Comments on: Another AGU Submission?

By: Russell C

Russell C — Thu, 13 Sep 2012 00:07:57 +0000

Handy 6 year old reference, don’t know how I’d missed this Mother Jones article where Mann mentions Gelbspan. Link for posterity: http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2005/04/man-behind-hockey-stick

By: Hank Roberts

Hank Roberts — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 14:14:12 +0000

Noted.

Anyhow, point being:

“Insanity and sanity are not mutually exclusive under the legal doctrines considering the burden of proof.”

Science has to do better than the law, to be respected.

By: Dave Dardinger

Dave Dardinger — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 13:57:32 +0000

Note that if you click the ‘b-quote’ button and then paste in a link you need to click the button again which (will now show /b-quote.) But if you paste your link first and then highlight it and click the b-quote button it will put both the b-quote and the /b-quote in. Myself, I try to leave a space before and after the tags just to be safe, but that probably isn’t necessary. I suppose most all browsers can handle the tag running into the text.

By: Hank Roberts

Hank Roberts — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 11:37:21 +0000

Mangled html; there are 2 links in the prior post;
– first (all but the last line of text) is to the NYT story from which the Specter quote is taken, explaining “more likely than not” — a phrase recently much used in securities law advice since the 1980s;
–the second one (the blog link) is to a recent example of “more likely than not” legal advice as it’s now blowing up in court cases.

By: Hank Roberts

Hank Roberts — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 11:31:09 +0000

This is why you don’t want to go to scientists and say they should be as reliable as business people in disclosures, as explained by Sen. Arlen Specter (link above) — the standard of “more likely than not” to be found legal is criterion for much of the legal advice about what securities disclosures a business should make.

————————–
“Mr. Specter. Insanity and sanity are not mutually exclusive under the legal doctrines considering the burden of proof. For example, to prove that a person is sane – to use the vernacular – and can be released from an institution, he must prove sanity by a preponderance of the evidence, which means more likely than not, or, say, 51 percent. To prove that a person is not insane, as was the standard in the Hinckley case, beyond a reasonable doubt – you cannot quantify it (but) you know it is more than 51 percent, say, hypothetically, 70 percent.”
—————–

Look at the recent stock option backdating stories — the legal advice was that backdating options and not disclosing the practice was “more likely than not” okay.

http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/whitecollarcrime_blog/2006/04/the_prosecution_1.html

Don’t be like them.

By: Steve Bloom

Steve Bloom — Mon, 11 Sep 2006 19:57:30 +0000

Re #144: Regarding the article, I didn’t say it discussed the GRACE results; it couldn’t have since it pre-dated the GRACE paper by some months. It did find a general consistency between the first two studies, and the GRACE paper itself discussed its consistency with these. I don’t have time right now to look at the discrepancies you mention, but I would note that there is an obvious way for altitude to increase while mass decreases in a given region.

Re #145: Agreed, but note also that the ice sheet melt results must ultimately be made consistent with sea level rise and ocean heat content. Although its results too are a little preliminary, the recent much-discussed Lyman et al paper relies in part on there being a melt level at least as large as that found by GRACE (and probably quite a bit larger, but that’s another discussion).

Re #146: It seems generally agreed that there just isn’t enough ice in Greenland and environs to have a major impact on the THC. There have been several recent papers along those lines, and I don’t recall seeing anything to the contrary other than the kind of speculation you mention. I think the reason for the speculation was the fact that fresh water surges associated with glacial terminations do seem able to affect the THC in that manner, but it turns out on closer examination that such a consequence requires a volume of fresh water that is only available at such times.

By: Barney Frank

Barney Frank — Mon, 11 Sep 2006 17:57:19 +0000

# 142,

My conclusion was that nothing was definitive in the assorted data. Its very easy to come to that conclusion, if one has an open mind. It is no doubt possible to come to other conclusions if one has an open mind as well.

This is as good a place as any for me to ask this question.
I was watching a program on the LIA on the Discovery channel the other day. They provided a possible explanation for its onset as the rapid melting of the Greenland ice cap during the MWP which cut off the ocean’s heat conveyor and the resultant cooling of the North Atlantic. Is there evidence for this or is it merely hypothetical?
And if that process does occur isn’t the implications that if the Greenland ice sheet does melt the next hundred years may be another LIA not MWP?

By: BradH

BradH — Mon, 11 Sep 2006 13:17:59 +0000

The other problem with the GRACE satellite, of course, is that it has only been aloft since 2002. Three years’ of data might catch some short-term variations, but it would be a very big call to extrapolate this into a meaningful, long-term trend.

By: Willis Eschenbach

Willis Eschenbach — Mon, 11 Sep 2006 06:25:13 +0000

Re 142, Steve B., I fear this is more non-science from Science … the editorial merely finds no contradiction between the two studies. It does not attempt to assess the combined effect of the studies, other than to say:

Increased accumulation in the ice-sheet interior, and even in some coastal areas, could offset losses attributable to surface melting at lower elevations

Since reference 11 explicitly shows increased accumulation in the ice-sheet interior, this seems like a curious oversight. The Rignot et al. paper says:

Climate warming in the last decade has enhanced surface melt and slightly increased snow precipitation to reduce the surface mass balance compared to the 1960 to 1990 average by an estimated 35 km3 ice/year in 1996 and 46 km3 ice/year in 2000 (19), which we linearly extrapolate to 57 km3 ice/year in 2005. Total ice sheet loss, combining dynamic losses and deviations from a zero-anomaly surface mass balance, is then 91 ± 31 km3 ice/year in 1996, 138 ± 31 km3 ice/year in 2000, and 224 ± 41 km3 ice/year in 2005.

However, in fact the reference 11 clearly shows an increase rather than a decrease in the surface mass balance for the ice-sheet interior, so this is a significant oversight. Using the reference 11 mass balance (+ 75 km3/year, rather than – 57 km3/year) gives a loss of 93km3 rather than a loss of 224 km3 in 2005, This is a significant difference, one that the editorial overlooked.

On another subject, in total contrast to the GRACE study claims of melting ice in the east and no change in the west of Greenland, the editorial reported:

The pattern of change was variable, however, with growth of 10 to 20 cm year-1 in southwest and parts of east Greenland and negative values of 25 to 30 cm year-1 in some lower-elevation western areas in particular (11, 12).

Thus, the GRACE results are NOT consistent as you claim, and the editorial did not say that the GRACE results were consistent … in fact, it didn’t mention the GRACE results at all …

By: David Stockwell

David Stockwell — Mon, 11 Sep 2006 02:50:58 +0000

#140. When they do study the variance due to parameter error in CGCMs e.g. monte carlo studies like the climate @ home project, it gets reported in Nature as potential extreme possibilities, not as uncertainty in the model. Moreover, prominent climate scientists say nothing to disabuse us.