forth your own reconstruction or models that shows something significantly different from what exist in the current literature

Of course you see the burden of evidence as lying on the skeptics; it is advantageous to your cause. I doubt that Feynman would have viewed it that way though. It is up to the innovating proponents of a hypothesis to be skeptical of their own work. When this internal skepticism fails, then outsiders must step in and try to do what the insiders failed to do. The fact is skeptics and innovating scientists are not on equal footing regarding access to data and tools. How can I build my own BCP temperature reconstruction if I don’t have access to specialized code that the gatekeepers won’t release?

Muirgeo, why don’t you build your own temperature reconstruction, and tell me how it goes?

Steve McIntyre

Andrew Wiles’ proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem last decade is one of the remarkable accomplishments of the century IMO. His first attempt contained a subtle flaw which critics found.

Did anyone ridicule the critics because they hadn’t proved Fermat’s Last Theorem? Of course not. Did Wiles call the critics names? Of course not. Did he say that his first attempt was still valid? Of course not.

Wiles went back to the drawing board; it took him about 3 more years but he developed a new approach which this time worked.

Lee

139:

GregF the models are NOT curve fits. They are the best currently attainable numerical descriptions of our current climate theory. Tehya rentpnt perfect, results from thema re jsutificalby subject to criticism (an drebuttal), but to describe thema s curve fits is to use innacurate alnguage to belittle them, rather than to deal with what they are.

Dave Dardinger

tossing out the most well thought out models as suspect mostly because you don’t understand them yourself.

I’ll resist the urge to say what I think (about you, that is) and limit myself to this statement which, while wrong and misleading, at least can be discussed.

Your main mistake is to confuse unwillingness to disclose how the models work withan inability to understand. Now, yes, the models are complex and there’s a sense in which even those who build the models don’t “understand” them, but that doesn’t mean they can’t and shouldn’t supply an entry into their systems which allow them to be explored and “audited”. At least what parameters are plugged into the systems and what reasoning was used to determine the values of the parameters should be given.

One thing you don’t seem to realize is that there are regulars here who are experienced in model building and use and they are not of the opinion that models can be trusted to have much accuracy.

Of course there was that poor fellow from the distributed PC model outfit who was around a bit spewing venom for a while, but he was apparently just some sort of technician and not anyone who understood the system and it showed.

Finally, you do realize, don’t you, that all the model systems are not physics based except for some rather broad categories? For instance they usually do check for conservation of energy and matter (though I think I’ve heard of some exceptions even there). But they don’t try actually solving the known equations which govern air and water motion and so forth because the bins into which the earth’s surface are broken up are so large that there’s no way to make the equations work. Consequently they have to use simplified equations and input average values of some sort to make them work; sort of.

But there’s no place to go to look at the equations being instantiated and what values are fed into the equations. Usually there’s a grand overview which sometimes sounds like it’s saying what’s going on, but as soon as you start asking questions, either of yourself or others as to how a given piece of data is used, you realize they’ve not given you more than a qualitative summary and not what you really need to know. There was one system that David C-H, I believe pointed out one time [another board and a few years ago for those reading this, but George knows who I mean.] Anyway David pointed out a simple GCM which did have its guts showing online, but even then, while the symbols for the various parameters were available, the values used were stored in a database and not at all easy to get. And it wasn’t one of the systems which are actually cited in the literature which are the ones which count.

muirgeo

Re# 139

You’ve confused scenarios with models….try again.

bender

Wait – what if Lee IS a whiny little girl? You may have insulted her. Better ask.

Steve McIntyre

Lee, I’ve never made grandiose claims for myself. I mention Andrew Wiles because he is an example of a truly fine mind.

I said that you had not made a “plausible explanation” of the plant deposits, but specifically said that you’d at least tried.

in my opinion, Lee’s explanation does not rise to “plausible”. In fairness to Lee, at least he made a go at it. That’s what the thread is here for.

Please be a little less aggressive in your tone.

Dave B

#141 lee…

you said:

“To my knowledge neigther wile snto not thos who foudn his flaw behaved like that.”

no ad hom, but my ability as a cipher has been defeated by this. what does it mean? (aside from a lck of proof reading?…i corrected three errors in my post)

Armand MacMurray

Re: #131, 132
The Pirate Count proxy has its own “divergence” problem! 🙂 The numbers of pirates worldwide have been increasing substantially during the last decade or two, especially off the Horn of Africa and in southeast Asia.

bender

… as if the divergence problem were trivial, and not the prelude to a more drastic outcome, such as large-scale dieback (in which case those narrow rings would be lost to dendrochronologists searching for that evidence 1000 years from now). Is this not occurring in the case of pinyon pine? Could it not happen to BCP?

I agree that re-sampling is a good idea. I think re-analysis of the existing data is a good idea too. I simply can not believe that someone is not already working on it.

Paul Penrose

Gabe,
Don’t make the mistake of confusing correlation with causation. Just because temperatures are going up (by some amount we can debate about later), and CO2 concentration is going up as well, does not mean that the rising CO2 is causing the rising temps. Even accepting the physical properties of CO2 as a potential warming influence, the climate system is just too complex to make such a simple connection. Now I agree that it’s plausable that CO2 has some effect on temperature, but how much? Even then the larger predictions of temperature increases (over, say .25C) over the next 100 years are largely driven by positive feedbacks (like increased water vapor) that are a long way from being proven. In fact, I’d say that the postulation of these feedbacks is not much better than speculation at this point.

Now I’m not asking for absolute certainty here, which is impossible, but you need to make distinctions in certainty levels. When you are just studying something out of pure scientific curiousity and the cost of going down a blind alley is reletively small, then you don’t need as much certainty than if you want to change the course of civilization. On this last point I’m not exagerating. If you assume that CO2 is as deadly an actor as the warmers claim then nothing short of a massive reduction in the use of carbon-based fuels will save us from AGW. I just don’t see any way to do that over the near-term (next decade or two) without just turning it all off.

Mark T.

Oh, that’s just the Divergence Problem, just as previously reported in the peer-reviewed literature.

As yet to be fully explained in the same literature. Being “reported” in the literature does not explain it away. It is known as a “problem” simply because it singlehandedly refutes the CO2 == ring width theory.

Mark

jae

Can someone tell me how to pronounce Quelccaya? Is it Kell.kay.yah? I have this compulsion to pronounce words I see.

Steve Sadlov

I don’t think it’s Spanish. Maybe it’s quechua:

http://www.zompist.com/quechua.html

James Lane

Lee, at post #35 Steve said that you hadn’t made a plausible explanation.

At #39 you claimed that Steve had said you had provided “no explanation”.

At post #120 Steve elaborated on why he found your explanation implausible, including:

Thus, if peat were growing 2200 years ago at the point where it was discovered in 2003, the temperature would have to be more or less what it is currently 400-500 m downslope. The glacier would have to recede accordingly and could not have continuously covered the point at which 5000-year old plant deposits were discovered in 2002 and again in 2005. This seems pretty obvious to me and is why, in my opinion, Lee’s explanation does not rise to “plausible”. In fairness to Lee, at least he made a go at it. That’s what the thread is here for.

Why don’t you start again and address this point, even if it means (clearly) restating your case? I’m not saying you’re wrong, but it’s very difficult to follow your argument – for all I know you and Steve are talking past each other.

I also suggest you stop hyperventilating and demanding apologies. I think any fair reader reviewing this thread would agree that Steve has been unfailingly polite to you.

BTW, everyone else on this site seems to be able to use preview and correct their posts. Why do you persist in posting as if your cat was walking across the keyboard?

Dave Dardinger

Lee, your posts are almost all horribly written. This means, to most people, that you don’t care about the people you’re writing to. Therefore the people you’re writing to don’t care if you’re miffed by an imagined slight (not that the series of events per se are imagined, but that Steve or anyone else here has much interest in responding to messsages you post, when it takes so much effort to read and understand them. Steve does his best to be polite even to the trolls but it’s really very low of you to make a big point about Steve not paying enough attention to you when you act as you do most of the time.) Now either you’ve gone back and examined all the long series of messages on this and related threads to be so certain that you’re correct in when you said what, or you haven’t. If you have then I submit that you’re spending your time here on the wrong things. Be polite, be well-written; it doesn’t take that much longer. OTOH, if you’re relying just on your memory, then what can I say?

Lee

Dave, I called Steve on makng false claims about what I said. He has changed his statement about PART of the initial false claim, but has not apologized or retracted other parts of the false claims. It is behavior very similar to what he consistently claims aobu the ‘hockey team’ and I find this quite amusing actually.

I have also made substantive claioms, including right here, adn pointed otu smore than one instance n ow where Steve simply didnt bother to look at the data he psoted her and is usign for the basis of hsi argument. When I point that out, I am ‘trolling’ or ‘nitpicking.’ Apparently care in understanding the data nd presenting analyses is not required of Steve, and pointing out his errors is trolling. I jsut pointed out two substantive errors in his earlier posts – and the rresponse is on style and ‘nitpickig.’ Adn o wonder why I dont much trust the presentatins here.

You are correct that I care very damn little at this point about this site- I find Steve’s posts on this topic to be showing very damn little regard for care or honesty in his anlaysis on this topic, and to be accepting sloppy logic that he woudl use to crucify people who disgaree with him including simple disregard of even attem[pting to understand the data presented, or to take it into accoutn when making arguments. But its an argument I was in, and I’m giving it a last chance – maybe I’m wrong about Steve, and he will realize that the presense of a LIA sample of peat at ice cap elevations, invalidates his argument about how peat could not have been growing at the ice ca unless it was substantially warmer. But I’m not holding my breath.

James Lane

Lee, you haven’t “pointed out substantive errors” that either Dave or I can understand. Once again, I suggest that you restate your case, preferably in point form, so we can discuss it. Once again, I’m not taking sides, but I simply don’t understand your argument. It may be cross-threaded, but I don’t have the time or patience to try to reassemble it.

You are calling Steve on “substantive errors” – MAKE YOUR CASE.

BTW, aren’t you the slightest bit embarrassed about posting like this:

I have also made substantive claioms, including right here, adn pointed otu smore than one instance n ow where Steve simply didnt bother to look at the data he psoted her and is usign for the basis of hsi argument. When I point that out, I am “trolling’ or “nitpicking.’ Apparently care in understanding the data nd presenting analyses is not required of Steve, and pointing out his errors is trolling. I jsut pointed out two substantive errors in his earlier posts – and the rresponse is on style and “nitpickig.’ Adn o wonder why I dont much trust the presentatins here.

Lee

Dave, ou lef tout psot 14, in which Steve says:

#

#11. Lee, I quite agree that things need to be kept separate. For crissake, that’s why you have maps in proper reports. I’ve just tried to collect some relevant information. I’m not an expert on Quelccaya; if I make some little error in interpreting this stuff, so be it. I’m quite happy to fix up any misunderstanding. But jeez, you guys are so hungry to find some little gotcha, it’s unreal. You might spend some of your energy attacking the presentation of the material by the original authors in such an incomplete and haphazard way before you start criticizing my meagre efforts to collate the information.

Comment by Steve McIntyre “¢’‚¬? 15 August 2006 @ 9:48 pm

In that post, Steve says there are maps in “proper reports” – ingnoring the map wihth the crossreference toethe table in thsi report. Steve says he is making a ‘meager effort’ to collate the data – that table is in the paper, with its cross references to the map. He blasts me for criticizing his misunderstanding of the basic data he is criticising, by calign it gotchas for minor points – which is why I told him to look at damn data, because tese points are central to his claims.

And none of this is responding to the simple fact that there is 270 yo peat at the level of the ice cap, so his argument that the peat growth level currenlty is 500 meters below the ice cap so it must have been warmer when the 2200 yo peat grew simply does not bear scrutiny, and that fact come directly from the table he posted.

James Lane

Lee, you edited post #172? Are you dyslexic?

And none of this is responding to the simple fact that there is 270 yo peat at the level of the ice cap, so his argument that the peat growth level currenlty is 500 meters below the ice cap so it must have been warmer when the 2200 yo peat grew simply does not bear scrutiny, and that fact come directly from the table he posted.

This makes no sense at all to me. Once again, could you clearly state your full case, in point form, regarding Steve’s “substantive errors”. This is the third time I’ve asked. If you won’t, I’ll assume you can’t, and like Dave, I’m done with you.

Dave Dardinger

Lee,

Sure I left out post 14, it doesn’t say anything concerning what you’ve been complaining about.

BTW, You didn’t try editing the preview, did you? You can only edit inside the box. The preview just shows how the message will look.

And none of this is responding to the simple fact that there is 270 yo peat at the level of the ice cap, so his argument that the peat growth level currenlty is 500 meters below the ice cap so it must have been warmer when the 2200 yo peat grew simply does not bear scrutiny, and that fact come directly from the table he posted.

Then why didn’t you say that instead of screaming at him? BTW, I have a little problem with dating a plant at such a recent date. We could discuss it if you like.

James Lane

Lee,

OK, I think I get it. You’re saying that the peat record near the ice cap says nothing about the glacier? That is, the existance of 2200 yo peat near the ice cap does not invalidate the idea that the glacial extension has not persisted for 5000 years. IS THAT IT?

If so, it’s a fair point. Mind you, I would have thought that the extent of the ice cap and the glacier would be strongly related, but I’m not a glaciologist. Perhaps someone with expert knowledge could chime in?

Your last paragraph makes no sense to me at all:

And on the third sentence, one more time – there is 270 year old (LIA-era) peat at the level of the ice cap. So how can Steve argue that it must have been warmer thousands of years ago when peat was deposited there? Unless he is arguing that it was that much warmer during the LIA, but cooler now?

My take out from that is that, if you accept the existance of the LIA, the ice cap isn’t telling us anything useful about temperature at all.

James Lane

Lee,

On the other issue, there is a 2700 yo sample that was collected at the ice cap margin in 1977. There is a 5000 yo old sample collected at the ice cap margin in 2003. Steve asks how the younger peat got under the ice while the older peat was already under the ice? Simple – the ice expanded between 5000 years ago and 2700 years ago. It is now retreating and in 1977 uncovered a 2700 yo sample, and since 1977 has retreated far enough further to uncover older samples, including the 5000 yo sample. Why Steve considers this “implausible’ is beyond me.

OK, I get it now. I do think you could have been clearer in your earlier posts. I’ll concede your argument, as long as the plant discoveries are located from oldest to latest (in terms of age) from the center of the ice cap. Is that the case?

Dave Dardinger

Lee,

I see that you’ve overlooked my little challenge to the 270 yo dating. So let me be a bit more explicit. Have you eliminated the two possibilities which would eliminate this?

1. It’s a typo. [BTW, I suppose I ought to see how the original looks. Is there a link to the actual article? I don’t see one in Steve’s post.] There might be internal indicators which would prove it was actually 2700. Or there might be discussion or a listing by age which would prove it was supposed to be 270. It’d be embarassing to find out a key point you’ve invested in is just a typo or a “0” too faint for you to read.

2. A more technical problem is radiocarbon dating of recent material. There’s always a problem measuring a small fraction of something. the half life of C14 is 5730 y so 270y = ~5% of this. Meanwhile an age of 800 years would be about 14%. Now there are various ways a sample could look younger than it actually is, the easiest being contamination by recent material. This could include bacteria or lichens growing on the older material and using ambient air. Also bear in mind that carbon 14 is produced by high-energy radiation from the sun and therefore I believe it’s mostly produced at higher altitudes in the atmosphere and later mixed into the general atmosphere. This means it would be necessary to make a correction to the age of materials for a slight excess of C14 if they grow at high altitudes. It this hadn’t been done (for instance if the altitude wasn’t reported to the outfit doing the datinge, the reported age of the material might be spuriously young. This wouldn’t matter as much for material thousands of years old, but would for material only a few hundred years old.

I’m not saying that either of these situations are the actual case, but I’d think they should be eliminated before too much is made of a single datum like this.

Steve McIntyre

The observation about the present-day range of peat came from Thompson’s PPT presentation to Texas A&M here. I have no independent knowledge of the range of peat plants at Quelccaya other than gleanings from these articles – and of course, Thompson bears the primary blame for merely presenting pamphlets.

Lee observed that, in the table from Mark et al which I provided in an earlier post, in addition to a 2760 year old sample of peat at the map location 13 (said by Lee to be near the ice cap rather than the glacier, which seems plausible), there was a 270 year old peat. Lee has said that this was also located near the ice cap, but in Table 1, it says that it was found in H1 – the LIA moraine that, as far as I can tell, is associated with the glacier in this case rather than the ice cap – so Lee appears to be mistaken as to location.

Be that as it may, this does raise a valid question about Thompson’s observation to Texas A&M about the range of the plants. If the plants are presently 400-500 m below the discovery at the glacier, how did it get in the LIA moraine? Is Thompson’s obervation at Texas A&M wrong? Are there different plants that have different ranges? It’s too bad that Thompson didn’t properly survey the plant deposits and answer these questions.

Lee says:

On the other issue, there is a 2700 yo sample that was collected at the ice cap margin in 1977. There is a 5000 yo old sample collected at the ice cap margin in 2003.

Lee distinguishes between the ice cap and the glacier based on the map from Mark et al which I posted up in an earlier post. I note that Thompson says in a release:

The plant had to have remained covered and protected for most of that time, which means that the ice cap most likely has not deteriorated to its current size for any length of time in more than 50,000 years.

I get the impression from the picture of the 50000 year old area that Thompson here is talking about plant deposits uncovered by the receding glacier and not the receding ice cap, but hey, it’s Thompson, so there are no maps and this is a surmise. As I understand it,

1) yes there was a 2700-year old sample collected at the ice cap margin in 1977
2) the 2003 sample appears to have been collected from the receding glacier area. Of course, the information comes from Thompson, so who knows. Lee, why do you think that the 2003 sample does not come from the area of the receding glacier?
3) the 5000 year old samples collected in 2002 and again in 2005 also appear to come from the receding glacier area, again with the caveat that the information comes from Thompson.
4) both 2 and 3 would appear to be upslope of H1, the LIA moraine in which the 270 year old peat was found.

The $64 question is whether Thompson’s discovery of 5000-year old peat proves that it has been covered continuously by a glacier for all that time. I have trouble wrapping my mind around how this can be reconciled with younger discoveries of high elevation peat – to which the quandary of 270-year old peat is now added.

A proper and coherent explanation of these various plant deposits – the type of explanation that one would expect that a blue-ribbon panel like NAS would require before relying on loose comments – is a proper small-scale map showing the various plant deposits and then a coherent diagram showing glacier/ice cap advance and retreat explaining the various deposits.

I personally have no difficulty in believing that it’s possible that the first advance that engulfed the 5000 year old peat covered it with sediments (along the lines of Alberta stratigraphy); that the glacier retreated in Roman times at which time 2200-year old peat grew; perhaps there was a stratum covering the 5000-year old peat; the LIA glacier advance bulldozed 2200-year old sediments (there’s very strong evidence of this phenomenon in other locations . In addition to the moraine, most 2200-year old sediments would have been washed away in connection with the earlier advance and retreat.

Who knows? Glacier sediment stratigraphy is a big complicated exercise as evidenced where it’s done properly as in the Alps. There’s evidence that Quelccaya history is just as complicated as that in the Alps – thus it’s impossible to conclude from the information as presented by Thompson that the 5000-year old plant was covered continuously by glaciers to the present.

270 year

On the other issue, there is a 2700 yo sample that was collected at the ice cap margin in 1977. There is a 5000 yo old sample collected at the ice cap margin in 2003.

Lee

Steve:

“there was a 270 year old peat. Lee has said that this was also located near the ice cap, but in Table 1, it says that it was found in H1 – the LIA moraine that, as far as I can tell, is associated with the glacier in this case rather than the ice cap – so Lee appears to be mistaken as to location.”

Uhh, once again Steve, look at the associated map. The 270 yo peat is sample 14 on the table. Sample 14 is marked on the map. It is an ice cap moraine, near the outlet glacier but not from the glacier.

—-
“I note that Thompson says in a release:

The plant had to have remained covered and protected for most of that time, which means that the ice cap most likely has not deteriorated to its current size for any length of time in more than 50,000 years.

I get the impression from the picture of the 50000 year old area that Thompson here is talking about plant deposits uncovered by the receding glacier and not the receding ice cap,”

So, Steve, from the fact that Thomspon says, in this frickin’ quote “…the ICE CAP (emphasis added) most likely has not deteriorated…” and from something about a picture of a 50,000 year old area (what picture?), you get that he is talking about the glacier? Steve, HE SAID ICE CAP!!” How on earth do you read “ice cap’ and infer ‘glacier?’ OR did you just not read the sentence you quoted?

Also, unless that “50,000”is a typo and we’re still talking about the 5,000 yo sample (which is what you’ve been talking about so far), you seem to be bringing in another piece of data?
—

Steve, your numbered points are simply incoherent. Thompson SAYS ‘ice cap” in at least one case. The H1 terminal moraine is an ICE CAP moraine, as shown on the map that YOU posted in that thread, and therefore MUST BE upstream of the glacier. You seem to be refusing to spend the necessary 5 minutes to look closely at the data YOU POSTED and are using as the basis for your argument – hell, I’ve already pointed out to you a couple of times that the table and the map are keyed to each other, and you STILL continue to make basic mistakes on the data that show you arent bothering to look. You are insisting that data shown on the map as being from an ice cap morraine must be glacial. You interpret a sentence in which Thompson says “ice cap” as meaning “glacial,” which is absurd and frankly insulting.Adn once again, glacial dynamics and ice cap dynamics are liekly to be quite diffeent – your arguments aobu tthe effecs of glacial outwash on glacial terminal moraines are not likely to hold up for ice cap termnal moraines, which are not confined to valleys with stream flows through them.

Yes, it would be good to get the data from the Thompson samples. Has anyone with some competence in the area – based on these two threads, not you, Steve – asked him for the locations?
—
Steve, if you are going to be hurling accusations of incompetence at the NAS board, it would be good to not miss such frickin’ obvious things as the locations on the map THAT YOU POSTED HERE of the samples that you use for your arguments – not to mention the rest of the errors you make here.

James Lane

OK, I found Steve’s link to the collation of Thompson’s statements, and also did some googling on “Quelccaya Ice Cap”

1) Thompson, and other citations, use the terms “ice cap” and “glacier” interchangably e.g.

Thompson:

“Plants at Quelccaya are often rooted in soil-filled depressions in the bedrock. Thus, Thompson suspects the plant was preserved as the cap advanced over such a depression. This left a chamber of trapped air that spared the plant from being scoured to tatters by the slow-flowing glacier. ”

US Geological survey:

“The Quelccaya ice cap (Zamora and Ames, 1977) is the largest single glacier in PeràƒÆ’à‚⸠(figs. 8 and 9)” (Link #1 below)

Personally, I think it is useful to distinguish between the ice cap and the glacier (in terms of the deposited moraines), but let’s hear no more of the semantic argument.

2) Thompson’s 2003 discovery of a 2200 BP sample is reported to be “near the southern tip of the ice field, some 6 kilometers (3.7 miles) south of their original [5200 BP] plant find”

This places the 2200 BP sample well away from any of the sites on the Mark map (although the southern extremity is depicted in the map). This sample would appear to be from between 5000-5200 metres.

3) The above would appear to give us an indication of the location of the 5200 BP sample – i.e. 6 km north. This would place it near site 14 (the 270 BP sample), although whether it is above or below the terminal moraine is unclear. In the context of Thompson’s conclusions, one would have to think it was above the moraine.

4) The location of the 50,000+ BP sample is a mystery. The press report suggests that Thompson intended to look in a different valley 3km away (maybe somewhere near site 8 on the Mark map – BTW this is labled in Table 1 as “beneath H2 terminal moraine” WTF?). But it’s then reported that he found it closer: “But about a quarter-mile from there, I found yet another area of uncovered plants.” This site is reported as being at 5000m, which would make it lower than the 2670 BP site, at 5180 metres.

It took me ages to put this post together, juggling between different sites. I don’t think one can conclude anything from the information, as presented, except that the moss has grown at higher altitudes in the past than now.

A final note: the references to the H1 and H2 terminal moraines in Mark’s Table 1 might suggest that the glacier was far more extensive (i.e. crossing over into adjacent valleys) sometime in the past. I don’t know, but I’m puzzled as to why they would make those attributions.

Link #1:
http://pubs.usgs.gov/pp/p1386i/peru/orient.html

Dave Dardinger

Thanks for your work James. This makes a lot of sense of the data as well as pretty much eliminating the 270 yo site as proving anything. Actually I’m interested in seeing what Lee has to say in response this time. It’s a chance for him to prove what he’s made of, either scientifically or re integrity; possibly both.

jae

Other analyses have shown a MWP with temps higher than the present at Quelccaya.

jae

Maybe so, Lee; I don’t know.

Lee

jae, for one thing, Ive alraeady said that for now, pending futher work, I’m looking at the tree ring studies as interesting but not to be given weight in the overal analysis.

For another, that article at CO2 Science is dishonest in what it leaves out. The point of the paper they cite is that averages across everal sites (ie, not lcoal at one location, but somethign a bit closer to global high-altitude tropical coverage) shows tath mofern temps are higher. For them to concentrate on just one site, without mentioning that the point of the paper overall is larger scale averages, is simply intellectually dishonest. That they one fact they convey is true, does not change their dishonesty.

JerryB

The subject of the Idso article to which jae linked is: “Quelccaya Ice Cap, Peru”, not “larger scale averages”. Other topics discussed in the article that they reference are extraneous to their subject.

Another of Lee’s fallacious assertions of dishonesty bites the dust.

JerryB

The Idso article to which jae linked is not a review of the Thonpson et al article; it correctly cites Thompson et al as the source of DATA (Lee seems to imagine that all caps are needed from time to time). It seems that in Lee’s fantasy world, one must not cite a source of data without writing at length about that source.

BTW, there are at least six brief articles on the Idso site citing that same Thompson et al article as the source for data for each of six locations including the Dasuopu Glacier, Tibetan Plateau in which Idso article about the data for that location, they state “… this work revealed no evidence of the Medieval Warm Period …”. Those are not cherries, folks; they’re apples.

Lee’s histrionics don’t seem quite adequate to blur reality.

jae

201: Lee, prove this, or shut up.

Lee

jae:

google scholar is your friend.

Willis Eschenbach

Re 205 … and your example of things that look like “intentional fibs” is …?

JerryB

It seems that in order to pretend that the Idso article to which jae had linked was intellectually dishonest, Lee omitted most of the first sentence of that article, and posted the end of it here, along with the second sentence, seemingly in an effort to give the appearance that the phrase “this work” in the second sentence referred exclusively to something mentioned in that small portion of the first sentence. A curious ploy to try while complaining about dishonesty by omission. 🙂

However, not satisfied with such a transparent ruse, Lee goes on in a subsequent comment to announce that they (the Idsos) “… cite the “low latitude history” as the source, …”. How bizarre can one get? Perhaps it depends upon how desperate one is to slander the Idsos.

Lee

Jerry, do the Idsos have a similar blurb about the “low latitude history” pointing out that it shows that average low-latitude temps are highest in the late 20th century?
—
jae, should I also try making up false and innocuous allegations about your club memberships and religious beleifs, and offer them up as an attempted insult? Or is that rhetorical technique restricted to members of the CA fellowship?

I do note that STeve seems unable recently to make a post without offering a “hockey team’ attempted insult in the early introduction – in overt violation of his own stated rules for this site. So perhaps this is part of the CA mode of worship, for the CA true beleivers?

—

Steve and JohnA, before you move toward censoring this post you might note that I am simply mirroring or pointing out similar kinds of posts that dont seem to get a second glance here, as long as those who post them are part of the club.

Lee

Willis,

the first part of that sentence says the authors studied several glaciers to show that temperatures are the primary influence on the isotope ratio. I could have included that quote in the same kind of analysis of the structure of the article, but didnt do so becasue I felt the secnd aprt was sufficient – but I’ll do so now. Here is the quote:

“The authors analyzed decadally-averaged àŽⲱ8O records derived by them and their colleagues from three Andean and three Tibetan ice cores, demonstrating that “on centennial to millennial time scales atmospheric temperature is the principal control on the àŽⲱ8Oice of the snowfall that sustains these high mountain ice fields,””

It continues on to say that they produced a “low latitude history that they use as a surrogate for air temperature.” Here is the remainder of that sentence:

“after which they produced “a low latitude àŽⲱ8O history for the last millennium” that they use as a surrogate for air temperature.”

The article then continues:
“For the Quelccaya Ice Cap (13.93°S, 70.83°W), this work revealed that peak temperatures of the MWP were warmer than those of the last few decades of the 20th century.”
—
That, plus the diagram, is the entire article. All of it.

Now, as I said above, each part of this is correct. In the first part: Thompson et al do claim that the rations are temp proxies – I’m not sure I buy tropical isotope rations as good temp-only proxies, but that’s another story. In the second part: they do produce a history – but here the article fails to point out that the history shows that modern temps are higher than older temps. In the third part: the analysis of Quelcayya ( as part of the ovrallhsitory) showed one short-term spikeof older ratio above modern levels.

But by making that justaposition of three true facts, they leave the misleading impression that the Quelcayya data was the point of the study, or is representative of the results of the study. They noticably do NOT link to the other articles about the other glaciers in the study, nor to any article about the entire history and its conclusions, nor to the abstract of the study. And by failing to point out that the conclusion of the article is CONTRARY to the single Quelcayya datum, they leave the impression that the results of the study overall is compatible with that Quelcayya datum.

jae actually confirms this: when I first pointed out that the study overall showed that modern temps were higher, he responed with:
“Lee, can you provide a link to the actual article? Not that I don’t believe you, but I would like to look at it myself.” He shoudnt hav eto ask – I shouldnt ahve to offer, and it shouldnt be necesary to be already familiar with the study in question to come to this realization.
—
Now, I’m not going to go back and make this kind of time-consuming deconstruction of articles I’ve read before where I found similar things. MY OPINION is that I don’t find that site worth paying attention to, because I find it too often misleading in the ways that this one is, for the reasons I’ve now outlined twice (and you wonder why I dont want to spend time bashing this topic in the face of challenges from y’all? I’d never do anything else…).

The Idsos may simply be consistently weeding down to isolated facts becasue they want to present isolated facts- but the lack of links to related facts, and the failure to mention that results of papers they are abstracting from are contrary to the isolated facts they present is at least, IMO, intellectual sloppiness. And functionally, that is enough to make their site not worth MY time.

Y’all may disagree – so be it. I cant prove intent; I’m not a mind reader. I can only offer my impression, and this is my impression, and this is why.

Willis Eschenbach

Lee, thanks for the complete history. Me, I did not find that the Thompson paper was substantially different from the results cited by the Idsos. Nor was I confused when they said “this work revealed”, as you seem to have been. To me, “this work” clearly refers to the paper that they are discussing.

Did the Idsos “leave the misleading impression that the Quelcayya data was the point of the study” as you think? To me, no way. They say “The authors analyzed decadally-averaged àŽⲱ8O records derived by them and their colleagues from three Andean and three Tibetan ice cores …” How you can misread this to think that one of these six sites is the focus of the study is a curiosity to me.

Nor is the Quelccaya Ice Cap the only one in the study to show a warmer MWP. The Sajama Ice Core shows an even warmer MWP. If the Idsos purpose were to cherry pick, wouldn’t they have picked that cherry as well?

Nor have the Idsos discussed any of the other problems with the reconstruction. First, there are only six sites that are averaged, three for NH summer, three for SH summer. In South America, of the three sites, two show a warmer MWP, and one of which shows a cooler MWP.

What does an average of the historical records of these three sites mean? At any moment in time, there’s only three data points, so the error bars will be ridiculously wide, floor to ceiling. Clearly, Thompson has absolutely no idea about statistics, because if there are only three data points, the +/- 2 SD standard error of the mean always includes all three data points! Thus, taking an average of only three trends is meaningless, it adds no statistically significant evidence at all. In addition, they don’t even bother to describe the process by which they have “composited” the three records into one. “Composited”? What does that mean? Is that different from “averaged”, and if so, how? Thompson doesn’t say …

Can we draw any global conclusions from these three sites? Of course not, any more than we could calculate a southern hemisphere temperature average from three thermometers.

Now, the Idsos don’t mention any of these problems with the Thompson study either. Instead, they present one of the results … which makes much more sense to me than claiming that an average of three of their results has any meaning whatsoever.

Part of the reason for the lack of a full explanation is that the Idso comment on the study contains exactly two sentences … since their subject is Quelccaya, they reserved one of these for Quelccaya. Now you may not agree with the two sentences, you may think you could write two sentences that would capture the study much better … but that doesn’t mean that the Idsos are trying to lead you astray.

The Idso site is very useful to me, but not necessarily for what the Idsos have to say. It is valuable because it points me to a wide variety of papers on the subject. I read what the Idsos have to say about the papers, and have generally found it to be useful. I don’t always agree with what they say, but then at various times, I don’t agree with what a whole host of people in the field say.

However, I don’t claim that they are being deceptive or deceitful … that’s a bridge too far. You start making those kinds of accusations about people without good evidence, and your own vote gets cancelled in very short order. Nobody wants to interact with someone who does that.

Again, Lee, thanks for your explanation.

w.

… like the song says, “I’m just a fool whose intentions are good” … and absent good evidence, I generally make the same assumption about the other people I interact with. In this world, I have found that for myself as well as for most people, foolish errors, moving too fast, or simple misunderstanding are a much more common explanation for incorrect results or statements than are deception or deceit …

Willis Eschenbach

James (and Lee), since you feel that the Idso two-sentence summary of the Thompson paper is not a good representation, perhaps you’d like to volunteer a two-sentence summary of the paper that you feel is more representative …

Re your comment, James, Thompson actually did one combination of the three NH sites, and one of the three SH sites, and yes, they do look completely different. They also look completely bogus. An oddity about the Southern Hemisphere sites is that the Huancayo site goes from its coldest record (1730) to its warmest (1790) in only 30 years … this pattern is completely absent from the other two sites. What does this mean? What does it mean when it is “composited” with the other records?

I suspect that the way that they have “composited” the results was to normalize each record to mean = 0, std dev =1, and then average them. The problem is that this procedure can end up treating small changes and large changes as being the same.

Overall? Not good … after seeing that paper, I wouldn’t believe anything Thompson told me.

w.

Willis Eschenbach

Whoa, James, you’re misleading your readers in # 217 … in addition to two of the SH records showing a warmer MWP, so does one of the Tibetan records … that’s half the records. So your claim that the reconstruction suggests a low MWP is incorrect, half say higher, and half say lower.

You see the problem? Almost any two sentence description will fall afoul of somebody’s ideas about what the study really says. Which is OK, as long as we don’t say that you, James, are deliberately trying to mislead. That’s a bridge too far.

However, there are other problems with the study. I haven’t analyzed the NH data, but the SH data is a disgrace.

1) If you take a straight average of the three SH records, it shows the MWP warmer than the present. (As you’d expect, given that two of the records show a warmer MWP.)

2) I have replicated their method of “compositing”. Their method of “compositing” is that they have normalized the data before averaging them … this gives the record with the smallest inherent variance the largest weight. This “compositing” method is almost identical with a straight average, except for the recent (post 1900) data, which is considerably warmer from “compositing” than in a direct average. Thus, the “compositing” method ends up showing a cooler MWP … but heck, that’s probably just a coincidence.

It turns out that their method weights Sajama, which shows a much warmer MWP, at half the weight of Huascaran, which shows a cooler MWP …

3) In any case, averaging three numbers gives us no new information, since the +/- 2SD standard error of the mean always includes all three numbers … thus, we cannot say if the average, or any of the individual series, are to be preferred.

4) The Huascaran record is the only one showing a cooler MWP. However, it appears to have internal difficulties. Unlike the other two records (Quelccaya and Sajama), there is an abrupt discontinuity in the variance. Up to the year 1700, the standard deviation is 0.5, and post 1700, the standard deviation is 1.0. This pattern is not present in either of the other two records.

5) At the same time as the change in the variance of the Huascaran data, the average changes as well, warming by a full percent around 1750 and then staying stable thereafter. Say what? I’d suspect that record.

6) Of the three records, the only one with a statistically significant trend overall (from the year 1000 to 2000) is Sajama, which shows cooling.

7) The MWP shown in each of the records peaks in about 1450, and the LIA peaks in about 1750. None of the three records show a significant trend from 1000 to 1450. Quelccaya and Sajama show significant cooling 1450-1750. Only Quelccaya shows significant warming 1750-2000.

8) The graph in Figure 6 is extremely misleading, as the vertical scale for Sajama is compressed about 3:1 compared to the other two.

9) The weights in their “compositing” method are based on the standard deviation (SD) of the data … but of course, that assumes normal, stationary data. The Huascaran data is highly autocorrelated (0.71), and the other two to a lesser degree, which affects the standard deviation. If we adjust the SD of all three sites data for autocorrelation and use their compositing method, we get a very different “composite”. And curiously, this new “composite”, using the corrected standard deviations, is virtually identical to the direct average, showing a warmer MWP …

Overall? The records don’t really tell us anything. Most trends are not significant. With only three records, an average is meaningless. The Huascaran record looks suspect. The compositing method distorts the results.

Bad statistics … no cookies.

w.

PS – I cannot prove that their “compositing” method was chosen over averaging simply because it produces a cooler MWP. But when else have you seen this method used to determine a temperature average, or as they say, a “low latitude history”? …

Willis Eschenbach

Lee, I went to the Idso site regarding Quelccaya, copied the name of the article into Google, and downloaded it immediately … is there a problem?

Lee

sigh…
“They noticably do NOT link to the other articles about the other glaciers in the study, nor to any article about the entire history and its conclusions, nor to the abstract of the study.”

Emphasis added.

Willis Eschenbach

Man, as bad as the Thomson study is, I wouldn’t link to it either …

Lee, you seem to want to be spoonfed this stuff, and you complain if the links aren’t there. Sure, it would be nice if the link were there, but if it’s not, me, I just go find it, the Idsos don’t have to do all my work for me.

w.

JMS

Oh, come on Willis, this is the internet and the Idso’s clearly know how to use hyperlinks. There’s a reason they don’t make it easy…

jae

Fair enough, Lee. But it is a good place to start your searches, if you know as little as I do about climate science. And I am sure there ARE some mistakes in the Idsos’ documents and approaches to the subjects. They are probably not super human beings, like you seem to think you are.