Continuation of Unthreaded #16
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Climate Audit 
390 Comments
Gunnar, I don’t think we’re readily going to resolve all the differences between us. I agree that there are problems with many CO2 measurements, this includes both the modern and ‘historic’ measurements. For example sampling close to vegetation, in enclosed spaces etc. can lead to very high CO2 levels being recorded. Without a careful analysis of all the information relating to every sample it would be difficult, indeed impossible to assess the quality of much of the data.
However, I think we both agree that CO2 levels are rising in the atmosphere. We can argue about how much and the source of it. For me the evidence strongly points towards fossil fuel burning as being the main source of this ‘extra’ CO2. The simple mass balance calculations that you present aren’t appropriate because they don’t appear to take into account isotopic equilibration between atmospheric CO2 and dissolved inorganic carbon in the oceans.
This also brings me to the point that there is a difference between carbon dioxide and oxygen solubility in water. The control on oxygen solubility is simply the Henry’s law constant. Carbon dioxide is more complicated. It is part of a buffered system involving carbonic acid, bicarbonate and carbonate ions.
I offer my invitation to you and others again. If you would like to visit my laboratory I can show you exactly how we make our measurements, some of the work we are doing and be able to explore these ideas in much more detail.
I guess Dave B agrees with Gunnar. Mighty brave of you.
Gunnar says:
I apologize. I didn’t realize I was conversing with a conspiracy theorist. By all means continue without me.
Re #1, Paul Dennis
Are you the Paul Dennis at UEA ?
Do you have anything to do with the CRU folk ?
It’s got nothing to do with conspiracy, just agenda, which was clearly stated in the quote that Gunnar used.
Mark
Thought this might be interesting in relation to CO2, the claim is that aerosols s are causing heating over India and may be responsible for the Himilayas melting. Leads to some interesting conjectures on whether sites downwind of the industrializing nations are showing more of a temperature increase than those that have reduced or maintained their polution levels upstream of the temperature stations.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6926597.stm
What’s more interesting is that the alarmists have been claiming aerosols cause cooling, in order to explain why temps haven’t risen faster as well as the temperature dip from the late 30s to the late 70s… hehe, oops.
Mark
I just had several temperate posts deleted. Including one where I asked for the R code for one of Steve’s procedures which is in question.
I haven’t been up to date on this site recently, so don’t know if this has been posted/discussed B4
However seems there is a new study out that rather than being based on unvalidated GCMS, instead is touted to use “statistics” 🙂
New statistical analysis confirms human role in climate change
Rather than trying to simulate the atmosphere as climate models do, Verdes has used statistics to assess man’s role in climate change.
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/30711
Luxembourg was until recent times the world’s highest per capita steel producer. Given the size of the place, it was probably the highest per area producer as well.
A good place to look for localized CO2 concentrations.
Re #6
That puzzled me as well. If aerosols cause cooling why are industrializing regions of China warming much faster than elsewhere?
Otherwise, back to the 1970s when dust/particles were touted as the main human climate driver.
Re #8
The analysis would be much more interesting if he separated the effect of different GHGs and aerosols. Presumably he could, which begs the question why he didn’t. Aerosols aren’t a more important forcing than GHGs (and specifically CO2) are they?
“Anyway, I’m based in the UK”
Does “The Inq” mean anything to you?
Re 8:
Can someone who has read the full article please explain why my reactions ‘simple post hoc reasoning’ and ‘correlation is not causation’ are wrong?
I approve of the idea that something is going on, but my naive bet is that there are many other things that fit his ‘driving force’. I bet if you do the graph against surface pollution of the oceans you’d get a good fit as well. Or number of a/c flying above the tropopause. Or even car production figures.
JF
Re 8
from a quick glance at the article in question, i doe’s show a link to temperatures. Rather a graph that could look like a temperatures increase; but only if you don’t look too hard. This Driving force (WTF), seems to show an increase of 2.5 from the 1980’s; exactly what 2.5 is I don’t know. It’s nothing to do with temperatures and stops at 2000, which usually means its hiding a divergence
What I’m saying is its twaddle.
Possible if the full article was available I would think differently, but I don’t think so.
Here is a May 2007 paper that gets 2.1°C in a 100 years.
Click to access tung07.pdf
Bob
Gunnar:
Currently combustion of fossil fuels emits about 7 GtC yearly (this data is highly accurate, based on fossil fuel consumption statistics of IEA ‘€” International Energy Administration), and atmosphere increases it CO2 concentration by about half of this amount.
Now, it would be correct to say that increase of atmospheric CO2 is due to combustion of fossil fuels, accelerated in last 50 years. Simple arithmetics. However, I strongly suspect that antropogenic CO2 flux does not really matter. There is huge carbon yearly flux, and antropogenic CO2 constitutes only couple of percent of it. Balance of CO2 in atmosphere depends on it concentration (vegetation aerial carbon fertilization and ocean upper layer solubility), temperature of land (vegetation), temperature of ocean surface (solubility and phytoplankton), etc.
Atmospheric concentration of CO2 is what global organic- and inorganic- carbon balance allows it to be. Put in other words, current climatic and geological conditions allow 390 ppm CO2 in atmosphere. Sources of it increase from “preindustrial” 280 ppm level do not matter.
#8, 11, 13, 14
I have had a glance at the original paper in PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS, 99. The analysis consists of fitting a statistical model using temperature anomalies, total solar irradiance, and volcanic activity to generate some sort of “reconstructed external forcing” which is then visually compared in a graph to “combined GHG and aerosol radiative forcing levels” to demonstrate their similarity. This is done using two “independent” methods – both of them from neural network methodology (which is not one of my areas of specific expertise): feedforward artificial neural network and radial basis functions. Both of these methods look like they would contain large numbers of parameters and be ripe for overfitting. Both models are not extended past 2000 even though the paper was submitted in 2006 and published last month.
One of the graphs (the ANN one) is shown in the link given by Brent in #8. There is unexplained oscillatory behavior visible in the ANN graph and the fit does look like it may start diverging around 2000. One of the problems with this type on analysis is that other factors are not taken into account. For example, they explicitly state that cloud effects are ignored. If one looks at the graph at the GISS site for cloud anomalies, there seems to be a substantial decrease in cloud cover from about the mid 1980s to 2000 which would alter the solar irradiation reaching the earth’s surface and just as easily account for the “external forcing”.
By the way, Steve, what are the legalities for posting graphs in posts in this blog from research papers which are available for purchase on line?
#16
Non-conformity with your world view is not evidence that research is “fraudulent”. More likely it is an indication that you are wrong.
Are you comparing the same types of aerosols? Some are essentially white along a wide range of bandwidths. Some are colored, and thus absorb in various bandwidths.
gdn,
Ask Mileswothy, he’ll tell you that without a doubt, aerosols on average, strongly cool the planet. That’s what they have been putting into their models.
RichardT,
Nice double standard there. When a study violates your world view, you have been quite quick to declare that the study, not you, is wrong.
#20 MarkW
Since you ask so nicely, I don’t think I’ve commented much on aerosols because I’m not that knowledgable. Sulphates that interact to produce clouds cause the clouds to be brighter. Such clouds reflect more sunlight and so cool the planet. On the other hand, if you have a “brown cloud” of gunk then it seems reasonable that its absorption of sunlight warms the layer of air that holds the cloud while resulting in a cooling at the surface below it.
#20
There is a world of difference between “wrong” and “fraudulent”. Accusing someone of fraud is libelous unless the allegation can be substantiated.
Re#8, etc – based on the graphics and explanation in the article, it looks like the statistical analysis considers aerosols to warm the globe hand-in-hand with CO2 emissions. So we have an independent confirmation of anthropogenic climate change which at its foundation flies into climate science and GCMs…yet it is somehow supposed to support the claims of climate science and GCMs, just because the end result is the same.
#16,22. I agree with Richard T. There’s no reason to believe that ice core measurements are “probably fraudulent”. This type of over-wrought language is also very counter-productive to whatever point that you’re making. You have to remember that people always see only your worst and weakest point. So by saying something foolish like this, you completely waste your message. BTW I also think that estimates of CO2 levels are quite plausible and do not wish personally to engage in discussions of this matter.
Also by this sort of over-wrought language, you diminish the currency when one tries to properly evaluate Mann’s withholding of adverse verification r2 results.
This is essentially what PCA does, i.e. it performs a correlation between some measurement (tree rings) and temperature. The results have then been compared to CO2 via correlation again. The potential for overfitting remains.
Mark
GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 34, L13705, doi:10.1029/2007GL030288, 2007
A new dynamical mechanism for major climate shifts
Anastasios A. Tsonis, Kyle Swanson, Sergey Kravtsov
Department of Mathematical Sciences, Atmospheric Sciences Group, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA
Abstract
We construct a network of observed climate indices in the period 1900’€”2000 and investigate their collective behavior. The results indicate that this network synchronized several times in this period. We find that in those cases where the synchronous state was followed by a steady increase in the coupling strength between the indices, the synchronous state was destroyed, after which a new climate state emerged. These shifts are associated with significant changes in global temperature trend and in ENSO variability. The latest such event is known as the great climate shift of the 1970s. We also find the evidence for such type of behavior in two climate simulations using a state-of-the-art model. This is the first time that this mechanism, which appears consistent with the theory of synchronized chaos, is discovered in a physical system of the size and complexity of the climate system.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2007/2007GL030288.shtml
Milesworthy,
Then it must of been another poster who uses the same name. I remember a discussion that we had, wherein I asked you how you could justify using aerosols in your models, but not the affect of cosmic rays on clouds.
You declared that it has been proven that aerosols cool the planet (you specifically mentioned the affect ships had on marine clouds), while there was no evidence that met your qualifications that proved that cosmic rays had any impact on cloud formation. (I might note that Svensmark has done experiments with non-saturated atmopheres, and has found such a connection.)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Bush administration unveiled plans on Friday for global warming talks next month that will bring together the world’s biggest polluters to seek agreement on reducing greenhouse gases.
U.S. President George W. Bush has invited the European Union, the United Nations and 11 other countries to the September 27-28 meeting in Washington to work toward setting a long-term goal by 2008 to cut emissions.
Under fire for resisting tougher action on global warming, Bush proposed the conference in late May before a summit of the Group of Eight industrial nations in Germany, but had withheld details.
In a letter to invitees obtained by Reuters, Bush assured them that “the United States is committed to collaborating with other major economies” to agree on a framework for reducing gas emissions blamed for global climate change.
But a senior U.S. official said the administration stood by its opposition to mandatory economy-wide caps. Many climate experts say that without binding U.S. emissions targets, the chance for significant progress is limited.
Bush agreed with other leaders of the G8 in June to make “substantial” but unspecified reductions in climate-warming emissions and to negotiate a new global climate pact that would extend and broaden the Kyoto Protocol beyond 2012.
But Bush has refused to sign up to numerical targets before rising powers like China and India make similar pledges. Convincing them to join the U.N. process will be crucial to reversing a rise in global temperatures.
China and India are both invited to the September conference, together with Japan, Canada, Brazil, South Korea, Mexico, Russia, Australia, Indonesia and South Africa. The EU delegation will include representatives from France, Germany, Italy and Britain, the U.S. official said.
“At this meeting, we would seek agreement on the process by which the major economies would, by the end of 2008, agree upon a post-2012 framework that could include a long-term goal, nationally defined mid-term goals and strategies and sector-based approaches for improving energy security and reducing greenhouse gas emissions,” Bush wrote.
Can someone help me with the USHCN Time of Observations adjustment? The NOAA web site describes it as follows:
They then go on to say that this adjustment is about 0.3C for all sites. I can understand such a large adjustment if it is to correct for actual measurements taken at different times of the day. But if it is just to correct for a 24 hour summary period being shifted a few hours, ie 5am-5am instead of midnight-midnight, that adjustment strikes me as really large. In the latter case, aren’t you just rolling a month of data, about 720 hours, by a few hours forward or back? That does not seem like it would generate on average a 0.3 degree bias so I must be misunderstanding the definition. Help?
Re: #24
Not only does it adversely affect the poster it affects those here (the great majority I assume) who want to read and contribute to more substantial discussions. These statements tend to provoke more counter statements and then the discussion gets sidetracked into something off topic. A recent example was the affect of an AC unit 100 feet from a thermometer. What a waste of time that discussions was — in the context of the post.
#26: Wow!
#16, 22, 24 and 30
It also puts off many people with valid points to make from contributing.
Re #29,
coyote,
For an introduction to time of observatin bias, you might
find more than you care for here.
>> there are problems with many CO2 measurements, this includes both the modern and historic’ measurements.
Paul, we agree on this.
>> For example sampling close to vegetation, in enclosed spaces etc. can lead to very high CO2 levels being recorded.
You imply that “close to vegetation” and “enclosed spaces” both lead to high C02 levels, when “close to vegetation” leads to lower C02 measurements. Analogy: a fountain, with a water source in the middle, which would fill up the container, until it started spilling over the sides. If the current water level was currently below the lip, and water from the source increased, we would measure rising levels. It would be foolish to imagine the levels continuing to increase.
>> Without a careful analysis of all the information relating to every sample it would be difficult, indeed impossible to assess the quality of much of the data.
Correct.
>> However, I think we both agree that CO2 levels are rising in the atmosphere. For me the evidence strongly points towards fossil fuel burning as being the main source of this extra’ CO2.
I suspect they are, but based on a very active sun heating the oceans.
>> The simple mass balance calculations that you present aren’t appropriate because they don’t appear to take into account isotopic equilibration between atmospheric CO2 and dissolved inorganic carbon in the oceans.
Well, being an EE, my expertise is certainly not in chemistry. However, my source is Tom Segalstad, who is a geochemist. He does seem to take that into account when he says:
http://folk.uio.no/tomvs/esef/esef4.htm
>> This also brings me to the point that there is a difference between carbon dioxide and oxygen solubility in water. The control on oxygen solubility is simply the Henry’s law constant. Carbon dioxide is more complicated. It is part of a buffered system involving carbonic acid, bicarbonate and carbonate ions.
There is buffering, but I don’t think it changes things, since as Segalstad says, “All together these buffers give in principle an infinite buffer capacity”. This explains why empirical evidence supports the Segalstad view, and contradicts the AGW dogma.
>> I offer my invitation to you and others again.
Thanks, I may get to the UK someday.
>> A good place to look for localized CO2 concentrations
#9 Philip_B,
Mauna Loa is also a good place for LOCALIZED C02 concentrations. If you wanted to mazimize your C02 reading, you would pick a spot next to the biggest C02 sources, like hot equatorial waters and volcanoes. Wait, that fits Hawaii exactly.
#16 Andrey, thanks for the kind words.
Contamination from drilling fluids and more than twenty physical-chemical processes occurring in the ice before, during, and after drilling, make ice cores unsuitable for paleoatmospheric work (Jaworowski et al., 1992 b). Such low atmospheric CO2 levels below approximately 250 ppmv (McKay et al., 1991) would have led to extinction of certain plant species. This has not been recorded by paleobotanists, showing clearly that the ice core CO2 results are not representative of paleoatmospheres (Jaworowski et al., 1992 b), hence the CO2-ice-core-method and its results must be rejected.
>> stomata proxies indicate higher that IPCC assumed 280 concentrations of CO2 in “pre-industrial era”,
Based on this proxy, and other accurate measurements, the pre-industrial “normal” c02 level is 335.
>> emits about 7 GtC yearly (this data is highly accurate
I think it’s more like 5 or 6, but the estimate is hardly “highly accurate”. I think it’s mostly guesswork. It is not a measurement.
>> that the average output of a nonlinear system is not the output of the average of inputs.
#230 Allan, you have expressed a much more elegant way of summarizing what I was trying to say. In effect, they are modelling the earth as a planet that doesn’t rotate, with the sun being 1/4 of it’s actual strength. Their wishful thinking is that the sun is a constant.
#26, I am struck by some of the findings in that paper. For instance, compare this:
With the predictions of Landscheidt based on oscillations of the sun around the solar system center of mass. He predicts a solar minimum in 2030 and a maximum in 2069 based on the 166 year Gleissberg cycle. Interestingly, there was a phase shift that reversed the effect of the Gleissberg oscillations in 1976, and resulted in two maximums 1952 and 1984 back to back without an intervening minima. Landscheidt published several papers (see landscheidt.auditblogs.com for more) that linked these solar oscillations to PDO, NAO, El Nino, etc.
I find it fascinating that this group has tied those phenomenon to large scale climate changes and predict future changes that match almost exactly what Landscheidt predicted for solar cycles. “Intrinsic property of the climate system” indeed!
Bjorn Lomborg ‘€” the author of The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring The Real State of The World (2002) ‘€” has a new book coming out on global warming. IT had been scheduled for release next February.
However, Lomborg’s Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming has been pushed up to early September ‘€” at least in the US.
Re # 26, #39 I’ll add this one to my must-read pile. I wonder what that does to the aerosol hypothesis as an explanation for the temperature upturn in the mid-1970s.
#39–I would be careful…while Landscheidt may have been right, and did have some legitimately published articles, I think it should wait until a better confirmation…Also note that the “cooling” the authors of the AGU article predict in the next couple of decades is really only a cooling back down to 1980’s levels…not quite the “Little Ice Age” that Landscheidt was predicting…finally, Landscheidt is very vague in terms of the underlying physical mechanisms.
Re 369
Dennis: The antiphase argument that you made had me convinced until I looked at the Mauna Loa yearly variations and realized something. If CO2 and O2 yearly cycles are in antiphase then the atmospheric “hang time” of CO2 is zero. This is inconsistent with the claims that CO2 remains in the atmosphere for 150 years or even 5 years.
If we assume that CO2 is completely recycled in three time constants (95% of the CO2 removed) then the lowest hang time estimate of 5 years would imply a time constant of 1.67 years. This would produce a large phase delay in the the yearly cyclical relationship between CO2 and O2. The crests of O2 would not appear 180 degrees out of sync with CO2 but more like 240 degrees and the peak to peak O2 values would be cut in half, not doubled. If the hang time were 150 years then the peak to peak values would be immeasurably small.
The explanation that the ocean accounts for the two to one ratio of O2 changes to CO2 changes is a qualitative explanation which needs some quantitative data to back it up. The oceans would have to be able to sink 50% of the emitted CO2 (assuming that the human CO2 emission estimates are accurate, these numbers seem to be quite controversial). Surely this absorption would be measurable. We would expect to seem many tons of additional carbonates being deposited somewhere, wouldn’t we?
Mzed,
I don’t take Landscheidt as the gospel on anything. I do think he was very good at predicting El Nino (although he too had his misses there) and other climatological events based on solar cycles. Also, as we go along, more and more research in solar physics is starting to back some of his other theories on solar motion and magnetic activity.
In terms of how the authors predict T through 2030 and beyond, I am not invested in thinking we are going to have a huge “Day After Tomorrow” type of climate swing prior to 2030. I think you also need to look at what was included in their modeling. They were using a model that includes a strong CO2 forcing assumption and weak aerosols. I find it interesting that they basically throw out the first 100 years of the model run (1900-2000) without really discussing what it showed. I suspect that the first 100 years of the modelling was off because it overestimates the impact of CO2 and underestimates the role of solar and aerosols. If that is true, then the first 100 years would have shown too large of a swing in temperatures since most AGWers agree that we can account for most of the pre-1980s temperature increases with non-CO2 forcings alone. Since the model also is likely to underestimate the impact of solar changes due to the overestimation of CO2, then it is not surprising that they would not predict a large cooling for 2030.
Also, in fairness to Landscheidt, I think he is actually referring to the 2070 event and beyond as the “new little ice age”, not the 2030 minimum.
#43–maybe, but the Tsonis et al article doesn’t really project beyond 2100–and the cooling they show at the end of the century just barely gets back down to 1980s levels…
It is disappointing that they don’t report 20th c. results, I agree. But we can get a hint from their graphs using 1860 gg levels as a baseline–b/c, if I’m interpreting it correctly, they do show 1960 onwards for that (“year 100” etc.) If you look at the graph, it roughly corresponds to the shape of the surface curve since then–but it’s a little off, and the warming amplitude is too small (and the cooling amplitude in the 1980s is too big). You can throw in solar which helps a little, but not much.
If I can indulge in some back-of-the-envelope math: remember that Scaffeta and West said solar irradiance could only explain as much as 20-40% of the warming since 1980 (which has been a little more than .3C, so maybe ~.1C at most) This new analysis can only explain about .075C at most of the warming since then (“year 120” to “year 140” or thereabouts). That would still leave well over .1C, maybe as much as ~.17C, unexplained by either solar influences or this new oceanic driver. So there would still be room for a gg role, albeit a smaller one than some suggest, I guess.
In fact I wonder–this site often discusses the surface record–would this new oceanic driver affect only surface temperatures, or would it affect atmospheric temperatures as well? I have no idea what the answer is, but I’m sure someone will figure it out.
I am among those who don’t doubt that GHGs have a role in warming. I believe there is ample physical evidence to suggest that the power of the CO2 forcing is off by quite a bit in the IPCC’s projections. If you use a lower sensitivity value for CO2 and assume that there is a little more UHI trend in the surface record than current adjusted for, then you can pretty much reconcile their values with the surface temperature record.
I am not sure if you have seen this paper ([url]http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2005/2004GL021110.shtml[/url]). Landscheidt’s theories look at the angular momentum generated by the Sun’s transit in an irregular path around the center of mass for the solar system in two dimensions (x and y if you will). That paper makes an argument that the vertical component of the interplanetary magnetic field (Bz) goes through long periods where one polarity dominates over the other and speculates that the cause may be a shifting of the heliomagnetic equator away from the heliographic equator. If you assume that the sun also moves away from the solar system center of mass vertically (in the z direction), then such a change in the heliomagnetic field would make sense, and would explain why one polarity would dominate over the other for a period of time.
I am still trying to see if anybody has a simple figure showing the sun’s movement in the z direction relative to the center of mass like the spiral diagram Landscheidt uses to show movement in the x,y plane. I would like to compare that diagram with a long term Bz record and then compare the combined dataset to temperature, SST, and other climate measures to see if there is a correlation. If you look carefully at Landscheidt’s spiral plot in the “new little ice age” paper, the dates where the Tsonis paper described the past synchronization points in their indicators all correspond to maxima or minima in the sun’s distance from the solar system center of mass. I find it hard to believe that such a correlation is merely coincidental.
Re #42 >> If CO2 and O2 yearly cycles are in antiphase then the atmospheric “hang time” of CO2 is zero. This is inconsistent with the claims that CO2 remains in the atmosphere for 150 years or even 5 years.
Any given C02 molecule can spend any amount of time floating around. His life is controlled by chaos. It’s analagous to the water cycle. A molecule of H2o could be unlucky enough to evaporate right in front of a hurricane, and be rained down shortly thereafter. That molecule could probably get his hang gliding fee back, if he complained loud enough. A C02 molecule that I just exhaled could go on a grand adventure, circling the globe countless times, and be absorbed decades later by a small gnarly bush on top of Alta, Utaah. After I whipped past the bush at 40 mph, it would be torn violently from its beloved host, and returned to dust. Eventually, it would return to the atmosphere again, remembering how to fly like people remember how to ride a bike. Then, suddenly, on a cold and snowy winter day near antartica, the molecule drowned! The cold water sunk the ocean floor, moving ever so slowly, just barely skipping the much longer route into the crust. Eons later, the current came to the surface again and was warmed by the sun. Brrr, that was a cold and lonely trip. Suddenly, the molecule lept for joy, as he started floating in the air again. But then, just as suddenly, he drowned again, then was absorbed by some algae. Then was eaten by some little animal, then a bigger animal, then by a salmon. The salmon was pulled up a line, killed, then placed on a grill. The salmon was then eaten by myself, sailing along the ocean blue, like all good norwegians do. Shortly thereafter, it was rudely considered waste, and exhaled by me again.
The great circle of the carbonic cycle is complete.
Or put another way: The CO2 atmospheric life time, which is certainly about 5 years, is an average only.
#42 Gunnar, thankyou for all your thoughtful comments, they are provocative in the nicest sense in that they force me to think about these systems afresh. My comment about the oxygen and carbon dioxide being out of phase is based on observation. This is largely seen in the northern hemisphere and represents seasonal cycling with photosynthesis dominating during the northern summer and respiration in the winter. The cycling is very much damped in the southern hemisphere. This response to seasonal photosynthesis obviously has a very short time constant.
The question of overall residence time is different and can be estimated in a number of ways. A simple calculation based on the size of the atmospheric CO2 reservoir and the atmosphere-ocean fluxes yields something like 5 years or so. This is in broad agreement with other estimates using tracers. I don’t think this residence time is in question amongst geochemists.
This residence time is different again to the relaxation time for the system once it has been perturbed. The question here is how long does it take the atmosphere-ocean-terrestrial system to establish equilibrium given that one of the systems is perturbed. I don’t know how long this time is. People suggest 100 years, 150 years and even longer.
With regard to Tom Segelstads work..I need to go back and read it in some detail before commenting. I will do so and if Steve will allow me the space will write a summary and critique. I am speaking with some degree of experience here being an isotope geochemist myself.
A comment about the ice core work. This is incredibly difficult and a lot of effort is going in to characterising how gas behaves in the firn layer and the processes that occur during final closure and entrapment of gas into the ice. A lot of this work has produced some exciting physical chemistry including the first observation of gravitational separation of isotopes and gases in a column..first predicted by Gibbs and observed many tens of decades later. In my lab we measure 15N/14N nirogen and 36Ar/40Ar isotope ratios of gas trapped in Antarctic ice core as a means of trying to get an estimate of rapid temperature fluctuations during the last glacial and glacial-interglacial transition. We don’t do CO2 work but I am aware of the care that goes into these measurements. They are not perfect by any means and there is much more work to do. There are important questions relating to how we can square the stomatal density estimates with the ice core data etc. There is significant smoothing that is inherent in the ice core record but obviously not in the stomatal density estimates. How can we equate these two etc. We need to better understand the realtionship between firn depth, temperature, the role of the convective zone and gas age. There are important questions about gas solubility in the ice, adsorption, the effect of ageing, stress, thermal gradients etc. Progress will be made and our understanding of atmospheric CO2 levels it’s variability will become clearer.
My last point..my comment about variability of CO2 levels in enclosed spaces, close to vegetation etc. wasn’t meant to imply that close to vegetation CO2 levels were always high. However they can be at times. Plants respitre at night and wooded areas do have high CO2 levels. The diurnal variations can be as much as 100ppm of CO2. I really wanted to point out that any sampling needs to be done with care.
#46 Yes I agree Gunnar….the CO2 lifetime of 5 years is nothing more, and nothing less than an average. Some molecules will have a much longer residence time and others much less. A nice little molecular story you told there.
PAul, did you ever get any acknowledgement from Thompson from your inquiry about inconsistent Guliya-Dunde versions?
Steve, not that I’m aware of. There’s a possibility that if it is an email it’s still in my inbox. 8 weeks away and I have many thousands of emails still to sift through and most of yhese to junk. I’m going to pursue the question though and hope that some pressure from all of us can help release of the raw data.
>> My comment about the oxygen and carbon dioxide being out of phase is based on observation.
It makes sense that they would be.
>> first predicted by Gibbs
Reminds me that I did a paper deriving something related to Gibbs, the greatest thermodynamicist of them all. Although, my Gibbs related derivation was connected to superconductivity.
>> There is significant smoothing that is inherent in the ice core record
I consider Jaworowski an expert in ice cores. Another point about ice core data that is quite subtle, yet profound. The average spacing of vostok samples is like 1400 years. This is latched onto a sample per minute dataset, ignoring known accurate measurements over the last 100 years, without a second thought about integrity. And then claims are made about historical C02 maximums. This means that there is only like a 3.4% confidence level for the statement that the present CO2 trend is unprecedented in the last 420,000 years. It could easily have been missed.
>> I really wanted to point out that any sampling needs to be done with care.
Right, I really agree with this. There really is no substitute for honest, common sense science, performed thoughtfully and carefully, probing every result with known scientific laws, seeking only the truth, whatever it may be, publishing all your data. And if you need to do some statistics, for goodness, seek competent help. 🙂
I knew the samples were far apart, but did not realize they were _that_ far apart. Fun with Nyquist to be sure.
Mark
#51….a colleague once told me ‘if you need to do statistics on your data then you designed your experiment incorrectly’!
Then again I have a beautiful little book on statistics which has some of the best advice…’before you design your experiment, or data gathering consult a statistician’…or words to that effect. It’s late here and I’m paraphrasing.
I agree with you about Gibbs……and also one or two others. I still refer back to my trustee Glasstone and Lewis for much of my physical chemistry.
It’s obviously late, I meant ‘trusty’ Glasstone and Lewis!
#48 >> the CO2 lifetime of 5 years is nothing more, and nothing less than an average. A nice little molecular story you told there.
Well, that it’s a cycle is obvious to you, but many of the non-scientific types don’t grasp what’s meant by a cycle. I had one guy tell me that if it rained for 100 days straight, the sea level would rise.
>> Plants respitre at night and wooded areas do have high CO2 levels.
Right, because of all the dead, decaying leaves and wood. It’s a little ironic that the solution to all this might be:
clear cutting! New growth absorbs C02 like gangbusters.
Does anyone know what the level of CO2 in the ocean is estimated by sampling to be? I don’t think anyone’s talked about it.
#1 Paul, there’s a couple of things. As much more CO2 as there is, levels are rising I would say, without doubt, from both ice cores and air samples; unless -both- are grossly wrong since 1860. I don’t think that’s possible. I did notice a variance in the linear trend line for ice vs air where air was rising a tad faster than ice, but nothing excessive, about on line with the SSTs temp change per year.
Reading U 16 it seems to me you’re not making any statements about GW (or maybe better put, you’re not commenting on the meaning of what’s going on with the parts of the cycle you’ve talked about).
But to say that if we weren’t burning carbon, they’d still be at 280 is too simplistic — we don’t know that. They could have gone up on their own even with no people, they could have gone up because of the sheer number of people alive and breathing, they could have gone up because it’s warmer from some other reason (sunlight, reduced magnetic field, whatever) and the system “wants” more in the atmosphere to transport the heat. It could be because of the Earth’s molten core is warmer and the oceans are letting off more of what they’ve sunk or are unable to sink as much as before.
I’m making this simple and leaving things off, and I’m sure I have some concepts and mechanisms wrong, but you get the point I hope; correcting major errors fine, quibbling about details not so fine… 🙂
Yes, we have an idea of what the cause is, but we have no proof — and can’t have proof because we can’t control any of the variables, nor go back in time. It’s a hypothesis that it is only because of the carbon we’ve been putting into the atmosphere with fossil fuels etc that there’s more.
If you’ve read my other ramblings, the ERSST (from NOAA graphs interactivly, measured values) that I calculated went up (from a mean of 13.82C) from +.06 in 1854 to +.22 in 2006. So as far as the surface temps, it could be a bit warmer. But I think that’s streching it if the measurements have only gone up an average of .016 degree C/decade (1.6 millidegrees per year) over a 150 year period…
No, I’m not going to even try and correlate that to the land temps and no I didn’t trend that rise.
The bottom of the area? Anyone know what the floor is doing? I don’t think we can answer that even as well as we can say what the surface temps mean. So is the Earth’s magnetic field stronger? Core hotter? 4 billion people breathing?
I wrote this after reading #1 only, forgive me if others have covered this.
#55…it’s an interesting point Gunnar. From a personal perspective I still don’t have a good handle on the effect of clear cutting, deforestation etc. It’s certainly clear that there is a certain amount of ‘greening’ going on with enhanced forest growth, much of it in the northern temperate areas and probably stimulated by CO2! Higher CO2 levels may well be a good thing.
#56 Sam..your point is a good one. We don’t have a good handle on natural variability of the carbon cycle, particularly on the annual and decadal time scale prior to the 1950’s. As Gunnar pointed out, some of the ice core data has a temporal resolution of the order of a thousand years and tells us little of relatively short term fluctuations. What the ice data is very good at is giving us a measure of the changes in CO2 between glacial and interglacial periods.
For direct measurements of atmospheric CO2 I think that some of Beck’s work where he has collated thousands of measurements conducted by different scientists over the past 100 to 150 years or so is valuable. I would like to see this published in a more mainstream journal and analysis of such data continue. If it were published in something like GCA (Geochim Cosmochim Acta), JGR or something similar then it would be noted.
Personally I’ve tried to think of ways of sampling old air that doesn’t involve using ice cores. I wondered about old aneroid barometers. These should have a sample of air sealed in them. There may be other items as well. Unfortuantely this would be a restricted sample set and there would be problems in interpretation. e.g. were the barometers made in a workshop with elevated CO2 etc. If anyone else has any other ideas I’d be willing to give it a go!
Having said this, for me the evidence still strongly supports the hypothesis that fossil fuel burning is behind a major part 20th century rise in CO2. Is this good or bad in terms of climate I don’t know. My position is very close to Steve McIntyre’s on this point.
#56 Sam, I forgot to answer your first question about the level of CO2 in the modern ocean. There are a growing number of data sets in which CO2 levels in the near surface ocean are measured. The data are often expressed in units of pCO2. This is the partial pressure of CO2 that would be in equilibrium at the appropriate water temperature and salinity with the dissolved CO2. Many of these measurements are now automated and are carried out routinely across transects of the oceans. Others have been associated with specific experiments such as iron fertilization studies in which the aim is to determine the amount of CO2 drawdown by phytoplankton blooms after applying an iron fertilizer to a patch of ocean.
One day I’ll read 2 to 55…. 🙂
#57 That’s why I’m going to start calling it “estimated by sampling” rather than “measured” for these large scale systems (CO2, ocean temp, land temp, etc) that we don’t really know…
Not trusting the proxies at all; first of all, they’re proxies! Even if they were not proxies, what it did 3 interglacials ago, or between interglacial 3 and 4, who cares. What bearing specifically does it have on the last 200? I am unconcerned.
I don’t discount that the bulk of the evidence does indeed support that hypothesis that fossil fuel burning has caused most of the rise. (That you don’t know if it’s good or bad, and that higher may be good; that does, if blog history is any indication, make you “a denialist, a wingnut, delusional and ignorant, because you don’t know the extreme destruction +1C will cause. And that ammount of CO2 will cause droughts, destroy coral reefs, melt the poles,” etc.)
However, there are two issues with that hypothesis besides its unprovability:
1. I don’t trust the temperature “evidence” as being accurate.
2. Item 1 doesn’t really matter, because I don’t think the temperature “evidence” is meaningful even if accurate.
Then you have the CO2 part: I am unconvinced the amount of CO2 is bad or is responsible for the warming, even if the evidence “estimated by sampling” is meaningful and accurate and the models that use it correct also.
Notice I didn’t deny any of it, I’m just either not trusting it or not convinced. I am assigning no probability to any of it. I’m not skeptical, I’m neutral more so I think.
#35 Gunnar
Are there volcanoes and warm water in all of the following?
Barrow, Alaska
Cape Matatula, Samoa
South Pole, Antarctica
Alert, NWT, Canada
Cape Kumukahi
Christmas Island
Baring Head
Kermadec Island
La Jolla Pier
?
http://cdiac.esd.ornl.gov/trends/co2/sio-keel.htm
#34 On Gunnar’s side, Paul by the fundamental laws you quoted (I direct you to #1 which is obviuosly a comment to thread #16), with respect to temperature, calcium and its formations have an inverse relationship with temperature.
Assume that global temperature is rising. Assume global means global. The oceans are cubic miles about 500 times denser than air. The oceans have coral formations that compared to the concentration of Ca++ in seawater is many orders of magnitude greater Ca++ than water which is in ppm. The Ca++ is always in flux, resulting in CO2 flux as you alluded to for other elements in thread #16. In water and for the atmosphere, this inverse relationship translates to CO2 in air and water. Please remember with diffusion it is not just surface area, but total mass as well. Remember as well, we are not talking of ppm or ppb at a low specific gravity, but parts per part of 2.5 (dense Ca++) times about 500 times water SpG to air SpG, / 100 ppm in water times orders of magnitude cubic miles of fossil corals = a 1000 million to 1 lever or much, much, much greater. Because it takes a geologic time scale to deplete the atmosphere, we do not have accurate numbers of total air mass (I do not know that we are even measuring this, much less measuring this to accuracy that you claim we are measuring O2), opposite of the discernment you indicate that you could detect O2 and welcomed visitors, Gunnar is being factual and consistent.
#46 and #47 Considering the extremely large sinks (sources) of CO2 in fossil coral, anything less than saying the CO2 lifecycle is in the order of million of years, for the accuracy Paul claims for O2, is obviuosly incorrect. Just see what the age of fossil coral is in the Florida “panhandle” and other large formations and multiply by 6 orders of magnitude, and then you can have an appreciation of the the time that just CO2 can be sequestered and released. It all counts if you want the accuracy Paul claims, unless you are the IPCC.
Note erosion of land surfaces and subsequent dissolving by water in a biolgically active matrix equates to sequestering or release, or a combination. That the fact that the coral is now part of the “land” is not a correct or detailed statement about CO2 releases to the atmosphere.
#62 #63 TCO my only advice is that those who are more interested in
in science rather than doing science, I direct you to “Hansen’s Y2K Error” where you have asked and I quote http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=1854 (my post) to be removed that was not removed because it was on thread. Save your “self-patting on the back “until it is appropriate. As I posted there, and elsewhere, I do audits and there are many items here and elsewhere that would cause an auditor to grade “Unsatisfactorily”.
Give you a freebie, when I see that someone has given me an inadequate audit response, that I made a non-committal remark about and they do
, I know if I dig further, I will have them. Seldom if ever have I been wrong about this. Of course, if you knew what EPA, or SEC, or a good auditor does (climateaudit), then this would be “old hat”. Those (these?) guys are experts.
Sam #56 >> Does anyone know what the level of CO2 in the ocean is estimated by sampling to be?
I did read a study on that. It will have to wait until monday to find it.
>> Are there volcanoes and warm water in all of the following?
Do you deny that volcanoes and warm water are C02 sources? I don’t have an agenda. I just want the truth. I want the raw data published, so that folks like Steve Mc can audit it. Besides, should we determine the global temperature with 10 measuring sites?
Why do the Scripps people have to be all over everything? Ok, They are all Scripps. With an issue this important, aren’t there any other measurements?
A note on Nyquist and sampling.
Nyquist says that to detect a frequency in a sample you must sample at a rate at least twice the frequency of interest. That is the minimum. Since you might be unlucky enough to sample when the frequency of interest goes to zero you will want to sample oftener than 2X.
This works well enough for repetitive signals. You just collect enough samples and tease out the data. However, if you are interested in maxima and minima of non-repetitive signals then you must sample oftener. The more frequent the sampling the more accurate the maxima and minima and the better timing available for the zero crossings. Reasonable estimates can be had from 5X or 10X sampling. Better is 100X if you want 1% or better accuracy.
You also have the undersampling problem where high frequencies are interpreted as low frequencies if they are sampled at less than 2X the high frequency.
Which means that to prevent aliasing the input signal must be band limited. However, band limiting throws away data.
In any case 1400 years between samples means that the shortest period resolvable with reasonable resolution is on the order of 7,000 to 14,000 years. Which means that a temperature change period of less than 2,800 years will be missed or aliased. If there is a lot of high frequency noise in the data (IF? – ha) then minima and maxima will not be reliable.
And that is just Nyquist. How accurately is the sampling done? i.e CO2 to 10 ppmv? 1 ppmv? better – worse? How representative are the samples? How representative are the proxies? Measuring is difficult. Especially reality.
Thanks to #33 for the reference to my question on time of obs. corrections in #29. Having read the reference in #33, I now understand that the time of obs. correction seems to be required mainly because of the very course way of computing daily mean, ie mean=(max+min)/2.
What I don’t understand is that a better average seems to be available,that is the weighted average over 24 hours. The time of obs. variance for this measurement is an order of magnitude less (as one would expect) than the courser formula. Why isn’t this better measurement used? Are they just crazy, or is it a matter of data dropouts causing problems, or is it an equipment issue where most of the historic data base is only max and min so they want to be consistent? In the latter case, if they are using (max+min)/2 because the hourly data is not available, then how do they compute the time of Obs. correction? The article linked makes it clear that this correction will change by month and season and by year, so I would assume that trying to extrapolate from other stations or other years at the same station would be full of errors.
Bill F #45
You will find a Z axis plot of the Sun – SSB (or CM if you prefer) from 1680 to 2120 here:
Let me know if you want any specific time period between 3000 BC and 3000 AD, and I will make one up, as the yearly positions are already in an AppleWorks spreadsheet.
Re 65
M. Simon – Your point on Nyquist is well taken. I doubt that the issue of Nyquist sampling rates is addressed at all by most climatologists because it isn’t something that people other than EEs or mathematicians are likely to encounter.
You also have the undersampling problem where high frequencies are interpreted as low frequencies if they are sampled at less than 2X the high frequency.
Which means that to prevent aliasing the input signal must be band limited. However, band limiting throws away data.
Yes, and once the samples are taken there is no way to distinguish a false low frequency component (one that is really an alias of a high frequency component) from a real low frequency component. The information required to distinguish the two is lost and lost permanently. This means that any conclusions drawn about low frequency components are improper and therefore should not be relied upon.
The only way around this is to resample the data at a higher rate.
Paul Dennis:
Do you know where I can get the data on oxygen variations over the course of a year similar to the CO2 data put out from Mauna Loa? I would like to compare this data over the last twenty years or so.
It appears that the lack of a delay between these data sets would imply that almost all of the yearly variation is due to photosynthesis. The five year average recycle time would not just be an average of molecules, but an average of several different processes each of which has its own characteristic delay. I wonder if I can separate these mathematically to determine the contribution of each process.
No
#59 Read 2 to 55!
Sam I’m only writing about the carbon cycle and not wether there is a link between rising CO2 and temperatures. Like you, I don’t know how good the temperature record is and am here because I’m interested in what Steve and others are doing. Apart from anything else it’s a fascinating insight into the way science is done and the way it has been ‘institutionalised’ over the past decades.
#61 and 62
John, I’m not sure what you are saying but think if you go to my postings you will see that I am talking about average residence time of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and not the residence time of carbon in the whole geologic cycle.
Imagine a river flowing at 1 cumec (cubic metre per second) into a well mixed lake of volume of 50 million cubic meters, then an outflow at 1 cumec to the ocean. The residence time for water in the lake is on average 50 million seconds (about a year) and the residence time for water in the ocean is many hundred to thousands of years. We can conduct experiments using tracers…perhaps naturally occuring tritium and find similar answers for the residence time in the lake.
This is essentially what we are doing with the atmosphere. The atmosphere is like the lake and we can talk about residence times, relaxation times etc. of this small part of the whole system and not the whole carbon dioxide cycle.
#69 Bob, I’ll post a set of references for you next week. I can’t guarantee that these will have the raw data in but you will be able to check the data archives, or contact the authors and see if you can get hold of the raw data.
#61 and 62
John I’ve just read your posting again and am not sure I follow it all correctly.
I think you’re alluding to the fact that the ocean, especially in the form of carbonate is a huge reservoir for carbon when compared to the atmosphere. We agree on this. Then you are making the point that as it’s a buffered system and the amount of CO2 in the ocean is linked through hydrolysis, dissociation and dissolution to calcium carbonate then there is potential for a huge net flux from the ocean to the atmosphere. This flux is positive (i.e. ocean to atmosphere) with rising temperatures because of the decreasing solubility of CO2 with temperature.
Am I correct here?
My point is that we can discriminate these processes by also looking at isotopes, and oxygen as well as CO2. When we do this we can resolve the ocean-atmosphere fluxes, fossil fuel burning and photosynthesis and respiration. When we do this we find that fossil fuel burning has been the major contributor to CO2 rise in the atmosphere.
On the comments about coral:
Off the Pacific coast along Washington, Oregon & British Columbia there are a couple of ridges of coral forming… from a species that was known only through the fossil record. It was regarded as extinct. So… it is plausible that oceanic conditions in this area have changed. (temp, ppCO2, ppO2, who-knows-what.)
Also, #68, Chem E’s have to pay attention to Nyquist too. Less often, as our systems are usually vastly slower than our instruments, but often enough to know we want to sample our data quickly enough to avoid the whole problem. 😉
Re #73
Thanks, Paul. You don’t have to rush this, I won’t get around to it for another couple of weeks anyway.
Re #70
maximovitch said: “No”.
Pithy, but can you expand on that just a tad?
Warming in the UK. Look at the spaghetti on pages 26 and 27. Looks like the major change has been just up the road from me. Rothamsted is about 5 miles from me, located near the centre of a medium sized town (Harpenden) about 25 miles north of central London, and is hosted at a research facility specialising in agricultural research. I suspect that the change in night-time temperature might be as much to do with changing work practices over the last 20-30 years at the facility (i.e. more poeple working overnight, necessitating more heating) rather than any particular climate variation or even the sort of microsite changes that seem prevalent in the surfacestations.org (compare with the trend at Cambridge, about 40 miles to the NNE). Could be worth an audit.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/hadleycentre/pubs/HCTN/HCTN_50.pdf
I’m putting this in unthreaded:
Steve is as bad as Mann in decamping from argument to argument and in appealing to the meta-n arrative as his interest when pinned down. ESPECIALLY when pinned down on something where it might look like (horrors) he has a flaw in his argument. This is not a sound science/math argument. The four color map problem was not solved by someone with that sort of promotional, slippery ethical behaviour.
We still lack all kinds of basic math characterizations of all the things that Steve spends so much rhetorical juice on in Mann world. We still have all kinds of mushy issue analysis wirh repect to red noise (is inadequate handling of autocorrelated signals the issue or would the complaints about bcp promotion in PCA exist even if there was a “sheep” signal in that strong rise, oh…and how the hell do rings exhibit year after year accumulation in a randowm walk manner which Steve posits. THere is no physical basis argued for more than a 1 year carryover. No physical analogy of hydrology, even theorized.)
Oh…and instead of writing clear finished papers (even discussion papers), we have Steve generating new half-formed kvetching after half-formed kvetching. See the new post on Peterson. How can anyone even engage him when his arguments are not complete, the writing sichs (graphs lack axes, references not used) and there’s no ability to cite him! And he can edit the posts after they’re DONE (and has at times! without a correction noted.) And whenthe whole blog could disappear tomorrow as Chefen’s did.
Heck, that Dutch paper that said the skeptics like to fire from the side of the road, like to run away from finishing arguments, was right. This sucks. Feynman would not be happy with Steve.
TCO there’s a flaw in your reasoning too. Nobody knows who the heck or what you are. I am a long time reader of this site, along with my husband, the geologist (ahem),-and your “TCO” personna is quite the character isn’t it?
Sheesh-All this attitude and drama over a bunch of data; that’s pretty much hidden from the public and yes MUSHY
re:79
TCO,
I think you misunderstand the blog. People love ClimateAudit precisely for the reasons you are critical of it. People love the fact Steve is so prolific. They can come almost everyday and find something new and interesting they have not seen before. The immediacy between Steve’s discovery and the announcement on the blog makes people feel they are part of it. Steve is mostly right on. And he is trustworthy. When Steve does not know something relevant, he admits it. Do mistakes sometimes pop up? Of course, but Steve corrects them. I think that is praiseworthy, not something to complain about as you did. And the quality of the other posters can be quite high. I know if I start naming names, I will leave out some important people so I won’t do that. But readers here get an insight into the review process as it happens, or as it should happen. Comments are made from both friendly and unfriendly camps. Readers get to judge for themselves the quality of the comments and Steve’s response to them. The openness of the process is preferable by far to the way the majority of research papers are currently reviewed. What Steve has created here is unique in the world of science. What Mann, Jones and most other climate scientists publish is not science – it is pseudoscience. Unless they are willing to provide all of their data and methods, then they are not open to the testability of their findings. Steve is doing science.
Re #66,
coyote,
Hourly temperature readings were not taken at most weather observation
stations until the relatively recent widespead use of ASOS/AWOS units.
The USHCN applies TOB adjustments on a monthly basis. They are
calculated/estimated by extrapolating from some data similar to the data
used in the reference linked in #33.
Right on Ron Cram, and Steve does not have an Environmental PR Firm running his site like Mann et al does either.
#74 Yes that was my post. I don ‘t think you can do it by isotopes though. There have been several posts on several threads about the ratios, and the claim is that the fossil fuel ratios are different because they are “fossil”. Most coral expanses are fossil as well. And that was something I thought was understood. To use your analogy of the 50 million cu3 resorvoir, there is a spring at the bottom you did not know or count or measure. From the posts concerning CO2 and Gunner about what percent CO2 is present in the atmosphere (I assume) compared to what was generated by man, the difference is so much greater in the atmosphere’s favor, thus CO2 exchange with the oceans, and the ocean’s Ca++ flux due to aproximate 1F change cannot be ignored. There are enough orders of magnitude difference to even get the attention of geologists or astrophysicists.
Rocksie: OB (Point Loma)
Crames: Yeah, I know that a lot of the hoi polloi like this blog and think it’s science. They’re wrong. It’s promotion and doodling and they’re nitwits to buy into that. I know more about the blog than you do. Steve hasn’t had a science paper since the two year ago GRL letter and has a history of playing games (like how he published the “long version” of the GRL paper in EE (not a real science journal).
#86 John there are very significant isotopic fractionations associated with photosynthesis such that C3 plants are very depleted in 13-C compared to atmopsheric CO2. C4 plants are also depleted in 13-C but not by as much. Coals, oil and natural gas, all ultimately derived from organisms and plants are also very depleted in 13-C. Corals, and most marine organisms are a little enriched in 13-C when compared to atmospheric CO2.
These signatures allow us to elucidate some of the pathways and transitions involved in the different CO2 fluxes. Of course the sytem is large, with very large fluxes and work continues to understand these better.
I think it is very important in this debate to have a very clear definition of what we mean when we talk about residence times. It seems to me that there are many instances when people are talking about different aspects of the carbon cycle but using very similar terminology which makes everything very confusing.
One cannot armwave about the effects of vegetation, clearing, regrowth etc as carbon sinks and releasers on a global scale. It is immensely difficult to enclose a tree and its root system for a period of years and to measure the many relevant chemical and physical balances, but scientists have attempted this. One group was an aluminium mining company in Western Australia.
Having said that, at the end of the day, the amount of CO2 sequestered by global terrestial vegetation (I have not worked with marine) is fairly proportional to the mass of the vegetation, dead plus live. However, there is an upper limit. As trees grow bigger, their rate of CO2 uptake slows and eventuually becomes vanishingly small. They die. As they decompose, they release CO2, unless the path to carbon release is blocked (like when coal deposits formed).
I am guessing here, but when one starts looking at the isotope geochemistry of C-14 abundance, the results are likewise hard to estimate. Take coral, for example, which some Australians study on the longest reef in the world. If there is a cycle of fixation then release of CO2 from coral, then surely there is a probability that the newest-formed coral will be the first to release, because it does not sit inside the proptection of surrounding coral. But there is a high probablity that the oldest, dead corals also release their particular ratios, causing a mix which might be hard to untangle, because we know that dead coral dissolves.
I do not know the quantitative methematics of this, but if one is speaking of an annual cycle such as appears in the Hawaii CO2-in-air records, and given the half life of carbon 14 of 5,700 years, then the picture would be most confused if based on C-14 alone. If abundant spring vegetation growth is a postulated cause in the northern hemisphere, then one has to remember that carbon is taken by trees from soil as well as air and again there is an entangled mixing.
For both trees and coral, a model would need to incorpoate the relative portions of old carbonates and new carbonates (or similar compounds)that are growing and decaying. There is not a simple linear isotope model that explains all about the CO2 sources in the air.
The concept of residence time is more appropriate to materials that change permanently, like radioactive isotopes. There is no real concept of the residence time of nitrogen in the air, because it is there in large qualtities which change very, very little. There is a residence time concept of radon gas, half life of Rn-222 being 3.8 days, going into the air. Carbon dioxide, as was eloquently explained by a Jules Verne voyage above (Gunnar #46), fits conceptually somewhere between these two, but I canot see the concept useful as a modelling tool when working on time scales of years.
TCO, stop. Science not a “thing” of worship, is a method with standards-it is a set list of protocols used to examine the world around us. Nothing more or less. You don’t have to be a lawyer to follow laws. Most scientists don’t have time to publish anyway, they are out there practicing the scientific method examining the world. Its not about publishing to make “science” valid. As long as anyone follows these protocals they are doing science and practicing the scientific method -examining the world around us. A child can be a scientist. Everyone here can practice the method.
The Hollywood type Climate Scientists and the Politically motivated Climate Scientists have ignored the scientific method and have made up ther own protocols to examine the world around us and calling it “better science” for all the bleeding hearts (for the good of mankind, blah blah), and then claiming too much certainty-disclosing no error bars, disregarding geological timescales, hiding data, hiding methods- and putting to much credit on “publishing” as if it makes the “science” better. Publishing has now come to be like receiving an Oscar or something…sheesh.
RE 84.
Hi TCO. I don’t think anyone here thinks that what is written here on a blog is science, or rather
that people are engaging in sciencing behavior here.
1. the name is climateaudit not climatescience.
2. Audits often begin with spot checks and progress from there. A close analog is forensics.
3. It’s a Blog. This is a front clipping of ‘weblog’. Essentially, a diary about a topic on the web.
4. writing science papers is not science. It is writing. Writing that documents sciencing behavior.
more to the point, a science paper is a set of instructions to others, or it should be.
here is my data. here is my method. here is my result. Mr Reader,you can repeat this sequence.
5. Writing for science may be changing, especially as communication and collaboration become
more real time. It may change as page restrictions ( how scientific THAT!) change. It may
change as peer review evolves.
Now, for the most part writing for science has not caught up with the technology that science
helped to create.
>> What Mann, Jones and most other climate scientists publish is not science – it is pseudoscience. Unless they are willing to provide all of their data and methods, then they are not open to the testability of their findings. Steve is doing science.
This is exactly right. Benjamin Franklin style citizen science will sweep away obscure scientific print magazines, just like newspapers will soon be obsolete. A small clique of like-minded agenda oriented college academics, addicted to tax payer grant money, supported by state dominated universities who have abdicated teaching their customers in order to maximize grant research money, all incestuously reviewing each other’s work IS NOT SCIENCE!
Rocks: Thanks for the little lecture. But I’ve read the Wilson book. The classic. The one from the 50s. The one that is reprinted as a Dover paperbook. I’m old school.
Mosh-pit:
a. Some of the morons (oops…”overwrought”) do.
And if it’s auditing or blogging rather than science. Well that sucks. And goes against the whole idea of what rocks was trying to say in pushing a Popperian inquiry. A Feymnan integrity. We might as well call it promotion rather than science. It’s sophistry. It’s legalistic debate games. It’s internet booshwa.
re:84
TCO,
You confuse published research with science. A good deal of science is never published. And a good deal that is published is not science. Regarding this blog, it is not just the hoi polloi who think science is being done here. This blog is more influential than any climate journal you can think of. Look around and see who is posting here. A good many published authors and academics at top schools find the time to comment here precisely because this is where the science is being done and they want to be part of it. Sometimes they come to defend their papers. Sometimes they come to critique Steve’s work. But mostly they come because they want to know what Steve is doing NOW. They know that Steve is on the offensive. He has the ball and is carrying the debate. Anthony Watts is doing a great job and it is all because of Steve and Roger Pielke. McIntyre, Pielke and Watts are changing climate science in ways you cannot imagine. This is real science at work.
re:88
Steve, you obviously did not read what I wrote because you denied anyone was saying exactly what I was saying. Science is being done here. The scientific method requires that scientists be open to testability and challenges to data, methods and conclusions. Nothing joins the body of scientific knowledge without being tested. That is what is being done here on a daily basis. This is science. It may not look like anything you have seen before, but it is science.
Post 88 (Mosh-pit): ” I don’t think anyone here thinks that what is written here on a blog is science, or rather that people are engaging in sciencing behavior here.”
Post 92 (test Cram): “Regarding this blog, it is not just the hoi polloi who think science is being done here. This blog is more influential than any climate journal you can think of. “
TCO and Steve Mosher:
What Steve is doing here is a very interesting experiment in how science is conducted, not just published. In a few hours Coyote has gotten a substantive answer to a technical question that would have taken days in the library, or the time and $$ to attend a technical meeting or seminar if he didn’t know who to call. I personally have learned much about climate theory in way less time than would have been possible, say, twenty years ago, because of the interactions on the blogs. This sort of thing used to be done at chapter meetings, or over cocktails after seminars.
Steve’s focus on transparency and protocol is a big part of what is missing from climate study (I refuse to call it science) and from other web sites which seem oriented mostly to outcome and opinion, not process. Transparency and protocol, along with experiments, are what separates science from religion.
Ultimately science still needs peer review presentations, though most of the real work goes on behind the scenes. Notice that NOAA has no longer any need for peer review — only a press agent.
Ok, hoi polloi let’s actually try thinking for a second. Mosh-pit seems capable of the exercise, maybe the rest of you can strain, bust a gut and actually analyze an issue:
I will start by tossing this out:
Mosh et al.: Doesn’t it bug you a bit that BOTH a controversial view (skeptic AGW) AND a conroversial method of pubilcation are being used (controlled, non-permanent, lacking review, lacking footnotes, lacking axes on graphs, crappy writing, filled with snark) are being simlutaneuosly argued for?
When someone says that a new (to the world) technology can only work in a (new to the world) business model, it trips my “unlikely” button. That’s too much newness. You’re in the new/new box of the 2 by 2. You’re in screw around land. That’s just a time waster and unlikely to do anything useful. It’s hard enough for ANYTHING new to work. Most experiments fail. But when you square the newness? When it has an excuse that the added element is needed to look at the first? Sorry kids, that becomes a house of cards.
95: I’ve followed the experiment more than anyone other than Steve or JohnA. I can declaim on it based on plenty of observation. I also have a good background in comparative fields, lacking only the saintly sunshine/monkey characteristics of a geologist):
You’re over-rating what Steve does. You claim the ability to judge a new medium while not understanding the prior. He has read a lot of the literature. He is medium smart. He is willing to code and do math as a 60 year old. All things to the good. But he doesn’t finish analysis. Is biased/skewed. And does not even properly label arguments so that they can be falsified. No wonder Lubos loves him. It’s like string theory, not even wrong!
In the category of interesting things to ponder, I can show substantial evidence that additional CO2 may in fact lower the average temperature of the earth. The arguments tread on currently forbidden grounds, and CA will get there eventually, after working through the basic papers on GW on the other thread. But I cannot resist calling attention to a very interesting post by Tomothy Chase on another blog —
http://www.aer.com/scienceResearch/rc/m-proj/abstracts/rc.clrt2.html
TCO #94
Can you explain what the point of your post is (other than applying childish monikers to people)?
Is it troubling you that the ‘hoi polloi’ don’t speak as one?
re 93.
Sorry Ron. I did not read what you wrote. I’ll revise. What is happening here is writing.
Sometimes writing documents scientific behavior.
This is a subtle difference. So yes, sometimes people document their scientific behavior here.
They document that behavior with words and numbers. The documents are not the behavior.
The documents, if properly costructed, are INSTRUCTIONS to other on how the science behavior
can be repeated. If you raise water to 100C, you will see it boil. This documents the behavior.
It is NOT the behavior itself.
Nitpicking, of course.
re 95.
I enjoy what steve does here. See my response above. I am being very specific about the
BEHAVIOR of sciencing. The writing documents the process. It is not, in and of itself, the process.
The nice thing about this Blog is we see documentation of the process in real time.
re:95
Allan,
Since you write “What Steve is doing here is a very interesting experiment in how science is conducted, not just published,” I am uncertain why you refuse to call it science. If he is conducting science, and he is (and so are many of the other posters), then it is science.
A good many people are under the mistaken impression that if an article gets published, it becomes part of the body of scientific knowledge. Not true. A good many of these papers are ultimately seen for the chaff that they are. By winnowing out the wheat from the chaff, Steve and other contributors are making a contribution to the body of scientific knowledge.
98: CA isn’t go to “get there”. Steve is trying to raise the level of discussion and curb some of the worst idiots. In the past, he has allowed them as he wouldn’t have much of a community unless he did. But now he wants to purge the Menshaviks.
99: Are you really that butt stupid that you could not understand an expressed point? Does the snark enrage you so much that you can’t read past it? Well, let me spell it out:
a. I said the hio polloi think of this as science. Don’t have a feel for quality.
b. Mosh said none of the hoi polloi thought this was science.
c. Ron said this was both good science and good science publishing.
d. I POINTED OUT THE CONTRADICTION to Mosh!
(Heck, even if you disagree that it is a contradiction as Mosh seems to be doing with some attempts to combine opposites as in the Marxist dialectic, you should at least be able to noodle that I was making the assertion that it is! If you could just think with your noodle instead of getting so enraged by my silliness. Heck, most of you tender flowers need to have the false pride stripped off with a lot of pushups and hazing.)
100-101: This blog is a very crappy way of documenting things. For all the complaints about imperfect normal literature, this thing is way, way worse. It has many, many of the classic faults of ameatuer publication.
re:100
Steven,
This statement is better but it is still too fine a distinction. The writing process is part of the scientific method. Wikipedia defines “scientific method” as “a body of techniques for investigating phenomena and acquiring new knowledge, as well as for correcting and integrating previous knowledge.” Without writing you cannot convey to others what you did in your experiment and so nothing new can be added to the body of knowledge. More to the point regarding this blog, without writing you cannot convey the problems with someone else’s work. Testing or auditing the work of others is essential because it is the only way to correct and integrate previous knowledge.
RE 96. Thanks TCO.
1. Controversial view and controversial method. I think of Luther and the 95 theses. This is a blog.
it is a new method. Some will use the new method for new ideas, other will use the new method
for old ideas. It is not the exclusive method.
2. Controlled. you have to be more specific and explain how this differs from other methods
3. Non permanent. Download it and save it. Or, submit the blog to the wayback machine which
archives the web. Paper disintegrates and burns. I think of the library at Alexandria.
Even classified papers disappear from the LOC. ask Sandy burgler.
4. Footnotes. Links are better.
5. Lacking review. Write one. everyone is free to. Blog your reviews. we have an army of davids
( good book you should read)
6. Lacking Axes. I agree, but this is not a flaw of the new method. It is implementation detail
7. Crappy writing. Implementation detail, not necessary element of the new method.
8. Snarky ness. You and I have been snarky. I am not snarky now. Its a choice, not part
of the method.
105: test Cram: I agree that reporting is an important part of the science process/method. That’s really why I think this is an important debate. Not just stylistic.
104: Mosh-man: I gotta go move some eggs and beef around on a plate. Will be back with a tedious rebuttal later.
TCO, when you get on one of your rants, please remember this. If you only posted the most salient 10% of your posts, you’d improve the level of discussion both for yourself and others
re:104
TCO,
You wrote: “This blog is a very crappy way of documenting things. For all the complaints about imperfect normal literature, this thing is way, way worse. It has many, many of the classic faults of ameatuer publication.”
Of course, you are entitled to your opinion but do not expect the progress of science to slow because of your complaints.
re 104.
TCO. As I explained to Ron, I did not see his comment. So, I was wrong when I said
“No one thinks…” better would have been “few think”
I am not trying to combine opposites. I am making a fine and tedious distinction.
If I look through a telescope, I am observing.
If I write about what I saw, I am putting ink on paper or characters on a screen
If I tell you what I saw, I am wiggling your eardrum.
re 107.
Yes, reporting is an important part of the process. PART.
I see this blog as an ongoing seminar. It is an opportunity to learn, form new ideas and possibly contribute to the conversation. Steve M. is good at providing interesting seeds which provide the basis for the material of the seminar. There is no need for starting with completed works – the whole point is to interact as the topics are developed. Is it science? Of course, it is – as much as any seminar at any university I have ever been at.
Now, if TCO would take his ritalin, he might be able to get past his unwarranted arrogance and unruly behaviour and get back to discussing the issues.
NCM says:
Mosh et al.: Doesn’t it bug you a bit that BOTH a controversial view (skeptic AGW) AND a conroversial method of pubilcation are being used (controlled, non-permanent, lacking review, lacking footnotes, lacking axes on graphs, crappy writing, filled with snark) are being simlutaneuosly argued for?
1. I take it you are unfamiliar with how to do a page capture. My condolences.
2. Filled with snark? Try the mirror.
TCO and others… this conversation is reminding me of a 20+ year disagreement I helped resolve a few years back.
Party A: we’re publishing valid, peer-reviewed population data. Yes, it takes 10 years to get it right, but everything adds up correctly. And no, you can’t have any data until it’s done.
Party B: we’re publishing up-to-date population based on the best that’s available in the field. We update every year. Ours is the only data set that truly reflects the latest field understanding. And we think it stinks that we share our data with you but you give nothing back.
Rebuttal from A: “Up to date” is overrated! Our comprehensive global population model is FAR more accurate. Provincial populations can be summed to form national populations, and so forth. Ours is a comprehensive, cohesive, global population model. “B”, you need to be more rigorous. Our unpublished data is of no value.
Rebuttal from B: “Global model” is overrated! Your numbers may all add up, but none of them match the field data! And by the time you’ve published, the whole world has changed. “A”, you need to pay more attention to the real world.
Resolution: both “A” and “B” bring value. They need to better understand and appreciate each another’s worlds.
The “A” model’s strength is its rigor and detailed cross-checking. Its weakness is the lack of tracking confidence intervals based on real-world updates. “A” needs to recognize that unpublished data has great value.
The “B” model’s strength is its careful adherence to real-world updating. Its weakness is the lack of tracking confidence intervals based on appropriate global models (e.g. provincial population should not exceed national population). “B” needs to recognize that carefully constructed population models have great value.
TCO appreciates “A”, with its (presumably) rigorous peer-reviewed publishing model. Many traditionally consider “A” to be more scientific.
Others appreciate “B” with its careful real-world reality checks and dynamic updates.
I believe both models can incorporate Real Science.
I like the seminar metaphor
108 Steve: Agreed.
#99,
What bothers TCO is that hoi polloi are allowed to speak at all.
RE 119.
OK, I look forward to your exposition.
Heh, TCO can nit pick the hoi pollioi all he wants to.
I will keep thinking the question to the “scientists” should be : is there there any example of a computer model looking at a vast and complicated system such as the earth’s climate that has ever been right? Computers such as these models run on are how old? Not very!
My husband says (a published scientist himself) in his experience models are good tools in some ways yes- but in his experience they are hardly ever that right with something this complicated-especially when we really have no idea about anything- let’s mention the time scales here getting ignored.
We can not look over geologic time like this (which is the REAL planet’s situation)-you know: how can we know how the climate acted- in 50-100 yr blips over millions of years, or thousands of years even -the global temp could have fluctuated all the time-up or down in higher degrees or lower-for all kinds of reasons. We are arguing fractions right now over a minute period of time in earth’s history and there’s just not enough data for these warnings of something being broken or wrong.
No data with that kinda detail exists…so pretty much “0” data if you really get scientific about it.
(#98, no worries, my husband thinks C02 probably barely has anything to do with climate at all 😉 )
Re #103 **In the past, he has allowed them as he wouldn’t have much of a community unless he did. But now he wants to purge the Menshaviks.**
They were not “allowed” here to have a larger community – this is a non-censored blog, so you and some that have departed are allowed until they get out of line.
This have been a great blog from day one, no matter how many participants there were. What made it great from the start is the purpose, then some great scientists contributed and added more quality. So we do not need to hear about “publishing”. That is an individual’s choice.
Just for an example: take a look into the artificial reef they created in New Zealand. They created it to have perfect waves for surfing-they modeled the heck out of it before they built it, and it has failed. (an article in current issue of Surfer Magazine-might be online: Sept 2007 issue)
I think this fellow is a climate scientist:
from:
Climate Science.
Mosh: (I know I still owe you, will get to it later, don’t feel like it now. But, while you are waiting, here is a good article discussing the advantages of the old school written technical report versus a different modern tool (Powerpoint). I realize this is not exactly the same thing, but think there are some important things in here regardless.
-benefit of proper papers and rigorous writing (even unit labels)
-disadvantage of a modern medium
-PR versus rigor
http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0001yB
Gerald Macht nichts: Yes, of course Steve is free not to publish. Free to type anything he wants on here. Free to take it all down tomorrow. Free to make accusations he does not back up. Etc. Etc. Etc.
However, as long as I’m allowed to comment, I will fault this behaviour, will show how it reduces credability, will redicule those who make too much of Steve’s work, just as they made too much of air conditioners.
121: Welove: You are (honsetly) one of my favorite posters, one of my favorite hoi polloi. And I (honestly) think you are sweet and think your love and admiration for your husband is touching. But. But. Not everyone else takes him as such an authority.
OK folks, what about some”auditing”…”light”:
If you google”Met Office May July Wettest On Record”
As result number 4 or so you come to a UK Met Office
page. Is there something wrong with the figures or
did I just miss some British nonsense humour…??(Some
parts of UK are clearly missing in the table if you
read the comment under it but never mind)
Peter Stott at Hadley has claimed the increasing(?)
(MY question mark)rains are man-made…Mr Stott, what
about land use as a driver of extra flooding?
The advantage of this blog is in the way ideas are reviewed. If a climatologist puts forth an idea in a journal article he will be peer reviewed by several climatologists before publication and by many more after publication.
Here if a climatologist puts out an idea it will be reviewed by several climatologists, a few statisticians, a couple of physicists, some chemists, a number of mathematicians, a few engineers and a botanist or two. The great advantage is that experts in each discipline can determine the implications of an idea and explain these implications to those whose expertise lies in other areas.
This provides an opportunity to refine and spread ideas that does not exist in the standard world of technical publishing. If also forces people to put ideas into a form where they can be understood by intelligent non-experts which is something technical journals cannot do well. If you think that this has nothing to do with science then consider the following.
Peer reviewed publications are a leftover from the medieval tenure/cloister structure of universities. Universities were first built by religious sects for the purpose of defending a body of dogma and were never intended for scientific investigation. On the contrary, universities actively opposed science for hundreds of years substituting revelation for reason. The original purpose of peer review was to strip all publications of heretical ideas.
The fact that some truly fine science comes out of universities today is more a testimony to the dedication and integrity of scientists than to the structure in which they work or to the process of peer review. Peer review is only as good as the character of the men who do the reviewing.
Re: #127
Your post was a flower in the desert. Thanks — and well worth searching for.
114
you point reminds me of the famous Einstein quote ‘Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind’. Now which is which!
TCO, or really how that’s? My husband fills all the requirements of a “scientist” does he not? Why should I believe those I do not know with the same exact “requirements” on this issue of global warming? I have to read or listen to them only because why?
My husband has a very high IQ, Masters in Environmental Geology, he is a working in the environmental field right now, he has been published, he even had job offer from NASA he turned down because he didn’t want to live in Texas, AND he has an original discovery about a little spot on the planet’s geological history, 6 million years ago -and he’s been published 3 times for it-something about this planet nobody even knew before.
And what part of the rest what I said to you disagree with TCO? How about some details? Examples? Evidence to the contrary?
Thought so! You are really good at playing psychic and psychologist aren’t ya?
I can hold my own on that level very well. 😉
Here in California we have an ad campaign that states “Global Warming is A Choice”
Sheesh.
124
and the hoi pollioi will be free to read this blog and be free to ignore your arrogant postings and be free to question bad science.
TCO you’re losing the arguments by your rants; try to post with maturity!
MrPete: I’m actually more in favor of model B than model A. I think there is a lot of waste in not publishing rapidly, because science is a collaborative field and people end up having to repeat your work 6 months or even 20 years later.
But it should be formally published in a journal of record, a HIGH standard of clerical and stylistic rigor is required (you’re part of the permanent litereature, difficult science/math should not be compounded with ambigious wririntg). And importantly the scope of conclusions, caveats, etc. should be very clearly honestly stated. For instance if a project is aborted and not all the data collected, publish what you have and be very upfront about the limitation. If you dropped a sample on the floor and decided not to repeat the entire campaign, say so. Or if you did a duplicate for the missing sample, could not acheive exactly the same conditions as for the rest of the campaign, and chose not to repeat the campaign, SAY SO! If there are some possible areas where the work could be of interest, could give inferences, but you don’t really have a microscopic understanding, make it clear the difference (the report having potential relevance rather than asserting a discovery of mechanism).
RE 123.
Ok will have a look. I have a meeting coming up, so will get back to you.
on another topic, please have a look at the OKE article. Anthony has linked it on the
A/C =22 thread ( where we were bad actors). The not so happy camp thread.
( someday we have a bloody mary )
I have skimmed it and it seems interesting. Also, it gave me an idea about checking for AC
contamination.. If one can divide the daily time series into two groups before and after
( like 1940 and 1990 ) then one might me able to extract an A/C signal ON PARTICULAR DAYS
using DTR…
I’m still fussing with it, but given Jims “guesstimate” I am figuring the signal is not
detectable.
Its a microsite forcing in the positive direction, but not detectable and not adjustable.
It can however be eliminated.
clean the lens of your telescope!
I liked Jim’s bottoms up approach. Top down, I guess like this.
The AC runs full bore maybe 30-40 days a year. So 10% of the days get hit.
Tmean = (Tmax+Tmin)2.
So if the AC unit corrupts Tmax, the effect is already halved. so 5%
AC units are present for 25% of the century,
So, I am down to mouse nuts. say 1% for Hoi polloi math.
If the contamination is not huge ( Jim shows a good lower bound estimate) then
I have probably have no hope of seeing this Signal, and ET will not get home.
STILL, clean your instruments.
RE 127.
The Army of davids!. Look at what Jim Edwards has done here.
Jim Hansen sits in an office and thinks Nightlights =0 is necessarily Rural and necessarily high quality
He is reviewed and published. nighlights are comforting.
Here is another good article on technical reports (note it’s from NASA from a long time ago, pretty eerie in light of the Tufte criticism).
Click to access NASA-64-sp7010.pdf
The sections on purpose, honesty, and shadowboxing are all relevant to our debates here about how to express information. The rest of it is fine, although you can get much of the same philosophy of expression and formalistic information as easily from the many other excellent books on how to write a science paper. Probably books that Steve really, really needs to read if his blog posts, presentations, and publishing history are anything to judge of of..
RE 134.
I have flamed before , so you cannot take the blame for my wicked wit.
Shame was I had some good ones. BTW, mosh-pit has been my nickname for a long time.
thick skull. tough skin.
Anyway, I scanned the article you reference. The slide show mentality has been around for a long time.
when I first experienced it ( in Aerospace) I was stupified. Then, I figured out the rationale.
The DECIDERS can be bothered with minutia. Their aids won’t understand the detail.
Especially in engineering. Briefings are different than reports. My reports might be 200
pages, but my briefings would be 20 pages. all the intersting bits are marginalized.
I had a friend who worked on the accident board.
I think more than a handful of people who post here have worked on systems where people’s lives
are at stake.
Sorry must go now
re: 133
Steve Mosher,
Your calculations regard the a/c only and no other microsite problems. “The GeoProfile metadata, exposure of instruments, and measurement bias in climatic record revisited” by Mahmood et al. 2006 says: “it is found that the difference in average extreme monthly minimum temperatures can be as high as 3.6 °C between nearby stations, largely owing to the differences in instrument exposures.” This can be found at http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/abstract/112518278/ABSTRACT?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0 I’m not sure why the link function is not working here.
According to Brooks unpublished Master’s thesis, the author investigated HCN sites in Indiana, and found that 16% of the sites received an excellent’ rating, 59% received a good’ rating, 12.5% received a fair’ rating, and 12.5% receive poor’ rating.
Anthony Watts’ work will ultimately determine if these percentages hold up, but we can discuss the relevance of his work by looking at these numbers. If 10% of all HCN sites are poor and have a 3.6 degrees C artificial warming bias, then nearly half of the perceived warming in 20th century is artificial.
I understand this is just a back of the envelop calculation but it gives people some idea of what is at stake with Anthony’s work.
steven mosher, thanks for your post. You say:
My objections to this interesting analysis are:
1. Many places, air conditioners are run for more than 30-40 days per year. A number of places, they run six months out of the year.
2. Residential air conditioners are often run at night, affecting Tmin as well as Tmax. I know lots of people that say they can’t sleep without the aircon being on. So the effect is by no means halved.
3. Your most egregious and blindingly obvious error is the idea that since AC units are only present for part of the century, that this decreases their effect on the record. In fact, since the statistic of interest is the trend, the fact that they are only present for the latter part of the century increases their effect. You clearly need to take a quick course in “Hoi polloi math”.
Finally, your claims about “hoi polloi” merely reflect the intellectual paucity of your arguments. There’s a lawyer’s saying – “If the law is on your opponent’s side, argue the facts. If the facts are on their side, argue the law. And if both are on their side, pound the table …”
The snide remarks from you and TCO about the “hoi polloi” are the equivalent of pounding the table, and manage to be simultaneously offensive, irrelevant, and detrimental to your arguments … which is a good trick in itself.
w.
Willie: Only on the hottest days would the unit be on continuously. Normally it will thermopstaically cycle. ESPECIALLY at night. This doesn’t mean that the unit isn’t “on”. It means that it goes on for a while, then turns off again after lowering temp a couple detrees, then turns on again after a while. Sort of how your refrigerator works.
P.s. On the hoi polloi: It’s not that you all are marvelous analysts and thoughtful writers who cause me problems in debate. It’s that you are nitwits who keep needing to have the same low level arguments rebutted. Nothing would give me more pleasure than to have thoughtful commenters here. Especially ones who disagree with me and can show me things I didn’t think of before.
Steven Mosher
re your: August 4th, 2007 at 1:00 pm
As pointed out by Andrey Levin [Lights 0, August 2nd, 2007 at 6:08 am], “Weather stations use day/night max/min temperature metrics. Couple of minutes of wind carrying AC hot exhaust directly to temperature measuring unit could corrupt day max temperature data.”
So, the important metric is not how many days the A/C might run full bore, but how many days the A/C might run as Tmax is being registered. Do you not think this would be more than 10% for almost all sites with potential A/C contamination?
TCO, while your comments undoubtedly seem vital to you, please stop trying to monopolize the blog. If you want to set up your own blog, do so, but please stop yapping so much here. Some of your best posts are decent and keep you from being Methane Mike, but once I start deleting nonsense, I’m not going to spend the time to sort things out so you run the risk of losing the few reasonable posts.
Re #124: It took TCO just one post to break the 10 percent agreement with Steve. I have noticed the following with respect to certain posters and even so-called scientists whether it is related to AGW or not:
In the absence of a scientific response, three comments have become the norm: a) attack the questioner personally, b) state the they are paid by Big Oil, and c) state that “the science is in, there is no more debate”.
In this case TCO uses the first one.
**However, as long as I’m allowed to comment, I will fault this behaviour, will show how it reduces ‘credability’, will ‘redicule’ those who make too much of Steve’s work, just as they made too much of air conditioners**
With regards to finding fault, unfortunately most of TCO’s comments do not point out a fault, but are an opinion with no scientific basis. Where is the A/C study?
Please do not build any bridges, but take a year off and go for a long hike or hop.
Steve:
1. I’ll try, but realize that you are allowing silly posts, or non-on-topic posts to stand when they are skeptic based. It’s only when I stir the hornets nest up that it’s really noticeable, but there are a lot of skeptic version of Lynn Vincenthaven comments attached to content style discussions.
2. I will try to keep general comments in the Unthreaded area. I think I deserve higher lattitude here, though. Especially as I have to resist the urge to counter people who think that I’m in cahoots with BCL or am a committee or the like (in the content posts). Have to bite my tongue and leave them there.
3. (I was going to post this anyhow, not kissing your ass.) Your recent Peterson analyses are interesting. I remain strongly worried that nothing will come of it in terms of a final answer, you won’t follow it through to some final hypothesis test, and you won’t publish. But the community here will just see and be affected by your in process musing and the PR buzz that it creates. I’m worried that will happen because that’s basically what always does. So I reserve the right to say what I’ve just said, IN UNTHREADED. I won’t mess up each individual thread with a comment to the effect of “where’s the pub”. But I reserve the right to say so in Unthreaded.
P.s. You still owe me a science answer on the code/procedure for the white noise. You haven’t responded yet either with a “you can’t have it” or a “wait”. That’s passive aggressive. Makes me get aggressive aggressive.
Different topic: Here is an interesting paper about dating of 15th century books. I wonder if there are some problem-solving insights that are helpful/analagous with paleoclimatology:
* cross-match dating
* use of lab experiments to infer aging mechanisms
* careful issue analysis
* squeezing info out of old things
http://evo.bio.psu.edu/printclock
TCO, please stop ragging about publications. I would quite like to have more published articles. But you have to consider the possibility that my getting our initial article through the GRL process was a bit lucky. None of the three reviewers were on the core Team. Even von Storch has written of the severe POV gatekeeping in climate science. I’ve had a number of rejections in 2006 and 2007, where the review comments were, in my opinion, very inappropriate.
I quite agree that formal journal publication is an important and relevant part of science activity and I do not personally share the view of some readers that blogs are a substitute for journal publication. However, I don’t share your view that this is entirely due to superior review; I think that superior indexing and information retrieval has much to do with it. I have trouble locating information in old posts and am well aware of this problem.
This is not to say that it’s not possible to run the gauntlet, but it’s time-consuming and I don’t have much to show for my efforts in this regard in the past year and a half. You may of course say that the rejections are due to my lousy writing, but, even at my worst, I think that my style bears up rather well compared to Mann or Rutherford or Ammann. You could also say that it’s due to lousy thoughts and perhaps so. But Kerry Emanuel, a mellow person, thought that our paper on hurricanes resolved an outstanding problem and Vimont and Kossin wanted to quote it, but the paper received vicious reviews and there seemed to be a conscious effort by the reviewers to make things difficult for me. In another case, Mann intervened saying that the paper did not belong in the peer reviewed literature and the editors backed off saying that the matter was too controversial.
Having said that, like an earlier reader said, I view the blog more as a type of seminar rather than as a substitute for journals. I also do some things that amount to reporting.
In any event, don’t get so wrapped up in this point that you turn into Methane Mike.
Ron Cram really hits the nail on the head in numerous posts above about the nature of science.
>> Ultimately science still needs peer review presentations
If you had einstein, maxwell, gibbs, & faraday on a deserted island filled with scientific instruments and equipment, but absolutely no science magazine publishers, a lot of great science would still be accomplished.
If you had 5 scientific journal publishers on an island, with a 100 eager folks, with TCO and their universities urging them to publish, publish, publish, and all reviewing each other work incessantly, but never testing anything, it’s unlikely that anything useful would be discovered.
Bob #127: Great point, well put!
RE 145
I also see this as the electronic version of a “bull” session. “Bull” sessions are a part of any scientific or engineering endeavor that I’ve been involved with. Informal discussions as much as formal presentations and papers encourage the transfer of information As far as publishing goes, your dealing with an expert culture. Having come from one, someone who does not belong to the right club nor adhears to the culture’s belief system will have a hard time being heard. Foretueatly there are other avenues such as this blog for spreading information.
Re: #84
The troll says:
Your location? If so, that explains your postings. Just a hop and a skip down from Scripps Institute of Oceanography (an AGW proponent). Are you an associate? BTW, can you cite your peer-reviewed papers?
My location: SD, inland, North County.
>> I have trouble locating information in old posts and am well aware of this problem.
I could help you design a database to archive information.
>> paper received vicious reviews and there seemed to be a conscious effort by the reviewers to make things difficult for me. In another case, Mann intervened saying that the paper did not belong in the peer reviewed literature and the editors backed off saying that the matter was too controversial.
Wow, this is really infuriating. It shows exactly what’s wrong with the “peer review” process. Ostracising and blacklisting is the work of childish Bullies, the last resort of the incompetent.
[snip- TCO. you don’t need to post that you are “reserving your rights to respond”. please consider the interests of readers of this blog. You’re monopolizing it and it is interfering with the blog. IF you want to make a scientific point, please do so, but again stop being Methane Mike. and yes while I try to keep an uncensored blog, there are exceptions for Methane Mike and Hartlob. Please don’t go that way.]
Gunnar (#146):
ROFLOL.
Unfortunately, the reason that’s funny is that it pretty much sums up what we have. 😉
#145
If you get something rejected, just update the citation style and submit it to another journal. You’d be unlucky to get the same reviewer twice.
>> Unfortunately, the reason that’s funny is that it pretty much sums up what we have
Yup. In fact, if, on a third deserted island, you have 100 honest but average scientists, diligently following the scientific method, they would far outperform the peer reviewers.
Steve, my thanks to you and most contributors to this blog. Most of the time the
comments are worth reading – but TCO is just a waste of space. Why not give him his
own thread, sort of a virtual padded cell. He could rant and rave there to his heart’s
content, and we could quietly forget him…
We could toss in the odd ingriating comment, admiring his startling insights, and so
on. We could even visit the thread – like Bethlehem – as a warning of what could
happen to any of us.
>> We could toss in the odd ingriating comment, admiring his startling insights
You know, we could automate that. In fact, I could show you how you can show different content for TCO only, it would include the regular fare + his postings, along with several auto-generated responses (eg “Good point TCO” and “We’re trying to publish, but we’re not as smart as you”).
Methods of science and construction quality of arguments and evaluation of them are an on topic meta issue, Steve. In fact one that you and your supporters often engage in, one-sideledly. I will restrict conversation on this level to UNTHREADED. That’s a reasonable compromise, Steve. I’m not screwing up the rest of your blog. And I know that I will generate PLENTY of response, so you can’t claim that its non-interesting. If anthing, the complaint is that it is too interesting.
TCO, you say:
First, as I have pointed out to you several times, my name (my real name, unlike your alias), is Willis. If you are too brain-dead to remember that, please copy and paste it somewhere. Your repeated mangling of my name is both childish and pathetic.
Next, gosh, TCO, thank you so much for letting me know that air conditioners cycle on and off. I’d never have known that but for you. However, I was responding to the post saying “The AC runs full bore maybe 30-40 days a year. So 10% of the days get hit.” by pointing out that in many locations, more than 30-40 days “get hit”. Perhaps you should share your blinding insight with steven mosher as well, he didn’t mention that AC units cycle on and off either, perhaps he hasn’t noticed it.
Finally, I notice that you didn’t comment on my statement that:
Who is the nitwit in this instance? Is it steven for making an incorrect claim, you for pretending to respond while ignoring the issue, or me for pointing out a nitwit error? This is all too typical of your postings.
w.
Willis:
1. I will call you by your right name. I personally think the over the top ad homs sorta funny and the nicknames for sure were not meant entirely unkindly. But Steve is cutting too many of my even on-content posts, so I’ll stop with that sort of enragement. (Shake your manly hand.)
2. If you are doing calculations based on the nameplate tons refrigeration (what a manly unit btw), then you need to consider the duty cycle. Obviously it will be less when it is cooler, even if the user has the AC “on”. I’m not sure exactly what Steve alleged or what you knew/didn’t know. Just want to make that point.
3. Sorry, I didn’t read it and even if I had would not know that you wanted a TCO response. I think you have a good point that air conditioning usage has grown over the years.
Thanks, TCO. Over the top ad homs are rarely funny on my planet, but ymmv.
Neither steven mosher’s calculations, nor mine, included tons of refrigeration (a manly unit indeed), only days when the AC units were likely to be used and whether they would affect only the daytime. I’m not sure why you think the fact that they cycle on and off is relevant to either of those calculations.
Finally, I’ve made good money as a marine refrigeration installer and repairman in the past, so the outer and inner details of the workings of refrigeration/air conditioning units are no mystery to me. Your paternalistic lecturing to me on the AC unit’s habit of cycling on and off was … well, let me just call it an uniformed choice on your part. My advice would be to learn something about what people do know before scolding them for what you think they don’t know. I have learned much in my life from the polloi …
w.
RE 137.
So, I am an early and energenic advocate of Anthony’s work. Just ask him.
The AC doesnt occur in isolation. It is combined with other issues which are probably
more important, like asphalt and buildings and wind/sun/sky shelter.
Let me explain. The AC may only run 30-90 days a year ( at happy camp I actually counted hot days in
1981, just to get a feel, a sense for what Jim edward said.. ) That means 30-90 days when it can pollute the signal.
However, the asphalt is there all the time, same as the building, same as the shelter. So, If you
put a gun to my head and asked me to guess I would guess the following.
1. The AC corrupts the climate signal!
2. The building/asphalt corrupts it more than the AC.
So, ON THE NARROW QUESTION, of whether the AC corruption is detectable. I have to say that I do
not think it will be detactable at a high degree of confidence. That is my bet.
I’m playing with some data from happy camp to see if it is detectable. So, how do I say
this. AC is not a good thing. It corrupts the signal.
THIS QUESTION, the question of detecting the signal, is seperate and distinct from the question
of using these sites. I would not use them. TCO, for example, thinks me too rigid in this decision.
That is our food fight.
I dont think sites with AC units in the vicinity of the sensor should be used.
145, Steve:
a. Didn’t know about your problems with acceptances. I’m going off of the record itself and off of your statements from 1-2 years ago, when you said things to the effect of not having complaints about acceptance process, about not planning to science publish-planning other type thjings (I thought you were teasing about a book).
b. I will speculate on the writing versus unfairness at length in a later post.
c. Good man for appreciating the importance of real science articles and citability and archaival is one of the strong reasons for doing so. There are several others, but I’ll get into that with Mosh-pit. FYI: You can consider that a discussion between he and I or between myself and the large number of commenters who defend blogging as equal or better than science articles. (no need for you to respond or edit or get excited and censor.)
d. I’m not Methan Mike and you know it. I intend to drill much further down. To spend a lot of time on this issue. And expect to rebutt those people who make points that need rebutting. And if people repeat points that have already been invalidated, you should not blame me for repeating the counterargument. Should blame those who trot out the same points. You want to have a free discussion, than leave it be. You have to decide if this is a place that allows free discussion or your PR mag. However, I will keep it segregated to Untrheaded.
e. I understand if you need to delete my drunk posts, fun posts, ad homs or the like. I don’t complain about that. I am mischeaveous, wrong, evil and tempted to do such things. However, I will complain if you delete posts where I’m hashing out an issue.
Willis,
I always enjoy your comments. Here is what I was getting at. The AC signal is there.
It will be hard to find. Jim looked at it bottom up with similfying assumptions.
I looked at it top down with simplifying assumptons.
You are right on #3. my bad. you are correct. Stupid of me.
This doesnt mean I think we should use these sites.
Hoi polloi was a joke for TCO who I abused yesterday.
Willis:
a. Glad to know your background. I only have a limited knowledge in the area from a couple years in an MEP firm, from shipboard service, and from a quickie Carrier course. I was very up front about the limits of my knowledge. My issue with others in those threads was that they didn’t even know enough to know that they didn’t know stuff, that this was a field of knowledge. (reminded me a bit of when someone here told me that diesel ships needed more seawater than steam, the dude had no clue that the heat cycle of condensation required cooling!) BTW, ever work with LiBr units?
b. Again, sorry if the duty cycle comment was irrelevant. I’m still not sure that it is. I would think that any calc of impact has to have an input of power rating and that is essentially the nameplate capacity times inefficency times duty cycle. (although a few people have made the relevant point that time of observation might match high load times, or that a maxmin reader would be strongly affect on the max side, so that duty load may not bweso relevant.) I really don’t know on that. Would depend on a lot in terms of speed of heat transfer, mixing, cycle times, etc.
RE 140.
10% is my guess. you are free to guess another guess. I did it for effect. try your numbers.
This is top down guessing. hapy camp has about 30 days a year over 100F.
Lets try this.
AC unit runs full bore 180 days per year.
AC unit raises Tmax or Tmin by 1 C.
thats raises Tmean by .5C for 1 half of the year.
That raises the yearly average by .25C after the advent of AC.
thats not .25C per year. if your Tmean were 10C before AC, it would be 10.25C after
and lets just guess that all Ac units were instaled in 1975. Now, do the
anomaly map dance.
Wait. there are 1000 sites in the network. 10% have an AC problem. Now do the
anomaly map dance.
Simple: AC units are a problem. Get rid of these sites. that way we dont have to
play guessing games or create microsite adjustment models.
#132 TCO on “model A” vs “model B”…
Sorry, you can’t have your cake and eat it too. Formal publishing in a journal of record is, of necessity, antagonistic to rapid publishing.
I believe the real issue is not formality, but trustworthiness. Sadly, the journals are descending to unimaginable depths. Certainly (and very sadly) it’s not valid today to presume that journal-published work can simply be trusted to be of value.
Meanwhile, for all its warts, the blogosphere is discovering what it takes to develop trustworthy sources.
One must be a skeptic of both.
FOR TCO
This how to judge the puerile content of TCO’s posts. HE states how that the unit would
I live in South Carolina and our air conditioner, except for those days that IPCC say don’t actually exist, it runs continously from at least June 1 to at least Sept 30, as the IPCC states it should. Often it runs from May 1 to October 1 continously. For those interested, I have and past owners have installed r38 or better, thermopane windows, and EPA cerified “green” heat and airconditioning, etc etc.
Look at Columbia SC lattitude and realize the substantial portion of earth that is “below”. ACCORDING to IPCC and TCO it should be even HOTTER there at first except that the flux gives it to SC and those “higher” than SC. But of course TCO says we won’t be running our air conditioners. WAIT WAIT, I know the answer, unknown to me and all, the A/C people used Hansen’s lights=0 and even though our temperature sensors measure higher temperature, TCO and Hansen have adjusted it to be less than our setpoint, because they have determined our setpoint compared to lights=0 is wrong. Thank God our temperature sensors do not actually measure temperature, and only obey the wizard of ODD who is hiding behind the curtain.
Pete: I published formally under the B model. Just do LPUs. Lots of books on how to do science say to formally publish under the B model. In your example, both groups were publishing in the literature. You take the time to write proper papers. It’s just that you don’t wait until 10 year of R&D is done. Capisce?
167: That’s not normal. Does your apartment overheat continuously from March to October? DO you set the control at 60 degrees or something? Think you still don’t understand duty cycle. And sorry about the typos. The problems with not being able to see the whole comment box are responsible for a lot of that. REally hard to comment on here when on a laptop.
TCO, Willis and Jim E,
In general, if the AC signal is going to hit one variable Tmax or Tmin,
which is it more likely to hit and why.. give scenarios.
I’ve bounced back and forth on this and some actual intellengence might help.
Consider DTR. Tmax-Tmin. if AC units push Tmax DTR widens. If Ac pushes Tmin
DTR narrows.
Just musing.
Steven Mosher: when is the A/C most likely to be running, Tmax or Tmin? No science, just common sense.
re: 169
Here’s a little musing. The a/c exhaust would obviously hit Tmax immediately because the a/c will be on during the hottest part of the day. But if the weather station is close to the building, the Tmin could be raised as well because the building may still be giving off stored heat well into the night. This is only a possibility and would have to be studied and quantified.
I live near the beach so I use the a/c less (fewer hours per day) than people inland but possibly more than people living in the northern states. The number of hours the a/c is used is not meaningful regarding Tmax but may affect how much it raises Tmin (if at all). My guess is that a/c may cause the DTR to increase. Nearby buildings, asphalt parking lots and tennis courts would cause the DTR to decrease.
RE 170.
Well, as I pointed out before. when I lived in LA on a concrete slab with thick adobe walls,
During the heat of the day it was cool inside. No AC required. When the sun went down, and the outside air cooled
the walls gave up their heat and the slab gave up its heat, and the inside was hotter than the outside.
So, the AC units came on at night. This would pollute Tmin.
Even now not on a slab, I see the outside temp hit a peak. Then a time lag, then that heat moves into the house.
then a while later the unit kicks on.. So AFTER TMAX. its takes time for that heat to get through the walls
etc etc.. perhaps its relative to ratios and settings
So, common sense? I dunno. That’s why I asked. Jim edwards is smarter than me on this. I dont think its common.
#168 167:
First of all, most savant of savants, I gave you real data, not that I expect you to understand, what happens “south of the MASON DIXON line”
Despite all of your comments, you still do not understand what it means to actually have to expierence(sp), measure, explain what someone expierences (sp). Next, I do not have an apartment, I am a homeowner. Not that that it matters, except to you, when you imply these poor apartment dwellers cant even tell it is hot,,
RE 171.
One theory is that microsite contamination Narrows DTR. But if AC hits TMAX
then DTR is widened. I puzzled on this today
With happy Camp I was toying with this idea and yes data snooping.
Pick 1931-1941.
Pick August
Pick 100 degree days.
Calculate DTR.
Pick 1991-2001
Pick August
Pick 100 Degree days.
Calc. DTR.
Kinda as a prototype, but then I got stuck on this question of what gets hit
Tmax or Tmin. And then I wondered if TMAX happens really rapidily, could your cooling
system respond fast enough to impact the sensor outside?. So, your inside is set to 75, and the
outside hits 100, and eventualy the inside gets to 80 and you start to vent, so you vent air, but the air you
vent is actually cooler than the outside (???guessng) and Tmax has come and gone… or something like
that.. So I puzzled. Nightlights =0 doesnt cover this. But if Tmax comes slowly… and your set point is
low..arrg
Musing.
#161. If I have to delete any posts because of stupid nonsense, I’m not going to spend time sorting them out.
Dear friends:
I don’t think that we can say without direct measurements and more knowledge whether or not AC units are impacting any given site.
One site-specific question is how the max and min temperatures are determined. As I understand it, there are a couple of methods in use. If temperatures are taken twice or four times a day, then one is max and one is min. If the temperatures are taken automatically, every five minutes, then the max is obviously the highest one.
It seems to me that the second method is more vulnerable to AC distortion than the first. All it would take is for the wind to be blowing in the right direction for five minutes, and the resulting spike of several degrees might easily break a long-standing record. In any case, transient temperature rises have much more effect with the second method.
All of this seems to be missing the point, though, which is “Are the sites in accordance with the published guidelines”. Many of them are not, air conditioners or no. In addition, many sites which are classified as “rural” or “lights=0” are subject to a variety of siting errors, most of which raise rather than lower the temperature.
How can these issues be resolved? The only way I can see to do it starts with a site-by-site inspection and documentation. That’s why I find all of the howling from the AGW camp, all of the abuse of surfacestations.org, all of the detailed calculations about AC units, to be so … curious. Why would a scientist complain about more detailed documentation of the factors which might affect their data? Eli the Lagomorph rubbishes the entire surfacestations enterprise, and says we should just trust the powers that be … right …
It may be that the AC units mean nothing … or it may turn out that they significantly add to a bias in the data. Remember that the 95% CI of the 2006 data in the HadCRUT3 global database is estimated by them at ⯰.16°C, and is increasing, and that error does not include any estimate of the types of possible bias which surfacestations.org is documenting.
It is far too early in the game to be debating whether asphalt, or nearby buildings, or AC units are a significant factor. We simply don’t have enough information yet to say either way. However, it is worth noting that even this early in the documentation, that a large number of stations are outside, in some cases way outside, the published guidelines …
w.
#145 – Have you tried asking journal editors not to send your submissions to the worst of the ‘team’? I know in the past we have asked an editor not to send a submission to someone who we argued would not give an imparital review because their beliefs were attacked by our work, and the editor complied.
There’s an interesting interaction going on at Deltoid, where someone has posted a criticism of a famous paper from Lancet on the mortality rates in Iraq http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2007/07/david_kane_on_lancet_confidenc.php
Some similarities to Steve and this blog’s work:
-criticism of a famous study by someone outside the mainstream
-politically charged issue
-the left being associated with the under attack, but published original paper
-arguments about statistics methods is what the debate hinges on
Some differences:
-A full discussion paper is being critiqued, not blog posts
-The author put it on the site of his opponents, rather than one he controlled
-Very strong criticism, vice support, in the comments
-skeptic version paper has been formally submitted to a science journal
Gunnar Re 147
Sorry I couldn’t respond sooner. I had to stop laughing first.
The only problem with Einstein, Maxwell, Gibbs and Faraday on an island is that we might never know what they did, unless maybe one of them had a blog.
106/Mosh:
1. Controversial view and controversial method. I think of Luther and the 95 theses. This is a blog.
it is a new method. Some will use the new method for new ideas, other will use the new method
for old ideas. It is not the exclusive method.
—————–
I expected this response and it is a valid point. Sometimes the new material does need a new application to show it’s worth. But it’s unlikely. How would you react to a proof of Cold Fusion that was only shown in CF (not respected, home grown, sorta like EE) Journals? Wouldn’ you trust it more if it was in PRL?
2. Controlled. you have to be more specific and explain how this differs from other methods
—————-
I mean that Steve is the approver for what he writes. It’s not an outsider. Not even the benefit of another person in the loop. Plus the danger of self-review. I realize that this isprobably a similar point to the peer review lacking. And also to the techical issues (ability to be deleted, to edit live, etc. versus journals of record.) THere is also the matter of control of the comments. Not such a big deal except the difficulty in citing a STeve blog post makes it hard to respond other than on site here.
3. Non permanent. Download it and save it. Or, submit the blog to the wayback machine which
archives the web. Paper disintegrates and burns. I think of the library at Alexandria.
Even classified papers disappear from the LOC. ask Sandy burgler.
————
This is a very weak response. I can and have walked into a library and pulled down an 80 year old paper and used it in science work. University libraries put things on acid free paper, don’t allow home circulation of journals, and will pay for lost volumes to be replaces. Also of course, the journal article is backed up electronically nowadays in addition, and not on random websites, servers, but in repositories. Wayback machine can be very unrelieable. Also, if there are different versions of a page, then which will be accessed. Screen captures do nothing for someone coming to the debate afterwards or wanting to use the science. (compare how I do cite a 1932 paper.) In addition, we would have to label the screen capture as versions change with time. Also, it’s unreasonable. Like saying that I have to photocopy the entire university library. No one screen captures everything. Look at a very practical example, cited on this blog and a part of the narrative of criticism: the Chefen blog (MBH 7 discussion and red noise buildup). That blog is now disappeared and it is impossible to show Chefen’s mistakes. Damage done to the community in terms of PR is done and we can’t easily correct it.
4. Footnotes. Links are better.
—-
Footnotes AND links are better than footnotes alone. But if I have to choose one or the other it’s the footnote. That is a definitive cite. The link is just a connection to another webpage that may change, get deleted, be the wrong one, etc. BUT in any case, I wasn’t talking about footnotes versus links, I’m talking about how Steve uses VZ04 or the like as a label for a paper and never clarifies by a bibliographical endnote exzactly which paper it is. This is crazy, not to be in favor of footnotes, especially when we make so mich point about being able to trace things back to ground truth in terms of data.
5. Lacking review. Write one. everyone is free to. Blog your reviews. we have an army of davids
( good book you should read)
————————–
I don’t need to read Hewitt’s book, I lived it. The benefit of review are many, not just wqeeding out liars. But pushing a higher clerical standard, making sure that it is readable (authors and Steve in particular often write unclearly because they know of things in their mind and assume that readers do as well), point out mistakes, improve quality by picking the most important papers in impact, etc. And it’s NOT just that reviewers and editors improve papers, but that submitters WRITE a better submissions since they know it will be checked.
6. Lacking Axes. I agree, but this is not a flaw of the new method. It is implementation detail
—-
It is a common failing of this blog and the informality and control and lack of a check all lead to clerical problems like this. Note that this is not merely a clerical problem as it causes issues with readability and ambiguity.
7. Crappy writing. Implementation detail, not necessary element of the new method.
————-
It’s an observed failing of the blog posts here, versus what is accepted into a journal. It makes sense that vetting will drive quality. That’s human nature.
8. Snarky ness. You and I have been snarky. I am not snarky now. Its a choice, not part
of the method.
—————–
It is discouraged and almost unallowed in traditional literature, but uncontrolled and rampant here.
————-
I’d make a few additional points.
*Some of the flaws of Steve’s posts versus traditional literature would be alleviated by posting discussion papers. Some not all. But the blog posts are just bad. Violate many good advice on how to write science papers (don’t use a mystery story format, don’t shadowbox, etc.)
*Steve has some tendancies to poor writing, to assumption, to clerical mistakes, to lack of a focus. HE NEEDS the discipline of writing papers. It will make him better think through things. Many times we don’t really understand something until AFTER we have written about it. Many times the process of writing a good, strong paper will get us to change opinions as we better evaluate supports for inferences, when in the writing process.
For the information of CA readers, the just-released issue of the UK-based journal World Economics (vol. 8, no. 2, April-June 2007) features several articles on climate change, including a major piece by David Henderson. The abstract of David’s paper follows:
GOVERNMENTS AND CLIMATE CHANGE ISSUES: THE CASE FOR RETHINKING
Governments, and in particular the governments of the OECD member countries, are mishandling climate change issues. Both the basis and the content of official policies are open to serious question. Too much reliance is placed on the established process of review and inquiry which is conducted through the agency of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. This process, which is wrongly taken to be objective and authoritative, has been made the point of departure for over-presumptive conclusions which are biased towards alarm, in the mistaken belief that the science’ is settled’. Rather than pursuing as a matter of urgency ambitious and costly targets for drastic further curbing of CO2 emissions, governments should take prompt steps to ensure that they and their citizens are more fully and more objectively informed and advised. This implies both improving the IPCC process and going beyond it. As to the content of policy, it is not the case that the choice now lies between two extremes, of no action and the immediate adoption of much stronger measures to curb emissions. The orientation of policies should be made more evolutionary and less presumptive, with actual policy measures focusing more on carbon taxes rather than the present and prospective array of costly and intrusive regulatory initiatives.
END OF ABSTRACT
In an article in the London Financial Times (2 August 2007, p. 9) Clive Crook, a Washington, DC-based columnist for the newspaper, writes that the IPCC is a seriously flawed enterprise and unworthy of the slavish respect accorded to it by most governments and the media’ and goes on:
For a fully documented indictment, read the article by David Henderson in the current issue of World Economics. Mr. Henderson, a distinguished academic economist and former head of economics at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, has been tangling with the IPCC for some time. Five years ago, he and Ian Castles (a former chief of the Australian Bureau of Statistics) first drew attention to a straightforward error in the way emissions scenarios were being calculated. The projections had used long-range cross-country projections of gross domestic product that were based on exchange rates unadjusted for purchasing power. The mistake yielded projections for individual countries that were in some cases patently absurd. Far from acknowledging the point and correcting the projections, the IPCC treated these eminent former civil servants as uncredentialed troublemakers. Its head, Rajendra Pachauri, issued a prickly statement complaining about the spread of disinformation.
As Mr. Henderson’s new article makes clear, the episode was symptomatic of a wider pattern of error (often, in the case of economics, elementary error) and failure to correct it. How can this be possible? The IPCC prides itself on the extent of its network of scientific contributors and on its rigorous peer review. The problem is, although the contributors and peers are impressively numerous, they are drawn from a narrow professional circle. Expertise in economics and statistics is not to the fore; sympathetic clusters of co-authorship and pre-commitment to the urgency of the climate cause, on the other hand, are.
Add to this a sustained reluctance ‘€” and sometimes a refusal ‘€” to disclose data and methods that would allow results to be replicated. (Disclosure of that sort is common practice these days in leading scholarly journals). As a result, arresting but subsequently discredited findings ‘€” such as the notorious hockey stick’ chart showing the 1990s as the northern hemisphere’s hottest decade of the millennium ‘€” are left to be challenged by troublesome outsiders …
With the environmental risks calmly laid out, framing the right policies demands proper political accountability and a much wider range of opinion and expertise than the IPCC currently provides. One incompetent institution, committed to its own agenda, should never have been granted this degree of actual and moral authority over the science, over public presentation of the science and over calls for more serious action’ that go well beyond the science.’
TCO.
Good counter points all. Where to begin? I would begin by noting that Interactive electronic publishing
has the potential to be everything a good journal is, and more. Nothing prevents it from becoming this.
Currently no blog I know of strives to be this. Perhaps one will. If we agree that this is like a seminar
then perhaps the fair criteria for judging it should be that? And if it claimed to be a replacement
to a journal, then we judge it by that.
So I want to defend the new method of publishing and you want to critique certain aspects of how Steve
uses it. Now, point by point
1. Controversial view and controversial method. …
“I expected this response and it is a valid point. Sometimes the new material does need a new application to show it’s worth. But it’s unlikely. How would you react to a proof of Cold Fusion that was only shown in CF (not respected, home grown, sorta like EE) Journals? Wouldn’ you trust it more if it was in PRL?”
well, I try to be sceptical of everything. Trust maybe but verify. The point wouldnt be who published it. The point
would be can the result be duplicated. I suppose one could say that certain publications could
boast a higher rate of duplicatability. That would be kinda interesting. Anyway, my stadard would be something
like does the journal and verify that all data and methods are publically and freely available.
Pedigree matters less to me
2. Controlled.
‘€”‘€”‘€”‘€”‘€”-
I mean that Steve is the approver for what he writes.
” Ok, well I think all new methods of publication attract self publication FIRST. It is a stage.
Think about the stages that books went through and why.
3. Non permanent.
“This is a very weak response. I can and have walked into a library and pulled down an 80 year old paper and used it in science work. University libraries put things on acid free paper, don’t allow home circulation of journals, and will pay for lost volumes to be replaces. Also of course, the journal article is backed up electronically nowadays in addition, and not on random websites, servers, but in repositories. ”
So we start a business for preserving your blogs for eternity in repository.
4. Footnotes. Links are better.
‘€”-
“Footnotes AND links are better than footnotes alone. But if I have to choose one or the other it’s the footnote. ”
The broken link thing is a pain ( also the missing journal, or journal only carried at LOC)
I wonder if it would be possible to autmatically generate a footnote from the link?
5. Lacking review.
‘€”‘€”‘€”‘€”‘€”‘€”‘€”‘€”‘€”
“I don’t need to read Hewitt’s book, I lived it. The benefit of review are many,”
I misunderstood you. You meant review before publishing, I thought you meant after.
Self publsih puts a big burden on the writer.
6. Lacking Axes.
‘€”-
“It is a common failing of this blog ” I think we agreed axes are good. I dont know that its common.
I’d have to count.
7. Crappy writing.
Well, I have some pretty aweful writing in journals. Mostly induced by page limits.
8. Snarky ness. “It is discouraged and almost unallowed in traditional literature, ”
True. sometimes however one gets tired of dry white toast for breakast.
Steven Mosher,
Not surprisingly, there is a bit of information found when web searching for “average hourly electric demand” and variations thereof [e.g., http://www.ce.jhu.edu/epastar2000/epawebsrc/joutz/Papers%20and%20Presentations/IAEE_Jul03.pdf ] Almost independent of geographic location, summertime electric load increases from a trough around 6:00 AM to a peak around 9:00 PM, then dropping back quickly to near the lows. This is not just A/C load, but is driven in large part by that. So your experience has merit, but at the same time this data seems to indicate that A/C units are more likely to be drawing load during the hot part of the day compared to the early morning hours. Not pure speculation, but not science either.
I agree with Willis Eschenbach that: ‘All of this seems to be missing the point, though, which is “Are the sites in accordance with the published guidelines”. Many of them are not, air conditioners or no.’ Certainly, some real science is needed before carte blanche acceptance of such “high quality sites.”
I appreciate your input on these blogs and look forward to finding an area where I can add some real value.
>> pattern of error and failure to correct it. How can this be possible?
If only the errors were in Economics alone. There are fundamental uncorrected errors in every field, including algebra, physics, chemistry, logic, control systems, statistics, hurricanes, etc.
Like the economics error, the errors are on purpose, and folks who point out the errors are demonized and ostracized. This is not the behaviour of professional scientists acting in good faith.
Congrats to Willis for knowing what ‘hoi’ means. I’m just one of the many-headed,
but let me answer TCO’s criticism in this way. The science you all discuss here is
opaque to me except in a miasmic manner; however, I do understand rhetoric and
it can lead me to truth. This blog has made this subject accessible to me, which
otherwise would have been impossible. And with that knowledge, I can hold my own
in a conversation with any of hoi polloi, and most scientists. Smells like science
to me.
======================================================================
Mosh: Climate of the Past Discussions is an electronic journal with open review and both archival and publication of even rejected papers. I think it’s fine.
re:174
Steve,
Interesting musings. When I lived inland, I also had a house that stayed fairly cool during the day but was hotter inside than outside at night. It has been a few years and I had forgotten about it.
I still do not think it is a good idea to have an a/c unit near a weather station.
RE 183.
Thanks reid, I was thinking of doing the same thing and looking at energy usage.
My bottom line:
1. AC units have the potential to corrupt the signal.
2. AC units are correlated with things that corrupt the signal as well
3. Trying to isolate and detect the AC corruption, in and of itself, would be very difficult.
4. trying to adjust the record is a fools errand.
5. Ignoring the corruption potential is bad science.
6. The safe approach is to eliminate sites that fail to meet standards and live with the effects
of reduced sampling ( bigger CI potentially)
7. Finally, work to improve the historical network so it can serve its purposes.
I cannot imagine a rational being disagreeing with me ( just kidding)
Kim,
Once upon a time I had two professors. One was brilliant and benevolent and he endured every
less than brilliant question I asked. I learned a lot from him.
The other was brilliant and bullying and he would not suffer my foolishness. I learned a lot from
him. The key was to not take the kindness nor the curtness personally.
Erich Heller was the first. William Earle was the second. you can wiki them both.
You will find characters of many colors here.
I think what you guys are doing is great.
The point of investigating all these temperture recording devices surrounded by buildings, pavements, ac units etc, is for finding the true reality. Boy are we lacking that these days LOL
These man made things do create a micro-climate in the area the unit is in; and all these “global temperature” charts using this data discuss only fractions of temps- over long periods of time; therefore there is no way to conclude for sure “global temp” or even “USA temps” are accurate to the detail some of these papers claim.
If you read the sections of Mann et al papers and the IPCC reports, even the congressional reports which I have to some extent in the past- it can say “and other thermometers” sometimes it says “various devices like on ships” (Can’t even begin to imagine what kind of calibration and compliance procedures ocean vessels had-before computers- to use those logs from back then to compare fractions of temps in climate papers now) Maybe they were good data takers- but how you could substantiate it I don’t know-and then combine that data, with other data from all over the place (tree rings and other proxy-other recording devices) is just amazing to me.
There are all kinds of abtracts dedicated to examining micro-climates created by manmade things in biology papers too. Just google “Roads raise temperature” and find things like “Effects of Roads and fencing on the Temperature and Humidity of Turtle Nests” (the sex of turtles is determined by the temp the eggs are exposed to) I believe they also examine the shadows cast by these things in this paper and what they do to the temperature!
Either buildings, ac units, pavement, cars, basketball courts…matter and effect the readings (even by fractions) taken by these units ; in these specific places- or they don’t!
145/McIntyre:
I haven’t read your papers or seen the rejections, so I will speculate. These are my honest
Bayesian bet” suspicions. Not rhetorical games. This is based on a lot of reading of this blog, your powerpoints, publishing of my own common problems of coworkers’ publishing, reviewing articles. Also reading classic books/articles about the science technical communication process/philosophy, like this: http://techreports.larc.nasa.gov/ltrs/PDF/NASA-64-sp7010.pdf
Many, many, many scientists feel that reviewers and editors are biased or stupid and that they are being unreasonably held up. 90+% of the time, they are making excuses. Sure, there are many mistaken review comments (but even many of these show how a casual reader could make a similar mistake). Moreover, editors are willing to take controversial material forward if the paper itself is an outstanding paper (over reviewer objections). But when it is an amalgam of poor exposition AND controversy then they will generally kill it. And I support them on that.
BC’s CPD rejection is an example of such a killing. My own experience, I have gotten a controversial paper published, over the objection of the most prestigious Bell Labs scientist, without revision, because it was well formatted and simple in “datapoint science” approach. Despite the sting it gave Bell Labs, it wasn’t even anything special in terms of a discovery! One could almost have rejected it for being “boring science”. But it wasn’t because it was well-done. Editors like getting clean firm bricks to add onto the wall.
I suspect that much of your problem lies with:
*slow writing and submission by yourself (you’ve been diffident about publication in the past, have written testimony and conference presentations at the last minute, etc.)
*sending to wrong markets (“I told you so” on the Polar Urals, remember.)
*slow resubmission to other markets after rejecting (why weren’t you in a methods journal after PU got bounced?)
*not doing a “nuclear” check to ensure that you meet the submission guidance on page 1 of the January edition (notice to authors)
*not doing a “nuclear” check of endnote references in the library
*not thoroughly proofing (spellcheck, word usage, Stunk and White stuff, etc.). Not having an outsider proof it.
*writing as if others know a subtext that is familiar only to yourself, or agree with arguments that you’ve made elsewhere that are still in dispute (you make this mistake a lot on the blog and even in some of your IPCC reviewer notes).
*lack of a clear, rigid focus, and papers that stand on their own. In particular, you have a bad tendancy to make segues to “other bad things that the team has done”.
*shadowboxing–putting strange arguments or spin or awkward themes to try to win a battle with rivals, etc. The NASA advice above, says clearly to just tell the simple science discovery story. If you do that the reader (now and for posterity) benefits in clarity as NOT EVERYONE knows the political or personal battle. Also, that’s not what the journals are about. Also, in acheiving the objective of clear science/math communication, you will find that you also achieve the secondary objectives of defeating the enemy and winning the girl.
*writing a lawyer-advocate position paper instead of a science paper: For instance, MBH is a black box. A function, an F(x1, x2,) etc. You seemed to think that you had discovered things about how the function behaved with different inputs that cause worry (different x’s) or that terms in the F itself (the expansion into terms) were flawed, or that the input data was in question. But instead of clarifying how it worked, you listed a bunch of rhetorical errors, did not quantify impacts, etc. In comparison, BC made a full factorial of variants of the function to better help us understand it. Huybers also clarified how the correlation/covariance and centered/decentered were two different “levers”. Similarly Zorita challenged you to define your rhetorical comment of “bad apples” by a math definition. But you haven’t. I have challenged you to label how a matrix handles different shapes, curves. (It can’t detect “badness” Steve, it can only interact with “appleness”! That’s how math works. It crunches numbers. Capisce?) Wegman actually showed how MBH interacts with certain shapes (perhaps low frequency) to promote them and had an example that was not even hockey stickish (max in the middle). If you would just look at this as a puzzle and write papes about what you’ve learned about the puzzle (whether good or bad for skepticism or Mannism) then you would make discoveries. Discoveries are contributions. They are what the journals are in the business of publishing. Note, that I’m not saying you have to do field work. But when you become so centered on only finding things in one direction, it skews the logic, writing, and conclusions, and even your process of research.
*Snark, ad hominem and slang.
*Not being deadpan in reporting things and being very clear about the difference between varying levels of data, trend, argued conclusion, possible inferences, etc. Journals are not just places for rivals to fight personal or political battles. They’re not even PRIMARIKY for that. They’re a place for people to make contributiuons and build off of each other for many years in the future. Therefore, even if you are incorrect on a higher level conclusion and proven so in the future, you still make a contribution if certain methods of analysis, data, lower level and more certain conclusions are upheld. So with that in mind, one should be more “just the facts ma’am” or just the “side by side comparison”, rather than trying to string to a whole conclusion. And in many cases, multiple papers are required to get to that meta conclusion (for instance that MWP exists or AGW or whatever). So you need to build small LPUs that stand on their own, regardless of even if you lose the meta battle in the end. And then when you’ve published sufficient of those LPUs, you write up a review that ties them together and argues for the bigger picture. The discipline of having done this and having sound bricks to build with will help your final house that you build. But more importantly, you will have learned enough to do a better job. Writing sound papers requires thinking. And you will learn more from having done this, than you do with half-baked blog posts to an uncritical audience. Caveat: you can and should give the readers reason for why they should care (“this work on silicon oxidation may have benefit to other researchers trying to develop lower size lithography”, but NOT “I’ve shown how to do lower size lithography” if you haven’t.)
*Speculation about ethics is improper. Let that speak for itself. Comments about lack of access to data are important, especially if you know you are working off of an imperfect set. That’s fine. You can still make a contribution and should do so, if you can’t get the code you want. But report the problem in a very deadpan, not vieled, fair manner. Not like your blog postings here. Just think of the reader who is looking at this stuff 10 years from now and wants to get what he can out of your paper. Your lack of data, code, is something he needs to know as it affects the weight he puts on your paper. But he doesn’t care about the personal battle. And he certainly doesn’t want to listen to whining.
***
Finally, the problems with writing and submitting are common. I have many of them. You evince many of them in the little places where I can judge. And I’ve read the whole blog. So do the vast majority of submitters. That’s why all the textbooks on “How to write a science paper” have the same motherhood and apple pie comments. Because PEOPLE STILL DON’T FOLLOW THE ADVICE!
Oh…and regarding Mann and the team, guess what? They have a lot of the same flaws. And they have problems getting published!
Re: TCO & others bashing this site.
There are several good reasons for this site and why I log in constantly:
1) There is no publication that specifically publishes audit-type work. Pointing out that the numbers in publication x don’t add up or that the data are not public are not viewed as “research”, but if we are going to spend trillions of dollars on this they certainly should be audited. There are formal organizations that audit corporations, and the congressional budget office even audits government agencies, but no one is auditing the climate science.
2) If you try to get contrary work published, it is huge headache compared to regular papers. For example, of my 107 peer-review papers, those on climate issues were 5 times as big a headache because I was not following the conventional wisdom. It is easy to give up under these circumstances.
3) Others, including myself, do followup on issues raised on this blog and publish.
4) It is a great vehicle for finding the latest important papers and seeing what people think of them. No,not everyone’s complaints about papers discussed here are not always correct, but it is useful to see what they say.
1.Audits
*You can get exactly that sort of thing published, if you do it right. (and have more of a message towards correcting the record than impugning integrity.)
*I’m sick of hearing the audit analogy. I’ve done M&A. Worked with finance weenies. It’s nothing mythical to me. Also, this is a pretty damn ad hoc and unprofessional (but hard working and curious) audit.
2. You can get stuff published. And if you don’t make the effort, you don’t deserve to change the consensus. Running off to EE is like Cold Fusionists who say Phys. Rev. has it out for them and go off to their own little conferences, with tin hats on. Also, why don’t we see full discussion papers then? We just see blog posts, which are not even finished thoughts.
3. Not enough. And the community, puts way too much credibility in stuff that is not getting checked.
4. It’s a fun place to hang out and does have a fair amount of content. I don’t like the mystery style posting and often it is very hard to parse Steve’s writing. For instance the recent asphalt stuff, starts with an irrelevant paragraph about air conditioners.
The host of this blog has many times mentioned the the value of data retention in mineral development. The owing letter in the National Post shows how valuable that this can be. For those who have forgotten Bre-X was one of the biggest frauds ever perpetrated.
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/editorialsletters/story.html?id=27c49e3c-c6b1-4726-bfd7-d11bd40b8e7e
An old Chinese proverb says:
“All models are wrong, some are useful”
re 183 reid simpson, You may know this, and for this discussion it may be total overkill, but I think you can acquire (maybe with more grubbing) complete load data for any region from the local interchange. Mine is http://www.nepool.com/markets/hstdata/dtld_net_intrchng/ext_intfrc/index.html
The RSS satellite data for July, 07 is out.
Lower troposhere anomaly +0.218C
Up 0.08C from June but down 0.22C from January and still lower than the anomaly of March 1983 (24 years ago.) Trend since 1979 unchanged at 0.181C per decade.
http://www.remss.com/pub/msu/monthly_time_series/RSS_Monthly_MSU_AMSU_Channel_TLT_Anomalies_Land_and_Ocean_v03_0.txt
http://www.remss.com/msu/msu_data_description.html#msu_amsu_time_series
#193 >> And if you don’t make the effort, you don’t deserve to change the consensus.
This shows remarkably distorted critical thinking. In science, the consensus means nothing. You must be thinking of that thing where we vote, and new people get elected. Let me repeat, in science, consensus means NOTHING.
I have downloaded all “unthreaded” from “road map” to #16, stripped all style from them, and made them simple text files retaining links and graphics. This is to allow offline reading and collection of items on similar subjects in a wiki or simple word processor.
If anyone wants, I can provide zips.
I’m getting sick of looking at that article, Mosh. I read about 1/4 of it pretty diligently. Skimmed the rest and looked at the conclusion. To really read something like that, when it is a new field and when you are being skeptical takes several hours. And you end up needing to read Parker and Peterson and Oke1987, etc. etc. It’s just not worth it for me, given the time required to judge Runnall’s thesis chapter (what it looks like). I’ve already done some of that with MBH and the like. And Steve has decamped to the extent of not even replying to Burger. We’ve been through paleoclimate to hurricanes, now to UHI and microsites. There’s even dabbling in solar. I just don’t think it’s worth the time to engage thoroughly, when my pushing for details will be blown off anyway. I can just as easily make the point, that we don’t need to engage with Steve until his papers are out (that ends up being more efficient with my time). Of course, I can still use hoi polloi’s as a scratching post.
RE 200.
That’s fine. My mind’s a blur too with all the half read stuff in it.
re: 198
Gunnar,
I agree that the trend is away from that view and that consensus means nothing in science, however the majority view means a great deal to Wikipedia. As a Wikipedia editor, I would love to know if you have a link to support your statement that “fewer than half the papers written since 2004 accept the AGW premise.”
Thanks!
I’ve updated the RSS lower troposphere temperature anomaly chart through July 2007, which is located here . Rather cool for an ENSO-neutral period.
Lessons in thermodynamics from my father. We would keep the house closed all day until the inside temperature was the dropping evening outside temperature at which time we’d open the house until morning. Hoi polloi’ll do it again, eventually, when electricity is expensive enough, though a fan will probably circulate the outside air inside instead of the wind, for security reasons. With adequate insulation it should be possible to keep the temperature inside near the outside mean.
=========================================================
Re: 193 TCO
TCO seems pretty dismissive of people’s difficulties getting papers published that are contrary to AGW conventional wisdom. I’ve published 12 papers on climate change (forest response, paleoclimate mainly)–by the way TCO, how many have you done? and how many were controversial?–and compared to my other 95 papers these were by far the biggest headache to get published, with very rude reviewers, journals refusing to even review them etc. TCO, before you claim this is all so easy and we are like cold-fusionists, tell us how many times you have published a paper that shows something contrary to what the big shots say.
In addition, let’s say that one had questions about a big physics experiment like those done at CERN, but they would not release their data or codes and it seemed monkey business was going on. You can’t go do your own experiments because it takes a huge team 15 years. Well, this situation is like that. The data and models are tightly held at government labs where big teams do the work led by people like Jones and Hansen with a public advocacy position to push. The rest of us mere Ph.Ds don’t have access to the magic they do to the data, which we are suspicious of.
Craig:
Almost nothing. I’ve had one paper that ruffled feathers with the Bell Labs mafia. I’ve never published and climatology papers.
However, I had every paper where I was lead author accepted without a revision. (7 or so.) My advisor as a grad student had 150 papers as an authro and 300 as an editor, had NEVER had a paper accepted without revision. And I did very menial science. And I’m no great writer. But I did follow the directions and REALLY take a strain on writing something that was letter perfect in every way.
I really think this helps by the way. I’d even go to the extent of saying that a weak research or the like can be published if you write a perfect LPU paper and are brutally clear about the failings of your work. If you dropped the sample on the floor and choose not to repeat it, just say so.
I’ve seen a lot of other people’s papers as friends or as a reviewer and heard the wails about unfairness. But the papers were usually sort of messes as well.
I’ve seen what Steve does on the blog and for conventions. He’s a smart guy and capable of doing high quality communication. But to date, he has not taken that extra effort to do so. Maybe, if he wrote perfect papers, then he would still get rejected, but why even leave that as a possibility. Write a perfect paper, so that bias is the only possibility for rejection!
I’ve also seen him submit to EE. Have seen him hesitant to publish. Have seen him submit to wrong markets (not even sure that he has a good feel for why to put a paper in one medium versus another.)
I mean sure, maybe he’s not afraid to be clear about his ideas, but then where are the discussion papers. Maybe he really does do careful issue disaggregation in papers, and I’ve just not in presentations or blog posts. But is that likely?
Oh…and there are a multitude of places to get published. There’s tree ring journals. GR. GRL. JoC. Elsevier journals, Springerp-verlag. European journals. Stats journals. Etc. If he has a problem with JoC, then go somewhere else. Sheesh. And don’t whine about Nature or Science. He is not going to get in there without a smoking gun breakthrough and he doesn’t have that. So stop whining and get in where you can.
And several people have said to Steve that he can request a certain rival not to review the paper. Heck, he ought to think of who could review it fairly. Zorita, Burger, VS, Tapio, Guidot, etc. I told him about that ages ago. And several people mentioned it to him recently. But is he doing it? Maybe, maybe not. He doesn’t have to give status reports. Fine. But then I don’t feel anything wrong in slamming him for the bottom line. Which is no pubs and a buttjeezuz of blog posts.
Oh…and if the situation like you described with CERN existed, I would chip away peice by peice. Pick the areas where I could write something. Or be very clear about writing things where there wasn’t a strong conclusion. just run two scenarious and say that’s the story. Proecedure M is susceptable to change z. Very deadpan and stoic. And I would still publish things that are additive or interesting, that are discoveries that I made, even if they didn’t fit into the CERN war. Heck, Steve ought to be able to publish the grass plots. or some of his vector proofs or whatlike. He doesn’t care enought about science to do so.
I mean heck, he says he will write about Burger later this summer. Sheesh. That is so tied in with stuff that he has worked on. But he’s going to dabble in Stevenson screens now. That’s not a get the science done, figure it out the end attitude. THat’s a flit around attitude. That’s a “score PR points” attitude.
One of the great mathematicians of the 20 th century made this statement
#169, Steve Mosher:
I agree w/ Willis in #176. Every A/C installation is site and application specific. I tried to highlight this in my posting to you RE: ‘at what ambient T will the unit turn on ?’ Some factors include wind direction, wind speed and site geometry, make and model of A/C unit and how it’s being used by the occupants.Service history of the unit may come into play. A unit low on charge, for example, will emit less heat on the hottest days.
It’s enough for me that there’s a decent likelihood that a nearby unit could cause what Boris called a “both big and small effect” [i.e. – Big enough to matter, but too small to be noticed as temp signal contamination by researchers.] It’s also troubling for me, in the historical record context, that we’ve gone in 50 yrs from a society where people used to pay money to see movies they knew they wouldn’t like b/c the theatre was the only place in town w/ A/C to a society where everybody has A/C.
I think Willis is right to point to the temp measurement algorithm as being key, b/c certain possible schemes practically guarantee that any positive bias will always be added w/o preserving any substantial record that could be used to go back and detect that bias.
More or less, I agree w/ your #188.
Re #210, maksimovich
Who are you quoting there ?
Re #212,
fFreddy,
Vladimir Arnold
see http://pauli.uni-muenster.de/~munsteg/arnold.html
TCO, #206, it seems that you are a great paper writer.
But you would make a terrible reviewer.
If you were a good reviewer and knowing how good your own papers are (letter-perfect apparently), you would not accept the distortion and missing data and illogical conclusions that exemplify the majority of pro-AGW papers. Something to think about.
In the early days, AC units were quite expensive, so it’s unlikely they all would have been installed at once.
Additionally, the price of AC as it relates to the average person’s income has been falling, so it’s likely a person would be willing to run the AC unit more now, compared to 10 or 20 years ago.
On the flip side, AC units have been getting more efficient as time goes on.
We can determine the amount of contamination that exists in the current record, but trying to puzzle out the amount of contamination in the historical record is going to be difficult. It’s probably impossible.
#169,
It’s not an either or situation. AC units can affect both Tmax and Tmin. Obviously Tmax has the greatest chance of being affected, but especially for southern locations, the AC will continue to run all night, thus affecting Tmin as well.
My wife and I work during the day. Sometimes we leave the AC off during the day, and turn it on when we get home. It then runs all night.
In this situation Tmax would not be affected, but Tmin would.
AC’s in business settings could see just the opposite. Other buildings, the AC would be on all the time (but not necesarilly running).
It’s not a simple problem.
JerryB, thank you.
#202,
Click to access consensus.pdf
Jer: Thanks. Interesting essay. It seems like the speaker is unhappy about a very high level of mathematics or of mathematics instruction or that for math majors. I’ve had the normal types of math up through Bessel functions and the like. But have not encountered the (I think) topology, formal algebra, theoretical calculus, of which this writer speaks.
I think traditional math instruction is pretty decent and has stayed the same for the last 100 years. Sure some new math silliness and some akward attempts to slide in computer programming exist. But for the most part, people learn the basics, things like integration by parts, as they always have.
Sam #56 >> Does anyone know what the level of CO2 in the ocean is estimated by sampling to be?
Given that equilibrium is like 50 times atmospheric, the ocean is below that, which is normal, considering it’s a cycle and this is why.
Click to access 764607.PDF
re: 219
Gunnar,
Thank you for the link. It was an interesting read. While I think it is correct to say scientific opinion is moving away from the AGW view, I would not claim that “fewer than half the papers written since 2004 accept the AGW premise.” According to the link, about 45% of published papers express an explicit or implicit endorsement of AGW and only 6% express an explicit or implicit rejection of AGW. Most of the papers are reporting on science and not conclusions.
Thanks again!
RE: #215 – As recently as the late 70s and early 80s, you’d only find residential A/C in California in the hotter inland locations. Even places that routinely get into the 80s, such as some Bayside locations in the SF metro, and places somewhat nearer to coast in SoCal, had very little residential A/C at that time. Since then, things have changed. Nowadays, many people in even these marginal areas have it. The new standard seems to be, if there are even a handful of days above the mid 70s, then A/C is deemed a “necessity” by today’s often obese, comfort obsessed automatons.
Ron #222,
While it’s true that “Most of the papers are reporting on science and not conclusions.”, it’s still significant that they don’t include an implicit acceptance of AGW, given that the search term was “global climate change”, and given the human dynamics involved.
>> only 6% express an explicit or implicit rejection of AGW.
Again, consider the human dynamics, confirmed on this very blog that anything counter to AGW is very difficult to publish. Given this powerful human “peer” pressure, that fact that so many chose not to add a line implicitly accepting the AGW premise is quite remarkable.
#223,
I grew up in Bellflower, near Norwalk and Compton. We had one wall unit in the family room. None in any of the bedrooms. I don’t remember turning it on more than 2 or three times a year. I moved out in ’78.
I was hoping that someone might be commenting on the latest Sci. American article bally hooed on the cover as “The Undeniable Case for Global Warming”. The article by climatologists Collins, Colman, Haywood, Manning, and Mote not only claimed a conclusive case, but also predicted dire consquences.
Nothing new here, but worthy of review.
OK, the truth is out: We’re all getting paid to be “deniers”. Why else would anyone express skepticism about global warming in the face of such overwhelming evidence?
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20122975/site/newsweek/
Where can I get my check?
RE: #225 – Bellflower …. you’re almost guaranteed to be on the ocean side of the fog line on most summer mornings. Definitely a good example of a closer-to-the-coast LA basin location. Takes all of about 10 minutes to be at the shore driving down Atlantic Ave. A/C is a luxuary not a necessity there. Good example!
RE: #227 – In my day job, I literally get paid to supply products which benefit from alarmism. Our sales come ons are heavily geared toward Green thinking and eco guilt. So why am I here? I guess I better get out of here, I would not want to be associated with “paid” deniers! OMG, what would my working peers think? My creds …. down the drain! /s
Newsbusters fairly nicely fisks this Newsweek article.
================================
If there had been a peer review system like we have today in 1905, Einstein probably would have had to start his own journal in order to get his ideas out to other scientists and the public. Thank God, the editor of Annalen der Physik (Max Planck) was a friend of Einstein!
Peer review is somewhat necessary, but no where near sufficient. Einstein simply posted his 6-page thesis in a bookstore window, right?
Mark
Re: #227
The Newsweek article refers to the denial machine as if it were a monolithic driver of public opinion for 95% of the article and then in the final 5% points to a voting public that would be less than thrilled to sacrifice now for claimed benefits to later generations. The terminology is not exactly what one would expect from a measured and thoughtful presentation of the current state of mitigation for claimed adverse AGW effects and is a bit of a give away. I think one can play the blame game with the small minority of skeptics on this issue, but one might be stepping on too many customers’ toes in going after the voting public that appears to inhibit the sanctimoniously and self righteously speaking but not so brave politicians.
Paul, yes. #58 As far as the level of CO2 where it’s being measured in liquid bodies, I don’t know if that tells us anything anyway. It’s just all estimated by sampling. I was wondering how much data was available. (And for #71 I meant hadn’t read the inbetween conversations down the line between 2 and 55 when I wrote what you said in #1.) I am also interested if there is a ‘CO2 leads temperature rise correlation’ (probably) but I don’t think there can be any specific answers, and am unconvinced even if true that it’s bad. If you think about it, what is 1C when comparing day/night temperatures in an area or variation between seasons in that area?
TCO, re #84 etc Sometimes you seem quite reasonable, other times your ‘nitwit hoi polli moron’-speak and obsessiveness on papers leads me to believe either you are multiple persons or have multiple personalities. By the way, “this blog and it’s science” is incorrect, it is “its”, no apostrophe. And your “EE is not a real journal” nonsense just makes you look childish and/or angry. Why don’t you(all) stick to constructive criticism rather than random drive bys. Or is that too much to ask. And your #91 just makes you look bad. Give it a rest. I’ll refrain from calling you “troll boy” here. No, no, not because you aren’t generally trolling, but because I don’t know your gender. Test Cram, Mosh Pit, Mosh Man. What are you, 3 years old? And take Steve’s suggestion from #141 to heart; if you want your points to be taken seriously, don’t obfuscate the issue with all this junk. Like your PS in #141 or post #161; are you on purpose trying to fill up the blog with so much junk and keep Steve busy editing you? Or would you rather get an answer and stop being such a disruptive influence in return?
All: Okay, via measurements (satty coverage of the SST are measurements of the SST pretty much, rather than just being estimated by sampling ) shows no real increase in them over the last 150 years. So would anyone like to refute that the SST readings show no real increase? (.001 C a year, with a switch in measurement methods and resolution along the way) Or give details of some other indication that the rest of the sea(s) and ocean(s), other than SST readings, are rising in temperature? The boundry layer is what it is, what about the rest of the chaotic system that’s both linear and non-linear at the same time…
AC: ‘Home units’ will cycle on and off as will such machines. But if it’s 90F in your house and you set the unit to 75F, the ‘on’ period will be long… If it’s 120F outside, that complicates it. If it’s a swamp cooler, that’s different too. If you’re talking about a 50 floor office building (or a building with a computer data center), individual units will cycle, but basicially at least one of them is always cooling…. In any case, the point being that the details don’t matter; it varies, and we want to know trends.
Gunnar, #221 So in other words, it’s pretty much another ‘infinite number of data points’ problem with estimates and averages. My question would be is it better to trend it in a linear manner or a logarithmic manner? My answer would probably be that it doesn’t matter. 🙂
re: air conditioning compressors/condensers: I still say that if there is actually a warming trend, the AC units will magnify that trend, because they will run for longer and longer periods of time.
Steve, this thing is a mess. You’ve got people just having general arguments about stuff in various threads, rather then exploring a single topic. It’s a mess. And I’m not even causing it.
Anthony, your most recent posting in More Asphalt is off topic. It’s just general micro-site argumentation. Oh…and quoting that paper like it is gospel is selective quoting. THat section you quoted is clearly a tentative argument, made at the end and a general idea, and not something based on data buildup and hypothesis testing for a set of areas.
Steve McI, sigh…
Discuss asphalt under asphalt. Of course, the head post is a mess as well. Sigh…
How about the Burger paper. Go read the final version and give me your thoughts.
Oke-dokey. Let’s talk Oke.
I think just doing a general regression and keeping Tmax1, Tmax2, Tmin1, Tmin2, would give more parameters. Might work better. Get some function based off of that.
Also don’t see how he has really proved that “R” is such a great metric. I mean, has he compared it to other ones? How about just using daytime temp difference, not “cooling”. Has he done the work to show wehther that works just as good?
>> Gunnar, #221 So in other words, it’s pretty much another infinite number of data points’ problem with estimates and averages.
You’re right. We’ve barely scratched the surface of measuring this. Like C02 in the air, it’s hardly evenly distributed.
Steve: Why don’t you [ … and go to this conference: http://imsc.iap.ac.cn/10imsc/OtherNews_show.asp?id=1
The International Meetings on Statistical Climatology have been organized by a group of independent climatologists and statisticians since 1979. The purpose of the meetings is to bring together climatologists and statisticians, to exchange concepts and problems. Climatologists present statistical problems in climatology, meteorology, and related fields and consider the methods that are currently used to deal with these problems. Also, techniques tailored by climatologists for the specific needs of climatology are presented. Statisticians, on the other hand, present new, state-of-the art techniques developed within mathematical statistics and other scientific fields. By discussing the needs of climatology and the possibilities offered by modern statistics, synergetic effects are obtained, advancing the methodical basis of climatology and helping statistics to focus on relevant problems.
————————–
Wow, did Wegman know about this group? If he thinks it stinks, why didn’t he at least explain why?
This looks like a good talk:
Linear and non-linear reconstruction from tree-ring series and written documents and the problem of low frequencies and missing data
Guiot, Joel
CEREGE CNRS, Aix-en-Provence, France
Nicault, Antoine
CEN, University of Laval, Quebec, Canada
（session: ）
Session: Climate reconstructions
Climatic reconstructions for the last millennium based on long tree-ring series and, when available, on historical written documents, have several crucial problems related, to the calibration (linear or non-linear methods, stationarity and range of the climatic variable), the validation of the estimates (availability of independent data, method), the variability amplitude of the extrapolation and the low frequency component of the reconstructed signal. Various methods have been proposed as well for the pre-processing of the low frequency component of the tree-ring series (standardization) than for the calibration method or the post-processing of the reconstructions. We illustrate our discussion with examples taken from our own works (reconstruction of temperature in Europe and summer PDSI in the Mediterranean region) that we compare with approaches found in the recent literature (Mann et al, 2005; Rutherford et al, 2005; Burger et al, 2006 …). We will propose some solutions for the various problems pointed out. So non linear calibration techniques such as analogues methods and artificial neural network are useful for reconstructing the full range of the climatic variables and to perform in presence of missing data (it is compared to the regularized expectation maximization (RegEM) method). A combination of cross-validation and bootstrap technique is useful for a robust validation. The treatment of the tree-ring series trend by using a flexible regional growth curve is also a good solution for saving low frequencies in the reconstructed climatic series. Finally we propose that, in the future, the use of inverted process models is an integrated approach able to deal with most of the problems discussed in the talk.
Here’s our pal:
An assessment of regional record-breaking statistics in annual mean temperature
Eduardo Zorita
GKSS
Hans von Storch
GKSS
（session: ）
Different datasets of global mean surface air temperature show consistently increasing values for the past 50 years. Since 1990, a large number of record warm years was detected: the 12 warmest years since 1880 have all occurred after 1990. The probability p of the event E of finding at least 12 of the largest values of a sequence of 126 random numbers (years 1880 to 2005) on the last 16 places (year 1990 to 2005) is 9.30’€”14 . However, annual mean surface air temperatures show serial correlations even in the absence of variations of external forcing. Two null-hypothesis have been used to calculate the probability that such series of warm record years may arise by chance in stationary, but serially correlated, series: an auto-regressive process of order 1 and long-memory process. The parameters of these processes are estimated from the observed data, using the complete record or just part of it. The resulting probabilities, estimated by Montecarlo realizations, hover over 10-4 to 10 -3.
A similar analysis has been performed for the annual temperature averaged in each of the 26 regions defined by Giorgi and Bi (2005), derived from the HadCRU3 data set. Some of these series start earlier than 1880. The autoregressive parameter is estimated for each of these series, as well as the number of warmest years occurring in 1990-2005. The probabilities of these number of record years arising by chance under this null-hypothesis varies widely. For some regions, it is as high as 0.1, but for other regions, notably East Asia and Alaska, they are remarkably small, of the order of 10-6, indicating that for these regions the late series of warm years would lie even more clearly outside the range of random fluctuations than for the global annual temperature.
Here’s a new in press Von Storch and Zorita comment on one of the Mann papers:
Click to access zorita_etal_comment_to_mannetal05.pdf
Note that it fits into the general theme of how different types of data work in different types of reconstruction methods. The whole “how red are your proxies” thing.
Note that this subject is still very much alive and has not been well described. Addressing it would take a general attitude of curiousity to go after it. Not just looking for things to “nail” an opponent with. Or wanting to score rhetoric points in an AGW battle. No…instead wanting to actually discover something and share it with people.
re 247.
Very nice.
It will be interesting to see if they used RAW or adjusted to calculate the
series and the records.
One way to twist this logically is as follows.
After “adjustments” to the record I see that the number of record hot years recorded
is highly improable.
I attribute this improbability to three possible explainations.
1. Our adjustments to the raw data create an unrealistic number of record years.
Our adustments must me wrong.
2. The world is getting warmer.
3. A combination of 1 and 2.
confirmational holisism. all theory is underdetermined by data. Duhem-Quine Theorem.
Further, I’m hoping that they can provide the sites used by CRU3! Every time
we ask for the CRU3 sites we get denied. So, if these guys relied on CRU3,
I’m sure they did due diligence and got the CRU sites.
TCO-244: “Since 1990, a large number of record warm years was detected: the 12 warmest years since 1880 have all occurred after 1990. The probability p of the event E of finding at least 12 of the largest values of a sequence of 126 random numbers (years 1880 to 2005) on the last 16 places (year 1990 to 2005) is 9.30’€”14 . However, annual mean surface air temperatures show serial correlations even in the absence of variations of external forcing. Two null-hypothesis have been used to calculate the probability that such series of warm record years may arise by chance in stationary, but serially correlated, series: an auto-regressive process of order 1 and long-memory process. The parameters of these processes are estimated from the observed data, using the complete record or just part of it. The resulting probabilities, estimated by Montecarlo realizations, hover over 10-4 to 10 -3.”
All this does not make any sense at all. We are not gambling, with cards or other game: any mathematical increasing function would behave in the same way, I do not find anything strange in it; but I am used to work with real world, not statistics. They neither write about uncertainty (in the error range, measures are compatible, and compatibility concept replaces equality concept). And overall they seem to consider the whole system as having to be stable, which is a thing out of sense: or, they might have demonstrated the system is not stable but depends on some variable (but I could even demonstrate that any conclusion is not demonstrable if I had just a 0.5°C error on historical series – I know it is just 0.2°C, 0.1°C for more recent years, but I suspect it is underestimated) – variable that can be out of the system but also in the system, if the system itself is not so stable. So, they discovered “hot water”, a thing that both AGW and Solar-influence supporters always thought (out that, in real world, when real things happen, it does not matter if the probability was very low, they happen anyway) or what their conclusion is?
Moreover: “Different datasets of global mean surface air temperature show consistently increasing values for the past 50 years. Since 1990, a large number of record warm years was detected: the 12 warmest years since 1880 have all occurred after 1990.”
It is a wrong statement. Are we discussing the last 50 years, or all the years since 1880? Moreover, temperatures did not increase for the past 50 years, but just from late ’70ies to late ’90ies (or early 2000ies, as you wish), while decreased from late ’40ies until mid ’70ies – and, no mention at all of 1920-1945 warming, and its statistical probability, if we want to deal with the years since 1880.
Zorita is a sharp fish, Phil. He understands that any such observation of number of record years has assumptions, and if you read he discusses how different autocorrelation assumptions would change the observed event probability. Considering if the result is from a trend, is also a clear part of his work. While you may argue or add that there are other methods that he should use, he is a good man for trying to quantify things.
So many people on this site, just seem scared to even have someone run the numbers and do analyses. They want to throw up their hands and say it’s impossible to make any inferences. Want to run away from science work because they are scared it will help build the case for the view on AGW. Don’t be scared. Be curious.
re: 242
TCO,
The question is not “What does Wegman think of this group?” You should be asking “Why didn’t Mann join this group?” In essence, that is the question Wegman was asking. Wegman was upset that Mann was attempting to innovate a new statistical approach and never bothered to ask a real statistician if his approach made sense. That is just sloppy work on Mann’s part.
BTW, apparently the computer modelers have done the same thing. They have developed these elaborate GCMs to run on expensive computers but they are not considering everything the scientific forecasters indicate they should be considering. I do not know if you have read anything by Scott Armstrong or not but you might find this pdf interesting.
re:248,
TCO,
You wrote: “So many people on this site, just seem scared to even have someone run the numbers and do analyses. They want to throw up their hands and say it’s impossible to make any inferences. Want to run away from science work because they are scared it will help build the case for the view on AGW. Don’t be scared. Be curious.”
That is about the most nonsensical thing I have ever seen written here. This site is all about “running the numbers” and “doing analyses.” It is people like Mann and Jones who are afraid to turn over their data and methods who are afraid to have the numbers run.
The tuti fruities are out in full force
Now they are trying to tie global warming to the Minneapolis bridge collapse.
http://climateprogress.org/2007/08/06/did-climate-change-contribute-to-the-minneapolis-bridge-collapse/#more-1120
WEgman said that the whole field of climatology was not interacting sufficiently with normal statistics. Mann argued in the contrary by citing some things like what I just brought up.
In any case, the argument is not just about what Mann did, but about the types of interactions of the fields as a whole. Could even add things like arguments about theoretical description and validation of new methods, in addition or instead of just using them. But statistics (read Hotelling’s essays) does have a history of building new methods from new data. Of theory coming from applied.
I actually think both Mann and Wegman have a point. And that a grownup would try to go to a higher level of understanding rather than just scoring points (like Mann does, like most of the commenters here do). A first step would be to take a look at this group and say in what way they do/don’t involve a collaboration from traditional statistics and climatology.
re:252
TCO,
The fact the group exists at all is a good thing for science, but it doesn’t do much good if climatologists who are publishing do not learn from it. You are right that new data and new problems cause people to try to innovate new approaches. I do not fault Mann for trying to innovate. I fault him for not checking with someone who knows the field. That is just sloppy work. Trenberth is doing sloppy work now in that he is not trying to learn from Armstrong.
“Anyone can speak Troll, all you have to do is point and grunt.” (J.K.Rowling)
*plonk*
As a norwegian, I’m tired of all this anti-norwegian bigotry. You’re insulting norwegian trolls when you compare them to some of the people on this blog. I haven’t met that many trolls, but the ones I’ve met have been decent folk.
We had a 6-hour power outage on our street yesterday; and a 3-hour outage already today. Quite annoying. Trying to cope in Baghdad with a few hours of power a day must drive people crazy.
Here’s a chance for a warmer to earn $100,000.
Steve McI:
Should we discuss sea ice in the asphalt thread? Should we even discuss general micro-site issues (remember ACs were banned, this was supposed to be an asphalt only thread).
If you are going to edit out things from one side (e.g. lack of publications criticism), you ought to also edit out the many diversions from your side, generalizations to higher level debate, or just loose complaints. You even generate many of these diversions yourself–jumping on Judith regarding a review for instance in one of the hurricane threads, or sighing about how hard it is working against the team. This happens in most of the board’s threads, but only becomes notable, when an “opponent” does it, since then the discussion becomes more heated.
I’m actually fine with allowing free discussion, including thread jacks or sight/cheers from the laity. But if you do it for one side, do it for both. You could look at places like Patterico or Volokh Conspiracy or Just One Minute. While, even at those places, someone going against the flow, gets a lot of abuse, the site owners do not shut down the discussion.
Note, none of this is to excuse, my using your laity as a scratching pad. But Lee flames, very very little. His comments are similar to much of the laity who are allowed to post.
Please be fair.
TCO, perhaps the problem has something to do with constant NAGGING and repitition. You don’t have to make the same point 100 times to be understood. Just what is your goal here, anyway?
#251 Mark W
Well it looks like we are now “bridge collapse deniers” as well as “AGW deniers”. This despite the fact that the bridge has been classed as ‘design deficient’ since 1990 according to the same article.
A couple of weeks ago I commented on the fact that since about July 10th, we here on the West Coast of North America poleward of ~ 37.5 N, had been experiencing a series of synoptic patterns that were more typical of October than July. I openly wondered if we might have actually surpassed climatic Summer and begun climatic Fall. Last year, our climatic Fall began in August. So, the question was not poorly put. Well, here it is August 7. Although, after that series of October-like systems, there was somewhat of a weak return of typical Summer conditions (e.g. no strong short waves, precipitating cold fronts, etc) during the last week of July, I am again wondering. On the evening of Aug 4, a fairly substantial trough moved down from Alaska. We got measureable rain at my location (only a couple hundreths, but still) Sunday and early yesterday. Today, there is overcast and threat of rain. It may truly be a year with almost no summer here. We’ll see how this contiues to develop.
RE: #260 – Roads in Minnesota were salted during icy and snowy conditions until the 1980s. At that point, enviro regs kicked in and banned it. 20 years of repeated intrusions of salty slush. Enough said.
At the risk of giving Dardlinger a chance to get snarky again, I should point out that as long as the bridge is properly painted, the salty slush can’t get too the metal to corrode it.
Re 261
15C [8C under the norm] and starting to spit here [BC South Coast].
One can hardly argue with the handling of the data by Zorita here or in the psuedo-proxy studies given the assumptions made in both. The devil can be in the details — and the assumptions.
LOL. Good ole boy Gore is complaining that the “polluters” are rigging the data. What irony.
He does have a point, govt is one of the biggest polluters around.
I honestly wonder if there is some circularity of logic where Steve calls “red noise” something that is centenial-scale trending (saying that the system has that kind of noise pattern), rather than saying that such a pattern is generated from 1 or 2 year lags. This would of course end up being a circular argument, because that’s about all that the paleo can show. If “hockey sticks” happen as part of the real, noise cycle of climate, how could we EVER account for it.
re: #263
Why should I get snarky at a Bridge over Troubled Waters?
TCO, I am really curious because I cannot make sense of Zorita-Von Storch statement.
So, if I trow a die 125 times, and I found that the last 10% of times I got only 6 (or any other number: the correlation is valid for cooling too) I can say it is a very rare event, I was very lucky or something similar – or maybe I am just a trickster.
But, if I have 125 years of Earth’s meteorological history, and I found that the last 15 years were the hottest ever in this period, well, I will try to find the cause of warming (GHG, Sun or whatever else) but such kind of statistics seem useless to me, because there is no reason I can see why the whole system should be stable and repeat itself for 125 years with very small random oscillations which average should be 0 (it may not happen even in real random oscillating systems for some hour…).
>> 125 years of Earth’s meteorological history
But, you don’t. You only have a few measurements in towns from a few countries. An amazingly small percentage of the earth.
>> I found that the last 15 years were the hottest ever in this period,
It has been clearly shown on this blog that the recent rise are caused by suspicious “adjustments” to the data, ie, NYC suddenly losing it’s population in the last decade. You did hear about that, didn’t you?
>> there is no reason I can see why the whole system should be stable and repeat itself for 125 years
The solar system has many long cycles in it. Just because you don’t know about them doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
TCO, a few things about Zorita and this work. One is the following statement from his abstract:
Note that both of these hypotheses assume a stationary series … perhaps Eduardo can show that global temperature is stationary, but I’ve never seen such a proof. I’m sure, however, that given your cheerleading for this presentation, that you can quickly point me to the required demonstration of stationarity. He seems to be saying that his analysis shows that such a group of high temperatures does not occur “by chance”, but all he may be showing is that the dataset is not stationary.
Second, you say “Zorita is a sharp fish …” I assume you mean that he knows what he is doing, albeit the metaphor is odd, but if that is the case, why is his name on the execrable “Climate of the Past” paper, which had more skeletons than closets to put them in? He did little to defend his work in that paper, despite repeated invitations and having a CoP forum expressly designed as a place for that defense, which I found disturbing.
Nor is his choice of companions reassuring. Anyone co-authoring a paper with Moberg, Esper, and Briffa, particularly one containing an egregious and wholly inaccurate personal attack on Steve M’s work, can’t be too long on piscine brilliance … he seems like a well-intentioned person, I enjoy his writings, I appreciate his willingness to post here, but he seems lacking in substance.
Finally, I just took a look at the HadCRUT3 dataset, which is the dataset where he claims that the 12 warmest years 1880-2005 occur since 1990 … and I find that the 12th warmest year was in 1988. Ooops … a minor point, to be sure, but a central point to his thesis, one which may affect the results, and one which doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in his sub-aquatic sagacity …
w.
270/Fil: It is an abstract of a paper or presentation. You need to see the whole thing to judge the method. Would also add that this is an area where both researchers have been grappling with for a while, so recommend you to read their papers. I critiqued one on this site. (None of this is to say that they are “right”, just that you ought to look at what they did thoughtfully. They are not neophytes or dishonest.)
>> So, if a system exhibits a cyclic phenomenon, with ah upward trend to the baseline of the cycle, that uper trend can have no qualitative effect on the system unless it exceeds the amplitude of the cycle? Really?
Exactly Right. If you have an alternative scientific hypothesis, based on first principles (not number theory), that would explain why we should believe that earth’s climate has a pole in the right half plane, please feel free to tell us. Physical systems react to the current value of inputs, not the average. If you claim that a high temperature will cause some sort of “damage”, then it would do so when temperatures increase to 26 deg C above the average EVERY SUMMER!
>> Oh, bullpoppy!!! You are confusing atmospheric residence times with equilibrium time constants. They are not the same thing.
Actually:
Note, I said 2110. That’s to allow time for the C02 to come in contact with the ocean. Once there, the equilibrium time is quite short. Everytime you open a can of soda pop, the sound “pssst” is nature’s way of saying AGW IS IMPOSSIBLE
>> Well, except he evidence of rapid sea level changes in the paleo literature, to name just one.
Actually, plate tectonics and geology are most of the determining factor in sea level change. Any piece of land which rises out of the sea, lowers sea level. Anyone who has taken a bath should know this, unless they have AGW blinders on. Examples are Norway, Mariana Islands, Aleutian Islands, Republic of Mauritius, most of Tonga, Some of the Lesser Antilles and the South Sandwich Islands, Iceland (which is the world’s largest volcanic island), Jan Mayen, Hawaiian Islands, Emperor Seamounts, Tuamotu Archipelago, Line Islands, Austral Islands, Tristan da Cunha, Surtsey, etc. That’s a lot of mass, which equates to a lot of water.
Ice on land is not as effective as most people think in lowering sea levels, since it displaces its weight in magma, which displaces water by volume. The difference in density between water and magma results in a sea level effect of about half of what one would expect. Besides, it is complete sophistry to claim that Greenland and Antartica will 1) melt from a 2 deg C change in temperature or 2) melt overnight or 3) man will not easily adapt. Double besides, there will be a lot of great land in Greenland available. As a descendent of vikings, I claim first dibs.
>> You are aware, I hope, that the satellites measure something different from the surface stations, and no comparable data is available to compare it to, going back before then?
Yea, but we can (they already do) calibrate the satellite data with good surface measurements. What’s the problem?
>> I’m not in a hurry; but Al Gore is.
So what, Al Gore doesn’t matter, from a scientific point of view.
>> premise 1) I don’t believe in tipping points if so we would have reached them during the Holocene period
Therefore, there is no hurry.
>> premise 2) Mankind could cope with 2 degree temperatures; however I not ruling out negative/positive effects.
Therefore, there is no hurry.
>> premise 3) I’ve heard arguments that resource will run out soon many time before and I always take them with a pinch of salt.
I’m not making that argument. I said “If what you (AGWer) say is true” and “either by new energy source or running out (as AGWer claim).
>> And yes we may have working fusion, economical solar cell….. but that doesn’t mean we should be prudent with what resource we got.
Never said anything about not being prudent. I’m all for prudence.
>> Premise 4) Have you seen me write anything that expounds such alarmist theories. No, nor do I believe in them.
Therefore, we have plenty of time to study the climate, and there is no reason to adjust fatally flawed (from a climate point of view) surface meaurements, when we have the satellite data.
>> But to say we should give up and not bother quantifying the data we have. Especially as this date is used to backup alarmist theories is bizarre. As it’s only when we can shoe the better science will the climate alarmist be silenced
I’m not saying we should “give up”! We have a completely superior data source in satellite data, so all post 1978 surface data is inferior. Why adjust and analyze it? It’s distracting us all from the real point: investigating the physics behind the climate. If the entire post 78 surface record was identified as inferior, then it could not be used to “backup alarmist theories”. When two people have a fundamental difference of opinion, and one side accepts the other sides premise (contrary to his own), and starts to argue details, that side has lost.
>> And I’m perfectly aware of satellite data, but 30 years is simply not long enough. We needed to AUDIT the current data we have and correct else leave wiggle room.
If they can graft ice core data onto a minute-by-minute NIR C02 dataset, it is certainly appropriate to attach the pre 1978 surface record to the satellite data, so your data will NOT be limited to 30 years. We do NOT need to audit the post 1978 surface data. It is obsolete.
>> As for temperatures 25 feel up a pole, of couse it can make a difference
You’re still not getting it. The surface data system was designed for weather reports, ie to tell people what temperature it is around where they live. This is important for their daily lives, as in, should I wear long or short sleeves today? Should I bring a sweater? Is it too hot to take a walk tonight? Whether a site is up a 25 foot pole or not doesn’t make a hoot of a difference in this case. It would make a difference if you told city dwellers that it’s 80, when it’s really 90, which is what these UHI adjustments are doing.
272: Willis:
-we can’t properly examine the work off of an abstract
-stationarity is open to question (if the AGW case is correct, then the series is non-stationary). If the system has some “100 year memory cycle” or “hockey stick” cycle inherent to it then we can never see if the current warming is anamolous. That seems unlikely to me and I have not heard any good physical arguments for it. but in any case, it’s moot. We examine what we can.
-Zorita is a sharp fish regardless of that co-authored paper. You have to look at the totality. Heck, I can tell from how he posts, that he is curious, smart and fair.
-(12th year): Let’s look at the full paper or presentation. Or if you think you have a valid point otherwise, send him a note.
TCO: no I do not think to dishonesty, simply to a useless method of classifying data or similar – as you said, I would have to read the whole paper, but in the same time the extract should give me the basis and the objective of the study (so I could complain about poor extracts or extracts missing their goal).
Gunnar: I think you are missing my point, which is not at all in favour of AGW (but neither of “extreme” opposite side). We have (few) point-measurements on a very large surface, not to mention volume (this is the main reason why I think satellite measurements should anyway be more precise then ground ones), and with (in my opinion) a little underestimated error: but it is all we have to study world’s history.
For the meteo stations, such work was made on US stations only. It is also true that e.g. Arctic warming just get temperatures reach ’30ies level, or that right to 1947 there were many long and hot summers in Europe (while continental averages start from 1948, and NOAA’s average from 1968, so including a 20 years period of anomalous chill summers for many parts of Europe – in North Italy July’s mean of 1921-50 is 1-2°C hotter than 1961-90 one). But Europe’s winters are now less cold than in the ’40ies, despite some pretty cold one (2002, 2003, 2006) while equatorial belt temperatures have been increasing over 1940 levels (e.g. 1998 Nino – indeed they are slightly decreasing in the last years, without such strong events).
In the end, I repeat you: no reason why the system should be stable for 125 years – because there can be too, of course, astronomical, solar or other cycles different from a 125 years period. And in my opinion is still to demonstrate that a 0.6°C increase in 120 years violates Earth’s historical variability [reasoning both on thousands and on millions years], so perhaps we could consider XXth century almost stable [being the increase 0 or 1°C as well] on a very long time scale.
#272
1988 is currently the 14th warmest year on record in the HadCRUT3 compilation. (In 2005 it was the 12th warmest, but there have been two more warm years since then)
A point I miss: errors in data corrections.
Let’s say corrections (Hansen’s or other one’s) are right.
We have an original historical value which error range is e.g. 0.1°C for the instrument and another 0.1°C for positioning or other causes out of the instrument.
But, if such value was not correct, and it has to be corrected by calculating a new value many years after, I would expect at least a slight increase in the error range of such value, calculating and correcting the new error as the new value: not passing e.g. from +10.0°C with a 0.2°C error to +9.0°C with the same 0.2°C error; unless we know (measured, better than calculated) a stable error in measurements of that kind of instrument (which I think it is not the case, since corrections are usually different station by station and depending on locations or other outer conditions rather than on instruments).
P.S. calculating errors does not simply mean to use just the barely instrumental error, or to add 10% etc. it is a more complicate question when you cannot get other direct measurements of the same precise event (so, I would not be surprise if, adjusting data by 1°C, then making the sum of all possible errors, the new error range could get up by 0.2°C to even 1°C, right the difference between old and new data).
Gunnar: while I agree with you that every effort _should_ be made to use the most accurate data set, e.g. satellite data, the fact of the matter is that the surface record _is_ what is being used (primarily). In that context, it should be audited, for better or worse.
I should point out that GISS has credited Steve with catching the Y2K glitch. Kudos.
Mark
#274
Yes! Exactly why I say: You’re in place X. This year, the high temp is 126 F instead of 125 F. So what if the mean is up a degree (or 2 or down etc) at 70 or 50 or whatever. What if your min never departs from average but max does by double mean? What are you even looking at, one sensor? Even if pristine, 1 sensor is 1 sensor, and all it tells you is the temp of the air where it’s at and what it’s above and how the two mix at the height. That’s even ignoring the usual 10s of degrees difference between night and day.
Hint to everyone: Local temperature records still get broken both directions all the time, hour after hour, day after day, week after week….
#274 Gunnar, you need to be careful and not take quotes out of context. I’m pretty certain that the Gonfiantini reference refers to the explicit case of isotopic equilibration between CO2 and water during the CO2-H2O equilibration method for measuring the oxygen isotopic composition of water. This method equilibrates a small volume of CO2 (10 – 30 mL, usually at or close to 1atm) with a small volume of water (typically 1 to 5mL). Conversely, when trying to measure the oxygen isotopic composition of small volumes of water this method is modified by reducing the pressure of CO2 so as to minimise the CO2-H20 molar ratio. Here, one finds that equilibration times are greatly increased and are well over one week.
As regards chemical equilibrium in the carbonate system (Stumm and Morgan and Dreybrodt), I don’t have the papers in front of me, but have in the back of my mind that these refer to establishing equilibrium between dissolved CO2, bicarbonate and carbonate ions.
There is an excellent paper by Hendy that discusses the kinetics of chemical and isotopic equilibrium in the water-carbonate system. I’ll post the reference tomorrow when I’m next in the office.
Siberia is -37 instead of -38… 🙂
Mark
>> _should_ be made to use the most accurate data set, e.g. satellite data, the fact of the matter is that the surface record _is_ what is being used (primarily). In that context, it should be audited, for better or worse.
But it’s a waste of time. It doesn’t really matter what the small number of true AGWers do. In the interest of science, all scientists should use the satellite data for all post-78 data. When reviewing a paper, the reviewer should insist on using satellite data.
AGWer: conclusion X, based on post-78 surface record
Option 1) audit post-78 surface record to show that the conclusion is unwarranted
Option 2) replace post-78 surface record to show that the conclusion is unwarranted
Option 2 takes no more time than Option 1. I’m still waiting for a scientific reason why anyone would use flawed surface data instead of satellite data.
That’s one of those “I think Gunnar knows the answer, but doesn’t want to admit any scientist is willing to compromise his objectivity in pursuit of agenda.”
I fully agree with you, but them’s the cards we’re dealt with. This data, and the undocumented adjustment methods, are the holy grail of the small number of true AGWers, many of whom are in control of the keys to the data kingdom.
Mark
Right, Mark, but of course the hot place releases more energy than the cold place, throwing the equilibrium out of wack!
>> Here, one finds that equilibration times are greatly increased and are well over one week.
Doesn’t change my point. It’s a lot less than 10 years.
The context of my comments might be hard to follow, since they were considered as off topic in “A “lights=1’€³ USHCN station”, so I reposted them here.
I’ll post something tomorrow to indicate which message was responding to what. I’m definitely going to design message threading into my blog software.
Two questions those in the know may already know.
If I did everything correctly, the graphed mean for 1961-1990 (or the entire period) for the ERSST was 13.82 C Again, if correctly, 1854 +.06 and 2006 +.22 on the mean. Although I did not get the anomaly for every year, nor the trendline of those anomalies (I could only find the data monthly download at a time so just used their charting capabilities), the start and end values give us a +.16 C (about 1.05 tenths of a degree per decade) rise.
First question; Does not calculating each year and not calculating the trendline make it a huge difference between doing it that for the land temps with a 7 tenths per decade rise? I’m trying to figure out the 7:1 ratio between the GHCN and SST change from start to end. If I remember, just doing start and end of GHCN land resulted in only about a .01 difference beween the absolute start and end trend, due to the length of time no doubt. However, I’m concerned I may have started and ended the SSTs on abnormal values and even with 152 years, it may affect what I got more than I think it does. Or if I could get pointed to a yearly anomaly download like with land temps.
Second question, multiple part; If indeed it’s been a rise of ~.16 C for SST why is it not higher (or more in-line with the air) if all this CO2 is in the ocean absorbing it? How much CO2 is estimated by sampling to be in the seas and would it account for this magnitude of rise, or should temps be up or down more for CO2 levels (or vice versa, CO2 up or down for temp)? How much resulting chemical levels for the level of CO2 and temp estimated by sampling to be in the seas and would it account for this magnitude of rise, or should temps (or some mix of the CO2 or the chemicals) be up or down more? Or is a 7:1 land/water difference normal?
A paragraph or two from anyone that has these answers would be appreciated. Short papers are fine too. I guess I’m saying I’m sure somebody knows this information already.
BTW, Gunnar, if your future blog intends to push such issues, i.e. using the most accurate data available, I’m with you on that 100%.
Mark
I’d like to read that paper on the kinetics of chemical and isotopic equilibrium in the water-carbonate system also.
Concerning the Newsweek cover story
“The Truth About Denial
Global Warming Deniers: A Well-Funded Machine”
By Sharon Begley, Newsweek
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20122975/site/newsweek/
There is a live talk on climate change deniers:
“Join NEWSWEEK’s Sharon Begley for a Live Talk on Wednesday, August 8, at noon, ET, about climate change denial and its lasting pervasiveness.”
Just go to the above link to join the fun. Hopefully it won’t be just a lot of hand wringing and dissent suppressing.
I’m working but perhaps some posters here can give it a go.
>> I think Gunnar knows the answer, but doesn’t want to admit any scientist is willing to compromise his objectivity in pursuit of agenda.
By definition, a scientist wouldn’t. In the battlefield of ideas, this point should be made loud and clear. That way, AGWers will be on the defensive. Conclusions based on the flawed surface data will be harder to defend, and gradually fade away.
>> I fully agree with you, but them’s the cards we’re dealt with.
You can’t win a war of ideas by being this defensive.
>> This data, and the undocumented adjustment methods, are the holy grail of the small number of true AGWers, many of whom are in control of the keys to the data kingdom.
And by fighting the battle of station minutia, you play their game. Since they do hold the keys, you should know the house always wins.
Big problems with the glacier data!!!!!!!
re 294
What is the point of the image?
>> Second question, multiple part; If indeed it’s been a rise of ~.16 C for SST why is it not higher (or more in-line with the air) if all this CO2 is in the ocean absorbing it?
Sam, I am not aware of any first principles of science that links ocean temperatures with ocean C02. Maybe I’m misunderstanding you?
Oceans are heated primarily by direct sunlight.
Gunnar, I have not formed an opinion one way or the other on how much impact AGW has and consider my efforts as a critical inquiry. I would appreciate it if you toned down terms like “holy grail of AGWers”, that sort of stuff. I don’t use that kind of language so please don’t either.
I should have put a smiley after that one. 😉
No, but what we have to deal with is what is already out in print. No amount of press on what the satellites say is going to change what’s already there, which is apparently quite flawed. For some reason, satellite data has been largely dismissed, or contorted to fit some preconceived view.
You could be right. I’ll find out more about the house and winning on my upcoming trip to Vegas.
I like the way you approach all this, Gunnar. Keep it up.
Mark
Actually, I said that Steve M. Apologies.
Mark
re 298.
satellite data, 1979 – 2005:
New topic: What’s up with Ross? Never see him. You all done collaborating? Anything prurient to share, like a big fight? 😉
As I understand it, CO2 disolves in the seas at various rates at various temperatures because the ocean is a CO2 sink. While of course the sun warms everything, there is a system that holds that warmth, and although we know little about how the system transfers it and absorbs it and so on, we do know it’s a system with that infintite number of data points I keep talking about. Just trying to get a handle on these mechanisms and correlate that to a .16 C rise in SST since 1854. If CO2 in the atmosphere sinks to the seas, and there’s an “extra” 100 ppm in the atmosphere, some is in the seas also that is “extra”. Some of that will be at the surface some all the way down etc. But as far as I know, we can only measure the barrier to some extent. Like the extra 100 ppm in the atmosphere, I was wondering at the levels of CO2 in the seas and how “extra” it is and see if that correlates to a 1:7 ratio rise between the estimated by sampling seas and estimated by sampling land temps.
Sorry, Gunnar #296 for the CO2/seas temp rise thingy.
>> Gunnar, I have not formed an opinion one way or the other on how much impact AGW has and consider my efforts as a critical inquiry. I would appreciate it if you toned down terms like “holy grail of AGWers”, that sort of stuff. I don’t use that kind of language so please don’t either.
I understand that you haven’t. I’m confused as to how that relates to my opinions. I’m quite certain that I have not exposed you to any liability (see link). I did call Callendar fraudulent, but he died in ’64.
Ok, Mark said “holy grail”, but I’ve probably been just as strident, but I’m not seeing why I need to change that.
(http://www.law.com/jsp/llf/PubArticleLLF.jsp?id=1166695602960)
Let me try again…
I was wondering at the estimated by sampling levels of CO2 in the seas and how “extra” it is compared to the estimated by sampling levels of CO2 in the atmosphere, and see if that correlates to a 1:7 ratio rise between the estimated by sampling sea temps (actual measured surface) and estimated by sampling land temps.
Newsweek…USAToday…CNN ( I am not really a conspiracy theorist, but all of these come out on the same day?
Lee,
is this a picture contest?
see:
Why has the lower troposhere stopped warming over the last 5 years?
Why has the lower stratosphere stopped cooling over the last 10 years?
Would it be unreasonable to interpret that as being consistent with the arctic sea ice data, ie sustained record but not increasing temperature?
Alan,
“is this a picture contest?”
If you think you have a good one in you, I say go for it.
Re 188 Steven Mosher and similar.
Airconditioners possibly affecting temperature measurements.
The solutions are threefold:
First, reject any station data that were out of standard, forever.
Second, don’t try to back-model the effects. If you need to, measure them to help improve future standards.
Third, avoid complexities. An airconditioner by itself might not be significant. Asphalt by itself might not be significant. But when you have both, does air mixing cause a significant rise? I don’t know. Not all scientific effects are first order.
I posted elsewhere on CA some months ago that a fast-response thermometer or one with a device to measure max temp and hold it there would give bias from a transient blast of abnormal hot air.
These threads are becoming very long and it it hard, but worth the effort, to keep up with them.
They would be shorther if TCO took some medical help, gave constructive suggestions and stopped self-aggrandisement. TCO, you seem not to know who you are fooling with (mainly fooling yourself). Some rather eminent people write on this Climate Audit. You have not advanced their knowledge, in my humble view.
Re: 308
hehe, cursed linky thing.
Try:
http://www.remss.com/msu/msu_data_description.html
Enjoy!
(and don’t forget the questions)
TCO, you say:
You are right, but we can certainly determine that he is incorrect in his claim in the abstract about the 12 highest years … I note you didn’t comment on that part.
You also say that “stationarity is open to question”, and I agree … but unfortunately, Zorita makes it part of the null hypothesis, rendering the statistics meaningless.
w.
Willis, without checking things I can’t tell if your 12 year thing is correct or not. Will have to wait and see. with respect to stationarity, I think you are chasing in circles and trying to set up restrictions which make it impossible to learn anything. His test shows what he learns, given what we can/can’t require as a preconception.
http://www.actionbioscience.org/environment/voogt.html
Sharpen your bore tool. Here are some 800 million year old tree stumps to sample.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/07/070731-fossilized-trees.html
Bob
re 307,
Alan, this is flip, but true – 5 years does not a trend make. The e is annual variation, the smoothed trend through that data is moving upward, and 5 years with no significant additional upward spikes is simply not enough data to claim that anything has flattened.
Same (somewhat weaker because of the added time) argument for the 10 year stratosphere claim – with the added proviso that stratosphere analyses are complicated by ozone depletion contributions.
Assuming your troposphere data claim is correct – then 5 years of these temps are enough to cause this kind of ice loss, and if the trend is still upwards that loss will only accelerate as we move to yet higher temps.
However, the analyses indicate that arctic temps have been climbing over the last 5 years, so that assumption of stagnant temps isn’t a solid one.
Oops. Make that 8 million years old.
Bob
#316 Cool! Does this mean we will soon be seeing claims of unpresedentet warming in the last 8 millyun years? 😉
For those interested the following paper gives a good summary of the kinetics of chemical and isotopic equilibrium in the carbonate-water system:
Hendy, C.H., 1971, The isotopic chemistry of speleothems, I: The calculation of the effects of different modes of formation on the isotopic composition of speleothems and their applicability as palaeoclimatic indicators, Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, vol. 35, 801-824
Don’t be put off by the fact it deals with speleothems. It has a very good summary of the kinetic data.
‘Interesting’ report on European heatwaves doubling since 1880. I don’t have access to the underlying paper, but the report refers to various corrections to the data:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6929668.stm
TCO, thanks for your post, in which you say:
You are right that if we assume stationarity, we can make lots of statistical claims. Unfortunately, it reminds me of the old riddle:
How many legs does a cow have, if we call the tail a leg?
w.
————————————————————————————-
Four … because calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it a leg.
So yes, we can learn things if we make certain assumptions, like a tail is a leg or the temperature record is stationary … but the things we learn may not be relevant or true.
Please let us know if the full text of his claims is made public, it will be interesting to see exactly how he treats this issue.
Further to my post above, here’s the abstract:
Woodentops:
Is their data set posted? What about the way they corrected for likely instrument bias? It makes perfect sense to me that a Stevenson screen would create an downward bias in temperatures assuming that instruments were out in the open and in direct sunlight. It certainly makes sense to correct the record where this is known. But how do we know where that is the case? Unless, of course, Anthony Watts or his predecessors were out there with their Brownies!!
How do we know that their correction is correct? For example, suppose the real correction should be 1 C cooler in the earlier years, but they statistically came up with a correction of 1.2 C. The net effect would be to overestimate the warming and number of heat waves. A small error in the derived correction factor could have a big impact on their conclusions.
>> we will soon be seeing claims of unpresedentet warming
Right, because, as we know, only temperature affects tree rings. C02 has nothing to do with tree growth, so there is no circular logic problem. And of course, the water cycle also has no effect on tree growth either. And of course, sunlight has no effect on tree growth either.
Steve sadov will enjy this RE Parker and blowing UHI away
#322 – I’ve just noticed that my last post has lost the associated link… the full report is available for $9 apparently, but I don’t have the time (or probably the expertise) right now to check it out. I’ll try posting the link again:
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2007…/2007JD008510.shtml
and clickable:
Della-Marta’s article downloadable for free from his publication list
#325. HOw hard would it have been to find the PArker thread and put that there?
The interesting part about that is that at least two of the above are correlated by hypothesis (actually, they are correlated in fact as well) and the respective responses are non-linear. Yet somehow, a method that strictly requires uncorrelated and linearly combined inputs is magically able to separate them in the output.
Mark
#328
Steve,
Perhaps it’s time for another post laying out the rules for the site. The more people your blog attracts, the newcomers may not know or understand the rules you’ve set down. Or if you still have an older version that sets forth the rules, you might want to revive it for a period of time.
From Della-Marta:
During the homogenization procedure, steps were taken to try and minimize the influence of urban warming; however, it is probable that some time series are not totally free from this phenomenon.
Another cutie:
Clearly, the use of these daily homogenized records has had an impact on the results presented in this paper. The effect is
most obvious in the mean DSMT change with the estimate of change being an additional 0.3C higher over the period
1880 to 2005.
And DM says the old data is biased warm. Is this likely? Is there evidence?
RE 328.
How hard to find the parker thread?
Not listed in the the categories on the right.
Not listed in categories on the left.
looked at “previous entries” two clicks was minutes . perhaps it was on the
third or 4th page..
So “how hard?” it’s relative to the time you have, the connection you happen to be on,
and your patience at the moment.
So, my bad. Won’t happen again.
#332. Fair answer. Sorry about that. I have an excellent editor-level search function and it would be nice if readers had this as well without the editor privileges.
But the reason for finding a topical post for a good reference is that there’s a chance of it being located.
Right, I searched the database for ‘Gerlich’ before I first posted. Later found I was tardy to class. Steve knows there is an information retrieval problem.
======================
RE 333.
No problem. I was just in a massive hurry this am. The search box finds it fast, but I hadnt cleared this
page for pop ups. Thats done. No more bad behavir frm me.
Before anyone says I’m in the wrong classroom, I’d like to state that I’m just auditing this one.
=========================================================
I had an entertaining experience here in Houston yesterday. I was trapped in a car dealership’s maintenance department waiting room while I had some work done on my truck. The TV was tuned to CBS, and I got to sit through an entire hour of the Oprah Winfrey show where she had Al Gore on giving a presentation on global warming and pumping the DVD version of AIT (I think it was a rerun). It was quite entertaining to listen to him tell people that expert scientists believed that Kilimanjaro’s glaciers are melting due to global warming, that antarctica and greenland are going to melt and raise sea level 20 feet (complete with mockups of New York, San Fran, and other places under water), and that anybody who questions him is obviously being paid by Exxon (not Occidental where Al’s family made his money).
But the real fun came right after Oprah when the first afternoon newscast came on. After about 30 seconds talking about a local fire, the next 5-7 minutes of the news cast was dedicated to warning people about the “extreme heat”, with several reporters live on the scene around town to show us how various folks were coping with the extreme heat. Lost in all of the hype was the fact that the high temperature was 96F versus a normal temperature for the date of 94F. The other funny part was hearing the news anchor repeatedly say “now that summer is finally here” (on August 7th). The fact of the matter is that it is SUPPOSED to be in the mid 90s in Houston in August and we have had a very cool summer and the wettest 1st seven months on record for Texas as a whole. So it is really hilarious to see the news station spend the first 1/3 of the news cast hyping “extreme heat” that is absolutely routine for Houston in the summer. I guess they must have just gotten all caught up in the moment after watching Al on Oprah and couldn’t help but get excited about the heat on a slow news day given that it is the first time all summer we have had typical Houston summer weather.
But has Della Marta corrected modern bias too? Has he checked the poor status or location of many meteorological stations? Has he checked the “official national” stations, or the “minor” ones (e.g. the difference between airports and rural stations here in Northeast Italy)? Has he accounted for warming induced by land use and hurbanisation (unless if he blame them too for modern continental warming)? etc. And who told him that old measures and instruments were not corrected before, or that having more precise instruments means by itself having better measurements out of all the other factors (including not-measurable human one)?
And finally, they are confronting different data sets, on different times, on different locations (some weather stations were moved just in the last 20 years), on different conditions (depending both on time and location) and on different instruments: this is not so correct; anyway, what is the error (always remembering that only direct measurement and not bare calculus can reduce it)?
Let’s say he has not, or not completely: here a new research, claiming new high results, that to tell the truth is at least incomplete.
I would wager that I could take the raw data from the satellites and come up with opposite plots to what were shown in #300. When you are looking at tenths of a degree scale anomalies, it is easy to twist and finagle the raw data to make it do whatever you want it too. It would be interesting to audit the raw satellite data used for these sorts of plots.
According to Nasa:
🙂
Mark
Re: 341 …
Mark, if I hadn’t seen the smiley, I would have thought you were being dishonest. Hasn’t NASA done an about-face since ’97?
#341
The NASA Christy/Spencer link is a bit out of date (1997). A number of thinsg have happened since then but I understand your sentiments.
The surface temperature measurements as adjusted for homgeneity by Hansen et al are clearly a crock of s**t and so cannot be relied upon as evidence for ‘unprecented warming’ in the latter part of the 20th century. it looking like its only a matter of time now before the surface stations survey is complete (thanks to Anthony and volunteers) and once the non-conforming to WMO standards data removed from the analysis and Hansen’s homogeneity adjustments fully audited by Steve, there most likely won’t be any blade left to the ‘hockey stick’. Perhaps there’ll even be a verification of the ‘divergence problem’ which should please Briffa et al and the IPCC won’t have to truncate the proxy reconstruction data in the Fifth Assessment Report.
Mark #329 >> The interesting part about that is that at least two of the above are correlated by hypothesis (actually, they are correlated in fact as well) and the respective responses are non-linear. Yet somehow, a method that strictly requires uncorrelated and linearly combined inputs is magically able to separate them in the output.
Those AGWers are Amazing! And this passed “peer review”, so it must be right. Like the comic strip that shows a board full of calculations, and in small print “miracle occurs”. And the professor asks “I’d like more detail about this part”.
(btw, which two are you referring to? I believe all 3 are known to affect tree growth)
#342
And Al Gore won’t have any excuse to use his cherry picker any longer.
Bill #337 >> “extreme heat”
The Gore/popular culture is about as scientific as Aunt Martha and Aunt Mary sitting on the porch rocking chairs saying “Sure is a hot one Martha”. “Sure is, can’t remember it ever being this hot”.
Richard #341 >> Hasn’t NASA done an about-face since 97?
In the last 10 years, the satellite data shows a cooling of about .6 deg C. so this statement:
is quite CORRECT, despite all the AGW implications to the contrary.
#338
You may find Della Marta’s list of stations in another paper from this year. Czech station is Prague’s Klementinum, that old one situated in the center of the city. There are some Czech studies, cited in ther linked Kysely’s paper, saying that UHI in this case doesn’t change (much) summer Tmax. Also, apparently simultaneous calibration measurements were made each time when the thermometers were exchanged or relocated, which makes Klementinum record continuous. Kysely’s conclusion was that there were two periods of heat waves in Prague – in 40-50’s and in 90’s.
Actually, you listed 4, temp, CO2, sun and water cycle… but I wasn’t referring to “correlated with tree growth,” I was referring to “correlated with each other.” By hypothesis, CO2 and temperature are correlated with each other (as are the sun and temp, but that’s another issue). Since these are correlated inputs to the system, using a method designed strictly for uncorrelated inputs is an inappropriate means for extracting one or the other (or both). The results will necessarily represent some linear combination of the two (or however many are correlated with each other). PCA is incapable of discerning what that combination is.
Mark
Mark #347,
Right, great point. Here are some physical phenomena involved (-> means “affects”)
Sun->tree growth
Sun->temp
Sun->C02
Sun->Water Cycle
tree growth->temp
tree growth->C02
tree growth->water cycle
temp->tree growth
temp->C02
temp->water cycle
C02->tree growth
water cycle->tree growth
water cycle->temp
yea, so let’s just get a really ol tree, ignore all these effects, and call it a temperature proxy. All we need is a statistician and we’ll call the science part “settled”
Transferring from the Gerry North thread:
Gunnar,
This is probably hopeless, but I will give it a try anyway. I’m a chemist so unlike you, I’ve actually had courses and practical experience in thermodynamics and spectrometry. Atmospheric emission of thermal IR has been confirmed by direct measurement. If you point an IR spectrometer at the night sky you will measure a spectrum that looks just like the MODTRAN calculated spectrum. If you use reflected light from the moon, you get the calculated absorption spectrum. We know it’s the atmosphere that’s being measured because the measurements are done at different angles to change the path length through the atmosphere. MODTRAN was developed by the Air Force for use in visible and infra-red imaging from planes and satellites, not by academic climate researchers, btw so it’s been both verified and validated. If, as you say, the ground only emitted 25 W/m2, an IR thermometer pointed at the ground would measure a temperature of 144 K or -129 C. Not! We have satellite IR images that also prove this is not the case. You can even buy an IR thermometer from a good kitchen supply store or online.
Yet another name for my mental killfile. Or in other words: *plonk*
Re #321:
Once again we are supposed to accept an “adjusted” data base which just happens to strengthen the case for AGW by lowering historic data to make current data look relatively warmer. When is this strategery [sic] going to stop?
A similar paper stating that hurricane frequency has doubled in the last half of the 20th century is seriously flawed as well. There is no determination in this paper of any method the authors’ used to compensate for large data voids in the Central and Eastern Atlantic prior to the availability of satellite data. BTW, some mention has been made of the paucity of Atlantic Basin hurricanes this season. One should keep in mind that the mean date for the first seasonal hurricane is August 14th. Perception can be misleading.
Whom the Gods destroy they first make mad. Seems there is a lot of this going on in the AGW community.
>> I’m a chemist so unlike you, I’ve actually had courses and practical experience in thermodynamics and spectrometry.
I’ve also had practical experience with thermodynamics and spectrometry.
>> Atmospheric emission of thermal IR has been confirmed by direct measurement.
You’re knocking down a straw man, because I do not claim, nor did I state, that thermal IR does not exist.
>> If the ground only emitted 25 W/m2,
I have read a paper where they measure it as such. It defies common sense that the earth would radiate at anywhere near the radiation of the sun.
>> an IR thermometer pointed at the ground would measure a temperature of 144 K or -129 C
You’re mixing up power flow with energy level.
349: Of course there is SOME IR from CO2, thus a spectrum signal for that particular temperature. How does that provide you with a measurement of the INTENSITY of that IR?
#345 Gunnar, Mark T.: no, that is wrong. The claim was about trends in the lower troposphere. Those now show a positive trend since 1978. This was resolved two years ago.
#353 mzed >> no, that is wrong. The claim was about trends in the lower troposphere. Those now show a positive trend since 1978. This was resolved two years ago.
Clever argument switch/misdirection, but there is no doubt that AGW claims that ground level temperatures will go up, which are part of the “lower troposphere”, since the troposphere is the lowest portion of Earth’s atmosphere.
And there is also NO doubt that in the last 10 years, the ground level temperatures have gone down about .6 deg C.
It changes easily simply by picking different endpoints, too.
Mark
#346: indeed, UHI affects mean daily temperature mainly by minimum and not maximum temperature, but always remembering that outside UHI maxima is often a temperature peak while inside UHI high temperatures can stay into the evening – and you too would agree that, with the same maxima of e.g. +32°C, it is much more comfortable having a +18°C minima than a +22°C one (it seems that the main problem of GW is not climate change itself, but if it is comfortable or not…).
Their conclusion on main heat waves decades is a thing which I absolutely agree, and common to most Europe (e.g. remember summers like 1945 and 1947).
#353: yes, but it is still very different from ground stations trend and data: and, while for the oceans they can agree at least for trends, their main difference is lands: indeed, being the oceans (70% of Earth’s surface) slightly cooling after 2002 until today, satellite measurements show a slight global downward trend; while, NOAA and GISS trends still show a slight global upward trend lead by just a small portion of global surface; HadCRU, even at ground, instead agrees with satellites; but, to tell the truth, they all show differences
For now, GISS has corrected slightly upward June 2007 (don’t worry: GISS were the only to show June slightly cooling from May, even satellites showed a June slighlty warming). But July 2007 has finally gone below +0.5°C anomaly, so now (January-July) the 1998 is the hottest year with +0.63°C, and 2007 matches 2005 at +0.61°C (2nd year ever for this period should be 2002).
For August, I think 2007 will stay behind 1998 and maybe even pass behind 2005; more probably, during tha Autumn 2007 could show temperatures like or cooler than 1998 (had a net cooling between August and September) and then let 2005 up (had a very hot Autumn).
So, we were told months ago that 2007 would have been the hottest year ever (even if differences of hundredths of degree does not count when uncertainty is 0.1°C) with a 60% probability: now it seems “very likely” that 2007 will not (I would say at least inverted probability, if not 80%).
Click to access 2007+2005+1998.pdf
To the management – why did you delete my post regarding how repeated media proclamations that “it’s hotter, it’s hotter” make some people actually think they feel hotter? Is this not the kitchen sink thread here? I digress ….
I have been commenting of late about the cool and moist summer here on the W. Coast poleward of 37N. Long range models (for what they are worth) depict two more storms after the coming weekend, superficially similar to the gully washer of July 17 – 19. That storm gave places north of here several times their normal entire July total in one day (July 18). Even here at the southern fringes of it, there were records broken (but not so drastically). If the models are correct, climatic Autumn has definitely started here.
I am not trying to misdirect any arguments and I have to say that I don’t myself accuse anyone here of misdirecting arguments.
I concede that temperatures have not been “going up markedly” since 1997 (though they have been going up). I did read your claim a little too quickly. However, you can take a (false) statement from 1997 and use the same words to make a new, different statement in 2007, but that is to make a new statement, not to confirm a false one!
Anyway, as for surface temperatures going down .6 deg C “in the last 10 years”, this is not true either. Mark T. is right: it depends on your endpoints. If you’re talking about the last 9 years, alright, maybe. (Though that would be to ignore running averages, which is all anyone is really talking about). But not the last 10. I’m not even sure it’s true for the last 9, but I’m willing to give the benefit of the doubt: where are you getting this figure from?
Then there’s always the interesting claim that all the unknown biases and their unknown effects and the unknown mix of those and the unknown formula by which they are corrected (if they even are, which I doubt — how do you specifically correct something you don’t know the specifics of?) “The surface station data from sites not meeting standards is taken care of by the well known and totally transparent and totally correct GISS methods for adjusting stations to each other.” bwhaa hhahahaha
Or the claim that since the anomaly factors remain constant at poorly sited stations, and we are only interested in changes from usual, the fact they’re poorly sited is immaterial.
Then there’s the strident hand-waving that photographs mean nothing, it’s only rural stations in the calculations, you’re only trying to invalidate the surface temps, you denialists are wasting your time, you’re calling everyone dishonest involved in this robust network, the US is only 2% of the network, you are deluded wackjobs… No matter what’s said or how logical it is from those that simply want good data and to know it’s good and problems are taken care of, and we’re the crazies.
This is all so funny in a way, arguing about huge non-linear, linear, chaotic blended systems that show less than a degree over more than 100 years.
Then the data turns out to be mistaken and has to be reworked!
Decoupling the inputs, indeed!
That site I posted is a bit outdated…
Mark
Curious. Does anyone know about how many of the possible 16,200 2×2 sea-sized sea grids are turned into how many of the possible 2,592 5×5 land-sized grids? (I realize there is an overlap of land and sea areas, and that the areas of the grids are greater at the equator than the poles, so more grid boxes at the poles.) Has anyone gathered statistics on the percent of above and below mean value (SST of .01 C/decade) or mean trend (surface .07 C/decade) of each one is individually? I would imagine this data exists somewhere if we are performing calculations on the data from the grids, or is it all source code algorithms nobody has access to and no background info?
Anyone with SST trend is of course free to replace my calculated variation of .16 C between 1854 and 2006 off the 1961-1990 mean of the average of the measured SSTs from their ERSST website.
I sometimes spend time on Climate Audit – unlike many, many people on ‘my side’ of this discussion. I come here because I like to have my ideas and conceptions challenged, even when – especially when – I’m pretty sure of my position going in. And I get that here.
I will vigorously defend my point, but I also pay attention to and evaluate seriously the serious challenges I get. Much more so than I’m sure is apparent here – because I find that I often get the most thoughtful and vigorous challenges when I remain vigorous in defense of my position.
But I can not stay on CA, as it is currently being run.
In the last three days, I have had a post edited by SteveM without notice, in a way that altered the apparent intent of the post and left it looking as if it were my work. I then had several posts, posts pointing that out to SteveM, simply removed without correcting the issue, until finally after multiple posts, SteveM removed the post he had edited.
Yesterday, on the Quantifying Hansen Y2K thread, there was a substantive interchange between myself and SteveM about something he had said, in that thread, that I felt was incorrect. The entire interchange was removed – including Steve’s original comment, without correction or explanation. In the place of one of those posts was left a [snip] comment by SteveM that is simply a false representation of the interchange, and that leaves a false implication of what I had said and done.
Now today, a post asking SteveM to correct that false impression, and to look at the ethical implications of such actions, has been twice removed.
I would like to stay here and continue to get my ideas challenged, and hopefully to offer some challenge to yours. I have learned things here, and changed some of my thinking as a result. But I will not, can not, remain as a participant on a blog supposedly devoted to serious examination of ideas and facts, but where the moderator takes it upon himself to edit my posts so as to change intent without even noting that he has done so, or to remove and then post false descriptions of posts I have made.
SteveM, please have the decency and honor to let this post stand.
Re:363
Lee, that is pure garbage. I only hope that you are a man of your word and do indeed go away.
Cliff
Lee:
I know exactly how you feel and agree with you 98%. But please hang in here. Steve does not have it all straight with both using this place for free discussion and as his signpost (the two things conflict).
With regard to the recent scrub, perhaps I am partially at fault as Steve had made a gracious post saying that he agreed with my criticising hurricanes as off-topic. I had challenged him that he allows off-topic diversion from “his sides” and even from himself and that he only takes note of threadjacks when they are against the grain. Not sure you saw this, things were moving fast, but he actually said that he would wait for my acknowledgement before scrubbing. I told him to scrub away.
Now, really we shouldn’t scrub anything, and I can’t give permission for scrubbing yours, Steve’s or even arguably my posts. But I think he was trying to do the right thing and feel bad that I made things worse.
Also, I appreciate your sticking up for me, but I think Steve’s comment about me being a one of a kind troll was meant warmly, teasingly.
Note, that none of the above changes your (and my) criticism of some of the rhetoric and control here. But I think I am having a good fatherly influence on him.
Please give Steve another chance. You know I can pull out the bad cop if needed. 😉
Oh…and Lee, I’m actually not a warmer. I’m a red-meat eating Republican. We need somehow from your side here. I don’t suffice.
Oh and if Steve cuts Lee’s good-bye post, I will be pi….issed.
Re #19:
The link to the revised GISS US Annual Mean temperature xhart is here.
Read it and weep.
Perhaps Lee wants casual visitors to get the impression that Climate Audit is no better than Real Climate.
As a long-time visitor to Climate Audit only, I am unaware of Steve M censoring comments in the way that Lee claims.
#365. First, I did not “edit” any of Lee’s posts. I occasionally snip posts and mark the snips. I’ve been trying to prune back off-topic posts and have been more severe on this than previously. As even TCO, our newly zealous defender of thread topicality observed both now and at the time, the exchange in question on hurricanes was highly offtopic in a discussion of Y2K adjustments. Not that I feel obligated to obtain permission from TCO to scrub offtopic posts, but oddly enough, as TCO noted, in this particular case, TCO had given his “permission”. So I scrubbed a series of offtopic posts and subsequent complaints. I’ve deleted a lot of posts on the Gerry North Thread as being hobbyhorse posts not pertaining to the topic.
When I do take the trouble to prune offtopic, bickering and hobbyhorse posts, the board reads better and I think that most readers appreciate the editorial initiative. I don’t promise to consistently do this – my hope is that people will respond to this and try to keep the bickering, offtopic and hobbyhorse quotients down. I’ve deleted more on the topic of how iniquitous AGWers supposedly are than anything else. I’m not interested in this type of venting.
There’s a tradeoff between people posting without censorship and the interests of readers who don’t wish to not want to be inundated with hobbyhorses, bickering, whining. I’m trying to restore the interest of readers a little according to my editorial judgement.
As to my teasing comment about TCO, TCO took it in exactly the spirit that it was intended and is in no need of faux outrage from Lee for protection. Lee, give it a rest.
Steve, you deleted part of my post WITHOUT marking the “snip,” in a way that changed the context and apparent intent. That could have been a mistake – except that you then deleted repeated posts pointing that out to you, without addressing the point – until finally you went back and deleted the edited post altogether.
You know this – you’ve been cutting posts explaining it, left and right. I have given you multiple opportunities now to explain all of this – you have simply deleted them outright with no respponse.
That you now choose to pretend that edit and your response to it did not happen, simply confirms me in my opinion.
*sigh*
370. You’re right, Lee. But let’s leave it be now, Lee. And please stay for the following reason:
There’s a famous saying by FDR. He was in a cabinet meeting discussing a brutal banana republic dictator and said to his aides, “well…he may be a son of a bitch, but he’s OUR son of a bitch.”
Well, Lee, you may be a liberal pussy, but you’re OUR liberal pussy. 😉
Re #370
Twice I have seen my posts snipped oddly after hitting submit, but I am sure it was the berg software or a client/server hiccup.
Re: #363
Lee, you have to do what you have to do, but for my taste this blog does bogged down on certain topics where the discussion gets hijacked from the more thoughtful and informative discussions and turns more personal and complaining and whiny. I have sometimes contributed to those wasteful conversations and it is not a good feeling and primarily because it distracts from the time I could spend learning here at this blog.
I have had the occasion to post at sites where posters, with views at significant odds to the majority of posters, have gained much respect and were given much space. These posters invariably do it by intentionally avoiding the more personal off topic departures I described above and being extra polite. It makes for great discussions and particularly if one wants to efficiently learn and learn what the arguments against ones position are. Often both sides in these discussions know when they have reached an impasse and simply agree to disagree.
If you were responsible for a blog like Steve M is and did not want to filter all posts and was attempting to run an open forum, but still needed to keep the discussions reasonably well on topic, I would think that you would lop some of those posts off yourself. I have had posts deleted and when I have I was able to go back with more diplomatic and polite language to attempt to make the same point without a second deletion.
#373. MAybe that’s what happened to the post that Lee is complaining about. I noticed that one of his posts was truncated, but it wasn’t by me.
Lee, you probably put in a lt. or gt. sign somewhere, without a matching tag. That’ll truncate posts.
Either way, quit whining.
Mark
The NASA/GISS response to Steve’s excellent work has several interesting aspects. The Global Climate Change Community has now made an explicit acknowledgment to results that have not been peer-reviewed. Maybe we’ll hear less of that tiresome meme from now.
>> But not the last 10. I’m not even sure it’s true for the last 9, but I’m willing to give the benefit of the doubt: where are you getting this figure from?
You’re absolutely right, it’s more like 9 years. Specifically, it’s been cooling since April of 1998.
http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t2lt/uahncdc.lt
Lee, unlike some on this blog, I sympathesize with your complaint about post snipping. At one point, Steve M said something like “I don’t use that kind of terminology, so no one else can”. What’s the logic behind that. It’s really quite extraordinary, and certainly has made me lose interest.
>> I’ve deleted a lot of posts on the Gerry North Thread as being hobbyhorse posts not pertaining to the topic.
Except that I read the initial posting on the Gerry North Thread, and some of the posts that you snipped as “off topic” were exactly ON TOPIC!
It’s interesting — I noticed some record-highs were tied/set in the US mid-atlantic states yesterday — several over 100F (38C). Some urban sites had overnite lows of 85F — my rural site was 72F, and the high a mere 92F (33C), tho there were thin remains of a TStorm anvil-cloud that partially shaded the place during the hottest period. Plus I’m not as dry as areas to the east. Note that I’m only a dozen miles & ~250 ft higher from were the MD state record was set in Cumberland in July 1936 — 109F (43C). On the same date Moorefield, WV set its state record of 112F (44.5C).
I think in the Gerry North thread, Steve should have just specified which serious posters could post. That would have stopped some of the dime a dozon hoi polloi from pugnacious, throwaway comments. Steve has every now and then restricted a topic to people with a brain (Bender, TAC, UC, etc.)
Hey there everybody – I’ve just come across this site, and what a great place this is.
I hope this is the right place to post this in – if not, my apologies. But hopefully somebody can help me out.
I started wondering what remaining IR is left over (beyond the absorption caused by pre-industrial CO2 levels) which additional levels of CO2 could absorb, leading to an increase in temperature. I was basically trying to look at the fundamental principles of GW. I did some googling, and came across the real climate site, which explained that the absorption bands for CO2 could actually expand with higher levels of CO2, and that’s where the extra absorption comes from. How is that possible? Concentrations of a molecule can affect the wavelength that the molecule can absorb? Beyond this expanding absorption band, is all the IR in the existing CO2 band already absorbed by CO2?
Any help?
Steve Mc, is your definition of “hobbyhorse” simply “thermodynamics?”
382: what you read is true, but I am not allowed to say more than that.
WaterEng,
The problem with this blog is that it’s about math and not science. It’s really all about auditing the math work of AGWers. The blunt truth is that Steve M is a math guy, and is generally uncomfortable with excessive science discussion. Steve has it in his head that AGW propoganda is “mainstream”, not the known scientific laws of science. Since this discussion is verging on science, it will probably be snipped. Like Lee, there’s a lot of science that I don’t understand, but it’s clear now that this blog is not a great place to learn. Maybe someday, I’ll get my own blog working at http://www.critical-thinker.org/
>> How is that possible? Concentrations of a molecule can affect the wavelength that the molecule can absorb? Beyond this expanding absorption band, is all the IR in the existing CO2 band already absorbed by CO2?
It’s not possible, they just make things up. They also pretend that C02 is a black body that emits significant levels of IR radiation. Think about that for a moment. An object is red, because it completly absorbs other frequencies, for example, blue frequency radiation. Yet, what they are claiming is equivalent to saying that a red object emits blue radiation. C02 absorbs many infrared frequencies. It seems like a stretch to consider a gas molecule as a black body, but what do I know, these AGW guys are mainstream.
And with their radiative balance idea, which is the very foundation of AGW, they also pretend that radiation is conserved. Have you ever heard of that physical law? Mass is conserved, Energy is conserved, Heat is conserved, but radiation? That’s a new one, but discussing that would be “off topic”, since we first have to understand the mainstream papers before we start worrying about known scientific laws. Your question is right on point, since what they are saying violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics. Steve doesn’t want to discuss this, since there is no statistics that he can audit, so this will be snipped shortly.
384 – sorry, I don’t take real climate’s word for it, and I’m not going to take yours (I’m just stubborn that way). Do you have any links to independant papers that can describe how increasing the concentration of a gas can expand the absorption band of that gas?
Gunnar, you probably have not been around long enough to know this, but his problem isn’t post snipping. It’s simple incompetence. He apparently, for the past several years, has been subjugated to the most extreme censorship imaginable. More likely, he simply doesn’t understand how to make posts that work. Additionally, he’ll leave for a few months, then come back with post after post of complaint and wonder why Spam Karma clips him… yeah, Spam Karma will register a sudden jump in posts from a specific IP and cut them, a point Lee has NEVER understood.
Mark
Do you have any links to independant papers that can describe how increasing the concentration of a gas can expand the absorption band of that gas?
I may or may not have posted an article to ?p=1805 (about Durbin-Watson and the “IPCC test”). I got an error, but I have seen that in the past when the posting has eventually succeeded. If it hasn’t worked in 24 hours I’ll post it here.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/aug/10/weather.uknews
Ah, yes – and now they can use all that power and capacity to forecast the next three days.