Sometimes a picture really is worth thousands of words.
Posted on 11/23/2009 9:39:37 PM PST by JohnRLott
Smoking causes cancer. Anybody who thinks it doesn't is delusional.
http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/data/sst/anomaly/2009/anomnight.11.23.2009.gif
Hacking for truth... has a nice ring to it....
we have seen no benign explanation that justifies efforts by researchers to skew data on so-called global-warming "to hide the decline."
There's nothing so stupid that the New York Times won't "buy it" if it supports liberals. The "we suck less" folks now suck more...
About the sort of response I expected. Here we have overwhelming evidence of outright scientific fraud, and you wax sarcastic. Nobody with a modicum of scientific training denies that an increase in CO2 will tilt the energy balance in a positive direction, but the hard facts are that there are many other factors, both known and unknown, which govern whether the earth itself warms and cools. And right now, the hard facts are that the earth has ceased to warm, and the models didn't predict it.
The film's other scientific claims can be similarly dismissed. Carl Wunsch - who, as discussed, appeared in the film - comments:
“What we now have is an out-and-out propaganda piece, in which there is not even a gesture toward balance or explanation of why many of the extended inferences drawn in the film are not widely accepted by the scientific community. There are so many examples, it's hard to know where to begin, so I will cite only one: a speaker asserts, as is true, that carbon dioxide is only a small fraction of the atmospheric mass. The viewer is left to infer that means it couldn't really matter. But even a beginning meteorology student could tell you that the relative masses of gases are irrelevant to their effects on radiative balance. A director not intending to produce pure propaganda would have tried to eliminate that piece of disinformation.” (http://ocean.mit.edu/~cwunsch/ papersonline/channel4response)
LOL... that's like asking Satan why Jesus Christ is not the Savior...
Or, in context of this article, it's like asking those scientists whose e-mails were just exposed, why critics of Anthropogenic Global Warming are wrong. :-)
You're asking the fox to guard the henhouse (the henhouse of so-called scientific inquiry). I'm afraid the fox has already eaten the chickens and is getting ready to eat the rest of us... LOL...
Except that the raw data remains under lock and key.
I’ve maintained for years that what we have is an instrument problem, no agreement on adjustments, artbitrary corrections, imputed biases, a number of data sets spread a number of researchers, searching for a sieve.
Any attempt to conceal critical data by any unit is a red flag.
I’m still not sure if you’re convinced through study or just stubborn.
No harm done, we are but mere spectators.
Sometimes a picture really is worth thousands of words.
You should read Wunsch's comments. He was duped. He was interviewed, told them a lot about physical oceanography and how the oceans absorb and release CO2, and a short out-of-context quote was used in the GGWS. He told them much more, such as (with my emphasis added):
"An example where my own discussion was grossly distorted by context:
I am shown explaining that a warming ocean could expel more carbon dioxide than it absorbs -- thus exacerbating the greenhouse gas buildup in the atmosphere and hence worrisome. It was used in the film, through its context, to imply that CO2 is all natural, coming from the ocean, and that therefore the human element is irrelevant. This use of my remarks, which are literally what I said, comes close to fraud."
And of course there's more:
Amen to that friend. Finally, a source that will be accepted by the libs I will see tomorrow. If it isn’t from a paper with a city name in the title they won’t believe it.
I wasn't being sarcastic; I was being both subtle and insouciant. I deliberately noted an article in which parallels were drawn between the tobacco companies campaign to cast doubt on the growing body of evidence linking smoking to cancer, and the campaign by many vested interests to cast doubt on the (hmm... monumental? overwhelming? ... perhaps a bit too strong. How about...) comprehensive accumulation of data and research from multiple lines of investigation and observation indicating the increasing warming influence of anthropogenic greenhouse gases on global climate. And then I posted a current SST anomaly map. Did you look at it? Is it fraudulent? Contrived? Is there an urban heat island in it? (Hold this point; I'll be returning to it.)
I've been reading a lot on this event. "Outright scientific fraud?" Hardly. There are some indications of improper and potentially illegal acts -- if they were actually carried out. But those acts would not constitute scientific fraud. Scientific fraud is the actual promulgation or publication of data or research results known to be erroneous by the researcher. That means faked data; experiments or procedures described that were never performed; fossils described as coming from one place when they actually came from somewhere else; reported immune responses in a vaccine trial when their really weren't any -- things like that. Scientific fraud is a pretty high bar. Bad data, poor analyses, using statistical procedures that you aren't good at -- not good science, but not scientific fraud, either.
There is, of course, lots to chew on in these emails. What I have concluded from extensive reading is that a lot of highly intelligent scientists don't at all understand the value of good public relations. As one poster noted, McIntyre could have been a real asset, rather than a massive thorn. I've also concluded, by reading a lot, that a lot of what skeptics have thought exciting in these emails constitutes absolutely nothing at all. (Example: "Ammann/Wahl – try and change the Received date! Don’t give those skeptics something to amuse themselves with." Explanation: "Context is all. The published Amman and Wahl paper had (has?) a typo in the "Received By" date, saying that it was received on 22 August 2000, when that was actually received in 2006.")
Which is not to say there isn't anything there. But I'm satisfied that there is a whole lot less there than the triumphant skeptical misreading community thinks there is. Rather than rehashing and rehashing and rehashing, read all the posts on RealClimate.
And right now, the hard facts are that the earth has ceased to warm, and the models didn't predict it.
Number 1, show me any reasonable model that predicted an exact linear, simple warming trend. Interannual variability is a characteristic of the system and is expected.
Abstract of Easterling and Wehner 2009:
"Numerous websites, blogs and articles in the media have claimed that the climate is no longer warming, and is now cooling. Here we show that periods of no trend or even cooling of the globally averaged surface air temperature are found in the last 34 years of the observed record, and in climate model simulations of the 20th and 21st century forced with increasing greenhouse gases. We show that the climate over the 21st century can and likely will produce periods of a decade or two where the globally averaged surface air temperature shows no trend or even slight cooling in the presence of longer‐term warming."
But wait; also remember, as I pointed out to StarTraveler, that the June-August 2009 sea surface temperatures set an all-time record. Yes, there's an El Nino; there was a massive one in 1998, of course, so why this record now? And also note that if 2009 ranks fourth or fifth in the all-time global temperature record list, as is likely, then there will be only one or two years (1997 and 1998) in the top 10 that haven't been after the year 2000. And finally, according to what I'm reading, the UK Met Office is predicting a 50% chance that 2010 will knock 1998 out of the top spot for all-time warmest year ever. Whoop-de-doo. This (in my world, at least) makes sense, because of the presence of that El Nino, and whether or not it happens is going to be primarily dependent on what that El Nino does after January 1st.
And finally: I'm probably going to start a blog. It's going to be a boring sole-subject blog, and the subject will be Pleistocene (not Holocene) climate. Basically, glacial-interglacial transitions, their causes and effects. I just made this decision and I've got a lot of advance work to do, and I expect that I will learn a lot as I tackle this (and probably make some mistakes). But I have a definite goal in mind. We'll see if I can get there.
Which data? Tree rings? National meteorological services? Sea surface temperatures?
I’ve maintained for years that what we have is an instrument problem, no agreement on adjustments, artbitrary corrections, imputed biases, a number of data sets spread a number of researchers, searching for a sieve.
In a perfect world, every measuring instrument would work exactly the same way, every time, not changing over time, every operator would conduct their observations exactly the same, and thus there would be no need for calibration, correction, or cross-checking.
This just in: it's not a perfect world. You do the best with what you can get, and you define your uncertainties with adequate error bars, significance tests, Q-tests, etc. Then you publish your results and let the world show what you did wrong.
Any attempt to conceal critical data by any unit is a red flag.
Conceal, yes, red flag, somebody has something to hide. Withhold until it is actually good data, according to proper data processing procedures; no red flag, this constitutes proper scientific effort.
I’m still not sure if you’re convinced through study or just stubborn.
Study. If somebody actually made a good argument that convinced me that I, along with the mainstream scientific community, was wrong on anthropogenic climate change, I'd jump ship before the rats.
But I read too much, I know too much, and I remember too much. (Somewhere early in the monster CRU Hack thread on RealClimate, Gavin said something to the effect of that he sometimes wishes he was wrong, but he knows he's not. I think along similar lines quite often. I wish there was more to hope for. There are little islands of hope still. But they are dwindling.)
a. the human contribution to atmospheric CO2 is only about 5% percent, at most, of current atmospheric CO2,
b. the residence time of a molecule of atmospheric CO2 is only about 5 years,
c. it would require that human production of CO2 be increased 20 to 80-fold.
I’d trust a used car salesman before I’d trust a “climate scientist”.
Pathetic.
I can easily picture these “climate scientists” five years ago, posting to their favorite political forum: “The DSM is finally going to bring down bushitler and his whole cabal.”
And then the “Downing Street Memo” turned out to be a forged hoax.
These “climate scientists” learned nothing.
In chemistry, this kind of thing would get one drummed out of the profession (as I suspect is true of pretty much any science EXCEPT global warming).
There are simply too many unknowns in the "warming model", both as to magnitudes of various effects, and even to whether the effects are positive or negative. Read Freeman Dyson's critique as to why.
The treerings are worthless, not even worth cutting them down or the extra CO2 that led to.
CRU has yet to produce the “lost raw data.”
Why keep or tolerate a bad instrument just because this isn’t a perfect world?
How can anybody trust accuracy rates of + - 1 degree or more when the entire argument rests on a putative 0.8C?
If any good comes out of this at all it will be voluntary conservation, not mandatory control of consumption.
Smart meters mean dumb people.
Regarding points 2 and 3: http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=4101
Pay attention to beaker.
That is certainly the impression you'll get from reading only one side of the story.
There are simply too many unknowns in the "warming model", both as to magnitudes of various effects, and even to whether the effects are positive or negative. Read Freeman Dyson's critique as to why.
If you can provide a link to this "critique", I would like to see if there have been any responses to it.
They core a lot of them; still living trees. (Not always.) I do think that tree ring proxy interpretation is a somewhat arcane scientific pursuit. That's my opinion, and no doubt useful information is obtained from tree rings. But the quality of the various kinds of information -- well, we are witnesses to the controversies they generate. But scientists try to find a way to get insight into the past workings of the climate system, even if it's imperfect. I can't fault the effort even if the results are ... hmmm ... disputable.
How can anybody trust accuracy rates of + - 1 degree or more when the entire argument rests on a putative 0.8C?
That's actually easy to answer (thanks). Do you understand the "power of large numbers"? It works in a lot of different ways, in a lot of different venues. My favorite is sea surface height.
If any good comes out of this at all it will be voluntary conservation, not mandatory control of consumption.
It's not human nature to give up comfort and ease voluntarily; one has to count on collective altruism, and that's not an easy sell.
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