Hiding evidence of global cooling: Junk science exposed among climate-change believers

And I say again, you know this how?? I've been looking for ANY information on heliomagnetic effects on the earth for quite a while, and find exactly zero information on its effects. Lots of stuff about "earth's magnetic field and solar wind" interactions, but pretty much zip about "sun's field vs. earth". I did find one paper that says that ocean currents and EARTH's magnetic field interact.

To answer your question, the mechanism wouldn't generate any radiative forcing. Feel free to continue your search.

Seems to be plenty of it to me. Pretty much every time I hear the news, or peruse a scientifically directed article there is a new earthquake, volcano eruption, or other vulcanism-related event. Little things like the Yellowstone super-volcano showing increased activity. And since I live in Washington, there is also evidence of increased "small" events that only show up on the local news.

"Seems" is fine, and no doubt monitoring (seismic, satellite, Webcam, etc.) is much better than even a couple of decades ago. It's similar to increased detection of hurricanes far out at sea; we have better methods of detection. So I have little doubt that there are a lot more reports of volcanic activity than there used to be. But what isn't happening is any detection of effects, such as increased atmospheric aerosol loading due to volcanoes, that would indicate actual increased activity, or that would show a trend.

Here's an answer from the Smithsonian. I don't think they were on the CRU mailing list.

Has volcanic activity been increasing?

What evidence is supposed to be at your link? I see a bunch of opinions, whose GUESSES at effects range over a factor of ten. Looks like the old "argument from authority" to me. The simple fact is that the sub-Arctic discoveries are so new that the only possible SCIENTIFIC response is "we don't know the effects yet".

Here's a couple of things. One of the respondents says: "In any case, heat releases from the Arctic sea floor do not get higher up in the water column than, typically, ~500-1000 m from the ocean floor due to constantly mixing with ambient water on its way up (so-called entrainment)."

and: "I get this question too - and my usual response is to say, the average heat added from volcanoes to the ocean is of order 0.1 Watt per square meter. But the heat added (or removed) to the ocean from the sun and atmosphere is of order 100 Watt per square meter."

I've discussed the following before on FR.

Furthermore, several years ago now, when I was still thinking of being a geochemist, an eruption on the Juan de Fuca Ridge (you should like this) was detected due to its creation of a "megaplume" of "warm" water.
SCIENTISTS TRACK A MEGAPLUME RISING FROM CRACK IN SEA FLOOR

Put these two excerpts together: 1) "Megaplume was putting out a tremendous amount of heat," said Baker. "It would take the Bonneville Dam two to four years to put ount of heat into the water column that megaplume put out in a few days." 2) "Scientists understand hydrothermal vents. But megaplume was different. For one thing, it was far hotter and rose higher above the sea floor than ordinary vents. Megaplume mingled with colder sea water as it rose, and was only a quarter of a degree warmer than the surrounding water by the time Massoth and Baker measured it."

(click for 2x)

Now, you can choose not to believe me, or these references. But undersea volcanism, wondrous and amazing as it is (I'm fascinated by it) doesn't affect surface temperatures or melt sea ice.

And I've been doing it for forty. Right now, I'm finding "dueling references" with differing arguments, and I'm working through them. But the handwaving references you posted don't even begin to constitute an argument. Not a number to be seen.

References abound here: Basic Radiation Calculations. I applaud your effort.

Why should I believe ANY statements from the "warmist climate science" position, given the proven track record of "cooking the books". Frankly, at this point, ANY publication that purports to link some effect to "global warming" is suspect. One has no way of knowing how deeply the demonstrated pathology has spread to other disciplines. How many of that NAS panel were "suggested" by Hansen, Mann, and/or Jones, or those connected to them?

"Cooking the books" has not been proven; the idea that it's been done has been sold by skeptics abetted by conservative think-tanks, playing on the general public's inability to deal with details. The spread of disinformation on this issue IS a conservative vs. liberal issue. We could talk this issue to death, countering with sources and links and explanations for months. I don't want to do that; do you? I'll reply to anything you want to discuss.

NAS Panel Membership. Check 'em out.
GERALD R. NORTH (Chair),
Texas A&M University, College Station
FRANCO BIONDI,
University of Nevada, Reno
PETER BLOOMFIELD,
North Carolina State University, Raleigh
JOHN R. CHRISTY,
University of Alabama, Huntsville
KURT M. CUFFEY,
University of California, Berkeley
ROBERT E. DICKINSON,
Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta
ELLEN R.M. DRUFFEL,
University of California, Irvine
DOUGLAS NYCHKA,
National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colorado
BETTE OTTO-BLIESNER,
National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colorado
NEIL ROBERTS,
University of Plymouth, United Kingdom
KARL K. TUREKIAN, (one of the world's most brilliant geochemists)
Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut
JOHN M. WALLACE,
University of Washington, Seattle

Biosketches of committee members

Here are just a couple of things that "just don't fit".... those graphs that show temperature "adjustments" seem to all be adjusted in only one direction---"up". And the "adjustment" gets larger in magnitude as the time gets closer to the present. Now, why would that be, given that as we get closer to present day, we have better instruments, better data, and supposedly better records, so any "adjustment" should get smaller with time rather than larger, yet it seems not to. And, given the well known "urban island" effect, at least "some" of the graphs should show a "downward" adjustment.

Hmmm... my initial reaction is that the adjustments are to make the modern data continuous with the historical data. So the baseline is... when the record begins? So the farther in time we get from the when the record begins, the more the data have to be adjusted to be comparable to when the record begins. That's my off-the-cuff idea for why the adjustments get larger. ??? Regarding the latter, I dug up this fairly large paper (6 MB) which has an entire section on adjustments:

Assessment of Urban Versus Rural In Situ Surface Temperatures in the Contiguous United States: No Difference Found
Enjoy.

"If a journal editor appeared to allow the publication of a poor-quality paper by selecting reviewers likely to favor publication of said paper, reviewers who might overlook its flaws because of its underlying theme, should scientists question the editor's actions, or not?"

Seen as "flawed" by whom?? A reviewer "suggested" by Hansen, Mann, Jones etc.???

Storm brews over global warming

"Mr. von Storch, however, found that some editors on the board [of Climate Research] still viewed the Harvard-Smithsonian paper as fine. "I concluded that we have different standards," he says. "Some are doing [the editing] in a rather sloppy way."

He says he suspects that "some of the skeptics had identified Climate Research as a journal where some editors were not as rigorous in the review process as is otherwise common." So he resigned from the board, as did three other members."

"To answer your question, the mechanism wouldn't generate any radiative forcing. Feel free to continue your search."

No, but it would cause heat deposition into the geosphere. Thus warming. Independent of "radiative forcing".

"Here's an answer from the Smithsonian. I don't think they were on the CRU mailing list."

Yeah, I found that same site. Looks to me like it says vulcanism is increasing, but after they "adjust" the data, it says not. Why does that sound vaguely familiar.

Let me be a bit more precise...by "vulcanism" I do NOT mean "volcanism". What I am referring to is increased geothermal activity, not necessarily volcanic eruptions.

BTW, the Smithsonian is one if the places that says that the Medieval Warm Period was warmer than current (and NOT the Soon paper).

"Now, you can choose not to believe me, or these references. But undersea volcanism, wondrous and amazing as it is (I'm fascinated by it) doesn't affect surface temperatures or melt sea ice."

And I repeat. The only possible legitimate response for the Arctic is "we don't know". The reason is that the subsea is simply too unexplored to allow any other answer.

My own bet is that there are more geothermally active areas and that their output is significantly higher than the other oceans. Why? Because the Arctic (and Antarctic) are where there should be maximum interaction of earth's field with the sun's.

"Hmmm... my initial reaction is that the adjustments are to make the modern data continuous with the historical data. So the baseline is... when the record begins? So the farther in time we get from the when the record begins, the more the data have to be adjusted to be comparable to when the record begins. That's my off-the-cuff idea for why the adjustments get larger. ??? Regarding the latter, I dug up this fairly large paper (6 MB) which has an entire section on adjustments:

So why are the adjustments always in one direction?? SURELY a few of the instruments would give systematically high numbers that needed to be adjusted down.

Thanks for the link. I'll read it.

""Cooking the books" has not been proven; the idea that it's been done has been sold by skeptics abetted by conservative think-tanks, playing on the general public's inability to deal with details."

Yeah, right. It's all just an evil plot by Exxon. Bullshit.

"A paper using that kind of methodology could not be published in any legitimate climate-research journal unless something was severely wrong or suspicious with the review process," says Virginia's Mr.Mann, lead author of the Eos paper"

So, Soon, et al, publish a paper that disagrees with "Hockey-stick fraud" Mann, Mann and "the Team" crank up the "blacklist generator" and "diss" the journal. And I would guess that this happened before Mann's own research was shown to be fraudulent.

I hope ex-editor Von Storch felt vindicated after McIntyre caught Mann with his pants down.

"To answer your question, the mechanism wouldn't generate any radiative forcing. Feel free to continue your search."

No, but it would cause heat deposition into the geosphere. Thus warming. Independent of "radiative forcing".

To cause warming of the atmosphere, heat has to get absorbed by something.

Yeah, I found that same site. Looks to me like it says vulcanism is increasing, but after they "adjust" the data, it says not. Why does that sound vaguely familiar.

The only thing that I see is that they feel that dips in the reported activity were caused by less media attention due to the occurrence of the world wars.

Let me be a bit more precise...by "vulcanism" I do NOT mean "volcanism". What I am referring to is increased geothermal activity, not necessarily volcanic eruptions.

That's hard to prove.

BTW, the Smithsonian is one if the places that says that the Medieval Warm Period was warmer than current (and NOT the Soon paper).

I'd like to read that. Where'd you see it?

"Now, you can choose not to believe me, or these references. But undersea volcanism, wondrous and amazing as it is (I'm fascinated by it) doesn't affect surface temperatures or melt sea ice."

And I repeat. The only possible legitimate response for the Arctic is "we don't know". The reason is that the subsea is simply too unexplored to allow any other answer.

We do know. We know that heat released on the deep sea floor does not get transported to the ocean surface. It's immutable fact. I try to be lenient on matters of uncertainty. This is not uncertain. Neither is the total amount of heat flow attributable to deep sea volcanism and hydrothermal activity; in fact, it was crustal heat flow measurements by Wolery and Sleep (classic paper in 1976) that indicated that there WAS hydrothermal activity on the sea floor, before any was discovered.

Maybe you could ask Norm Sleep.

So why are the adjustments always in one direction?? SURELY a few of the instruments would give systematically high numbers that needed to be adjusted down.

I think you've asked a great question. One of the things that the CRU hack has done is foment some statistical examinations of the datasets. Two (linked) discussions are below:

GHCN and adjustment trends

Lots of smoke, hardly any gun. Do climatologists falsify data?

These partly address the next part of this discussion. I spent some time trying to read both threaded posts above -- and it didn't help my understanding any. I can only say some general things. 1) Adjustments are necessary. Simple example: if a station gets moved (and they do), there is going to be a discontinuity. That has to be adjusted for to maintain a long record. 2) Contrary to your perception, if you look at gg's post about a 1/4 way down (second threaded post), you'll see a negatively adjusted station. Search the text with "December 12th, 2009 at 14:12" to find it quickly.

My hope is that some of this will shake out meaningfully and understandably, and get transmitted to the interested public, whatever the results turn out to be.

"Cooking the books" has not been proven; the idea that it's been done has been sold by skeptics abetted by conservative think-tanks, playing on the general public's inability to deal with details."

Yeah, right. It's all just an evil plot by Exxon.

Exxon/Mobil certainly helped, but that's not what I meant. What I meant is that skeptics like McIntyre have found some errors. Many have been corrected (quickly, too). But the discoveries have been amplified by Heartland, CEI, TechCentralStation, etc. into this perception of "cooking the books", as you say. Example: McIntyre discovered the GISTEMP error that, when corrected, reverted 1934 to warmer than 1998 in the continental U.S. The discovery of this error got widely promulgated, many times erroneously, and one of the main errors was that the correction made 1934 the warmest year GLOBALLY (when it wasn't even close!!). But that error proliferated, and I still see it repeated now, years after this happened. Well-meaning people read sources they believe to be authoritative, and they receive the errors that are transmitted, and this establishes multiple erroneous perceptions. Many times it's accidental; sometimes it's deliberate; either way, it creates doubt where there shouldn't be doubt. I used to think I was doing FR a service by correcting some of the obvious errors, but I only have so many fingers and there's just too many holes in the dike.

So, Soon, et al, publish a paper that disagrees with "Hockey-stick fraud" Mann, Mann and "the Team" crank up the "blacklist generator" and "diss" the journal.

It wasn't just Mann and the "Team". The publication of this paper in Climate Research was widely criticized; that's why Kinne brought van Storch on board in the first place. But he couldn't fix the editorial process that had been exploited by de Freitas, so he quit, along with six other co-editors. The journal's peer-review editing process wasn't fair. That's what the emails were about.

And I would guess that this happened before Mann's own research was shown to be fraudulent.

Soon and Baliunas was 2003. And Mann's research was never shown to be "fraudulent". It was shown to be of questionable accuracy early in the time-series when using limited data. If it had been shown to be truly fraudulent, he wouldn't have a job today.

I hope ex-editor Von Storch felt vindicated after McIntyre caught Mann with his pants down.

Yeah, the emails do show von Storch had a couple other problems with Mann. But the Soon and Baliunas paper wasn't one of them.

"To cause warming of the atmosphere, heat has to get absorbed by something."

It's called "the earth", which then radiates into "the atmosphere".

"The only thing that I see is that they feel that dips in the reported activity were caused by less media attention due to the occurrence of the world wars."

Uh, note that the slope continues upward the entire time, despite those dips. Seems to me that that indicates that the overall geothermal activity of the planet is increasing.

"That's hard to prove."

See graph at your own reference.

"I'd like to read that. Where'd you see it?"

See Smithsonian website. Section on the history of the Vikings. Covers the Greenland settlements and much else.

"We do know. We know that heat released on the deep sea floor does not get transported to the ocean surface. It's immutable fact. I try to be lenient on matters of uncertainty. This is not uncertain. Neither is the total amount of heat flow attributable to deep sea volcanism and hydrothermal activity; in fact, it was crustal heat flow measurements by Wolery and Sleep (classic paper in 1976) that indicated that there WAS hydrothermal activity on the sea floor, before any was discovered."

The amount of heat flow may be known for the well-studied Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. But the Arctic is another matter entirely. Firstly, it has not been deeply studied (though that is changing). And if my hypothesis about a heliomagnetic interaction with the earth is correct, the overall geothermal activity of the Arctic should be higher (and the Antarctic as well, but that's even less well studied). One wonders if the accelerated slippage of the Antarctic ice is geothermally driven.

"Maybe you could ask Norm Sleep."

Thanks, I'll check out his stuff.

"These partly address the next part of this discussion. I spent some time trying to read both threaded posts above -- and it didn't help my understanding any. I can only say some general things. 1) Adjustments are necessary. Simple example: if a station gets moved (and they do), there is going to be a discontinuity. That has to be adjusted for to maintain a long record. 2) Contrary to your perception, if you look at gg's post about a 1/4 way down (second threaded post), you'll see a negatively adjusted station. Search the text with "December 12th, 2009 at 14:12" to find it quickly.

Yeah, I saw ONE tiny dip. Pretty irrelevant next to the huge mass of other adjustments.

"Exxon/Mobil certainly helped, but that's not what I meant. What I meant is that skeptics like McIntyre have found some errors. Many have been corrected (quickly, too). But the discoveries have been amplified by Heartland, CEI, TechCentralStation, etc. into this perception of "cooking the books", as you say. Example: McIntyre discovered the GISTEMP error that, when corrected, reverted 1934 to warmer than 1998 in the continental U.S. The discovery of this error got widely promulgated, many times erroneously, and one of the main errors was that the correction made 1934 the warmest year GLOBALLY (when it wasn't even close!!). But that error proliferated, and I still see it repeated now, years after this happened. Well-meaning people read sources they believe to be authoritative, and they receive the errors that are transmitted, and this establishes multiple erroneous perceptions. Many times it's accidental; sometimes it's deliberate; either way, it creates doubt where there shouldn't be doubt. I used to think I was doing FR a service by correcting some of the obvious errors, but I only have so many fingers and there's just too many holes in the dike.

Sorry, it won't fly. There is just too much evidence coming out, the latest from the Russians.

"It wasn't just Mann and the "Team". The publication of this paper in Climate Research was widely criticized; that's why Kinne brought van Storch on board in the first place. But he couldn't fix the editorial process that had been exploited by de Freitas, so he quit, along with six other co-editors. The journal's peer-review editing process wasn't fair. That's what the emails were about."

Same "circle the wagons"/"damage control" mentality. A distinction without a difference.

"And Mann's research was never shown to be "fraudulent". It was shown to be of questionable accuracy early in the time-series when using limited data. If it had been shown to be truly fraudulent, he wouldn't have a job today.

LOL, if the jerk is that incompetent, he shouldn't have a job anyway. Yet he does. And there seem to be quite a few folks who no longer have jobs because they dared to (or tried to) publish papers that didn't follow the "catastrophic warming gospel".

Frankly, before starting this discussion with you, I really had NO idea what a stinking cess-pit was involved with the warmist crowd. The politicization of science that they have done simply boggles my mind. And IMHO, even if "global warming" turns out to be correct, they should all be drummed out of the practice of any form of science for their bastardization of the scientific process. There is NO justification for doing what they have done. NONE. NICHTS. NADA. And their tactics are precisely what has driven a big part of the "doubt" that has been generated.

If they had a scientific case, none of that bullshit was needed. The science would have stood on its own.

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