Global warming [Archive] - Page 9

mhaze

19th October 2007, 07:26 AM

Thank you...

you are a liar
Another lie.
your appaling record with the data you have access to.
your only purpose is to look like a fool, which you manage quite nicely.

Second, there is a very large pool of ancient cold water surfacing every day - you might want to check thermohaline circulation - that, coupled with a period of low solar activity, could possibly have stalled the warming. ... I will take the scientists opinion on the matter.

you might want to check thermohaline circulation - that, coupled with a period of low solar activity, could possibly have stalled the warming. ...

Separating out the personal innuendo from the rational comments, I see that buried in a paragraph you admit that the warming has "stalled". I am really not sure what the big deal is about this.

I have mentioned this paper numerous times previously, but it seems that it may have been a bit too radical for anyone to have an interest in. Here is a brief discussion of the 2007 publication by Tsonis (http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog/getting_order_out_of_climate_chaos1/), "A new dynamical mechanism for major climate shifts". A recent paper published in the Geophysical Research Letters deserves some attention, not only for the work done, but the implications of the paper as well. The paper, “A new dynamical mechanism for major climate shifts”, by A.A. Tsonis, K. Swanson, and S. Kravtsov is remarkable because it brings back some common sense in the climate change debate.

This paper discusses the collective behavior of four major climate “cycles” or variations and how they may interact with each other to impact the overall direction of climate or climate change. Some of these cycles are well-known to the public, such as El Nino or the North Atlantic Oscillation, and others are less known such as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation.

The authors can account for the warming and cooling periods of the 20th century by examining the dynamic behavior of these climate variations. In particular, they find that the climate regime can shift when these four cycles “synchronize”. Thus, they find that climate can shift, or change, due to internal (non-linear) climate dynamics, and they don’t even have to invoke an external climate change mechanism such as solar forcing.

It would seem that the old AGW theory of Aerosol cooling overwhelming the greenhouse gases in the 1970s, then the effect of greenhouse gases being the dominant factor in climate since then, is utter nonsense.
The full pdf of Tsonis is available online, if you have trouble finding it let us know.

Tsonis in his application of synchronised chaos theory to the non linear system of climate does not exclude the possibility of there being an AGW effect in the system. However, his work explains well the major trends in 20th century climate, which have been latched onto by Warmers as being firm evidence of AGW.

mhaze

19th October 2007, 07:28 AM

Clarification - the following paragraph is my comment, not that of the reviewer of Tsonis, and should not have been indented.
It would seem that the old AGW theory of Aerosol cooling overwhelming the greenhouse gases in the 1970s, then the effect of greenhouse gases being the dominant factor in climate since then, is utter nonsense.

Locri

19th October 2007, 08:12 AM

Any random data creates a hockey-stick?

If you want to get into technicalities, there are probably some random sets of data that wouldn't form hockey sticks, but that is a technicality only.

McIntyre used "red noise" which basically amounts to a data set that is built to have no trend at all. And it formed a hockey stick.

But we've actually observed the blade of the Hockey-Stick get longer over the last twenty years. Method has nothing to do with that.

But the hockey stick graph eliminates the medieval warm period and the little ice age which in effect makes the 'blade' look so much more worse than it actually is rather than a fairly normal reaction that is maybe slightly out of variance due to MM sources.

No it wouldn't, given the inertia of the world's oceans - thermal inertia and the dissolved-CO2 inertia. This is demonstrated by the 800 year lag in CO2 response to Milankovich warming.

I'm going to drop the whole ice core graph discussion because I'm obviously not getting through to you as to why it's important for whatever reason. I'll say one last time though, please read:

Skeptics Guide to Anthropogenic Globa Warming
(http://www.coyoteblog.com/Skeptics_Guide_to_Anthropogenic_Global_Warming_v1. 0.pdf) (It's even a PDF.)

Are you referring to the error in calculating late-90's temperature across the contiguous-48 US states? That's a recognised error, and nobody's trying to conceal it. (Whether David Rodale includes the necessary corrections in his "no warming this decade" graphs - courtesy, I suspect, of McIntyre - is another matter.) In global terms it means squat.

Correction, it was both late 90's and early 2000 temperatures. It's a recognized error, but the recognition was a paltry small announcement several days after it came out. Compared to the fanfare that occurred when 1998 was wrongly declared the warmest year, you'd think they'd spend a little more effort on it. And you're missing the point that I was/am still talking about the way they are going about things (by saying that it means squat, which I don't think it does... even if it doesn't change the data much, the way it was handled makes it seem like they are reluctant to let the scientific method do it's work).

It was you who introduced the idea that scientists won't admit their defeats. So I used it to poke mhaze with. That doesn't make me a bad person. OK, maybe I'm not a nice person ...

Yes, but it doesn't matter how much one side is wrong if the other side is too. That's like two children in a playground who both punch some other kid there. Just because one did it doesn't justify the other doing it or make it right.

Anyway, I think I'll try a bit of a different tact. If I recall correctly, a lot of this stuff has already been discussed and it went absolutely nowhere before. The only reason I brought the topics up is because you asked me why I lean towards the Anti-AGW.

So now I have a question for you, CD:

In the past on this thread, you've stated that you don't believe that statistics are a science. How do you feel about the fact that a great deal of the IPCCs evidence relies on computer models that (like any model) relies quite heavily on statistics?

I'm also curious on thoughts about this article, which describes some potential problems with the structure of the IPCC:

http://nzclimatescience.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=154&Itemid=1

Wow, things are so much nicer now that I can post links. It'll be a few days before I'm able to reply again, but I'm interested in reading what you think.

Locri

19th October 2007, 08:18 AM

It's been validated since then, using a different statistical method, with pretty much the same result, a line that looks like a 'hockey stick'.

Is this the way that is discussed in the IPCC report you linked to? The one that describes the methodology as being very close to Mann's methodology?

mhaze

19th October 2007, 08:20 AM

Locri

19th October 2007, 08:22 AM

The data is always imperfect. If it was never updated or revised, I would be worried.

Then why is it that, considering how much the data has been revised, the AGWs are so absolutely (almost religiously) certain? One place I visited seemed to have it right that it's almost now considered immoral to be even skeptical of the AGW position. I've read comments (from whackjobs admittedly) in reply to skeptics that are along the lines of "I wish you and everyone like you would die."

Megalodon

19th October 2007, 08:30 AM

you might want to check thermohaline circulation - that, coupled with a period of low solar activity, could possibly have stalled the warming. ...

Separating out the personal innuendo from the rational comments, I see that buried in a paragraph you admit that the warming has "stalled". I am really not sure what the big deal is about this.

First of all, if you think that was innuendo, I would hate to see what you classify as an open insult :)

Of course that there is only a very small, insignificant positive trend to be seen since around 2001, when the solar activity started to decrease. But that was not one of the several claims your buddy made, was it? You can see a strong positive trend all the way up to then, and none of his claims about the trends panned out, once the graphs were produced.

Now, does that mean that a cycle has peaked and is going to start reversing? I surely hope so, but hope has no place in science. The data suggests that we are going to experience another warming in the next few years.

Megalodon

19th October 2007, 08:32 AM

CapelDodger has it half right.

What's been observed are the NOSES of Warmers getting longer and longer, a la Pinnochio, as they continue to defend the Hockey Stick.

Now, this could be seen as an innuendo.

And a dumb one, since you've been shown wrong several times in this matter.

mhaze

19th October 2007, 08:52 AM

First of all, if you think that was innuendo, I would hate to see what you classify as an open insult :)

Of course that there is only a very small, insignificant positive trend to be seen since around 2001, when the solar activity started to decrease. But that was not one of the several claims your buddy made, was it? You can see a strong positive trend all the way up to then, and none of his claims about the trends panned out, once the graphs were produced.

Now, does that mean that a cycle has peaked and is going to start reversing? I surely hope so, but hope has no place in science. The data suggests that we are going to experience another warming in the next few years.

Thank you for your reply.

I am certain that of various theories floating around, many people are waiting for the next few years to see some confirmation of them. No question of that.

When you have the time, review Tsonis 2007. In my opinion it does represent new work of a fresh sort, different than the old paradimn of "if it can't be proven to be solar it must be AGW".

mhaze

19th October 2007, 08:54 AM

Now, this could be seen as an innuendo.

And a dumb one, since you've been shown wrong several times in this matter.

I've certainly said some dumb things, yes...we all have. But if I was at the Hockey Stick game, I'd be on the offense or just watching.

That Defend the Hockey Stick game is not a winning game. There are better pro AGW arguments than that, way better. Surely?

David Rodale

19th October 2007, 09:01 AM

That's because you don't know how to make scatter charts. Look at Megalodon's. That's how you make a scatter chart.

Again, since you didn't read it the first time:
http://forums.randi.org/showpost.php?p=3063394&postcount=1917
Look in the middle of the post. There are two links to the arrival of the minimum in July and the start of the next cycle in August.

I don't know why I bother; you obviously can't read.

I know how to make scatter diagrams and use them frequently. It was fully explained in a previous post. Did you read it? It’s really quite elementary.
\
So schneibster, what you’re saying is SC24 began before SC23 ended?
The one article you linked to is August 2006
http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Onset_of_Next_Solar_Activity_Cycle_Observed_999.ht ml
Minimum activity is predicted to occur around February 2007
Oops.

The other article dated July 2007 is saying SC23 has bottomed.
http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Sun_Loses_Its_Spots_As_Solar_Cycle_23_Bottoms_With _A_Cold_Wet_Southern_Winter_999.html
Determining solar minimum is not a straight forward process from what I can tell, but nonetheless:
NOAA's Space Environment Center, Boulder CO, forecasts that the next solar cycle should begin in March 2008 and should peak in late 2011 or mid 2012.
Oops.
When spots begin to appear on the sun once again, scientists know that the sun is heading into a new season of extreme solar activity.
At certain locations. I don’t recall the exact log/lat.

Just so you know, SC23 doesn’t end until SC24 begins.

You’d better inform NOAA as they were predicting after Feb 2007 for SC24 to begin in March 2008 (+/- 6 months I believe is the standard error).
April 2007
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/SolarCycle/SC24/PressRelease.html

“I was for Solar Cycle 24 before I was against it”

Predictions of SC24 made after it already began? May 2007:
http://www.sec.noaa.gov/SolarCycle/SC24/May_24_2007_table.pdf

I don’t Google-fu around looking for information that supports a pre-conceived position about SC24. I have openly and honestly stated there are several predictions concerning both the amplitude and length of SC24. The fact is SC23 is past due. The longer it lags, the less likely SC24 will be stronger. That much I do know. Schatten accurately predicted SC21(?), 22 and 23 if that’s something to go by, and predicts SC24 will be very weak. Until then, we can expect temperatures to drop regardless; that is what I said. If you’re willing to refute that, no problem, but it would have to fly in the face of logic. Right now the temperature trend is flat in the current decade. The AGW gang here can ignore that all you want, but only for so long.

Not that I wish to stoop to your level, and I have no problem admitting an error, but quite frankly Schneibster, your tactics are approaching the level of megalomaniac proportions.

BTW, your collar needs straightening.

mhaze

19th October 2007, 09:11 AM

I have not read the links noted on solar cycle prediction as to when it starts, but would like to make one very obvious comment.

Anyone here that thinks they can predict accurately when the next solar cycle will start can make millions of dollars on that one. So don't sit around babbling on JREF about your opinion, just go place your money in commodity futures, then sit back and laugh at us.

Schneibster

19th October 2007, 09:34 AM

I know how to make scatter diagrams and use them frequently. Obviously not, since you're having trouble understanding trend lines that go from lower left to upper right.

It was fully explained in a previous post. Did you read it? It’s really quite elementary. Elementary it might or might not have been; what it was for certain was wrong.

So schneibster, what you’re saying is SC24 began before SC23 ended?
The one article you linked to is August 2006
http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Onset_of_Next_Solar_Activity_Cycle_Observed_999.ht ml

Oops.Sorry about that, I misread. On the other hand,

The other article dated July 2007 is saying SC23 has bottomed.Which was my point. Glad you understood it.

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Sun_Loses_Its_Spots_As_Solar_Cycle_23_Bottoms_With _A_Cold_Wet_Southern_Winter_999.html
Determining solar minimum is not a straight forward process from what I can tell, but nonetheless:

Oops.The point was not when the next one starts; it's that we're at minimum now. So it appears you missed the point after all, or else you're being disingenuous; given the rest of what you've written on this thread, I lean toward the latter, since you seem to lie at the drop of a hat.

At certain locations. I don’t recall the exact log/lat.

Just so you know, SC23 doesn’t end until SC24 begins. Yes, but that doesn't mean it's not at minimum; the article proves it is, which was (if you are capable of recalling) my point.

I don’t Google-fu around looking for information that supports a pre-conceived position about SC24. I have openly and honestly stated there are several predictions concerning both the amplitude and length of SC24. The fact is SC23 is past due. The longer it lags, the less likely SC24 will be stronger. That much I do know. Schatten accurately predicted SC21(?), 22 and 23 if that’s something to go by, and predicts SC24 will be very weak. Until then, we can expect temperatures to drop regardless; that is what I said. If you’re willing to refute that, no problem, but it would have to fly in the face of logic. Right now the temperature trend is flat in the current decade. The AGW gang here can ignore that all you want, but only for so long.We're not ignoring anything; we're well aware that the Sun's output is going down but temperatures are remaining flat for the short term, and rising for the long term, which is what those scatter plots you're having so much trouble with show.

Not that I wish to stoop to your level, and I have no problem admitting an error, but quite frankly Schneibster, your tactics are approaching the level of megalomaniac proportions.

BTW, your collar needs straightening.Considering this mish-mash of attempted straw-man arguments, complete misunderstanding of the meaning of charts, and presentation of points that do not support your position, I have no idea what you think you're talking about, but whatever it is, you're wrong.

mhaze

19th October 2007, 10:14 AM

Gosh, I think I'll help out the Warmers on the subject of the Sun's Coffin Being Nailed Shut. Here are the Warmer Scripts that Warmers just cut and pasts from. I've provided both PseudoRealCLimate and Gristmill.

Oops....Warmers just read this stuff out of pre written Scripts?

Oops Oops....Oops....

'It's the sun, stupid'
(http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/12/28/090/30666)Posted by Coby Beck (http://gristmill.grist.org/user/Coby%20Beck) at 9:23 AM on 29 Dec 2006 |
(Part of the How to Talk to a Global Warming Skeptic (http://gristmill.grist.org/skeptics) guide) Objection: The sun is the source of warmth on earth. Any increase in temperature is likely due to changes in solar radiation.
Answer: It's true that the earth is warmed, for all practical purposes, entirely by solar radiation, so if the temperature is going up or down, the sun is a reasonable place to seek the cause.

Turns out it's more complicated than one might think to detect and measure changes in the amount or type of sunshine reaching the earth. Detectors on the ground are susceptible to all kinds of interference from the atmosphere -- after all, one cloud passing overhead can cause a shiver on an otherwise warm day, but not because the sun itself changed. The best way to detect changes in the output of the sun -- versus changes in the radiation reaching the earth's surface through clouds, smoke, dust, or pollution -- is by taking readings from space.
This is a job for satellites. According to PMOD at the World Radiation Center (http://www.pmodwrc.ch/pmod.php?topic=tsi/composite/SolarConstant) there has been no increase in solar irradiance since at least 1978, when satellite observations began. This means that for the last thirty years, while the temperature has been rising fastest (http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A2_lrg.gif), the sun has not changed.

There has been work done reconstructing the solar irradiance record over the last century, before satellites were available. According to the Max Planck Institute (http://www.mps.mpg.de/en/projekte/sun-climate/), where this work is being done, there has been no increase in solar irradiance since around 1940 (http://www.mps.mpg.de/images/projekte/sun-climate/climate.gif). This reconstruction does show an increase in the first part of the 20th century, which coincides with the warming from around 1900 until the 1940s. It's not enough to explain all the warming from those years, but it is responsible for a large portion. See this chart (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Climate_Change_Attribution.png) of observed temperature, modeled temperature, and variations in the major forcings that contributed to 20th century climate.
RealClimate has a couple of detailed discussions on what we can conclude about solar forcing and how science reached those conclusions. Read them here (http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/07/the-lure-of-solar-forcing/) and here (http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/08/did-the-sun-hit-record-highs-over-the-last-few-decades/).

And here is your script on Lockwood and its rebuttals from PseudoRealClimate. (http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?s=lockwood&submit=Search&qt=&q=&cx=009744842749537478185%3Ahwbuiarvsbo&client=google-coop-np&cof=GALT%3A808080%3BGL%3A1%3BDIV%3A34374A%3BVLC%3A AA8610%3BAH%3Aleft%3BBGC%3AFFFFFF%3BLBGC%3AFFFFFF% 3BALC%3A66AA55%3BLC%3A66AA55%3BT%3A000000%3BGFNT%3 A66AA55%3BGIMP%3A66AA55%3BFORID%3A11%3B&searchdatabase=site)

Cosmic rays don’t die so easily (http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/10/cosmic-rays-don%e2%80%99t-die-so-easily/)
Last week, a Norwegian official-looking - and in my view - climatesceptic website (http://www.forskning.no/) praised Eigil Friis-Christensen from the Danish space center (featuring in the Great Global Warming Swindle (http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/03/swindled/)) and hailed him for having given the best speech ever in the annual Birkeland seminar organized by Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters (http://www.dnva.no/) (NASL). There were rumours of controversy behind the scene before the seminar, as the NASL is regarded as a prestigious body in Norway.

Furthermore, Svensmark and Friis-Christensen have written a response (title 'Reply to Lockwood and Fröhlich – The persistent role of the Sun in climate forcing'; DNSC Scientific Report Series 3/2007) to a recent paper by Lockwood and Frohlich (LF2007) (http://www.pubs.royalsoc.ac.uk/media/proceedings_a/rspa20071880.pdf). In this response, they state ’… [LF2007] argue that this historical link between the Sun and climate came to an end about 20 years ago'. Another quote from their response is ‘Here we rebut their argument comprehensively’. So the cosmic ray theory isn’t quite dead after all (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v448/n7149/full/448008a.html)?
(more…) (http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/10/cosmic-rays-don%e2%80%99t-die-so-easily/#more-476)

Share This (http://www.realclimate.org/?p=476&akst_action=share-this) Comments (pop-up) (221) (http://www.realclimate.org/?comments_popup=476) View blog reactions (http://technorati.com/search/http%3A%2F%2Fwww.realclimate.org%2Findex.php%2Farc hives%2F2007%2F10%2Fcosmic-rays-don%25e2%2580%2599t-die-so-easily%2F?sub=jscosmos)

It's the sun! (not) (http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?s=lockwood&submit=Search&qt=&q=&cx=009744842749537478185%3Ahwbuiarvsbo&client=google-coop-np&cof=GALT%3A808080%3BGL%3A1%3BDIV%3A34374A%3BVLC%3A AA8610%3BAH%3Aleft%3BBGC%3AFFFFFF%3BLBGC%3AFFFFFF% 3BALC%3A66AA55%3BLC%3A66AA55%3BT%3A000000%3BGFNT%3 A66AA55%3BGIMP%3A66AA55%3BFORID%3A11%3B&searchdatabase=site)
As regular readers here will know, the big problem for blaming the sun for the recent global warming is that there hasn't been a trend (http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/10/taking-cosmic-rays-for-a-spin/) in any index of solar activity since about 1960, and that includes direct measurements of solar output by satellites since 1979. Well, another paper (http://www.pubs.royalsoc.ac.uk/media/proceedings_a/rspa20071880.pdf), has come out saying exactly the same thing. This is notable because the lead author Mike Lockwood has worked extensively on solar physics and effects on climate and certainly can't be credibly accused of wanting to minimise the role of solar forcing for nefarious pro-CO2 reasons!
Stefan was quoted in Nature as saying this is the 'last nail in the coffin' for solar enthusiasts, but a better rejoinder is a statement from Ray P: "That's a coffin with so many nails in it already that the hard part is finding a place to hammer in a new one."

mhaze

19th October 2007, 10:28 AM

David Rodale

19th October 2007, 10:33 AM

Obviously not, since you're having trouble understanding trend lines that go from lower left to upper right.

Elementary it might or might not have been; what it was for certain was wrong.

Sorry about that, I misread. On the other hand,

Which was my point. Glad you understood it.

The point was not when the next one starts; it's that we're at minimum now. So it appears you missed the point after all, or else you're being disingenuous; given the rest of what you've written on this thread, I lean toward the latter, since you seem to lie at the drop of a hat.

Yes, but that doesn't mean it's not at minimum; the article proves it is, which was (if you are capable of recalling) my point.

We're not ignoring anything; we're well aware that the Sun's output is going down but temperatures are remaining flat for the short term, and rising for the long term, which is what those scatter plots you're having so much trouble with show.

Considering this mish-mash of attempted straw-man arguments, complete misunderstanding of the meaning of charts, and presentation of points that do not support your position, I have no idea what you think you're talking about, but whatever it is, you're wrong.

http://forums.randi.org/showpost.php?p=3069632&postcount=1977
As far as background data, I'll go with Megalodon's scatter plots, and the fact that we're at the bottom of the solar cycle (technically headed back up, just past it).

That is totally 100% wrong. Once NASA/NOAA announces SC24 has begun, I'll be the first to let you know. Just admit you pooped your pants because you thought you had something big, completely screwed up, and move on.

What am I wrong about? A line chart is the correct method for this discussion. If Megalodon's aquarium aerator bubble chart (aka a cloud) were presented as a tool to interpret the data, it would be laughed out of the room. There is absolutely no advantage to using it here. If you're trying to show temps have some sort of relationship (that's why it's called XY) to time it would, but the results would be nonsensical.

What information can you glean from the following scatter diagrams? Is there correlation between time and temp? What are you looking for?
http://forums.randi.org/imagehosting/thum_103234718dc3bdbebc.jpg (http://forums.randi.org/vbimghost.php?do=displayimg&imgid=8856)

rcronk

19th October 2007, 11:23 AM

Schneibster

19th October 2007, 11:23 AM

That is totally 100% wrong. Once NASA/NOAA announces SC24 has begun, I'll be the first to let you know. So, you're saying we're not at or near minimum in the solar cycle?

Just admit you pooped your pants because you thought you had something big, completely screwed up, and move on.So, you're saying we're not at or near minimum in the solar cycle?

Let's be clear about the fact that you've either shifted the goalposts, i.e. it's now about when the next cycle begins, not whether we're at minimum, or you're using a straw-man argument, i.e., that my point was that the next cycle has begun, not that we're at minimum. Your choice; but either way, a logical fallacy that you're now trying to draw attention away from by capping it with another fallacy, ad hominem; which would be two fallacies in a row. Amazing. What do you do for an encore, gargle peanut butter?

What am I wrong about? You mean aside from stacking logical fallacies on top of each other like the leaning tower of Rodale? Well, let's start with the fallacy that every chart represents the data in a way that's equally easy to see. Then there'd be the fact that you've been asked twice to demonstrate your understanding of graphs and charts by describing their smoothness mathematically, and failed to do so, which makes it clear that you have no idea what they mean or how to read them. Shall I continue? I think not- the point appears made. And the remainder of your post is rendered irrelevant by it.

Let us know when you have a good description of graph smoothness, and when you intend to stop lying.

mhaze

19th October 2007, 11:33 AM

http://forums.randi.org/showpost.php?p=3069632&postcount=1977
If Megalodon's aquarium aerator bubble chart (aka a cloud) were presented as a tool to interpret the data, it would be laughed out of the room.

There is an exception to that, and it is when each of the data points has an uncertainty in X, which in turn engenders an uncertainty in Y. Thus each point does become a little balloon which may be elongated in one axis depending on the nature of the uncertainties.

This would always be the case with so called "proxy temperature measurements", but it is rarely seen or discussed. Instead, we are expected to believe all proxies are more precise than current temperature measurements. And those seem notably imprecise.

In the case at hand, since the X axis values are exact, the use of large circles for the data would appear to have just been a choice in the plotting program and not an intentional presentation of error bounds.

mhaze

19th October 2007, 11:36 AM

I have preliminary results for the AGW poll: 21 for AGW, 18 against AGW. Closer than I thought it would be.

I have gathered all of the arguments into two lists and am requesting that people now begin to add citations to these lists for and against any items they want to: http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?p=3073111

Please help me to flesh out these lists with citations for and against each item. My goal is to end up with a truly objective list of arguments for and against AGW with citations and counter arguments for each item. It could end up being a good (the only) objective starting point for people to take a look at AGW. Thanks in advance for any help you can give me on this. Thanks.

Excellent analsyis of viewpoints; I do have one suggestion. As you seek references for supporting viewpoints, require exact citations with page and chapter numbers, no vague citing of 2000 page documents with the assertion that "it's in there somewhere".

In other words, a cite should be something that one can click on, and immediately see that it is directly an answer to the assertion, and then in short order, find the primary arguments.

rcronk

19th October 2007, 12:04 PM

Excellent analsyis of viewpoints; I do have one suggestion. As you seek references for supporting viewpoints, require exact citations with page and chapter numbers, no vague citing of 2000 page documents with the assertion that "it's in there somewhere".

In other words, a cite should be something that one can click on, and immediately see that it is directly an answer to the assertion, and then in short order, find the primary arguments.

Thanks - I added your suggestion to the instructions on my last post. I hope in the end, we can all agree that it is an objective list of arguments that have both sides of the AGW argument equally represented. I appreciate everyone's help on this - I can't do it on my own. If you want your point of view in this, please post in the thread I linked to above. Thanks.

mhaze

19th October 2007, 12:30 PM

Interesting. I have received the oral testimony of Hansen from 1988, and it is quite different than expected. There is one or two pages which are a bit blurred, and I'm going to have to ask for them to be redone.

But just looking at this, here are my preliminary comments. I'm not sure how to address JREF Warmers arguments about "Michaels lying", because although they are of like mind that some type of lying happened, their comments are all over the map on how exactly it happened. Then again, that really doesn't matter, does it.

There were no lies by Michaels.

Here is a bit more that has become clear.

Hansen bluntly says to the Senate that Scenario A is "Business as Usual". In the first part of the talk, he talks about global climate. Then goes on to talk about summer heat spells. (This may have been a hasty concoction, as on that day in the summer of 1988 it was extremely and unusually hot in Washington DC. )

The written documents submitted with the oral talk follow one another closely as to content. A preprint of Hansen et al 1988 is included, along with the three viewgraphs that were presented.

As far as the "summer heat wave" section of the talk, Hansen discusses maps - not graphs - which have as the underlying basis, Scenario B. This is where all of the vague beliefs about "Hansen only talked about Scenario B" originate from.

Ten years later, when Michaels gave his Congressional presentation, he was addressing the primary prediction made by Hansen in 1988. That of course nothing to do with the sensational "summer heat waves" talk of ten years prior. There is of course no discussion of maps.

Rather it was on the primary topic - global warming. Michaels was dead on correct to note that Hansen's prediction of 0.4C temperature increase was wildly incorrect.

Hansen's phrase to the Senate was exactly as Michaels clear stated, "Scenario A was business as usual".

I still don't have 100% legible copies of all pages of these documents, but they should come in perhaps in a day or two.

Raskolnikov123

19th October 2007, 12:47 PM

1) There is a mischaracterization that Mann's dataset is the definitive source for the "hockey stick". No. Mann collected his data via tree rings. Other studies using other sources of data have come up with similar results.

2) McIntyre's criticisms and the high attention paid to them by members of Congress resulted in the National Academy of Sciences being called in to referee the dispute. You can access their report here: http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=11676 (http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=11676). In summary, they acknowledged some methodological issues with Mann's work, but substantiated what climate scientists would describe as the most important conclusions of Mann's work, that temperatures are going up, and have gone up sharply recently. They had high confidence in that conclusion over the last 400 years, but less confidence going back 1000 years. This is very similar to how the IPCC assessed the same data, with higher margins of error going back further in time.

This is the NAS' conclusion about M&M's criticism of Mann...

"As part of their statistical methods, Mann et al. used a type of principal component analysis that tends to bias the shape of the reconstructions. A description of this effect is given in Chapter 9 (http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11676&page=83). In practice, this method, though not recommended, does not appear to unduly influence reconstructions of hemispheric mean temperature; reconstructions performed without using principal component analysis are qualitatively similar to the original curves presented by Mann et al."

In other words, Mann's methods weren't the best, but the conclusions hold when better techniques are applied to the same data.

3) There is a mischaracterization that the same flaws in Mann's data apply to the independent sources for proxy climate data. In essence, there is an attempt to damn the other sources by association. But that doesn't hold. The criticisms of Mann's work were on an arcane (by lay standards) technical point. They were *not* a damning of the entire technique of principal component analysis. Again, read through the NAS report for a thorough discussion of the various data sources and statistical techniques that have been applied to the historical climate record.

Sorry guys, the hockey stick is alive and well. Scientific investigation of the topic didn't stop with McIntyre's paper

mhaze

19th October 2007, 02:19 PM

Schneibster

19th October 2007, 02:44 PM

All that's needed is to note that the chart Michaels presented that he claimed was the one Hansen presented, is not the one Hansen presented. That means Michaels lied. Anything else is just obfuscation intended to draw attention from the fact that Michaels lied.

Raskolnikov123

19th October 2007, 02:50 PM

What else may that report have said?

I read out loud to my kids, not to adults. I expect them to actually show initiative when a link is provided.

Any better evidence that may indicate the hockey stick once more rises, zombie like, a verifiable walking dead?

What evidence would you consider better than that provided by the NAS?

mhaze

19th October 2007, 04:11 PM

I have a high opinion of the NAS and of this report, but do not think that saying that it supports the zombie Hockey Stick accurately reflects its content at all.

CapelDodger

19th October 2007, 04:32 PM

Interesting. I have received the oral testimony of Hansen from 1988, and it is quite different than expected. There is one or two pages which are a bit blurred, and I'm going to have to ask for them to be redone.

But just looking at this, here are my preliminary comments. I'm not sure how to address JREF Warmers arguments about "Michaels lying", because although they are of like mind that some type of lying happened, their comments are all over the map on how exactly it happened.

Mi point has remained crystal clear and focused. Michaels lied to Congress in 1998 about the Mann et al 1988 model, not about Hansen's 1988 testimony. These are two different things.

Then again, that really doesn't matter, does it.

It does, given that Michaels is prominent in the anti-AGW camp, and his 1998 lies are widely believed. It's important to get this point straight. Michaels is condemned from his mouth - just read his 1998 Congressional testimony (available via the Cato Institute website). Michaels claimed that the Hansen et al 1988 model predicted four times the warming in the 90's than really occurred, which it didn't.

There were no lies by Michaels.

See above.

Here's the Michaels money-shot yet again

"That model predicted that global temperature between 1988 and 1997 would rise by 0.45°C (Figure 1)."

That model, not some testimony. It was the model Michaels lied about.

You're weird flutterings about Hansen's Congressional testimony in 1988 are inane. Michaels blatantly lied about the Hansen et al 1988 model. He did it to dishonestly discredit that model, which had in fact predicted 90's warming pretty accurately.

CapelDodger

19th October 2007, 04:46 PM

I have a high opinion of the NAS and of this report, but do not think that saying that it supports the zombie Hockey Stick accurately reflects its content at all.

The NAS report supports the Mann et al reconstruction. I know that's just me saying it, but it's true.

There's a strange symmetry between your desperate defence of Michaels's lying testimony to Congress in '98 and the way you perceive the scientific defence of Mann et al. I'm not sure of the psychological term, but it might be "projection" or something similar.

mhaze

19th October 2007, 04:52 PM

But just looking at this, here are my preliminary comments. I'm not sure how to address JREF Warmers arguments about "Michaels lying", because although they are of like mind that some type of lying happened, their comments are all over the map on how exactly it happened.

Mi point has remained crystal clear and focused. Michaels lied to Congress in 1998 about the Mann et al 1988 model, not about Hansen's 1988 testimony. These are two different things.

Exactly how crystal clear and focused your comment is speaks for itself.

CapelDodger

19th October 2007, 05:10 PM

Exactly how crystal clear and focused your comment is speaks for itself.

I hope so. Clarity and precision is what I strive towards.

Your response speaks for yourself, of course. If you could see a chink you'd have tried to worm your way into it, but instead you make this sad post.

Michaels's lie wasn't about Hansen's Congressional testimony, it was about the Hansen et al model, and I suspect that fact is starting to get through to you.

mhaze

19th October 2007, 05:34 PM

I hope so. Clarity and precision is what I strive towards.

Your response speaks for yourself, of course. If you could see a chink you'd have tried to worm your way into it, but instead you make this sad post.

Michaels's lie wasn't about Hansen's Congressional testimony, it was about the Hansen et al model, and I suspect that fact is starting to get through to you.Michaels lied to Congress in 1998 about the Mann et al 1988 model, not about Hansen's 1988 testimony. These are two different things.
Exactly how crystal clear and focused your comment is speaks for itself.

Now which do you opine it was, some Mann Model or some Hansen model?

Perhaps a supermodel in the fashion show?

Inquiring minds would like to know.

mhaze

19th October 2007, 05:48 PM

Now, does that mean that a cycle has peaked and is going to start reversing? I surely hope so, but hope has no place in science. The data suggests that we are going to experience another warming in the next few years.

Another look at raw data.

The CRU says this is the global temperature over the last 5 years:
2003 0.465
2004 0.444
2005 0.476
2006 0.422
2007 0.437
Flatline from 2003 to 2007. A slight cooling.
No rise.

As for the Southern Hemisphere …
2003 0.371
2004 0.299
2005 0.329
2006 0.288
2007 0.254
Almost back to 0.0.

NO WARMING.

a_unique_person

19th October 2007, 05:49 PM

Then why is it that, considering how much the data has been revised, the AGWs are so absolutely (almost religiously) certain? One place I visited seemed to have it right that it's almost now considered immoral to be even skeptical of the AGW position. I've read comments (from whackjobs admittedly) in reply to skeptics that are along the lines of "I wish you and everyone like you would die."

I'm not at all certain. I'm considering the risk that will happen if it is correct, and most of what I have seen so far seems to suggest it is correct. If we are wrong, then we get a world that is far less reliant on fossil fuels, which have been a source of much of the conflict around the globe. If we are right, we prevent many serious problems.

Schneibster

19th October 2007, 06:04 PM

Well, if we're going to invoke the CRU, let's make sure we read everything they have to say (http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/myths/index.html).

JEROME DA GNOME

19th October 2007, 06:14 PM

Well, if we're going to invoke the CRU, let's make sure we read everything they have to say (http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/myths/index.html).

You do understand that the data set at the end of the graph is measured with a different technique than the rest of the data?

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/myths/Atmos-CO2.gif

a_unique_person

19th October 2007, 06:28 PM

Another look at raw data.

The CRU says this is the global temperature over the last 5 years:
2003 0.465
2004 0.444
2005 0.476
2006 0.422
2007 0.437
Flatline from 2003 to 2007. A slight cooling.
No rise.

As for the Southern Hemisphere …
2003 0.371
2004 0.299
2005 0.329
2006 0.288
2007 0.254
Almost back to 0.0.

NO WARMING.
:rolleyes:

CapelDodger

19th October 2007, 06:57 PM

If you want to get into technicalities, there are probably some random sets of data that wouldn't form hockey sticks, but that is a technicality only.

McIntyre used "red noise" which basically amounts to a data set that is built to have no trend at all. And it formed a hockey stick.

There's a distinction between "white noise" and "red noise". Both have no inherent trend, but while white noise is purely random ,red noise has an influence on subsequent events. (I'm sure - I hope :blush:? - someone out there can handle this better than me.) A parameter in the statistical model defines how long the red noise influence extends. Long story short, McIntyre et al select a large parameter for no better reason than it serving their purpose - faking a hockey-stick.

That's how these people work.

But the hockey stick graph eliminates the medieval warm period and the little ice age ...

It doesn't; what it does is reveal that the global influence was far less than the anecdotal European evidence suggests to those not well-versed in the subject.

... which in effect makes the 'blade' look so much more worse than it actually is rather than a fairly normal reaction that is maybe slightly out of variance due to MM sources.

In truth it's the European/North Atlantic collective memory that's being called on to make the globally abnormal appear normal. That's why you say that the MWP and LIA aren't represented in Mann et al. They are there, but not with the amplitude you expect.

I'm going to drop the whole ice core graph discussion ...

And why not, it's not terribly relevant to what's currently going on.

... because I'm obviously not getting through to you as to why it's important for whatever reason.

And I'm obviously not getting across my point that it's only real importance is as a tactic to divert attention from the current situation.

I'll say one last time though, please read:

Skeptics Guide to Anthropogenic Globa Warming
(http://www.coyoteblog.com/Skeptics_Guide_to_Anthropogenic_Global_Warming_v1. 0.pdf)(It's even a PDF.)

Editorial in the Wall Street Journal? I'm going to plough through that? WSJ journalism is upper-bracket, but WSJ editorial is frankly weird. I really don't think there'll be anything in there I haven't heard and laughed at before.

Correction, it was both late 90's and early 2000 temperatures. It's a recognized error, but the recognition was a paltry small announcement several days after it came out.

As I recall, McIntyre discovered a jump in US temperature records years after the event and made some significant noise about it. He didn't work out why it occurred, he just finally found a real nugget after a lot of digging. The scientists involved, made aware of the discrepancy, burrowed in to discover the cause. It took a few days to identify it, at which point they reported it and produced new reconstructions.

Compared to the fanfare that occurred when 1998 was wrongly declared the warmest year, you'd think they'd spend a little more effort on it.

I missed that fanfare myself. As far as I'm aware 1998 and 2005 are too close to call. It doesn't matter much, a dead-heat suffices.

And you're missing the point that I was/am still talking about the way they are going about things (by saying that it means squat, which I don't think it does... even if it doesn't change the data much, the way it was handled makes it seem like they are reluctant to let the scientific method do it's work).

I know you're trying to get your perception of what's going on across to me, I can even understand it. Your perception of this incident is exactly what McIntyre et al have projected, but it's a phantom.

Yes, but it doesn't matter how much one side is wrong if the other side is too. That's like two children in a playground who both punch some other kid there. Just because one did it doesn't justify the other doing it or make it right.

mhaze invited it, and as far as I'm concerned he's getting it.

Anyway, I think I'll try a bit of a different tact. If I recall correctly, a lot of this stuff has already been discussed and it went absolutely nowhere before.

Meanwhile, the world got warmer. And Diamond melted away.

The only reason I brought the topics up is because you asked me why I lean towards the Anti-AGW.

You brought these topics up quite independently. I asked, you answered, I said "thank you". I'm not chasing down your answer - as I said at the time, I wouldn't be at your throat over it. Nor am I.

So now I have a question for you, CD:

In the past on this thread, you've stated that you don't believe that statistics are a science.

Statistics is a branch of mathematics, and therefore scientific. Are actuaries scientists? It's a grey area.

How do you feel about the fact that a great deal of the IPCCs evidence relies on computer models that (like any model) relies quite heavily on statistics?

The bulk of the evidence is in observation. The theory behind AGW is well-established, as described in IPCC reports. Climate models are physical models, not statistical models.

A question for you : how do you regard Solar Cycle Science, which is entirely based on statistics? (No models, no theory, just statistics and "track-records".) Laughable, or what? David Rodale thinks SCS is sweet; is he deluded?

I'm also curious on thoughts about this article, which describes some potential problems with the structure of the IPCC:

http://nzclimatescience.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=154&Itemid=1

Wow, things are so much nicer now that I can post links. It'll be a few days before I'm able to reply again, but I'm interested in reading what you think.

What I don't think is that the IPCC and its structure matter at all. The IPCC reports - four so far, over twenty years - collate the science that's going on, all of it referenced. This isn't science that the IPCC is doing or is even commissioning, all the IPCC does is report. Conservatively.

I think you should leaven your critical look outwards from the ClimateAudit et al environment with a critical look inwards from the normal world.

CapelDodger

19th October 2007, 07:03 PM

You do understand that the data set at the end of the graph is measured with a different technique than the rest of the data?

The money-shot end of the graph (:)) is predicted, not measured. So what's this technique you speak of?

JEROME DA GNOME

19th October 2007, 07:20 PM

The money-shot end of the graph (:)) is predicted, not measured. So what's this technique you speak of?

No, No. The Vostok ice core data does not show the last 6 or 7 years of data. The recent data is extracted from a different technique (possibly with a different accuracy) and incorporated into the Vostok data. You do see the potential problems with this sort of incorporation?

mhaze

19th October 2007, 07:52 PM

It's a joke, sort of. The two series should be clearly separated and their respective error bounds noted. Short story: do not buy into this graph.

CapelDodger

19th October 2007, 07:56 PM

Michaels lied to Congress in 1998 about the Mann et al 1988 model, not about Hansen's 1988 testimony. These are two different things.
Exactly how crystal clear and focused your comment is speaks for itself.

Now which do you opine it was, some Mann Model or some Hansen model?

Perhaps a supermodel in the fashion show?

Inquiring minds would like to know.

It wasn't Hansen's Congressional testimony, was it? And Mann et al was a climate reconstruction, not a model. What we're left with ... is the Hansen et al 1988 model that Michaels lied about in 1998.

mhaze

19th October 2007, 08:00 PM

What evidence would you consider better than that provided by the NAS?

Since I do link to and like the NAS report, here is more evidence that the hockey stick is not a zombie risen from the dead.

Medieval Warm Period Record of the Week
This issue's Medieval Warm Period Record of the Week comes from the Polar Ural Mountains (http://www.co2science.org/scripts/CO2ScienceB2C/data/mwp/studies/l1_polarurals.jsp), Russia. To access the entire Medieval Warm Period Project's database, click here (http://www.co2science.org/scripts/CO2ScienceB2C/data/mwp/mwpp.jsp).

Oops... Oops...

What is this? A MWP every week?

mhaze

19th October 2007, 08:16 PM

Michaels lied to Congress in 1998 about the Mann et al 1988 model, not about Hansen's 1988 testimony. These are two different things.Originally Posted by mhaze http://forums.randi.org/helloworld2/buttons/viewpost.gif (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?p=3074172#post3074172)
Exactly how crystal clear and focused your comment is speaks for itself.
Now which do you opine it was, some Mann Model or some Hansen model?
Perhaps a supermodel in the fashion show?
Inquiring minds would like to know.
CapelDodger;
It wasn't Hansen's Congressional testimony, was it? And Mann et al was a climate reconstruction, not a model. What we're left with ... is the Hansen et al 1988 model that Michaels lied about in 1998.

Hansen was no liar.
Please do not continue saying such things. They are not true.

Schneibster

19th October 2007, 09:12 PM

Now it's getting surreal. Is everyone drunk?

First CD says Michaels lied about the Mann model.
Then mhaze says "Hansen was no liar."
I thought "polar Ural mountains" might be part of it, but it turns out that there really is a part of the Urals called "polar," which of course is nowhere near the pole (64 degrees N).

It must be Friday.

JEROME DA GNOME

19th October 2007, 09:56 PM

Now it's getting surreal. Is everyone drunk?

I always post drunk in this thread.

It is to allow you a small chance.

:blush:

What do you think about incorporating two differently derived data sets?

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/myths/Atmos-CO2.gif

mhaze

20th October 2007, 08:26 AM

It's not warming.

Only a tree ring can do that
http://forums.randi.org/imagehosting/thum_10323471750ecb5cb9.jpg

I must ask based on the picture....

What is a "Global Teleconnection Signal?

How do you find these "Teleconnections" in tree rings?

Are they cheaper than mobile phone plans?

Sounds very, very woo woo.

CapelDodger

20th October 2007, 04:12 PM

Now it's getting surreal. Is everyone drunk?

I am. Rugby World Cup Final - what do you expect? Especially when our team won.

First CD says Michaels lied about the Mann model.

I was drunk then as well :o. Late Friday night - what do you expect?

CapelDodger

20th October 2007, 04:28 PM

No, No. The Vostok ice core data does not show the last 6 or 7 years of data. The recent data is extracted from a different technique (possibly with a different accuracy) and incorporated into the Vostok data. You do see the potential problems with this sort of incorporation?

The graph covers four hundred thousand frickin' years. How many pixels do you reckon the last six or seven years occupy? Less than one? A lot less than one?

If you want to make a point about the last six or seven years, I suggest you pick a graph with a much shorter time-scale.

JEROME DA GNOME

20th October 2007, 04:32 PM

The graph covers four hundred thousand frickin' years. How many pixels do you reckon the last six or seven years occupy? Less than one? A lot less than one?

Enough pixels to present a SCARY circumstance for the proles.

If you want to make a point about the last six or seven years, I suggest you pick a graph with a much shorter time-scale.

That is the point; if you graph just the Vostok data it is not SCARY.

mhaze

20th October 2007, 04:58 PM

I am. Rugby World Cup Final - what do you expect? Especially when our team won. I was drunk then as well :o. Late Friday night - what do you expect?

;) Whut, me drunk?

CapelDodger

20th October 2007, 05:03 PM

Since I do link to and like the NAS report, here is more evidence that the hockey stick is not a zombie risen from the dead.

Medieval Warm Period Record of the Week
This issue's Medieval Warm Period Record of the Week comes from the Polar Ural Mountains (http://www.co2science.org/scripts/CO2ScienceB2C/data/mwp/studies/l1_polarurals.jsp), Russia. To access the entire Medieval Warm Period Project's database, click here (http://www.co2science.org/scripts/CO2ScienceB2C/data/mwp/mwpp.jsp).

Oops... Oops...

What is this? A MWP every week?

" we conclude that the Medieval Warm Period lasted from approximately AD 700 to 1300 and that significant portions of it were as much as 0.56°C warmer than the Current Warm Period."

That seems to be rash conclusion. The Current Warm Period only goes back three decades. How quickly does the tree-line advance in response to climate change? Less than instantly, I think. We don't know how high the tree-line will reach even in the current climate - we know it's climbing, but trees don't grow overnight. It may well be that the equilibrium tree-line in current conditions will be well above the MWP tree-line. We won't know until the tree-line stops climbing. Which it hasn't.

There's no great controversy about the MWP being as warm as the world was thirty years ago, possibly warmer. The important issue is how warm it is now, and how quickly it's changing. There's no refuge in the past - nor in CO2Science.

I'm not at all surprised that CO2Science promotes this paper, nor that you're impressed by it. It only takes a moment's thought - what's the reaction-time of the tree-line? - to see it for the obscurantist nonsense that it is.

I don't doubt the science that was done, but I do wonder about the way that CO2Science presents it. First the reference. And then "Description". Not "Abstract" - most papers include an abstract - but a description, courtesy of CO2Science to save you the trouble of looking at it.

In this description "and that "the vertical gradient of summer air temperature in the Polar Urals is 0.7°C/100 m" is inside quote-marks - suggesting a direct quote - while the conclusion I quoted above isn't - suggesting that it's an interpretation. By the people at CO2Science. For the benefit of people like you.

It really is possible to fool some of the people all of the time. And you're an example to us all.

CapelDodger

20th October 2007, 05:25 PM

Enough pixels to present a SCARY circumstance for the proles.

That is the point; if you graph just the Vostok data it is not SCARY.

So we've gone from a different measurement technique at the end (2100) through the latest six (or seven) years of differently-derived of the last 400,000 to it being a scare-tactic.

As I view it, the light-blue line of recent CO2 increase occupies one pixel, and the projected red-line sits right on top of it. What's the less alarming alternative? Leave it out completely?

If you think there's something in the most recent six or seven years Vostok data (do they really bother with that?) that will save our sorry asses you'll have to present some evidence on a much shorter time-scale than hundreds of thousands of years.

At least mhaze can take comfort in the MWP lying right inside that light-blue pixel, which means CO2 levels could have been almost anything at the time.

JEROME DA GNOME

20th October 2007, 05:45 PM

If you think there's something in the most recent six or seven years Vostok data (do they really bother with that?) that will save our sorry asses you'll have to present some evidence on a much shorter time-scale than hundreds of thousands of years.

I am not talking about the projected data.

You are still missing the point.

The last 6 years of data are not from the Vostok study.

This data is derived differently and incorporated as if it is part of the same data set.

Does this incorporation and presentation not bother you?

CapelDodger

20th October 2007, 06:08 PM

Well, if we're going to invoke the CRU, let's make sure we read everything they have to say (http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/myths/index.html).

The scarifying graph at the top has been played out, I think. Whether the even more alarming words around and below it are looked at is anybody's guess.

jerome's knee-jerk response was predictable. A CO2-graph, and he knows an answer from a trusted source. He's kinda hazy about it, but it's a kick-ass rebuttal, he loved it. Something about the recent past, and Vostok ice-cores, and scientists being devious and manipulative. Whatever, that's all in the past now.

mhaze

20th October 2007, 06:16 PM

That seems to be rash conclusion. The Current Warm Period only goes back three decades. How quickly does the tree-line advance in response to climate change? Less than instantly, I think. We don't know how high the tree-line will reach even in the current climate - we know it's climbing, but trees don't grow overnight. It may well be that the equilibrium tree-line in current conditions will be well above the MWP tree-line. We won't know until the tree-line stops climbing. Which it hasn't.

There's no great controversy about the MWP being as warm as the world was thirty years ago, possibly warmer.

What they are getting at, if you didn't see it, is noting every week, another paper that shows the MWP, which Hansen does not in the Hockey Stick.

I'm not sure what exactly you mean by the comment "no great controversy ..." above. It isn't necessary to show definitely that prior periods have had a higher temperature than the current decades to smash the hockey stick.

It's only necessary to show they are in a similar temperature range to destroy the statistical significance of current warming.

Does that make sense to you?

JEROME DA GNOME

20th October 2007, 06:20 PM

The scarifying graph at the top has been played out, I think. Whether the even more alarming words around and below it are looked at is anybody's guess.

jerome's knee-jerk response was predictable. A CO2-graph, and he knows an answer from a trusted source. He's kinda hazy about it, but it's a kick-ass rebuttal, he loved it. Something about the recent past, and Vostok ice-cores, and scientists being devious and manipulative. Whatever, that's all in the past now.

Sorry, your accusation is incorrect.

I come-up with this stuff all by myself.

I am barley bright enough to type over the internet. I could not comprehend the intricateness of others presented information concerning this topic.

I notice that you declined to answer my question:

Does this incorporation and presentation not bother you?

I bet you were great at dodge-ball in primary school.

CapelDodger

20th October 2007, 06:28 PM

I am not talking about the projected data.

You are still missing the point.

The last 6 years of data are not from the Vostok study.

This data is derived differently and incorporated as if it is part of the same data set.

Does this incorporation and presentation not bother you?

I guess I was wrong about this being played out.

Recent data is derived directly, by measuring CO2 in the actual atmosphere. But let's get to the point : how does incorporating six years of data differently change a graph covering 400,000 years? It doesn't, does it?

Forget the CO2 graph, it's getting you nowhere. Cut to the chase - what is it about the last six or seven years that you're fixated on?

mhaze

20th October 2007, 06:38 PM

I am not talking about the projected data.

You are still missing the point.

The last 6 years of data are not from the Vostok study.

This data is derived differently and incorporated as if it is part of the same data set.

Does this incorporation and presentation not bother you?

500,000 years on a graph with some resolution every how often in Vostok?

Say on the right hand side, we had 3 minutes of data.

Nobody would think that was okay, because the time intervals between the samples taken over the 500,000 years could easily have missed a 3 minute period where a similar deviation occurred. Sampling could have missed hundreds of 3 minute periods.

Exaggerated, but the same general problem.

Not that that's the only problem with the graph. How well does it correlate with other historical CO2 indices, such as from stomata? Not well....

JEROME DA GNOME

20th October 2007, 06:44 PM

Recent data is derived directly, by measuring CO2 in the actual atmosphere. But let's get to the point : how does incorporating six years of data differently change a graph covering 400,000 years? It doesn't, does it?

Correct, and the rest of the data is derived how?

Certainly not by the measurement of the atmosphere.

It is the last section which presents a divergence from the vast majority of other data. It is also this last section of data that was derived using a different method.

The common assumption in this circumstance in science when one sees that dramatic of a difference in the two data sets would be to try and determine why this is.

The graph just inserts the uniquely derived data and presents it as equal in collection to the rest of the data.

I ask again: Do you not see a problem here?

Schneibster

20th October 2007, 06:46 PM

the time intervals between the samples taken over the 500,000 years could easily have missed a 3 minute period where a similar deviation occurred. Sampling could have missed hundreds of 3 minute periods.Coulda woulda shoulda oughta.

JEROME DA GNOME

20th October 2007, 06:49 PM

Coulda woulda shoulda oughta.

Dude, science does not willy nilly insert two differently derived data sets as if they are equal in collection methods.

CapelDodger

20th October 2007, 07:18 PM

What they are getting at, if you didn't see it, is noting every week, another paper that shows the MWP, which Hansen does not in the Hockey Stick.

Hansen? Hockey Stick? This is you trying to appear clever, isn't it?

How's your piece about Hansen's 1988 testimony coming along?

Every week another piece of pony. But every week another piece, never any shortage. Keep them coming.

I'm not sure what exactly you mean by the comment "no great controversy ..." above. It isn't necessary to show definitely that prior periods have had a higher temperature than the current decades to smash the hockey stick.

Smash it all you like, it's current times that we all live in.

It's only necessary to show they are in a similar temperature range to destroy the statistical significance of current warming.

:confused:

This week's tree-line thing from CO2Science didn't do any of that. I actually said some stuff about it. Keep them coming, and I'll keep saying stuff about them.

mhaze

20th October 2007, 08:22 PM

Hansen? Hockey Stick? This is you trying to appear clever, isn't it?

No, it's me getting scarily almost as confused as you....

meant Mann and his Hockey stick...

On Hansen and Michaels, well, I pretty much summed that up. "Cut to the point", as you'd say, right?

a_unique_person

21st October 2007, 06:22 AM

Correct, and the rest of the data is derived how?

Certainly not by the measurement of the atmosphere.

It is the last section which presents a divergence from the vast majority of other data. It is also this last section of data that was derived using a different method.

The common assumption in this circumstance in science when one sees that dramatic of a difference in the two data sets would be to try and determine why this is.

The graph just inserts the uniquely derived data and presents it as equal in collection to the rest of the data.

I ask again: Do you not see a problem here?

We could have two separate graphs, if you really want. But people would want to see the actual measurements compared to the ice cores anyway. They are clearly labeled as being from two different sources.

CapelDodger

21st October 2007, 05:16 PM

Correct, and the rest of the data is derived how?

Certainly not by the measurement of the atmosphere.

No, from ice-cores. They show a geat deal of consistency across different cores and across different analyses by different groups. I see no reason to think they're grossly inaccurate. They're also consistent with CO2 measurements made in the 19thCE and early 20thCE, from the atmosphere.

It is the last section which presents a divergence from the vast majority of other data. It is also this last section of data that was derived using a different method.

Both methods measure the same thing.

The common assumption in this circumstance in science when one sees that dramatic of a difference in the two data sets would be to try and determine why this is.

Burning hundreds of billions of tons of fossil-fuel is an obvious suspect.

The graph just inserts the uniquely derived data and presents it as equal in collection to the rest of the data.

I ask again: Do you not see a problem here?

No, I don't. Ice-cores trap the atmosphere of their time, and the CO2 content can be measured accurately. That's been confirmed by multiple studies on multiple samples. CO2 content of the modern atmosphere can be, and has been, measured accurately. There's no reason not to combine the two data-sets - certainly not because the ice-cores aren't available yet for the latest eighty years or so.

It's not as if the more modern method of directly measuring CO2 in the atmosphere was wildly at odds with the ice-core data. Back in the 19thCE CO2-load was measured at about 280ppm - consistent with the long-term range. Now it's measured at above 380ppm. In between it's been going up. The graph doesn't show that because it's on too long a time-scale.

I doubt you'd find two graphs (one showing the 400,000 year graph without the last century thrown in and the other showing the last century) any less alarming. CO2-load is about a third greater than it was a century ago, and over that century hundreds of billions of tons of fossil-fuel have been burnt, injecting CO2 into the atmosphere. More CO2 than accounts for the atmospheric and oceanic accumulation.

CapelDodger

21st October 2007, 05:33 PM

Not that that's the only problem with the graph. How well does it correlate with other historical CO2 indices, such as from stomata? Not well....

Stomata provide a very indirect measurement of CO2 and are subject to other influences, such as moisture. Ice-cores contain atmosphere which can be directly measured for CO2 content - which is the data we're looking for, after all.

CapelDodger

21st October 2007, 05:40 PM

Just so you folk can't say I never give you anything, http://epa.gov/climatechange/science/recentac_majorghg.html presents graphs of CO2 levels on three different timescales - 600,000 years, 10,000 years, and 50 years.

JEROME DA GNOME

21st October 2007, 05:45 PM

CapelDodger

21st October 2007, 06:16 PM

On Hansen and Michaels, well, I pretty much summed that up. "Cut to the point", as you'd say, right?

I cut to the chase and got to the point some while back. Michaels lied about the Hansen et al 1988 model predictions for the 90's. Here it is again

"That model predicted that global temperature between 1988 and 1997 would rise by 0.45°C (Figure 1)."

As far I can see your response to that point has been

Ten years later, when Michaels gave his Congressional presentation, he was addressing the primary prediction made by Hansen in 1988.

Which is untrue. Michaels presented the Scenario A prediction as the prediction of the model, and then compared it to the outcome. Michaels knew by then that Scenario A was not what had transpired, but still used the Scenario A prediction in his dishonest attempt to discredit the model. Michaels surely knew by then that Scenario B was much closer to what had actually transpired and that the associated prediction was pretty accurate - but bringing that up would not have served his purpose, which was to discredit the model by any means available. Including lying. About which he obviously has no qualms.

Even if Hansen had predicted Scenario A as the most likely, from a 1988 perspective that wasn't what Michaels was addressing from his 1998 perspective. Look at his testimony - it's available via the Cato Institute.

mhaze

22nd October 2007, 06:33 AM

Michaels presented the Scenario A prediction as the prediction of the model, and then compared it to the outcome. Michaels knew by then that Scenario A was not what had transpired, but still used the Scenario A prediction in his dishonest attempt to discredit the model. Michaels surely knew by then that Scenario B was much closer to what had actually transpired and that the associated prediction was pretty accurate - but bringing that up would not have served his purpose, which was to discredit the model by any means available. Including lying. About which he obviously has no qualms.

Even if Hansen had predicted Scenario A as the most likely, from a 1988 perspective that wasn't what Michaels was addressing from his 1998 perspective. Look at his testimony - it's available via the Cato Institute.

You'd be pretty much right if Hansen hadn't gone a little bit alarmist in the oral testimony. Reading Hansen 1988 et al all the way through, the same trend is there also. Would you like me to split out the list of alarmist comments from the actual scientific discussion of the model? Have you even read Hansen 1988 et al, by the way?

CapelDodger

22nd October 2007, 03:51 PM

You'd be pretty much right if Hansen hadn't gone a little bit alarmist in the oral testimony.

:hb:

I am entirely right that Michaels lied about the model not the testimony.

Reading Hansen 1988 et al all the way through, the same trend is there also. Would you like me to split out the list of alarmist comments from the actual scientific discussion of the model?

Please do. It'll be another subject to discuss, not a change of this subject. You know, Michaels being a mendacious lowlife quite possibly guilty of perjury (is lying to Congress perjury? As a non-member, of course. For members that's their job :).)

Have you even read Hansen 1988 et al, by the way?

In parts. The part describing the different scenarios, for instance, and the bit with the corresponding predictions. The parts that reveal Michaels to be a liar.

On a quite separate issue, what do you find alarming in the Hansen et al report?

mhaze

22nd October 2007, 05:27 PM

I am entirely right that Michaels lied about the model not the testimony.

Nope. No lies by Michaels, sorry.

As I've mentioned, I don't really care to address JREF warmers assertions that "Michaels lied", because there is no agreement on the details, just kind of a general certainty among Warmers that there was a lie there somewhere. Which no doubt you've been told to believe and told it was true.

That's the way a smear works, like this one by Krugman.

Hansen bluntly says to the Senate that Scenario A is "Business as Usual (BAU)". In the first part of the talk, he talks about global climate. Then goes on to talk about summer heat spells. (This may have been a hasty concoction, as on that day in the summer of 1988 it was extremely and unusually hot in Washington DC. )

Scenario A is BAU. In this section of the testimony Hansen does not even specifically mention Scenarios B or C. This is the section on Global Warming. Later he goes into summer heat waves, and mentions "the maps" are from Scenario B.

What was the subject of Michael's talk in 1998?

Was it summer heat waves, or Global Warming?

What was the primary prediction made by Hansen 1988 et al?

mhaze

22nd October 2007, 05:30 PM

Stomata provide a very indirect measurement of CO2 and are subject to other influences, such as moisture. Ice-cores contain atmosphere which can be directly measured for CO2 content - which is the data we're looking for, after all.

What, you don't like multi proxy studies?

Or is multiple proxy only okay if the results fit the preconceived hypothesis?;)

CapelDodger

22nd October 2007, 08:03 PM

What, you don't like multi proxy studies?

Or is multiple proxy only okay if the results fit the preconceived hypothesis?;)

What's more relevant is that you like indirect measurements. There's more play in them, more room for the uncertainty which keeps your hopes alive. A refuge for belief in extremis. The direct measurements are unpalatable to you so you seek something indirect - and lo, you find it served up on one of your got-to teats. Direct observations of the Sun? There's an indirect refuge-teat. Direct observations of glacial retreat? Of Arctic ice-extent? Of increasing temperatures? Your refuge-pig has way more teats available than that. I doubt it'll ever run out, whatever transpires. Even when the Greenland icecap is lapping round your ankles you'll still find someone to tell you that it's perfectly normal, happens all the time.

(Multi-proxy ... Mann et al ... do you really think your tactics aren't transparently predictable? A failed prediction, but only because I warned you about it. If you spent less time on the teat and more time looking around at the real world you might have realised that would happen.)

Stromata are an indirect and singular proxy with lots of uncertainty. Ice-cores are direct, with far less uncertainty. They don't tell you anything you want to hear, but there it is.

CapelDodger

22nd October 2007, 08:48 PM

Nope. No lies by Michaels, sorry.

Yes, Michaels lied blatantly.

As I've mentioned, I don't really care to address JREF warmers assertions that "Michaels lied", because there is no agreement on the details, just kind of a general certainty among Warmers that there was a lie there somewhere. Which no doubt you've been told to believe and told it was true.

Do I really need to post the Michaels money-shot again? This is me, CapelDodger, not some anonymous "JREF Warmer". I'm not surprised you don't care to address me and my post directly, but then I've got a very low opinion of you, intellectually and otherwise. You just keep on confirming it.

That's the way a smear works, like this one by Krugman.

I don't smear. Michaels lied about the Hansen et al model, as I've clearly stated, and your response is to smear me anonymously as someone who "smears". Don't think the reference to Krugman will give you an escape-route to slime out through.

Hansen bluntly says to the Senate that Scenario A is "Business as Usual (BAU)".

Michaels blatantly lied to Congress ten years later about the Hansen et al 1988 model redictions. (That's not a response to your post, it's just a restatement of fact.) Check out Michaels's testimony, as can anybody - it's online via the Cato Institute. You've surely heard of them.

Your post says a lot about you but nothing about Michaels (a notorious liar) except that you can't give him up.

mhaze

23rd October 2007, 06:22 AM

Yes, Michaels lied blatantly.

Do I really need to post the Michaels money-shot again? This is me, CapelDodger, not some anonymous "JREF Warmer". I'm not surprised you don't care to address me and my post directly, but then I've got a very low opinion of you, intellectually and otherwise. You just keep on confirming it.

I don't smear. Michaels lied about the Hansen et al model, as I've clearly stated, and your response is to smear me anonymously as someone who "smears". Don't think the reference to Krugman will give you an escape-route to slime out through.

Michaels blatantly lied to Congress ten years later about the Hansen et al 1988 model redictions. (That's not a response to your post, it's just a restatement of fact.) Check out Michaels's testimony, as can anybody - it's online via the Cato Institute. You've surely heard of them.

Your post says a lot about you but nothing about Michaels (a notorious liar) except that you can't give him up.

What was the subject of Michael's talk in 1998?
Was it summer heat waves, or Global Warming?
What was the primary prediction made by Hansen 1988 et al?

CapelDodger

23rd October 2007, 03:43 PM

What was the subject of Michael's talk in 1998?
Was it summer heat waves, or Global Warming?
What was the primary prediction made by Hansen 1988 et al?

Read it all at http://www.cato.org/testimony/ct-pm072998.html, courtesy of the Cato Institute - a trusted source, surely? Michaels's statement to Congress.

In it Michaels says
"That model predicted that global temperature between 1988 and 1997 would rise by 0.45°C (Figure 1). "

Which is a lie.

The purpose of the statement is political, in opposition to the Kyoto Protocol. That explains the lie - Michaels was trying to discredit the Hansen et al 1988 model which had turned out to be far more accurate than served his purpose. So he resorted to a bare-faced lie which the Committee on Small Business wouldn't recognise but would be widely promoted and believed. It's called "getting the lie out there".

The man's no better than a lowlife lawyer.

CapelDodger

23rd October 2007, 04:12 PM

What was the subject of Michael's talk in 1998?
Was it summer heat waves, or Global Warming?

Notice the redundancy there? Ask me what and I'll tell you. The subject was the Kyoto Protocol.

What was the primary prediction made by Hansen 1988 et al?

The scenario thought most likely to match future events was the middle one. It always is in this sort of case. You make your best-guess prediction, then you introduce a higher and lower scenario. Whatever turns out, you've got it covered.

As it happened, the middle scenario for CO2 emissions did pan out in the 90's, but it's going a bit adrift now. It assumes the existing trend (in 1988) towards more CO2-efficient GDP. It doesn't incorporate a very coal-hungry China of the 21stCE.

All that extra Asian GDP, and not much of it CO2-efficient. Scenario B is slipping below the real line now. But what the hey, pretty good for twenty years ago, don't you think? Time to retire it and look to younger models that can run thousands of scenarios and remember not the days of punched-cards and paper-tape.

CapelDodger

23rd October 2007, 04:31 PM

Carbon output rising faster than forecast, says study

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/oct/23/climatechange.carbonemissions

Experts said that the rise was down to soaring economic development in China, and a reduction in the amount of carbon pollution soaked up by the world's land and oceans.

[snip]

About half of this is down to the Chinese reliance on coal, which has forced up the carbon intensity of the overall world economy since 2000, reversing a trend of increasing energy efficiency since the 1970s

It's time to abandon Scenario B. Scenario A might be rescued, though.

This is not a reversal that's going away soon. Many eyes are turning towards coal as oil and gas trend towards the high-end of the energy market. China has lots of coal, but very little oil. The US has lots of coal, but very little oil any more. The UK the same - and coal is making a comeback. (I cherish the day Thatcher starts spinning in her grave.)

Upshot is, we're screwed. Buy the ticket, take the ride.

mhaze

23rd October 2007, 04:51 PM

The scenario thought most likely to match future events was the middle one. It always is in this sort of case. You make your best-guess prediction, then you introduce a higher and lower scenario. Whatever turns out, you've got it covered.

As it happened, the middle scenario for CO2 emissions did pan out in the 90's, but it's going a bit adrift now. It assumes the existing trend (in 1988) towards more CO2-efficient GDP. It doesn't incorporate a very coal-hungry China of the 21stCE.

Please read the below sections and then, do you have any questions about the primary conclusions of Hansen et al 1988?
(p. 9346 rt column top) "We conclude that, on a time scale of a few decades or less, a warming of about 0.4C is required to be significant at the 3 sigma level (99% confidence level).

(p. 9346 rt column 3rd pp) "The model predicts, however, that within the next several years the global temperature will reach and maintain a 3 sigma level of global warming, which is obviously significant"...."it is robust for a very broad range of assumptions about CO2 and trace gas trends, as illustrated in Figure 3".

(p. 9359 6.5 Summary). Our model results suggest that global greenhouse warming will soon rise above the level of natural climate variability. The single best place to search for the greenhouse effect appears to be the global mean surface air temperature. If it rises and remains for a few years above an appropriate significance level, which we have argued is about 0.4C for 99% confidence (3 sigma) it will constitute convincing evidence of a cause and effect relationship, i.e., a "smoking gun", in current vernacular.

CapelDodger

24th October 2007, 03:20 PM

Please read the below sections and then, do you have any questions about the primary conclusions of Hansen et al 1988?(p. 9346 rt column top) "We conclude that, on a time scale of a few decades or less, a warming of about 0.4C is required to be significant at the 3 sigma level (99% confidence level).

A few decades or less does not mean the 90's, which is the period Michaels referred to.

(p. 9346 rt column 3rd pp) "The model predicts, however, that within the next several years the global temperature will reach and maintain a 3 sigma level of global warming, which is obviously significant"...."it is robust for a very broad range of assumptions about CO2 and trace gas trends, as illustrated in Figure 3".
Here Hansen is talking a 3 sigma level over a shorter period, not 0.4C in the "next several years". I need the context to work out exactly what the confidence-level refers to in each case.

[/quote](p. 9359 6.5 Summary). Our model results suggest that global greenhouse warming will soon rise above the level of natural climate variability. The single best place to search for the greenhouse effect appears to be the global mean surface air temperature. If it rises and remains for a few years above an appropriate significance level, which we have argued is about 0.4C for 99% confidence (3 sigma) it will constitute convincing evidence of a cause and effect relationship, i.e., a "smoking gun", in current vernacular.[/quote]

Here Hansen is back to the 0.4C over a timescale of a few decades or less. So not the 90's. There are two different timescales being referred to; one on the order of a few decades, the other on several years. The 0.4C has been transferred by Michaels from one to the other.

mhaze

24th October 2007, 04:33 PM

A few decades or less does not mean the 90's, which is the period Michaels referred to.

Here Hansen is talking a 3 sigma level over a shorter period, not 0.4C in the "next several years". I need the context to work out exactly what the confidence-level refers to in each case. (p. 9359 6.5 Summary). Our model results suggest that global greenhouse warming will soon rise above the level of natural climate variability. The single best place to search for the greenhouse effect appears to be the global mean surface air temperature. If it rises and remains for a few years above an appropriate significance level, which we have argued is about 0.4C for 99% confidence (3 sigma) it will constitute convincing evidence of a cause and effect relationship, i.e., a "smoking gun", in current vernacular.[/quote]Here Hansen is back to the 0.4C over a timescale of a few decades or less. So not the 90's. There are two different timescales being referred to; one on the order of a few decades, the other on several years. The 0.4C has been transferred by Michaels from one to the other.[/quote]

Thanks for looking at this. In my opinion it's not a well written paper with clear conclusions. If someone asked me to summarize it, well, I'd tend to look at the Summary. Right?

So you see my point (or maybe this thread has dragged on and I should summarize myself and restate it). Basically, Hansen told the Senate he'd found GW in recent years using this 3 sigma measurement (THAT is another issue we could discuss, is it even valid, but some other time). He said that in Oral and offset something about "Business as Usual === Scenario A". Then he goes off into that "Summer heat wave stuff". In that is where all the Scenario B is that you've heard about.

Written submittals match the oral.

So here's what I get from it.

Hansen said he'd found GW already 0.4C (Senate, oral) and was predicting a bunch more (Business as Usual, another 0.4C).

Ten years later Michaels goes in and says, "Look no GW, 0.11C since 1988, not the 0.4C predicted by Hansen, no 3 sigma"

Michael's basis for the 0.4C is two fold
(1) Hansen's laying of of "having established" 0.4C as having already happened
(1) Business as Usual in oral, Scenario A
(2) Hansen 1988 et al Summary, primary conclusion of future warming.

Now let's look at all the chatter about Scenario B. Yes, this was mentioned in Oral but not in this context, in the (alarmist of course, hottest day of the century 6-23-1988) "Summer heat wave" section. Yes, Scenario A-B-C are detailed quite well in Hansen et. al. 1988. Yes, there is a hard to find bit in Hansen 1988 where it does say "Scenario B" is the most plausible.

Are there inconsistencies in Hansen's words? Absolutely yes. You can see them yourself. Did Michaels move the 0.4C from a few decades to a few years? No, Hansen used both phrases in his written work. Go figure...

Michaels 10 years later basically just hit the nail on the head, saying we don't have GW by these criteria and metrics of ten years prior. Should he have included A-B-C? I can't see how, since Hansen's Summary indicated 0.4C "soon" (0.4C is Scenario A).

That's it.

CapelDodger

24th October 2007, 06:54 PM

Thanks for looking at this. In my opinion it's not a well written paper with clear conclusions. If someone asked me to summarize it, well, I'd tend to look at the Summary. Right?
So you see my point (or maybe this thread has dragged on and I should summarize myself and restate it). Basically, Hansen told the Senate he'd found GW in recent years using this 3 sigma measurement (THAT is another issue we could discuss, is it even valid, but some other time).

This may well be so, but it has no bearing on the predictions of the model agter 1988, does it? It's the predictive accuracy of the model that Michaels lied about, not what had already emerged from it.

He said that in Oral and offset something about "Business as Usual === Scenario A". Then he goes off into that "Summer heat wave stuff". In that is where all the Scenario B is that you've heard about.

Scenario B is on the graph in the Hansen et al model report; it's the one that best matches what actually happened in the 90's in terms of emissions and volcanoes, and was pretty damn' accurate right up to '98, when Michaels got up and claimed it had predicted four times the warming that it did.

Written submittals match the oral.

Well there's a thing. Still no substance.

So here's what I get from it.

Hansen said he'd found GW already 0.4C (Senate, oral) and was predicting a bunch more (Business as Usual, another 0.4C).

The "already" is irrelevant, given that this was in '88 and Michaels lied about the model prediction in '98. The predicted amount more did occur up to '98, it wasn't 0.4C, but Michaels said that it was.

Ten years later Michaels goes in and says, "Look no GW, 0.11C since 1988, not the 0.4C predicted by Hansen, no 3 sigma"

Yes he does, but leaving out the sigma thing. The Hansen et al model predicted about 0.1C for the scenario best matching the outcome. Look at the graph.

Michael's basis for the 0.4C is two fold
(1) Hansen's laying of of "having established" 0.4C as having already happened

Nothing to with predictions for the 90's.

(1) Business as Usual in oral, Scenario A

Didn't happen, so irrelevant. Michaels knew it hadn't happened by '98.

(2) Hansen 1988 et al Summary, primary conclusion of future warming.

Over the next few decades [since 1998] AGW will be confirmed. Two decades later it has been.

Now let's look at all the chatter about Scenario B. Yes, this was mentioned in Oral but not in this context, in the (alarmist of course, hottest day of the century 6-23-1988) "Summer heat wave" section. Yes, Scenario A-B-C are detailed quite well in Hansen et. al. 1988. Yes, there is a hard to find bit in Hansen 1988 where it does say "Scenario B" is the most plausible.

Who gives a toss? By 1998 things had happened and they were most similar to Scenario B.

Are there inconsistencies in Hansen's words? Absolutely yes. You can see them yourself. Did Michaels move the 0.4C from a few decades to a few years? No, Hansen used both phrases in his written work. Go figure...

Hansen used both phrases, and Michaels switched the meaning from one to the other for his own purposes. Remember, Michaels presented - in '98 - Scenario A as the only prediction of the Hansen et al 1988 model.

Michaels 10 years later basically just hit the nail on the head, saying we don't have GW by these criteria and metrics of ten years prior. Should he have included A-B-C? I can't see how, since Hansen's Summary indicated 0.4C "soon" (0.4C is Scenario A).

"Soon" is a few decades or less (seen from 1988). As for the rest of this, it's just gibberish.

That's it.

And it's nothing.

Please drop this novelty about what Hansen might have said about the past back in '88. It's a very sad diversion. The 90's didn't happen before '88 (there's a rule) and it's the 90's model prediction that Michaels lied about in '98.

Regarding the hot summer of '88 that was so alarming - it wouldn't stand out these days, would it?

Locri

24th October 2007, 06:58 PM

Editorial in the Wall Street Journal? I'm going to plough through that? WSJ journalism is upper-bracket, but WSJ editorial is frankly weird. I really don't think there'll be anything in there I haven't heard and laughed at before.

Um... are you mixing up links? The link I posted is NOT to an WST editorial. Please look again. I'm mystified as to why none of the AGW proponents here seem to want to touch this link when it's been posted multiple times, and not just by me.

Meanwhile, the world got warmer. And Diamond melted away.

You brought these topics up quite independently. I asked, you answered, I said "thank you". I'm not chasing down your answer - as I said at the time, I wouldn't be at your throat over it. Nor am I.

I never said I had a problem with the idea that the world is getting warmer *shrugs* that is a bit of a non-sequitor. And I just wanted to state why I wasn't going to be pursuing those particular topics to make sure it was understood that I wasn't dropping it in agreement for the sake of those following the discussion.

Statistics is a branch of mathematics, and therefore scientific. Are actuaries scientists? It's a grey area.

So is that a yes or no? Scientific but not science? You're kind of skirting around an answer...

The bulk of the evidence is in observation. The theory behind AGW is well-established, as described in IPCC reports. Climate models are physical models, not statistical models.

I think you may be somewhat backwards in your thinking on things... the models are models OF physical things, yes, but they are not physical models themselves. The models need to use some sort of statistical analysis along with what (little) they understand about how the aspects of the worlds environment interacts with the climate in order to attempt to predict things.

Which, according to a recent article backed up by someone in the IPCC they apparently don't do. If you believe that.

http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,21977114-27197,00.html

A question for you : how do you regard Solar Cycle Science, which is entirely based on statistics? (No models, no theory, just statistics and "track-records".) Laughable, or what? David Rodale thinks SCS is sweet; is he deluded?

I don't have any issues with statistics, I was just curious to see what felt about it considering your earlier remarks.

The Solar Cycle does have some valid theory to it. Even if you go back to a basic level, there is the simple theory (fact) that the Sun has a HUGE effect on our temperature as it provides nearly all of the light we are able to see during the day. The stars might account for some minuscule amount, but whatever. Extending the theory slightly farther, it is completely reasonable to consider that the sun has a cyclical nature which could change the amount of light and the strength of the light we are receiving, thus changing the temperature. It's not laughable, if you think the Sun isn't important to this, you have other issues.

What I don't think is that the IPCC and its structure matter at all. The IPCC reports - four so far, over twenty years - collate the science that's going on, all of it referenced. This isn't science that the IPCC is doing or is even commissioning, all the IPCC does is report. Conservatively.

If you don't feel that the structure of the primary group advancing the AGW concept is important here, I may never be able to get anywhere to explain to you how much of an impact social groupthinking and agendas can have on science. Yes, even science is vulnerable to it.

Have at least 10 minutes of spare time to watch something? There is a fairly good video here:

Climate Change - Is CO2 the cause? Pt 1 (http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=FOLkze-9GcI)

I'd suggest watching at least the first part, but the other three parts have some good content in there as well.

Schneibster

24th October 2007, 07:02 PM

Basically, Hansen told the Senate he'd found GW in recent years using this 3 sigma measurement Three sigma is a level of certainty. The sigma stands for the standard deviation; what this means is that the results are at the 99.865% level of confidence.

mhaze

24th October 2007, 09:47 PM

Three sigma is a level of certainty. The sigma stands for the standard deviation; what this means is that the results are at the 99.865% level of confidence.

Yep, that's what he told them. But its contradicted by other things he says.

Not sun its worth while taking Hansen's words too literally.

David Rodale

24th October 2007, 10:16 PM

This may well be so, but it has no bearing on the predictions of the model agter 1988, does it? It's the predictive accuracy of the model that Michaels lied about, not what had already emerged from it.

Scenario B is on the graph in the Hansen et al model report; it's the one that best matches what actually happened in the 90's in terms of emissions and volcanoes, and was pretty damn' accurate right up to '98, when Michaels got up and claimed it had predicted four times the warming that it did.

Well there's a thing. Still no substance.

The "already" is irrelevant, given that this was in '88 and Michaels lied about the model prediction in '98. The predicted amount more did occur up to '98, it wasn't 0.4C, but Michaels said that it was.

Yes he does, but leaving out the sigma thing. The Hansen et al model predicted about 0.1C for the scenario best matching the outcome. Look at the graph.

Nothing to with predictions for the 90's.

Didn't happen, so irrelevant. Michaels knew it hadn't happened by '98.

Over the next few decades [since 1998] AGW will be confirmed. Two decades later it has been.

Who gives a toss? By 1998 things had happened and they were most similar to Scenario B.

Hansen used both phrases, and Michaels switched the meaning from one to the other for his own purposes. Remember, Michaels presented - in '98 - Scenario A as the only prediction of the Hansen et al 1988 model.

"Soon" is a few decades or less (seen from 1988). As for the rest of this, it's just gibberish.

And it's nothing.

Please drop this novelty about what Hansen might have said about the past back in '88. It's a very sad diversion. The 90's didn't happen before '88 (there's a rule) and it's the 90's model prediction that Michaels lied about in '98.

Regarding the hot summer of '88 that was so alarming - it wouldn't stand out these days, would it?

Why are you so impressed with Hansen predicting an already established decadal trend? Had he done it in 1978, now that would be impressive.

Of course you didn't notice NASA (aka Hansen) adjusted the global temps in 2001 which later was found to be erroneous in 2007.
http://forums.randi.org/imagehosting/thum_1032346ef463355856.jpg (http://forums.randi.org/vbimghost.php?do=displayimg&imgid=8377)

Aside from that, Hansen for some reason didn't set the zero points the same between the 1998 observations (red line) and the scenarios. Using HadCRUT3 data from 2006 tells a different story:
http://forums.randi.org/imagehosting/thum_10323470aebdc0202c.jpg (http://forums.randi.org/vbimghost.php?do=displayimg&imgid=8716)

No, the gases weren't right either. It sure doesn't appear you've investigated this thoroughly. MHaze is right, you are wrong. Hard pill to swallow isn't it?

It is no warmer in Sept 2007 than it was in Sept 1988.
http://forums.randi.org/imagehosting/thum_1032347201859b9d56.jpg (http://forums.randi.org/vbimghost.php?do=displayimg&imgid=8922)

Megalodon

25th October 2007, 06:29 AM

wow that is a nice graph... It would be so impressive if only someone hadn't post the whole data series, with the trends, including the ones starting from 96, 97, 98 and 99...

You are depressing...

mhaze

25th October 2007, 06:43 AM

This may well be so, but it has no bearing on the predictions of the model agter 1988, does it? It's the predictive accuracy of the model that Michaels lied about, not what had already emerged from it.

Please drop this novelty about what Hansen might have said about the past back in '88. It's a very sad diversion.

Novelty?
Might have said?
What he said is what he said.

Predictions of the model being what Michaels lied about? It was the prediction of 0.4C warming by Hansen that he stood up and said did not happen.

As I mentioned (4 times now I think) if Hansen had not flavored his writing and his oral testimony with stupid Alarmist comments, this would not have happened. But he did. Just like he continues doing today.

You've had it laid out for you very clearly and simply. You don't have to like it, and you do not have to accept it. You can be a denier.;) Unless you have something of substantial, I consider this matter closed.

Hansen went too far in his prophecy, called Scenario A "Business as Usual", forecast a warming that did not occur. Michaels called him on it.

Michaels was not a liar.

Krugman unfairly and for political purposes, smeared Michaels.
But that's what Krugman does, isn't it?

mhaze

25th October 2007, 09:05 AM

Um... are you mixing up links? The link I posted is NOT to an WST editorial. Please look again. I'm mystified as to why none of the AGW proponents here seem to want to touch this link when it's been posted multiple times, and not just by me.

Have at least 10 minutes of spare time to watch something? There is a fairly good video here:

Climate Change - Is CO2 the cause? Pt 1 (http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=FOLkze-9GcI)

I'd suggest watching at least the first part, but the other three parts have some good content in there as well.

Excellent, excellent video and 100% relevant to the points you have been making. I'd say you win that debate.

Any errors or misrepresentations in the presentation by Bob Carter? My count is zero.

Even better is Carter's Polar Bears. Best Bears Yet! Next subject.

Megalodon

25th October 2007, 10:59 AM

Predictions of the model being what Michaels lied about? It was the prediction of 0.4C warming by Hansen that he stood up and said did not happen.

Read this slowly, so that you'll get it:

Michaels presented a model with 3 scenarios as if it had only one. He did this to make a point that couldn't have been done otherwise.

He didn't say "Hansen was an alarmist!". He said ""That model predicted that global temperature between 1988 and 1997 would rise by 0.45°C (Figure 1)."

That is a lie.

As I mentioned (4 times now I think) if Hansen had not flavored his writing and his oral testimony with stupid Alarmist comments, this would not have happened. But he did. Just like he continues doing today.

Even if, for the sake of argument, Hanse was alarmist in his claims, Michaels lied.

You've had it laid out for you very clearly and simply. You don't have to like it, and you do not have to accept it. You can be a denier.;) Unless you have something of substantial, I consider this matter closed.

Are you drunk again? Or is the cognitive dissonance increasing?

Hansen went too far in his prophecy, called Scenario A "Business as Usual", forecast a warming that did not occur. Michaels called him on it.

Hansen made a model with 3 scenarios. 10 years later, the one he said was more likely panned out. Michaels lied to congress, hiding that scenario, and presenting the extreme one.

Michaels was not a liar.

Anyone with a grasp on the meaning of "liar" would disagree.

Krugman unfairly and for political purposes, smeared Michaels.
But that's what Krugman does, isn't it?

So, not only you defend an obvious liar, you smear someone else in the process... Par for the course, I guess.

mhaze

25th October 2007, 04:20 PM

Read this slowly, so that you'll get it:

Michaels presented a model with 3 scenarios as if it had only one. He did this to make a point that couldn't have been done otherwise.

He didn't say "Hansen was an alarmist!". He said ""That model predicted that global temperature between 1988 and 1997 would rise by 0.45°C (Figure 1)." That is a lie.

Even if, for the sake of argument, Hanse was alarmist in his claims, Michaels lied.

Hansen made a model with 3 scenarios. 10 years later, the one he said was more likely panned out. Michaels lied to congress, hiding that scenario, and presenting the extreme one.

Read this even slower.
Michaels' direct comments about this issue (bold is mine)-
NASA scientist James Hansen had a model that did just this, published in 1988, and referred to in his June 23, 1988 Senate testimony as a “Business as Usual” (BAU) scenario.
BAU generally assumes no significant legislation and no major technological changes. It’s pretty safe to say that this was what happened in the succeeding ten years.

He had two other scenarios that were different, one that gradually reduced emissions, and one that stopped the growth of atmospheric carbon dioxide in 2000. But those weren’t germane to my discussion.
Questions to ask.

Did Michaels lie about the model being described in June 23, 1988 Senate testimony as a "Business as Usual" (BAU) secnario?

Senate testimony.

Hansen discusses only Scenario A, Business as Usual in the section on Global Warming. Later in the section under "Heat Waves", he discusses a intermediate trace gas scenario and this is not labeled but if you look at the legend on the maps you see Scenario B. Maps, not the chart you are thinking of.

Conclusion:

Michaels didn't lie, and wasn't talking about maps of summer heat waves. If he had wanted to discuss the predictions of more and more intense summer heat waves (obviously sort of a bogus concept), then he would have definitely misrepresented the subject had he not gone into Scenario B.

I've provided the direct quotes, if I recall correctly.

If you want more I can type more of it in, or clip some segments might be easier.

Facts may be a bit disagreeable...

Megalodon

26th October 2007, 03:33 AM

Hansen presented the 3 scenarios, and the maps based on scenario B, and he included a pre-print of his publication, that says in no unclear terms that the scenario B is the most probable one.

Yet you insist that Michaels didn't lie, when 10 years later, when the most probable scenario pans out, he tells congress that Hansen's model predicted scenario A... with no reference to the other scenarios, including the one said to be more probable, that actually panned out.

I understand that you really want Michaels not to be a liar, since he's on your camp, and defends the same blurry whatever that you're defending against all facts, honesty be damned... but this is getting ridiculous.

mhaze

26th October 2007, 05:34 AM

Megalodon

26th October 2007, 06:19 AM

Yes, you said that he presented a preprint of his paper. And that he showed the maps, based on scenario B. And 3 viewgraphs, wich I'm assuming where similar to the graphs on the paper, presenting the 3 scenarios. The assumption is made due to the fact that you didn't mention it. If the graphs had only Scenario A, you would be all over it, I'm certain.

Michaels lied, get over it. He said that the model predicted 0.4, not that the extreme scenario predicted it, and not that Michaels emphasized the results of a particular scenario in his testimony.

He has an agenda, so he lied in a way that it would suit him. It seems to happen a lot in your side of the argument.

Pipirr

26th October 2007, 06:51 AM

{snip}The written documents submitted with the oral talk follow one another closely as to content. A preprint of Hansen et al 1988 is included, along with the three viewgraphs that were presented.{snip}

Okay. By “three viewgraphs”, I assume you mean the “one line graph with scenarios A, B, C and observed global temperature”, to use Hansen’s own words.

Here’s the thing. Hansen has complained that Michaels misrepresented him. It’s not Krugman, not any other bogeyman of the week that I get this from. It was Hansen. Hansen took issue with how Michaels has misrepresented his 1988 testimony.

Read this, for example:
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/hansen_re-crichton.pdf

In my testimony to congress I showed one line graph with scenarios A, B, C and observed global temperature, which I update below. However, all of the maps of simulated future temperature that I showed in my congressional testimony were for scenario B, which formed the basis for my testimony. No results were shown for the outlier scenarios A and C.

{snip}

One of the skeptics, Pat Michaels, has taken the graph from our 1988 paper with simulated global temperatures for scenarios A, B and C, erased the results for scenarios B and C, and shown only the curve for scenario A in public presentations, pretending that it was my prediction for climate change. Is this treading close to scientific fraud?

And this:
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/edu/gwdebate/

The extreme scenarios (A with fast growth and no volcanos, and C with terminated growth of greenhouse gases) were meant to bracket plausible rates of change. All of the maps of simulated climate change that I showed in my 1988 testimony were for the intermediate scenario B, because it seemed the most likely of the three scenarios.

But when Pat Michaels testified to congress in 1998 and showed our 1988 predictions (Fig. 1) he erased the curves for scenarios B and C, and showed the result only for scenario A. He then argued that, since the real world temperature had not increased as fast as this model calculation, the climate model was faulty and there was no basis for concern about climate change, specifically concluding that the Kyoto Protocol was "a useless appendage to an irrelevant treaty".

Michaels erased the scenarios B and C from Hansen’s figure.

Now, how is that anything other than a misrepresentation? Do you really not think that Hansen has cause for complaint here?

mhaze

26th October 2007, 08:10 AM

Okay. By “three viewgraphs”, I assume you mean the “one line graph with scenarios A, B, C and observed global temperature”, to use Hansen’s own words.

Here’s the thing. Hansen has complained that Michaels misrepresented him. It’s not Krugman, not any other bogeyman of the week that I get this from. It was Hansen. Hansen took issue with how Michaels has misrepresented his 1988 testimony.

Read this, for example:
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/hansen_re-crichton.pdf (http://www.columbia.edu/%7Ejeh1/hansen_re-crichton.pdf)

And this:
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/edu/gwdebate/

Michaels erased the scenarios B and C from Hansen’s figure.

Now, how is that anything other than a misrepresentation? Do you really not think that Hansen has cause for complaint here?

First of all let my say that I do like the spinning earth with the decreasing sea ice. :)

Yes, we can go back to the debate, and the responses of Hansen and Michaels to this issue - we can go back "Before Krugman". I have the references you mentioned, and only use Krugman because he is the latest propagator, so to speak.

There are three separate viewgraphs, the first one has a global temperature trend (Fig 1) and a "Global Temperature Change" (Fig 2). The second has A-B-C (Fig 3). The third is clearly labled at the top "Scenario B" and is global maps of simulated July heat waves.

At the bottom of this text clip, he is taking the second viewgraph off (A-B-C) and going to the maps and summer heat waves, at this time putting on the viewgraph relevant to those, "Scenario B".

Because Michaels only discussed the subject of global warming, not the other, more extensive material on summer heat waves, his approach seems reasonable.

Here is the snip that is relevant form the Oral -
http://forums.randi.org/imagehosting/thum_142244721f17d760e6.png (http://forums.randi.org/vbimghost.php?do=displayimg&imgid=8939)

In summary, Hansen presented a total of three charts, and one page with maps. In the section of his talk on GW, he went through the first 2 viewgraphs (three charts, culminating with A-B-C) and in the second part, he discussed summer heat waves using global projections from Scenario B.

The "summer heat wave" section, it may be conjectured, was thrown in at the last minute since the presentation was done on a very hot day for that part of the country. That map was pulled from one of those at the end of Hansen et al 1988.

Megalodon

26th October 2007, 10:37 AM

In summary, Hansen presented a total of three charts, and one page with maps. In the section of his talk on GW, he went through the first 2 viewgraphs (three charts, culminating with A-B-C) and in the second part, he discussed summer heat waves using global projections from Scenario B.

You forgot to add that he included the paper where in no uncertain terms scenario B is the most probable. And by the way, Michaels lie was removing the B and C of your A-B-C culmination. Thanks for showing it to us again.

The "summer heat wave" section, it may be conjectured, was thrown in at the last minute since the presentation was done on a very hot day for that part of the country. That map was pulled from one of those at the end of Hansen et al 1988.

I like your thought process. You can't, even in the face of evidence that you brought to the discussion, admit that Michaels lied to congress to suit his political stance. However, you now conjecture -without a shred of evidence - that Hansen made last minute changes to his presentation to congress (no biggie) because it suited the temperature of the day...

I admit, it's fun watching you... you never can guess what inanity will come next.

mhaze

26th October 2007, 10:52 AM

You forgot to add that he included the paper where in no uncertain terms scenario B is the most probable. And by the way, Michaels lie was removing the B and C of your A-B-C culmination. Thanks for showing it to us again.

I like your thought process. You can't, even in the face of evidence that you brought to the discussion, admit that Michaels lied to congress to suit his political stance. However, you now conjecture -without a shred of evidence - that Hansen made last minute changes to his presentation to congress (no biggie) because it suited the temperature of the day...

Yes, we could indeed discuss the "summer heat wave" section of the paper. And as you were so kind to note, I did of course call it conjecture that that section may have been made up for dramatic effect.

Guess it is just too bad that the subject we are discussing is not summer heat waves.

Oh- that's not what Michaels was discussing either.

Oh-that's the only place Scenario B is mentioned.

Guess you don't have much of a case for you "Michaels lied" meme...

Megalodon

26th October 2007, 11:00 AM

Locri

26th October 2007, 12:44 PM

Ok, now I get it.... You're out of your mind!

Scenario B appears in the graphs that were shown. You told us that. And it appears in the paper handed out, where it says that it's the more plausible scenario.

The only place it doesn't appear is on Michaels testimony.
Because he lied.
For political purposes.
And it worked.

Admittedly I haven't followed this issue too closely, but I have a few questions just to clarify your stance (along with CD and Pipirr):

From what I can tell, Hansen said in his testimony that Scenario A was "business as usual." Is this an agreed upon statement?

And then, from what it sounds like, in his actual report he says that Scenario B is the most likely thing (though supposedly only in one small section) right?

The lack of alignment between those two statements seems a bit weird. I would think that "business as usual" would be considered as the default thing and that anything less would require some sort of effort to change things to a "better" scenario (as Scenario A was the worst case, according to the graphs).

It seems to be a bit nitpicky to say that Micheals lied about Hansen predicting Scenario A as he did predict that. It might possibly be misleading to forget to mention that he also predicted a possible B and C, but considering that Scenario A was the default scenario, it does make some sense that it would be the one he used. Anything less than that would apply that some major things were being done to reduce the "business as usual" scenario down to Scenario B, yes?

I'm honestly not sure what the big deal is here. If Micheals testimony was to point out that there was no warming and the observation matches Scenario B in which things must change from a "business as usual" stance to get to, obviously Scenario A must have been an overshot on the prediction if things have been "business as usual" but resulting in Scenario B.

I'm hoping that makes sense... it's a bit convoluted isn't it? Am I getting this right though?

Pipirr

26th October 2007, 01:08 PM

First of all let my say that I do like the spinning earth with the decreasing sea ice. :)

Well, thankyou very much :)

The sticking point for me and so it seems Hansen too, is that Michaels altered Hansen's original figure, removing scenarios B and C. It was a lie of omission to present the altered figure and criticize Hansen's 1988 testimony / predictions on that basis. As a piece of underhand, devious swiftboating, it worked. Michael Crichton, for example, picked it up and ran with it.

The reality is Hansen's original figure. If one is going to offer a fair, 10-years later review of Hansen's testimony, the honest approach would be to review the original figure and the three scenarios. Michaels didn't do that. Hansen considers that a misrepresentation took place and went so far as to ask if it could be described as 'scientific fraud'.

What Michaels did is so frustrating to someone like me, who is really learning all this as they go along. It can be a lot of work to find out who are the trustworthy sources. It's almost ridiculous that one has to establish that in the first place... How many people, on hearing that Hansen got it wrong (by 300%, if they read Michael Crichton) would fact check Michael's 1998 testimony? Not as many as should, and so the lie persists.

It just takes a lot of spin to justify (and I think that is what you are trying to do) Michael's omission of two of the scenarios. But however you justify what he did, it was still an alteration of a key graph and a misrepresentation thereby of Hansen's predictions. A fair, scientific, scrupulous and honest evaluation of the 1988 testimony, it was not (which is a shame, as that would have been a useful thing to present).

Hansen wouldn't go so far as to call it a lie, but I would, as have others. And a lie begs the question: if Michaels is right in his skepticism, why lie at all?

So a final question for you. Hansen et al. update and review their predictions, favourably, in this peer reviewed publication (http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/103/39/14288) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Do Michaels, McKintyre, or anyone else, have a similar peer reviewed paper that reviews the outcomes of scenarios A, B and C as predicted in 1988, and that perhaps support Michaels' criticisms?

Because Capitol Hill testimony aside, I would much rather see the debate in the peer reviewed literature. That's the one that should count and that's where criticisms will carry weight. Politicians can choose to hear what they want to hear, but the scientific community does not afford it's members that luxury. And one hopes that it also doesn't tolerate altering graphs.

CapelDodger

26th October 2007, 04:37 PM

Novelty?
Might have said?
What he said is what he said.

Michaels didn't lie about the Hansen testimony, he lied about the model prediction. The testimony you're obsessed with is irrelevent

Predictions of the model being what Michaels lied about? It was the prediction of 0.4C warming by Hansen that he stood up and said did not happen.

Michaels said
"That model predicted that global temperature between 1988 and 1997 would rise by 0.45°C (Figure 1). "

Which is a lie, the model didn't predict that.

As I mentioned (4 times now I think) if Hansen had not flavored his writing and his oral testimony with stupid Alarmist comments, this would not have happened.

Of course it would. Michaels lied about the prediction because he was intent on discrediting the model for political reasons, and since the real prediction didn't suit his purposes he lied about it. Hansen's 1988 testimony had nothing to do with the matter; it was all about discrediting the model, dishonestly if necessary. Which it was.

You've had it laid out for you very clearly and simply.

Not so much. We've had your flap about about extraneous issues and Hansen's "alarmism".

Here's what followed the above quote from Michaels (relevant testimony, since it's all part of the lie)

"2 compares this to the observed temperature changes from three independent sources. Ground-based temperatures from the IPCC show a rise of 0.11°C, or more than four times less than Hansen predicted."

In fact, the prediction matched the 0.11C quite well. Michaels wasn't going to present that, obviously. He could have left the model prediction out entirely, but instead he chose to bring it up and lie about it.

You don't have to like it, and you do not have to accept it. You can be a denier.;)

I can read and comprehend plain English. And I can recognise hysteria when I read it. Notice how plain and simpler have been the posts pointing out Michaels's blatant lie. Then consider your own rambling screeds.

Unless you have something of substantial, I consider this matter closed.

I consider something else closed, with good reason.

Hansen went too far in his prophecy, called Scenario A "Business as Usual", forecast a warming that did not occur. Michaels called him on it.

No he didn't, Michaels said that the model predicted warming of 0.45C over the 90's. Which it didn't, to his certain knowledge. He lied.

Michaels was not a liar.

That something is definitely closed.

Your behaviour is frankly bizarre.

Krugman unfairly and for political purposes, smeared Michaels.
But that's what Krugman does, isn't it?

It's not a smear to call Michaels a liar, because he is a liar. Condemned from his own lips. No matter how much convoluted theology you wring out nothing to explain why he didn't really, those were just the words he said and the air-brushed graph he presented but the real meaning was something entirely different ...

There'll be no end to it, but it does serve to drive home to normal people that Michaels is not to be trusted in the slightest, and those who laud and promote him are not to be trusted either.

mhaze

26th October 2007, 05:31 PM

Well, thankyou very much :)

The sticking point for me and so it seems Hansen too, is that Michaels altered Hansen's original figure, removing scenarios B and C. It was a lie of omission to present the altered figure and criticize Hansen's 1988 testimony / predictions on that basis. As a piece of underhand, devious swiftboating, it worked. Michael Crichton, for example, picked it up and ran with it.

The reality is Hansen's original figure. If one is going to offer a fair, 10-years later review of Hansen's testimony, the honest approach would be to review the original figure and the three scenarios. Michaels didn't do that. Hansen considers that a misrepresentation took place and went so far as to ask if it could be described as 'scientific fraud'.

What Michaels did is so frustrating to someone like me, who is really learning all this as they go along. It can be a lot of work to find out who are the trustworthy sources. It's almost ridiculous that one has to establish that in the first place... How many people, on hearing that Hansen got it wrong (by 300%, if they read Michael Crichton) would fact check Michael's 1998 testimony? Not as many as should, and so the lie persists.

It just takes a lot of spin to justify (and I think that is what you are trying to do) Michael's omission of two of the scenarios. But however you justify what he did, it was still an alteration of a key graph and a misrepresentation thereby of Hansen's predictions. A fair, scientific, scrupulous and honest evaluation of the 1988 testimony, it was not (which is a shame, as that would have been a useful thing to present).

Hansen wouldn't go so far as to call it a lie, but I would, as have others. And a lie begs the question: if Michaels is right in his skepticism, why lie at all?

So a final question for you. Hansen et al. update and review their predictions, favourably, in this peer reviewed publication (http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/103/39/14288) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Do Michaels, McKintyre, or anyone else, have a similar peer reviewed paper that reviews the outcomes of scenarios A, B and C as predicted in 1988, and that perhaps support Michaels' criticisms?

Because Capitol Hill testimony aside, I would much rather see the debate in the peer reviewed literature. That's the one that should count and that's where criticisms will carry weight. Politicians can choose to hear what they want to hear, but the scientific community does not afford it's members that luxury. And one hopes that it also doesn't tolerate altering graphs.

I have not had any reason to go and look for other people hindcasting in the peer reviewed literature A-B-C. That seems rather a ridiculous thing to do. Each scenario has a composition of not just CO2, but other trace gases, and B and C has some volcanos thrown in. Each has a component of government regulation or lack of.

That would be engaging in some exercise for what purpose, to try to see which of them most closely resembled what happened? If that is what we wish to do, then why not have the model output 4,096 possible futures. Then we could have even more fun hindcasting, right? Such a "modeler" could never be shown to be wrong but neither would he do useful predictive work.

It's not surprising that Hansen said Scenario A was "Business as Usual". It should not have been too hard in 1988 given the apparently steady accurate data from Mauna Loa to estimate emissions. One point of the paper was to show that B and C were outcomes with some restrictions on emissions. Ergo, emissions control good and necessary.

But from 1988 to 1998, no such regulations......

So tell me exactly why B and C should have been included since they were predicated on laws and regulations being passed that restricted emissions when in fact none were passed? No lie of omission is possible unless such was passed and they were not.

Please note also that I support my assertion with the Summary conclusion of Hansen 1988 et al, while those who would like to assert the importance of Scenario B have got to go to one line buried in the middle of a paragraph describing the procedure (and also they must get around the fact that Scenario B in the oral is only mentioned in the Heat Wave section).

Have you read Hansen et al 1988?

CapelDodger

26th October 2007, 06:01 PM

Admittedly I haven't followed this issue too closely, but I have a few questions just to clarify your stance (along with CD and Pipirr):

From what I can tell, Hansen said in his testimony that Scenario A was "business as usual." Is this an agreed upon statement?

I haven't seen the testimony, but Scenario A might have been considered as "business as usual" in 1988. It assumed economic growth at the high end and an unchanged CO2/GDP relation. It essentially meant projecting the economic curve up to 1984 into the future. (And it didn't have any big volcanoes; this was very much the maximum scenario, the upper limit.)

And then, from what it sounds like, in his actual report he says that Scenario B is the most likely thing (though supposedly only in one small section) right?

The middle scenario is always the most likely one. It really goes without saying. You make your best guess, then you set out more extreme outliers. That way you net whatever does happen, unless you're wildly out of whack in the first place.

The lack of alignment between those two statements seems a bit weird. I would think that "business as usual" would be considered as the default thing and that anything less would require some sort of effort to change things to a "better" scenario (as Scenario A was the worst case, according to the graphs).

"Worst" is value-laden; Scenario A was the maximum case, Scenario C the minimum. Scenario B took considered account of increasing CO2-efficiency of GDP, and included a volcano. It matched the outcome pretty well up to 1998, and beyond.

It seems to be a bit nitpicky to say that Micheals lied about Hansen predicting Scenario A as he did predict that.

Michaels lied about the model prediction, not anything in Hansen's testimony. This is the weird web mhaze is trying to weave over the subject. Michaels wasn't lying to discredit Hansen, he was lying to discredit the model.

It might possibly be misleading to forget to mention that he also predicted a possible B and C ...

Might possibly? They weren't forgotten, they were concealed.

... but considering that Scenario A was the default scenario, it does make some sense that it would be the one he used.

Scenario A was not the default scenario, nor did Michaels say it was. He just said it was the prediction and air-brushed out the others.

When it comes to talking about the model - which is what Michaels was doing - does it not make sense that he should refer to the scenario that best matched what had already happened? So why didn't he?

Anything less than that would apply that some major things were being done to reduce the "business as usual" scenario down to Scenario B, yes?

What was better represented in Scenario B was the shift in world wide GDP (proportionally) from high-energy primary industries to low-energy service industries. Along with improved energy-efficiency in primary industries, through technology. (And there was a volcano, which was another lucky call.)

I'm honestly not sure what the big deal is here.

Michaels is quite prominent in the denialist community, and always quick to accuse honest scientists of making things up to get funding. He was on CNN doing it recently. The hypocrisy is a big deal in itself, but this guy is a crutch to many simple folk. Kicking him away will encourage them to stand on their own feet.

You've said yourself that what you perceive as the devious manner in which science presents its case makes you lean to the other side. Well, prominent on the other side is Pat Michaels.

If Micheals testimony was to point out that there was no warming and the observation matches Scenario B in which things must change from a "business as usual" stance to get to, obviously Scenario A must have been an overshot on the prediction if things have been "business as usual" but resulting in Scenario B.

Michaels presented a statement to the Small Business Committee in the House of Representatives in opposition to the Kyoto Protocol. He agreed that there'd been warming in line with Scenario B; he didn't say there was no warming. He wasn't there to say there was no warming. He was there to claim - very publicly - that the model prediction was different from the actual warming. Which it wasn't.

The lie has served its purpose; Chrichton was quoting it in Congress not long back. The model has been widely discredited simply by Michaels's bare-faced lie - always the best - and the way it's presented in the Cato Institute and such clubhouses as gospel.

I'm hoping that makes sense... it's a bit convoluted isn't it? Am I getting this right though?

It's actually quite simple. The best estimate, after due consideration, was the middle scenario, Scenario B. It always is. Having arrived at that you set up outrider scenarios on either side. "Business as usual" can be an outrider, if business as usual is not what is reasonably expected.

Whether Hansen described Scenario A as "business as usual" is still a moot point, but even if he did, so what? It's not what happened, nor does it suggest that's what he or his colleagues expected. That would be Scenario B.

CapelDodger

26th October 2007, 06:53 PM

I have not had any reason to go and look for other people hindcasting in the peer reviewed literature A-B-C. That seems rather a ridiculous thing to do. Each scenario has a composition of not just CO2, but other trace gases, and B and C has some volcanos thrown in. Each has a component of government regulation or lack of.

A component of government regulation or lack of? Gibberish or what?

That would be engaging in some exercise for what purpose, to try to see which of them most closely resembled what happened? If that is what we wish to do, then why not have the model output 4,096 possible futures. Then we could have even more fun hindcasting, right? Such a "modeler" could never be shown to be wrong but neither would he do useful predictive work.

More gibberish.

The Hansen et al 1988 model made a forecast that has been accurate over twenty years. Where are the hundreds -dozens, even - of failed models from 1988 that this particular example has been cherry-picked from? They never existed, did they?

It's not surprising that Hansen said Scenario A was "Business as Usual". It should not have been too hard in 1988 given the apparently steady accurate data from Mauna Loa to estimate emissions. One point of the paper was to show that B and C were outcomes with some restrictions on emissions. Ergo, emissions control good and necessary.

Apparently steady, eh? Never let an opportunity to explicitly doubt the data pass. And the "good and necessary", it's all emotion with you, isn't it?

But from 1988 to 1998, no such regulations......

Scenario B was more likely than "business as usual" because business was changing pretty rapidly in the 80's. It wasn't anything imposed by governments that increased the CO2 efficiency of global GDP during the 90's, it was the free market and technology. That's what was factored into Scenario B, not government action. It was emission measurements from Mauna Loa and all the other stations that revealed the trend.

So tell me exactly why B and C should have been included since they were predicated on laws and regulations being passed that restricted emissions when in fact none were passed? No lie of omission is possible unless such was passed and they were not.

In your febrile imagination they're predicated on such laws, but it is not true. Scenario B reflects what was already happening in the global economy leading up to 1984 (which is when they started the runs). No government action, no prescriptions, just the market and technology. And they were right.

Please note also that I support my assertion with the Summary conclusion of Hansen 1988 et al, while those who would like to assert the importance of Scenario B have got to go to one line buried in the middle of a paragraph describing the procedure (and also they must get around the fact that Scenario B in the oral is only mentioned in the Heat Wave section).

What you can't seen to get around is that Michaels lied about the Hansen et al 1988 model for transparently ideological reasons. We have these lying lines

"That model predicted that global temperature between 1988 and 1997 would rise by 0.45°C (Figure 1). Figure 2 compares this to the observed temperature changes from three independent sources. Ground-based temperatures from the IPCC show a rise of 0.11°C, or more than four times less than Hansen predicted. "

And now we get the Heat Wave section from you. However convoluted your excursions they cannot change the fact of Michaels testimony

Have you read Hansen et al 1988?

The bits that confirm that Michaels, in 1998, lied about the model.

Have you read Michaels's statement in opposition to the Kyoto Protocol? There's at least one lie in there. See if you can spot it.

Pipirr

27th October 2007, 06:34 AM

I have not had any reason to go and look for other people hindcasting in the peer reviewed literature A-B-C. That seems rather a ridiculous thing to do.

Hindcasting? What?

I'm talking about low-lying fruit here. This may be the most famous global warming model prediction in the world. Hansen put the issue on the map in 1988 with this testimony and the A/B/C scenarios.

Was he correct or was he just being alarmist?

Low lying fruit, really. If ever there was a model that the skeptics should debunk, this is the one. Think of the PR value! But has no one bothered?

The only 'debunking' that I know about is Michaels, 1998, lying to Congress.

And that's just not good enough.

mhaze

27th October 2007, 11:23 AM

Hindcasting? What?

I'm talking about low-lying fruit here. This may be the most famous global warming model prediction in the world. Hansen put the issue on the map in 1988 with this testimony and the A/B/C scenarios.

Was he correct or was he just being alarmist?

Low lying fruit, really. If ever there was a model that the skeptics should debunk, this is the one. Think of the PR value! But has no one bothered?

The only 'debunking' that I know about is Michaels, 1998, lying to Congress.

And that's just not good enough.

I have had the same question (leaving aside for a moment the erroneous interpretation of Michael's response:)). Hansen basically claimed four things (I am simplifying, he contradicts himself often on details and does not state things clearly).
Any temperature deviation of more than 3 standard deviations (or 0.4C) was abnormal, unnatural and thus caused by man.
Therefore as of 1988 GW (hence AGW by #1) already existed.
He predicts GW (Hence AGW) ("Soon", within a few decades) by #1.
Computer models (agree, confirm, yada yada ydada, point to CO2, on and on on this one with lots of hand waving).1951-1980 is his base period for calculating anomalies. Everything changes if you just change the base period. Meterologists use the prior three decades thus now we would be using 1971-2000. Hansen does not want to change that of course, it destroys the assertions. I think the British Met uses 1961-1990.

Leaving the issue of baseline period aside, what of the assertion that 0.14C is a reasonable number of standard deviation for climate? What of the assertion that three times that would indicate a man made cause (or as Hansen put it, the "smoking gun")?

Those are the basic questions.

varwoche

27th October 2007, 01:45 PM

In summary, Hansen presented a total of three charts, and one page with maps. In the section of his talk on GW, he went through the first 2 viewgraphs... True or false...?

Two scenarios were willfully erased from the graphic including the scenario identified the most likely.

(And what the heck does viewgraph impart not otherwise imparted by graph?)

CapelDodger

27th October 2007, 04:21 PM

I have had the same question (leaving aside for a moment the erroneous interpretation of Michael's response:)).

The lie in Michaels's statement is so blatant as to not erroneous interpretation, save by somebody with a serious compulsion not to see it. Michaels lied about the model prediction, not about Hansen's statement to Congress in 1988.

Hansen basically claimed four things (I am simplifying, he contradicts himself often on details and does not state things clearly).

So. moving on to this different matter.

Any temperature deviation of more than 3 standard deviations (or 0.4C) was abnormal, unnatural and thus caused by man.
Therefore as of 1988 GW (hence AGW by #1) already existed.
He predicts GW (Hence AGW) ("Soon", within a few decades) by #1.
Computer models (agree, confirm, yada yada ydada, point to CO2, on and on on this one with lots of hand waving).
I never could be getting on with statistics, so somebody else will have to explain what Hansen meant and about what with the sigmas and stuff.

If Hansen calculated that AGW was already evident to a good level of confidence in 1988, nothing has happened since to show him wrong. With each passing decade it gets more evident, empirically. Which is the measure of a major model, generally.

So score one for the scientific method.

CapelDodger

27th October 2007, 05:07 PM

Hindcasting? What?

I'm talking about low-lying fruit here. This may be the most famous global warming model prediction in the world. Hansen put the issue on the map in 1988 with this testimony and the A/B/C scenarios.

There's nothing remotely equivalent in the anti-AGW locker. Over the last twenty years pretty much the same cast has been forced to make ever more data-mined explanations of what's actually happened. The Hansen et al 1988 model sails serenely on.

Was he correct or was he just being alarmist?

One specific I've elicited about "alarmist" in the climate change sense : one can be alarmist right up to the point when the alarming thing happens. Being alarmist doesn't depend on outcome, or even likely outcome. Alarmism (in this context) is that which some people find alarming.

The old sense of "alarmist", which I'm more familiar with, is applied from a safe retrospective.

Low lying fruit, really. If ever there was a model that the skeptics should debunk, this is the one. Think of the PR value! But has no one bothered?

The only 'debunking' that I know about is Michaels, 1998, lying to Congress.

Which speaks volumes. Ten years into the model's predictions, and there's already an international protocol on the table. Michaels rides into combat (agin it) before the Small Business Committee of the House of Representatives, lies about the model, waves his hands a lot, admits a warming of 0.11C and gets in some polemic. Massively promoted and publicised, and the imprimatur of Congress.

It's so transparently propagandist that one has to wonder about some people.

And that's just not good enough.

That depends on the market it's destined for.

Remember, September 1988 was as warm as September 2007. No warming.

Every other month in 2007 was warmer than its 1988 equivalent, and the summer of 1988 was - as mhaze insists on bringing up - regarded at the time as a very warm one. Was this last summer regarded as particularly warm? Out of the ordinary?

This is the twenty-years-on ordinary. But it's still ordinary. So, no warming. Why are well-educated people getting into such a tizzy over this :rolleyes:.

Pat Michaels is still at it, still a pillar of the cause, still claiming AGW is all (well, mostly ...) a trick to get funding by well-connected scientists. Bizarre, but there it is, and there, I dare say, it will remain.

mhaze

27th October 2007, 07:19 PM

I never could be getting on with statistics, so somebody else will have to explain what Hansen meant and about what with the sigmas and stuff.

If Hansen calculated that AGW was already evident to a good level of confidence in 1988, nothing has happened since to show him wrong. With each passing decade it gets more evident, empirically. Which is the measure of a major model, generally.

So score one for the scientific method.

No. But here I think it would be wise to set forth two different interpretations of Hansen et al 1988. The first is the much ballyhooed popular version that goes along with the Hansen-Michaels controversy. That is not accurate. In line with that version, you may have heard these comments - separately by van Storch and Christy to the effect of ...

"Right for the wrong reasons".

That's not the scientific method.

Now, note I said two different interpretations above. Let's leave this one aside, and call it the Blurred-Ambiguous-Unprecise popular media version. "BAU".

Gee, we've heard that BAU before somewhere....:)

The second, and much more interesting question, is whether the ground that he set forth for a determination of "global warming" and "man made global warming" have any validity at all, or under what scope of circumstances they might. And that is the use of the standard deviation on ground based temperatures over the prior three decades being used to derive a metric - three standard deviations or 0.4C - by which "unusual and clearly man made influences on climate" have occurred.

I strongly suspect this is completely false, but am not by any means an expert statistician. I am not at all convinced that the use of the standard deviation is even proper with climate where from one number to the next the series is highly autocorrelated. And this starts to get into the exact areas where McIntyre, Wegman and others have criticized the methods and conclusions of Hansen, Mann etc.

:eye-poppi

mhaze

27th October 2007, 07:51 PM

True or false...?

Two scenarios were willfully erased from the graphic including the scenario identified the most likely.

(And what the heck does viewgraph impart not otherwise imparted by graph?)

False.

B-C were discarded as moot points since the government regulations that was part of their conjecture had not occurred in the ten years intervening.
A- Business as Usual, was what had actually occurred.

In the Hansen 1988 paper -
"B" was made note of as "plausible", which does not mean the same as "most likely".

In the Oral presentation to Senate -

"A" was identified as "Business as Usual", which was exactly what did occur. There is no mention of Scenario B in the section of Global Warming whatsoever and the only mention of Scenario C is with reference to "draconian emissions cuts" which obviously did not happen.

Both Hansen and Michaels agree that what was at dispute was the oral presentation to Senate, as I understand the matter. (Comments to each other in the 1998 debate, separate statements by Hansen and Michaels about the matter).

What was a Viewgraph?

In the 1980s, a viewgraph was a clear transparency produced on a xerox from an 8.5 x 11 piece of paper. Thus a viewgraph could have several graphs on it, and here that was the case with viewgraph 1, which had 2 charts. Viewgraph 2 had one chart, and Viewgraph 3 had 6 maps.

Megalodon

28th October 2007, 07:31 AM

False.

B-C were discarded as moot points since the government regulations that was part of their conjecture had not occurred in the ten years intervening.
A- Business as Usual, was what had actually occurred.

Psst, don't look now, but you're lying again. You have been explained this before, the projections on CO2 emmissions used in the model that most approached what really happened were the ones of scenario B. The same scenario had the temperature predictions that most approached what happened in that decade. Removing that scenario is lying.

But even that is superfluous. The model consisted of 3 scenarios. Presenting one of the extremes is lying. If he wanted to present only one scenario, he would have to have gone with B, and explain that he was not presenting the two extremes for whatever reason... you know, honesty.

In the Hansen 1988 paper -
"B" was made note of as "plausible", which does not mean the same as "most likely".

And this is where I tip my hat at you. I really doubt that you can sink any lower than this in your desperate attempts to explain why a lie wasn't a lie afterall. Please beware when on crosswalks ;)

Both Hansen and Michaels agree that what was at dispute was the oral presentation to Senate, as I understand the matter. (Comments to each other in the 1998 debate, separate statements by Hansen and Michaels about the matter).

You've proved amply that you don't understand the matter.

Locri

28th October 2007, 08:26 AM

If I may...

False.

B-C were discarded as moot points since the government regulations that was part of their conjecture had not occurred in the ten years intervening.
A- Business as Usual, was what had actually occurred.

Psst, don't look now, but you're lying again. You have been explained this before, the projections on CO2 emmissions used in the model that most approached what really happened were the ones of scenario B. The same scenario had the temperature predictions that most approached what happened in that decade. Removing that scenario is lying.

No... you are misreading what mhaze said. Scenario B and C involved government regulated CO2 emissions whereas Scenario A didn't. Scenario A is what happened (in a government sense) because no regulations like the ones Hansen used in Scenario B and C were forced by the government. You are mixing up the political half and the scientific half.

From what I can tell, the reason Micheals presented Scenario A is because of the fact that nothing regulation wise had been done, therefore according to Hansen, Scenario A is the one that should have happened in the real world. But it didn't, it was more like Scenario B.

Although I would agree that it would have been a lot better if Micheals had the B and C graphs as well, it would have taken away from his point that Hansen was wrong on his prediction of what would happen if no government regulation was added.

In fact, I think Micheals testimony would have been stronger if he had said "Look at Scenario B, this is more in line with what actually happened in the world, but there was no regulation despite Hansen's prediction that you would need regulation to get this particular Scenario."

But that's me *shrugs*

Megalodon

28th October 2007, 08:41 AM

No... you are misreading what mhaze said. Scenario B and C involved government regulated CO2 emissions whereas Scenario A didn't. Scenario A is what happened (in a government sense) because no regulations like the ones Hansen used in Scenario B and C were forced by the government. You are mixing up the political half and the scientific half.

Actually, that isn't right. The reason for the variation in CO2 emissions is irrelevant. The fact is that, 10 years later, CO2 emmissions were closer to scenario B than A.

From what I can tell, the reason Micheals presented Scenario A is because of the fact that nothing regulation wise had been done, therefore according to Hansen, Scenario A is the one that should have happened in the real world. But it didn't, it was more like Scenario B.

That would be all good if the scenario was trying to predict CO2 emmissions, but it wasn't. Since the CO2 emissions resembled Scenario B, honesty would compel someone evaluating the model to mention Scenario B.

Although I would agree that it would have been a lot better if Micheals had the B and C graphs as well, it would have taken away from his point that Hansen was wrong on his prediction of what would happen if no government regulation was added.

The prediction was not that the temperature would react in a way if no government regulation was added, but if the CO2 emissions would happen in a certain way. Hansen's being wrong about what would moderate the emission rate has no relevance since: a) his model doesn't forecast CO2 emissions, they are actually fed into the model; b) He explicitly said in his paper that the Scenario B was the most probable.

In fact, I think Micheals testimony would have been stronger if he had said "Look at Scenario B, this is more in line with what actually happened in the world, but there was no regulation despite Hansen's prediction that you would need regulation to get this particular Scenario."

Possibly, if they were discussing CO2 emissions, that they weren't. They were discussing a model forecasting global temperatures based, among other things, on different CO2 emission rates fed into it.

Schneibster

28th October 2007, 08:51 AM

A few little details (/sarcasm) to point out: whether the US enacted regulations or not may be aside from the point, in the face of the fact that the Montreal Protocol reduced some CFCs (which are strong GWGs) and in the face of the Kyoto Protocol, which was signed and has been followed by quite a few other countries. This may well account for the fact that business was not "as usual." Furthermore, didn't B include a volcanic eruption, and A not? And wasn't there, in fact, a volcanic eruption? I guess that Michaels was criticizing Hansen for not being able to predict volcanic eruptions (/sarcasm).

mhaze

28th October 2007, 09:25 AM

If I may...

No... you are misreading what mhaze said.

In fact, I think Micheals testimony would have been stronger if he had said "Look at Scenario B, this is more in line with what actually happened in the world, but there was no regulation despite Hansen's prediction that you would need regulation to get this particular Scenario."

But that's me *shrugs*

Well, going down that road of thinking....just consider today (2007) Hansen's Scenario C, which showed a flattening and leveling off of temperature as the result of "Draconian emissions cuts". That flattening and leveling off of temperature has apparently occurred in the last eight years and there have been no "Draconian emissions cuts".

That makes Hansen's computer model look rather foolish.

Schneibster is correct that B and C included a volcano in their respective scenarios, with a net cooling effect from that.

To clarify this I will excerpt the relevant section from the 1998 debate between Hansen and Michaels. One comment is necessary. Hansen's starting comment (p. 160 below) is wrong, as previously noted. Hansen's only reference to scenarios in the GW portion of his Senate talk was-"We have considered cases ranging from business as usual, which is scenario A, to draconian emission cuts, scenario C, which would total eliminate net trace gas growth by year 2000".
SPF Transcript.
"Is there Sufficient Scientific Evidence which Proves We Should Limit Greenhouse Gas Emissions Because of Climate Change?" Dr. James E. Hansen vs. Dr. Patrick J. Michaels. National Communication Association Convention. Hilton Hotel Green Room. New York, NY. November 20, 1998. P. 160. Hansen.
"...he(Michaels) started out showing the results of our scenario A, even though the scenario I used in my testimony was scenario B, and the facts show that the world has warmed up more rapidly than scenario B, which was the main one I used."

P. 161. Michaels.
"Your first observation about your scenario A vs scenario B must be addressed; I view that as a question. Hansen is saying, in scenario A, that the change in total greenhouse forcing that human beings will have heaped on the atmosphere by 1995, would have been somewhere around 2.75 watts per meter squared. By knocking out the CO2, and with the absorption of carbon dioxide that occurred as the Earth got greener than it was supposed to, the forcing drops about thirteen hundredths of a watt per meter squared. I do not believe that the warming in your computer model dropped from forty-five hundredths a decade to twenty-five hundreds a decade for merely changing the total forcing by less than five percent. So, I object to your objection there. Next question."

P. 161 Hansen.
"You should look at the paper. The other difference was volcanos...those predictions for the real world were published, so we couldn't have changed anything, and we happened to hit the real world on the money."
References
http://www.pitt.edu/~gordonm/ (http://www.pitt.edu/%7Egordonm/) Program PDF file [19K]
(http://www.pitt.edu/%7Egordonm/Pubdeb/SPFprogram.pdf)Transcript PDF file [3.2MB]
(http://www.pitt.edu/%7Egordonm/Pubdeb/SPFtranscript.pdf)O'Donnell introduction PDF file [192K]
(http://www.pitt.edu/%7Egordonm/Pubdeb/O%27Donnell.pdf)Hansen commentary NASA website
(http://www.giss.nasa.gov/edu/gwdebate)Shackley commentary PDF file [97K]
(http://www.pitt.edu/%7Egordonm/Pubdeb/Shackley.pdf)Ziman commentary PDF file [138K]
(http://www.pitt.edu/%7Egordonm/Pubdeb/Ziman.pdf)Wander and Jaehne commentary PDF file [213K] (http://www.pitt.edu/%7Egordonm/Pubdeb/WanderJaehne.pdf)

mhaze

28th October 2007, 09:42 AM

The prediction was not that the temperature would react in a way if no government regulation was added, but if the CO2 emissions would happen in a certain way. Hansen's being wrong about what would moderate the emission rate has no relevance since: a) his model doesn't forecast CO2 emissions, they are actually fed into the model; b) He explicitly said in his paper that the Scenario B was the most probable.

Possibly, if they were discussing CO2 emissions, that they weren't. They were discussing a model forecasting global temperatures based, among other things, on different CO2 emission rates fed into it.

That is perceptive as to what the basic issue is. Now we differ on the facts and interpretations of them. I see the exact opposite, that Hansen's prediction was how the temperature would react if no government regulation was added. In support of this interpretation here is the context of Michael's talk-

Michaels discussed this at a hearing on the Kyoto protocol. In that context, it is of course necessary to forecast future CO2 emissions and promulgate government regulations to lower or mitigate those expected CO2 emissions. You do not have three planets on which you can do Scenario A, B, and C.

In his oral presentation of 6-23-1988 to the Senate, Hansen was proposing government regulations and beneficial effects thereof, and highly negative consequences of "Business as usual" with no government intervention.

A postscript by Michaels (2006)- "That’s precisely the keynote of my testimony eight years ago: in climate science, what you think is obviously true can literally change overnight, like the assumption of continued exponential growth of carbon dioxide, or how the earth responds."

Megalodon

28th October 2007, 10:21 AM

That is perceptive as to what the basic issue is. Now we differ on the facts and interpretations of them. I see the exact opposite, that Hansen's prediction was how the temperature would react if no government regulation was added.

Really? And what was the proposed regulation on plate tectonics? You realize nobody's taking you serious anymore, don't you?

Michaels discussed this at a hearing on the Kyoto protocol. In that context, it is of course necessary to forecast future CO2 emissions and promulgate government regulations to lower or mitigate those expected CO2 emissions. You do not have three planets on which you can do Scenario A, B, and C.

But that is not what the model does. And the model wasn't criticized on it's pessimistic view on CO2 emission rates, but on it's temperature forecast. Both of which are quite on the nose in Scenario B, that was ommited.

In his oral presentation of 6-23-1988 to the Senate, Hansen was proposing government regulations and beneficial effects thereof, and highly negative consequences of "Business as usual" with no government intervention.

Yes, he was, so what? The world is not the US, and the future is not a given. CO2 emission rates declined despite the lack of will of the US, and volcanic eruptions actually happened. Nothing of this has any influence on the fact that Michaels lied.

A postscript by Michaels (2006)- "That’s precisely the keynote of my testimony eight years ago: in climate science, what you think is obviously true can literally change overnight, like the assumption of continued exponential growth of carbon dioxide, or how the earth responds."

So a liar lies again to justify is lie. His testimony didn't address the CO2 emission rates in the model in any significant way. The reason is obvious, since he would have to explain that one of the scenarios they close to the real emission rates, and the performance of the model was quite good.

mhaze

28th October 2007, 10:48 AM

His testimony didn't address the CO2 emission rates in the model in any significant way. The reason is obvious, since he would have to explain that one of the scenarios they close to the real emission rates, and the performance of the model was quite good.

Actually, yes his testimony did address CO2 emission rates quite nicely. Want details?

Suppose in 1988, the Senate had bought off on Hansen's alarmist view and went for "Draconian emissions cuts". Worried about "C" business as usual, they opted to create, through legislation, penalties, fines and taxes, "Scenario A".

Oops.....

the results of our doing nothing turned out to be just as good as what was predicted by Hansen's proposal for "Draconian Emissions Cuts".

That's some model you are choosing to defend...

Schneibster

28th October 2007, 12:13 PM

Nope. "Draconian emission cuts" would be scenario A. We got scenario B from the Kyoto and Montreal protocols and a volcano. We might even be better off than scenario A if we had done that.

Do you have no shame?

mhaze

28th October 2007, 12:37 PM

CapelDodger

28th October 2007, 08:44 PM

Actually, yes his testimony did address CO2 emission rates quite nicely. Want details?

Why not?

Suppose in 1988, the Senate had bought off on Hansen's alarmist view and went for "Draconian emissions cuts".

Where does the term "draconian emission cuts" derive from? You put it in quotes, so it must come from somewhere, but I've rather lost track.

Worried about "C" business as usual, they opted to create, through legislation, penalties, fines and taxes, "Scenario A".

They did what now, and who are they? Why didn't we hear about it at the time?

Oops.....

the results of our doing nothing turned out to be just as good as what was predicted by Hansen's proposal for "Draconian Emissions Cuts".

That's some model you are choosing to defend...

Again with the "draconian emission cuts". Odd

What actually happened was that the best-guess scenario - Scenario B, the middle one - turned out close to reality (even to the volcano) and did a very good job of predicting climate change up to 1998. Since then it's done the same up to 2007.

And you seem to have mixed up Scenarios A and C.

CapelDodger

28th October 2007, 09:19 PM

Psst, don't look now, but you're lying again. You have been explained this before, the projections on CO2 emmissions used in the model that most approached what really happened were the ones of scenario B. The same scenario had the temperature predictions that most approached what happened in that decade. Removing that scenario is lying.

But even that is superfluous. The model consisted of 3 scenarios. Presenting one of the extremes is lying. If he wanted to present only one scenario, he would have to have gone with B, and explain that he was not presenting the two extremes for whatever reason... you know, honesty.

The two scenarios that had not matched the outcome were superfluous (in such a short term). What-ifs that iffed not.

And all this is definitely in the contrarian comfort-zone - at least ten years old, and much of it twenty. The intervening years have not gone well for their cause, but there are still old fights to be fought. Oh, and temperatures have been "stagnating" meanwhile. Cooling is just over the hill. the models have been proved wrong (see Michaels) and all the people that predicted what's happened and is happening were and are alarmists.

In the meantime reality has been diverging from Scenario B in a Scenario A direction. There's been an acceleration in CO2 accumulation over the last decade, a goodly chunk of which is down to growth in China. The CO2-efficiency of GDP improved in the late 20thCE, but it's been declining with recent Asian growth.

This won't have much immediate impact on the rate of climate change, but in the medium-term it will if it continues. China still has mountains of coal - it's late into the game of burning through them.

mhaze

28th October 2007, 09:22 PM

Where does the term "draconian emission cuts" derive from?

And you seem to have mixed up Scenarios A and C.

No mixup here.
"draconian emission cuts" was Hansen's description for C.
"Business as usual" was Hansen's description for A.

Schneibster

29th October 2007, 03:15 AM

You must have something backwards there...Well, that was probably because I accepted what you said about which scenario was which: Worried about "C" business as usual, they opted to create, through legislation, penalties, fines and taxes, "Scenario A".Sorry, I should have known you were wrong. My bad. :rolleyes:

Gee, I guess CD was right; you ARE confused about which is which.

But that doesn't change the fact that you claimed: the results of our doing nothing turned out to be just as good as what was predicted by Hansen's proposal for "Draconian Emissions Cuts".Which is not what we see; we see scenario B, the middle scenario; you're claiming we see the results of draconian emissions cuts today, the low scenario, when we clearly do not.

stevea

29th October 2007, 01:55 PM

mhaze

29th October 2007, 04:28 PM

NASA recently released the source code for Hansen's model. I performed a brief review and I have toi say the quality of the code is very poor. It contains the sort of organizational problems that I used to see in undergraduate homework programs in the 1970s (before better tools and languages avoided many of the problems) That is not to say the model is wrong, but personally I'd be hesitant to make any major claims based on such a low quality tool. The possibility of error in the code is significant and I wonder what sort of test cases were used to give confidence to the results ? I don't see any test verification suite for the units.

-S

I think someone tried running that code with CO2=0%, and the thing bombed out. That's not a good sign for a model....

Aside from the model, Hansen had a supposed "scientific basis" for discovering global warming. I am curious what your opinion is of it.

Using the 1951-1980 as the climatic mean, he establishes a standard deviation of 0.14C for annual global temperature variations. He then states that > 3SD is unusual and therefore man made. Then there is a leap to CO2 as the primary cause.

At one point he says he's already found AGW (=>3SD) in the last several years, at another he says if we see "several consecutive years with 3SD deviation that would be the "smoking gun".

Whichever way you take it, he is asserting that the surface temperature data should be used, and > 3SD is the 99% percentile of variation and therefore must be manmade....

CapelDodger

29th October 2007, 05:41 PM

CapelDodger

29th October 2007, 06:16 PM

I think someone tried running that code with CO2=0%, and the thing bombed out. That's not a good sign for a model....

The model depends on a database that doesn't include such silliness. It's meant to model the real world. Which it does, more than tolerably well.

Aside from the model, Hansen had a supposed "scientific basis" for discovering global warming. I am curious what your opinion is of it.

Given that Hansen revealed this twenty years ago, and the intervening decades have served only to confirm his conclusion, I have a high opinion of it.

Using the 1951-1980 as the climatic mean, he establishes a standard deviation of 0.14C for annual global temperature variations.

What does it matter what period is chosen to establish a base-line? Variation about it remains the same. All that changes is the number, not the proportion. Which is to say, the shape of the graph remains the same.

He then states that > 3SD is unusual and therefore man made. Then there is a leap to CO2 as the primary cause.

Is this from the published Hansen et al 1988 paper, or from your reporting of Hansen's 1988 statement to Congress? It's easy to lose track. Your idea of a leap might well be stuff you can't understand or don't want to see.

Whatever, we're talking about 1988, and Hansen's star is way up in the ascendent twenty years on. Something about not being wrong so far, and if anything ahead of the game.

At one point he says he's already found AGW (=>3SD) in the last several years, at another he says if we see "several consecutive years with 3SD deviation that would be the "smoking gun".

Whichever way you take it, he is asserting that the surface temperature data should be used, and > 3SD is the 99% percentile of variation and therefore must be manmade....

Of course it's man-made. What's behind the positive energy balance if not the greenhouse effect? "Just warming since the Little Ice Age" doesn't cut it; global warming means energy accumulation on a massive scale. It doesn't just happen.

Schneibster

29th October 2007, 06:19 PM

What a terrifically intellectual discussion this has devolved into. So-n-so lied. So-n-so didn't! How brilliant, how insightful ! Did it ever occur to either of you that the truth or falsity of statement by some non-researcher, non-primary source is of no relevece to the underlying issue of climate change ?Every time I post, as a matter of fact. But mhaze has moved the debate away from the science by claiming that the scientists are lying. I have to agree with you that this seems like use of rhetorical devices to avoid discussing the facts, but I have little control over what s/he posts. I'll bring it to your attention that I and others have been pointing this out for quite some time. I suppose if you're gonna wrestle with a pig, you gotta figure you're gonna get some mud on ya.

I'm regularly disgusted by illogical arguments, and one of the first signals that things are going off the tracks is when people referring the the "Insert name" theory of such-n-such instead of briefly explaining the fundamental point. So from this, I get two statements by you:
1. Any scientific theory that requires an IQ greater than 90 to understand, or requires an explanation that takes more than two sentences, is BS.
2. You don't want to talk about scientific theories by name; it's illogical.
Have I got that right?

It's a great debater's technique for inserting a massive and therefore difficult to rebut body of work into a discussion without going to the effort of laying a foundation. It's really only valid when the audience all understand and agree on the definition of the idea.So basically you don't want to talk about science, when you talk about climate. OK, that's fine, but I have to ask you, why are you posting on a forum titled, "Science, Mathematics, Medicine, and Technology?" Politics is over there ->.

NASA recently released the source code for Hansen's model. I performed a brief review and I have toi say the quality of the code is very poor. It's crufty. That's why it has all those tracers and diagnostics sprinkled all over it. What's the matter, never seen scientific code before? They aren't, after all, professional software engineers. I didn't have any trouble following it. Are you saying you did? That would be consistent with your attitude on scientific theories.

It contains the sort of organizational problems that I used to see in undergraduate homework programs in the 1970s (before better tools and languages avoided many of the problems) Well, gee, considering it was originally written in FORTRAN, in the '70s, THAT'S a big surprise, huh?

That is not to say the model is wrong, but personally I'd be hesitant to make any major claims based on such a low quality tool. The possibility of error in the code is significant and I wonder what sort of test cases were used to give confidence to the results ? I don't see any test verification suite for the units.They test them with the diagnostics and tracers in the code that you apparently overlooked. In fact, according to the documentation, it's only recently that it was modularized. I bet that was fun. Almost as good as hitting yourself repeatedly in the chest with a pickaxe. No wonder it's got cruft all over it.

And with all that trouble you have with scientific theories and stuff, I bet you have a great deal of trouble figuring out what numerical simulations do, because it's mostly math- kind of like scientific theories are.

mhaze

29th October 2007, 06:43 PM

Is this from the published Hansen et al 1988 paper, or from your reporting of Hansen's 1988 statement to Congress? It's easy to lose track. Your idea of a leap might well be stuff you can't understand or don't want to see.

In the paper, of course. The talk to Congress was as we've noted, simple generalities. "Business as usual" will get you this huge T spike, "Draconian emissions cuts" will get you this nice moderate world. The paper does go into the model although rather briefly.

Whatever, we're talking about 1988, and Hansen's star is way up in the ascendent twenty years on. Something about not being wrong so far, and if anything ahead of the game.Hansen will be about as remembered 20 years from now as Paul Erlich.

Quote:At one point he says he's already found AGW (=>3SD) in the last several years, at another he says if we see "several consecutive years with 3SD deviation that would be the "smoking gun".

Whichever way you take it, he is asserting that the surface temperature data should be used, and > 3SD is the 99% percentile of variation and therefore must be manmade....
Of course it's man-made. What's behind the positive energy balance if not the greenhouse effect? "Just warming since the Little Ice Age" doesn't cut it; global warming means energy accumulation on a massive scale. It doesn't just happen.Really? Can you substantiate that without asserting Belief in Models? That is the point of my comment here. Many things "don't just happen" in climate but happen for reasons that are poorly understood or modeled because the chaotic behavior is not easily handled.

"Just warming since the Little Ice Age" doesn't cut it? What exactly happens when a planet comes out of a Little Ice Age other than "just warming?"

CapelDodger

29th October 2007, 06:58 PM

... we see scenario B, the middle scenario; you're claiming we see the results of draconian emissions cuts today, the low scenario, when we clearly do not.

Even less so recently.

The real pink elephant is in

" ...they opted to create, through legislation, penalties, fines and taxes ..."

A projected night-terror, or what? "Draconian" covers that lot, but the detail has to be drawn out by a need to see them. And of course it applied to the minimal scenario, which was meant to be at the low end of realistic, verging on the fantastic, and weren't expected to apply for at least a decade.

"They opted to create ..." - it's as if a Revolution has overturned a tyrant.

The B Scenario, the middle and most considered, has pretty much panned-out. And serious (let alone draconian) measures to change matters are as fantastical today as in 1988. What is different is that AGW has muscled its way onto centre-stage in the meantime, because of climate change.

a_unique_person

29th October 2007, 07:23 PM

CapelDodger

29th October 2007, 07:30 PM

In the paper, of course. The talk to Congress was as we've noted, simple generalities. "Business as usual" will get you this huge T spike, "Draconian emissions cuts" will get you this nice moderate world. The paper does go into the model although rather briefly.

It does go into the model quite a lot, and it refers to it pretty much from the get-go. Any projections from 1988 were based on the model that stevea finds so untidy. The B Scenario - the middle one - is the one that's reported in most detail. The others, let's remember, are deliberately deigned to be outliers.

Hansen will be about as remembered 20 years from now as Paul Erlich.

A prediction! May you still be around in twenty years time to have fun made of you for it.

Some names that will fade into obscurity : Michaels, McIntyre, Singer, Gray, Lindzen.

Really? Can you substantiate that without asserting Belief in Models? That is the point of my comment here. Many things "don't just happen" in climate but happen for reasons that are poorly understood or modeled because the chaotic behavior is not easily handled.

Chaotic behaviour can distribute energy indeterminately, but it doesn't create it. Global warming involves a massive amount of energy accumulation. That's about as simple a model as you can get.

The benchmark we have is the big bad analogue model we call home, and that's been accumulating energy just as predicted - by reining-in outgoings.

"Chaos" is no refuge. Weather is chaotic, but you still expect summer to be warmer than winter.

"Just warming since the Little Ice Age" doesn't cut it? What exactly happens when a planet comes out of a Little Ice Age other than "just warming?"

If the fluid skim on the surface of Planet Earth warms up, it does it by accumulating energy. Nothing "just" gets warm - see "conservation of energy".

CapelDodger

29th October 2007, 07:45 PM

That's why completely indepdent teams around the world are building their own models. It means we have more than one source to make claims that are based on the output of models.

Yes, but, no, um ... if contrarians can keep the focus on 1988 they won't have to face what's actually transpired since. Taking refuge in the past, I calls it.

mhaze

29th October 2007, 08:30 PM

A projected night-terror, or what? "Draconian" covers that lot, but the detail has to be drawn out by a need to see them. And of course it applied to the minimal scenario, which was meant to be at the low end of realistic, verging on the fantastic, and weren't expected to apply for at least a decade.

"They opted to create ..." - it's as if a Revolution has overturned a tyrant.

The B Scenario, the middle and most considered, has pretty much panned-out. And serious (let alone draconian) measures to change matters are as fantastical today as in 1988. What is different is that AGW has muscled its way onto centre-stage in the meantime, because of climate change.

Not mine but Hansen's words.

Although perhaps Draconian you preferred?

David Rodale

29th October 2007, 10:38 PM

Yes, but, no, um ... if contrarians can keep the focus on 1988 they won't have to face what's actually transpired since. Taking refuge in the past, I calls it.
It appears to be you infatuated (a bit unhealthy at that) with Hansen as if his serendipitous "prediction" was anything more than akin to going to the carnival to have your weight guessed.

It was warming up to 1988, a trend was established. He extrapolated it. Big deal. Strange how when HadCRUT3 data is laid over his prophecy graph it doesn't look so good. No, the gases weren't correct either. Then again, Hansen, the same one doing the predicting is also the gatekeeper of temperature data.
http://forums.randi.org/imagehosting/thum_10323470aebdc0202c.jpg (http://forums.randi.org/vbimghost.php?do=displayimg&imgid=8716)

The error in Hansen's U.S. temp data has somehow mysteriously returned with no explanation; Hansen wanted 1998 higher than 1934, so he just changed it back. AUP stated UHI has been accounted for in IPCC. It has not. No physical studies were done by Jones at Hadley; it was all based on untested assumptions crap shooting. Below is perhaps one of the most comprehensive studies conducted on UHI effects.
http://www.geography.uc.edu/~kenhinke/uhi/Hinkel&Nelson_JGR-A_2007.pdf
3. On the basis of rural and urban group averages for
the period 1 December to 31 March of four winters, the
urban area is ~2 deg C warmer than the rural area. It is not
uncommon for the MUHID to exceed 4 deg C.

What gives you any confidence in the current surface station network when a town of 4500 can have such an effect on temperature?
AUP, is this your idea of IPCC addressing UHI?
http://forums.randi.org/imagehosting/thum_103234726aea99e154.jpg (http://forums.randi.org/vbimghost.php?do=displayimg&imgid=8988)

Nowhere in Hansen's 1988 utterances did he mention in any quantitative way, solar, clouds, water vapor, UHI, precipitation or any other of the many mechanisms. No, it's only CO2 that's important.

As I've tried to convey on several occasions, climate models are about tuning and parameterization. For some reason, the AGW gang here seem to think climate models are "validated". Nothing can be further from the truth. Monkeys on keyboards is a good analogy on climate model predictions.

Please read about cloud feedbacks:
http://irina.eas.gatech.edu/EAS_spring2006/Stephens2005.pdf
Predictions of global warming
by GCMs forced with prescribed increases of atmospheric
CO2 are uncertain, and the range of uncertainty
has, seemingly, not changed much from initial estimates
given decades ago.

How many more do you want? 10, 20, 30? You're basing all your statements about climate models on assumptions they are "reliable" and the AGW scripted responses. We have already presented several examples illustrating climate model folly. The so-called "evaluations" of them are done by the modelers themselves.

AGW is now caught with it's pants down. Met O is trying to salvage it somehow:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/317/5839/796
Our system predicts that internal variability will partially offset the anthropogenic global warming signal for the next few years. However, climate will continue to warm, with at least half of the years after 2009 predicted to exceed the warmest year currently on record.:jaw-dropp

Met O January 2007, not from a newspaper CD. Directly from their website:
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/2007/pr20070104.html
2007 - forecast to be the warmest year yet:D

And a special note:
http://www.coaps.fsu.edu/~maue/tropical/
For the period of June 1 - TODAY, only 1977 has experienced LESS tropical cyclone activity than 2007.
You know what that means don't you? Where has all the global warming gone?

a_unique_person

30th October 2007, 12:07 AM

No UHI problems on the wheat farm.

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,22671919-662,00.html

The Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics (ABARE) today revised down its forecasts for 2007-08 winter crops.

The winter wheat crop output is now forecast at 12.1 million tonnes, compared with a previous estimate of 15.5 million tonnes.
Barley is forecast at five million tonnes, against a previous prediction of 5.9 million tonnes.
This year's canola crop is now estimated at 900,000 tonnes, versus 1.1 million tonnes previously.
ABARE said with the exception of Queensland, pockets of northern NSW and southern Western Australia, rainfall during the critical September-October period had been below to very much below average throughout the grains belt.
NSW had been particularly dry, with many regions recording their lowest September-October rainfall on record.
"This lack of rainfall, combined with hotter than average daytime temperatures and strong winds, has led to the rapid deterioration of crop yield potential and in many areas has resulted in total crop failure," ABARE executive director Phillip Glyde said.

mhaze

30th October 2007, 06:43 AM

The benchmark we have is the big bad analogue model we call home, and that's been accumulating energy just as predicted - by reining-in outgoings.

"Chaos" is no refuge. Weather is chaotic, but you still expect summer to be warmer than winter.

If the fluid skim on the surface of Planet Earth warms up, it does it by accumulating energy. Nothing "just" gets warm - see "conservation of energy".

If the fluid skim on the surface of Planet Earth warms up, it does it by accumulating energy.

The great climatic battery that stores and releases heat energy is the oceans, not the air. British MET sea surface temps -

1998 0.451
1999 0.209
2000 0.219
2001 0.335
2002 0.376
2003 0.406
2004 0.383
2005 0.383
2006 0.340
2007 0.317

Oceans are cooling.

The Earth is not dancing to the tune of the Alarmist AGW trend line.

http://forums.randi.org/imagehosting/thum_142244723654333cdb.png (http://forums.randi.org/vbimghost.php?do=displayimg&imgid=8960)

Schneibster

30th October 2007, 07:06 AM

It appears to be you infatuated (a bit unhealthy at that) with Hansen as if his serendipitous "prediction" was anything more than akin to going to the carnival to have your weight guessed.

It was warming up to 1988, a trend was established. He extrapolated it. Big deal. Strange how when HadCRUT3 data is laid over his prophecy graph it doesn't look so good. What is the supposed source of this supposed HadCRUT3 data? Looking at the Met Office Hadley Centre HadCRUT3 web page (http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcrut3/), it looks like they have a whole-world data set. What did you do, pick the one site that was low enough to suit you out of all the data shown on that temperature anomaly map so you could claim that HadCRUT3 says Hansen is wrong? Or did you cherry-pick from various locations whatever was convenient to the graph you wanted to draw?

No, the gases weren't correct either. There aren't any gases in that graph, David. You're confusing last night's acid trip with reality again.

Then again, Hansen, the same one doing the predicting is also the gatekeeper of temperature data. Honestly, that's gotta be some pretty good acid. Either you're asserting that Hansen, who works for NASA, which in case you missed it is a US institution, has control over data collected by the Meteorology Office's Hadley Centre, which in case you missed it is a UK institution, not a US one, or you're asserting that HadCRUT3 isn't temperature data, despite having put what you claim is data from it on a temperature graph. Now, I don't know about you, but it seems to me you have a wee little bit of a conflict there somewhere or other.

The error in Hansen's U.S. temp data has somehow mysteriously returned with no explanation; Hansen wanted 1998 higher than 1934, so he just changed it back. What is it that makes you imagine that someone can just do things like that without other scientists noticing it? Do you seriously think that you can publish a paper that has a particular, detailed claim in it, and then publish another one next year that supposedly uses the same data in it, and the data's different, and NO ONE WILL NOTICE? I mean, come on.

Maybe the tooth fairy changed it.

AUP stated UHI has been accounted for in IPCC. It has not. No physical studies were done by Jones at Hadley; it was all based on untested assumptions crap shooting. Below is perhaps one of the most comprehensive studies conducted on UHI effects.
http://www.geography.uc.edu/~kenhinke/uhi/Hinkel&Nelson_JGR-A_2007.pdfYour "most comprehensive [study]" covers ONE CITY. :dl:

What gives you any confidence in the current surface station network when a town of 4500 can have such an effect on temperature?What gives you any confidence you can question it on the basis of a "most comprehensive [study]" of ONE CITY? I mean, come on now. This is Ernie telling Hagar, "That waitress is flat. This beer is flat. My wallet is flat. The world HAS to be flat!!!"

AUP, is this your idea of IPCC addressing UHI?
http://forums.randi.org/imagehosting/thum_103234726aea99e154.jpg (http://forums.randi.org/vbimghost.php?do=displayimg&imgid=8988)I expect AUP will be along shortly with an IPCC reference instead of something from the forums.

Nowhere in Hansen's 1988 utterances did he mention in any quantitative way, solar, clouds, water vapor, UHI, precipitation or any other of the many mechanisms. No, it's only CO2 that's important.Nope, he only mentioned temperature- and got it right. You're sure having a heck of a time keeping the subject of the conversation in mind.

As I've tried to convey on several occasions, climate models are about tuning and parameterization. For some reason, the AGW gang here seem to think climate models are "validated". Nothing can be further from the truth. Monkeys on keyboards is a good analogy on climate model predictions.Yeah, monkeys on keyboards that make a correct prediction. That must be pretty difficult to swallow; must really burn. I can tell because you keep trying to spit it out.

Please read about cloud feedbacks:
http://irina.eas.gatech.edu/EAS_spring2006/Stephens2005.pdfWhy?

How many more do you want? 10, 20, 30? All of 'em. Bring it. You got nothin'.

You're basing all your statements about climate models on assumptions they are "reliable" and the AGW scripted responses. We have already presented several examples illustrating climate model folly. The so-called "evaluations" of them are done by the modelers themselves. No, see, there's this problem that you might not have noticed down there in the basement. It's called the "real world." The models, you see, they have to work in it. They always did. We have data for how things were, you see, and those models have to take how things were a long time ago and duplicate how things turned out now. Once they can do that, then what these guys do is keep running them past now and see what they say is going to happen. You see, that is and always was the entire point. This is what they were trying to accomplish, the entire time: make a model that can predict what's going to happen to the climate. They weren't looking for global warming. The whole global warming thing, that's a side-track to these guys. The model is the entire point.

But you see, there's this problem. Several of them made these models, and they all kept getting the same answer: global warming. And when they started to model what would happen then, some pretty gnarly stuff came out. You've heard the whole bit: melting ice sheets, rising oceans, irreversible changes in various major climate systems, like the thermohaline cycle that drives the Gulf Stream, the ENSO, the PDO, and so forth. And when they thought about what that might mean in human terms, they got scared, and figured they'd better tell the rest of us. So they did.

But people like you, when they hear something they're scared of, what they do, you see, is they deny it and hope it goes away. Only, you see, some of us don't think that's the greatest idea evar, you know? We think, hey, maybe these guys are right, and if they are, what do we do then? And it's not like they just came up with this yesterday, either. They've been saying the same thing for 20 years. And now, you see, we're starting to see the first things they predicted 20 years ago. The ice sheets are melting. And that's REALLY scary. And people who come up out of their basements, or don't live in them in the first place, see, they don't believe all the horsepucky you guys who want to deny it and hope it goes away have been spouting for 20 years any more. Because they look at the newspaper, and the newspaper says you're lying. Now, you might not believe that, because you've been down in that basement so long. Problem is, it doesn't matter what you believe any more. That "real world" thingie I talked about at first? Well, that's the problem, you see.

AGW is now caught with it's pants down. Met O is trying to salvage it somehow:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/317/5839/796

Met O January 2007, not from a newspaper CD. Directly from their website:
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/2007/pr20070104.html
:D

And a special note:
http://www.coaps.fsu.edu/~maue/tropical/

You know what that means don't you? Where has all the global warming gone?[/quote]No, see, you have to read the newspapers. AGW just melted the North Pole. This year. And if you don't read newspapers, you might have missed that. Nobody else did, though. So what you're doing, you're fighting City Hall. You're telling the tide to stop. Not gonna happen, you with me?

My recommendation? Come up out of the basement into the real world and see what's going on.

mhaze

30th October 2007, 07:54 AM

....What did you do, pick the one site that was low enough to suit you out of all the data shown on that temperature anomaly map so you could claim that HadCRUT3 says Hansen is wrong? ....cherry-pick... confusing last night's acid trip with reality.... gotta be some pretty good acid...do things like that without other scientists noticing it? ...NO ONE WILL NOTICE?. ....

Maybe the tooth fairy..... question it on the basis of a "most comprehensive [study]" of ONE CITY?...monkeys on keyboards....You got nothin'.....The model is the entire point....pretty gnarly stuff...they got scared.....that's REALLY scary...the newspaper says you're lying...you have to read the newspapers... AGW just melted the North Pole....if you don't read newspapers, you might have missed that....you're fighting City Hall...you with me?

This skeptic is not with you.

No way.

Substantial arguments against contemporary alarmist AGW theory based on recent scientific studies and data sets, with references, are posted.

And the best argument in defense of said AGW is this?

Oh, wait, I remember now. AGW scripts explain how to handle a discussion when it seems you can't win it - use these tactics - assert cherry picking, bully, ridicule, sidestep, change the subject, attack the person not the argument.

Following a script.

Schneibster

30th October 2007, 08:25 AM

See, they call that "projection." What the idea is, you use tactics like that, and every time someone says something honest, a straightforward assessment of the situation, you accuse them of lying and cheating on the data. You don't even have to prove it. You just produce some data of your own, invent it if you have to, and claim it proves they're lying. You know, like graphs that are lower on the left and higher on the right that you claim prove the variable under discussion isn't rising- since most people can't read a graph anyway, they'll just believe you, goes the argument. All you have to do is keep saying it so everybody can keep fooling themselves. Thrown in that 1500-year climate cycle, and claim it's peaking now and 500 years ago. No one will notice; they're all either stupid, or looking for a way to delude themselves just like you are. Because they're afraid. Just like you are.

It was developed by conservative think tanks funded by the oil companies and tobacco companies. Those same think tanks were started up after Goldwater lost.

Nice try though.

mhaze

30th October 2007, 08:51 AM

See, they call that "projection." Thrown in that 1500-year climate cycle, and claim it's peaking now and 500 years ago. No one will notice; they're all either stupid, or looking for a way to delude themselves just like you are. Because they're afraid. Just like you are.

It was developed by conservative think tanks funded by the oil companies and tobacco companies. Those same think tanks were started up after Goldwater lost.

Nice try though.

Nice try by you, also. I commend you though; giving Big Oil credit for inventing debating tactics superior to those detailed by the Greeks.

Oh, by the way. Your arguments were a complete flop.

Schneibster

30th October 2007, 08:52 AM

Megalodon

30th October 2007, 09:31 AM

The great climatic battery that stores and releases heat energy is the oceans, not the air. British MET sea surface temps -

1998 0.451
1999 0.209
2000 0.219
2001 0.335
2002 0.376
2003 0.406
2004 0.383
2005 0.383
2006 0.340
2007 0.317

Oceans are cooling.

Way to cook the numbers... From the NOAA dataset tha DR linked to (simple averages for the years, ocean data):

0.475 1998
0.314 2002
0.299 2005
0.257 2003
0.247 2006
0.218 2004
0.188 2001
0.112 1987
0.083 1995
0.080 1980
0.077 1991
0.048 1990
0.046 1997
0.043 1988
0.041 1983
0.035 1996
0.005 2000
0.003 1981
-0.015 1994
-0.028 1999
-0.046 1979
-0.092 1982
-0.110 1993
-0.119 1986
-0.128 1989
-0.143 1992
-0.193 1984
-0.193 1985

So, in the last 3 decades, the last 6 years are among the 7 hottest years. And it's cooling... ok

Let's see how the list looks plotted:

http://forums.randi.org/imagehosting/thum_28147274d0303994.jpg (http://forums.randi.org/vbimghost.php?do=displayimg&imgid=8990)

Look at that... In the last 6 years the average anomaly was bigger than all the years before excluding 1998. and not a little bigger also, only 87 was bigger than 0.1, and only 2001 smaller than 0.2. I guess that means it's cooling.

The Earth is not dancing to the tune of the Alarmist AGW trend line.

Yes, argument by colored font... that was the only thing missing, really ;)

Megalodon

30th October 2007, 09:50 AM

Substantial arguments against contemporary alarmist AGW theory based on recent scientific studies and data sets, with references, are posted.

And the best argument in defense of said AGW is this?

You're arguments are not substantial, and they've been blown out of the water repeatedly. Your scientific studies are either not scientific (eg. Beck) or they don't support your argument in the least, actually supporting the AGW Theory (eg. Tung). You're datasets don't say what you think they say.

Oh, wait, I remember now. AGW scripts explain how to handle a discussion when it seems you can't win it - use these tactics - assert cherry picking, bully, ridicule, sidestep, change the subject, attack the person not the argument.

This would be funny if it wasn't depressing. It's not like there's even a discussion going on to win. You are making a fool of yourself, and we are laughing at you. It's that simple.

mhaze

30th October 2007, 02:37 PM

For you, probably- but then, ALL arguments are a flop for you.

ETA: Might as well add a little bit of linkage (http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2004/Republican-Propaganda1sep04.htm), since some folks won't know what I'm talking about.

I have every certainty that we could have an interesting discussion about politics but it isn't of interest to me and is off topic.

Not all arguments are perceived as a flop to me, and not all arguments made by you need to be defined as a flop by me., you and I are in agreement probably on 90% of the issues relating to AGW

We differ on the CO2 argument (which means that we differ on All Important Things to you, and on Unimportant Things to me).

mhaze

30th October 2007, 02:55 PM

You're arguments are not substantial, and they've been blown out of the water repeatedly. Your scientific studies are either not scientific (eg. Beck) or they don't support your argument in the least, actually supporting the AGW Theory (eg. Tung). You're datasets don't say what you think they say.

This would be funny if it wasn't depressing. It's not like there's even a discussion going on to win. You are making a fool of yourself, and we are laughing at you. It's that simple.

I have no problem at all with your data set or the conclusion you have reached with the time series used therein, as long as the conclusion is based on the data. Similarly, I have no problem with looking at the real loss of heat from the oceans in the last six years.

Obviously, both conclusions are limited to the time frame and the data series used to support them. But you knew that.

Here are some of your gems of scientific wisdom and understanding, most of which polite and reasonable people have not bothered to respond to.
Psst, don't look now, but you're lying again.
I really doubt that you can sink any lower than this in your desperate attempts to explain why a lie wasn't a lie afterall.
So a liar lies again to justify is lie.
Thank you... now any doubts that you are a liar are dispelled.
Another lie.
So I assume that your only purpose is to look like a fool, which you manage quite nicely.
You are the one lying right now, by saying that I'm smearing you.
You're depressing...Your prior comment seems most applicable to yourself, so here it is.This would be funny if it wasn't depressing. It's not like there's even a discussion going on to win. You are making a fool of yourself, and we are laughing at you. It's that simple.
Of course, you misrepresent other people's comments, too. Want to discuss Tung? Let's see, here was our last snip about Tung. I said this, and you conveniently vanished.And actually, I thought the approach by Tung in attempting to "back out" a signal for global warming quite interesting. That does not mean I agree with it, and the details of his approach could of course be discussed. I noted that he pegged natural variation at 0.2C. Not having the paper in front of me, perhaps it was 0.18C.
But then, that dissertation won't write itself, will it? How's it going?

CapelDodger

30th October 2007, 06:50 PM

I have no problem at all with your data set or the conclusion you have reached with the time series used therein, as long as the conclusion is based on the data. Similarly, I have no problem with looking at the real loss of heat from the oceans in the last six years.

There has been no loss of heat from the oceans in the last six years, quite the contrary. You remember how the Arctic ice melted over the summer? An inflow of warm water from the Atlantic made a contribution to that. These days there's plenty of warm water to go around.

Obviously, both conclusions are limited to the time frame and the data series used to support them. But you knew that.

Nobody claims to know what words you're going to string together. This means what now :confused:?

Here are some of your gems of scientific wisdom and understanding, most of which polite and reasonable people have not bothered to respond to.
[/quote]
Megalodon can get rather exercised, but I can appreciate the frustration lying behind that. I can also recognise the adolescent sarcasm of "gems of scientific wisdom" followed by whining. You never respond to the actual scientific points that are made. You race off on tangents, flap about chaos and stuff, cast aspersions on honest scientists, what about the Middle Ages, eh?, anything but take in a reality that discomforts you. Then you whine when people get irritated by it.

Don't think you're capturing the moral high-ground from Megalodon.

CapelDodger

30th October 2007, 07:08 PM

Schneibster

30th October 2007, 07:32 PM

I have every certainty that we could have an interesting discussion about politics but it isn't of interest to me and is off topic.

Not all arguments are perceived as a flop to me, and not all arguments made by you need to be defined as a flop by me., you and I are in agreement probably on 90% of the issues relating to AGW

We differ on the CO2 argument (which means that we differ on All Important Things to you, and on Unimportant Things to me).That is interesting. Let's see just how that breaks down.

1. You've used political and rhetorical arguments in a technical/scientific discussion. This is incompatible, to my mind, with a discussion of the technical/scientific issues. Not to put too fine a point on it, and I don't mean this to be insulting but I do intend to be very frank, I perceive you as using arguments that have little to do with a realistic appraisal of what's happening, and everything to do with politics and rhetoric, in a forum that is not supposed to be about that. I am startled to see you state that you are not interested in a conversation about politics since I see most of what you have said as far more political than technical/scientific. Accusations of lying by climate scientists, etc. are to me political arguments, that have little to do with the technical/scientific merits of their research and the conclusions they draw from it. To me, evaluation of these matters depends more upon the consistency of their results with known facts about the atmosphere and the Earth's heat budget than with accusations of faking data or other misfeasance, and I am frankly at a loss to understand how you think that anyone could fake this given the large amount of scientific effort and the large number of data sources that all seem to interlock and say the same thing. I may be wrong, but I perceive your underlying motivations as political rather than technical/scientific. I'd like to see you justify the style and content of the arguments you have been using rather than making a statement that may or may not be yet another rhetorical device. Quite frankly, I suspect that it is in fact a rhetorical device on your part, and if that is untrue, it is at least well deserved. If you wanted something different, you should have started far differently or switched to a different path long ago.
2. You appear to be stating that you believe that the arguments for AGW are based entirely upon CO2 emissions. This, to me, flies in the face of obvious facts, to wit:
a. Climate scientists in general maintain that only half of the anthropogenic warming is due to CO2. Numerous other gases are released by human activities and these other gases (halocarbons, methane, and so forth) account for the other half.
b. Furthermore, water vapor, in currently accepted and well tested scenarios functions as a GWG, but is not treated as an anthropogenic gas but as a feedback; in other words, the temperature increase accounts for the increased water vapor content, which then further increases the temperature.
3. The other gases are either not easily controlled, or are already being controlled by protocols other than Kyoto (specifically, the Montreal Protocol which limits CFC emissions). CO2 therefore is the primary point of attack. It is the one we can do something about. And doing something about CO2, provided we don't go crazy creating other gases, should reduce the problem enough that the Earth's homeostatic balance can deal with the remainder.
4. However, despite these known facts, ones which are well documented in the literature, and in links we have provided, you continue to insist that both we and the scientists doing this research believe that CO2 is entirely to blame.
5. And to top it all off, neither any of us nor any of the scientists engaged in this research believes that GWGs are fully to blame for all temperature fluctuations in the climate for all time; it is well documented again in the literature and in links we have provided that there are other driving forces in the climate, including variations in the Sun's output, variations in Earth's orbit, variations in the placement of the continents and their sizes, variations in volcanic activity, asteroid strikes, and gases created, destroyed, released, or absorbed by natural activities of both living and unliving agents that can, under the right circumstances, become drivers of climate changes both upward and downward. Nor is this an exhaustive list of possible driving forces.
All we are saying is that right now, the most important driving force is GWGs, and of those, the most important is CO2.

In the face of all of these well-documented facts, and of our extensively stated beliefs and the documentation that underlies them, and in the face of the statements you have made in this post, I have to ask you: what the hell do you think you're arguing against? Because based on what you've written here, you have no basis upon which to argue other than politics, which you have stated you are uninterested in discussing.

Would you care to explain your behavior?

CapelDodger

30th October 2007, 07:39 PM

Let's see how the list looks plotted:

http://forums.randi.org/imagehosting/thum_28147274d0303994.jpg (http://forums.randi.org/vbimghost.php?do=displayimg&imgid=8990)

Look at that... In the last 6 years the average anomaly was bigger than all the years before excluding 1998. and not a little bigger also, only 87 was bigger than 0.1, and only 2001 smaller than 0.2. I guess that means it's cooling.

The new normal does stand out, doesn't it? It's the new normal that's apparently been "stagnating", which is meant to be some kind of refuge. Trust the oceans to provide the surprise shift between normals, and trust to such ponderous timescales.

The next El Nino will start from the new normal base. That's gonna be warm.

mhaze

30th October 2007, 09:16 PM

David Rodale

30th October 2007, 09:21 PM

Way to cook the numbers... From the NOAA dataset tha DR linked to (simple averages for the years, ocean data):

0.475 1998
0.314 2002
0.299 2005
0.257 2003
0.247 2006
0.218 2004
0.188 2001
0.112 1987
0.083 1995
0.080 1980
0.077 1991
0.048 1990
0.046 1997
0.043 1988
0.041 1983
0.035 1996
0.005 2000
0.003 1981
-0.015 1994
-0.028 1999
-0.046 1979
-0.092 1982
-0.110 1993
-0.119 1986
-0.128 1989
-0.143 1992
-0.193 1984
-0.193 1985

So, in the last 3 decades, the last 6 years are among the 7 hottest years. And it's cooling... ok

Let's see how the list looks plotted:

http://forums.randi.org/imagehosting/thum_28147274d0303994.jpg (http://forums.randi.org/vbimghost.php?do=displayimg&imgid=8990)

Look at that... In the last 6 years the average anomaly was bigger than all the years before excluding 1998. and not a little bigger also, only 87 was bigger than 0.1, and only 2001 smaller than 0.2. I guess that means it's cooling.

UAH data on global temps. You seem to have missed 2007. Considering it's through Sept, which way will it go? Up?
http://forums.randi.org/imagehosting/thum_103234727f39d8f58a.jpg (http://forums.randi.org/vbimghost.php?do=displayimg&imgid=9004)

I've already posted these. Sorry Meg, there's no warming. Something is happening, but it's not following AGW. Note again, data is through Sep07. Which way will it go? Up?
http://forums.randi.org/imagehosting/thum_103234716c0ce30d7c.jpg (http://forums.randi.org/vbimghost.php?do=displayimg&imgid=8833)http://forums.randi.org/imagehosting/thum_103234716c0ed51458.jpg (http://forums.randi.org/vbimghost.php?do=displayimg&imgid=8834)

David Rodale

30th October 2007, 09:29 PM

There has been no loss of heat from the oceans in the last six years, quite the contrary. You remember how the Arctic ice melted over the summer? An inflow of warm water from the Atlantic made a contribution to that. These days there's plenty of warm water to go around.

Nobody claims to know what words you're going to string together. This means what now :confused:?

Megalodon can get rather exercised, but I can appreciate the frustration lying behind that. I can also recognise the adolescent sarcasm of "gems of scientific wisdom" followed by whining. You never respond to the actual scientific points that are made. You race off on tangents, flap about chaos and stuff, cast aspersions on honest scientists, what about the Middle Ages, eh?, anything but take in a reality that discomforts you. Then you whine when people get irritated by it.

Don't think you're capturing the moral high-ground from Megalodon.
According to JPL, the recent Arctic melting is due to unusual wind patterns carrying the ice south of Greenland.
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/videos/earth/earth20071001/

Please provide the evidence the oceans are gaining heat, in Joules. If you're going to make the statement "quite the contrary", then it's time to present the evidence.
SST is not ocean heat content.
What is going on currently with the record low tropical storm activity?

Why do you suppose Arctic temperature records don't match ROW (rest of world) surface station network compared to the 1930's? Could it have something to do with UHI contaminating GISTEMP and HadCRUT3 data?
http://forums.randi.org/imagehosting/thum_103234727f5f28feb2.jpg (http://forums.randi.org/vbimghost.php?do=displayimg&imgid=9005)

Schneibster

30th October 2007, 09:44 PM

David Rodale

30th October 2007, 10:07 PM

David, you've already been shown to have manipulated data with the intent to deceive, and you have not responded except to post more data or repeat past postings. Why should we even bother to look further? Why should we bother to debunk your manipulations? Having shown it once, why would we even question whether you have manipulated it, and are lying? You've cried wolf, and we came and looked, and there was no wolf. You are toast.
Meg didn't include 2007, is that deceptive?

Another "you are lying"? Try responding to the post. Lyman made a correction to the original 2006 paper on ocean heat content change. What is the correction?

Constructive criticism: when you write long novels, I don't bother reading. Your last post was precise and to the point with the customary personal attacks, but at least I read it.

CD errantly stated "An inflow of warm water from the Atlantic made a contribution to that". According to JPL (link included), that is not the case.

I'm interested in your take on why we are witnessing 30 year lows in tropical storm activity.

a_unique_person

30th October 2007, 10:15 PM

According to JPL, the recent Arctic melting is due to unusual wind patterns carrying the ice south of Greenland.
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/videos/earth/earth20071001/

Please provide the evidence the oceans are gaining heat, in Joules. If you're going to make the statement "quite the contrary", then it's time to present the evidence.
SST is not ocean heat content.
What is going on currently with the record low tropical storm activity?

Why do you suppose Arctic temperature records don't match ROW (rest of world) surface station network compared to the 1930's? Could it have something to do with UHI contaminating GISTEMP and HadCRUT3 data?
http://forums.randi.org/imagehosting/thum_103234727f5f28feb2.jpg

You have to prove your claim.

a_unique_person

30th October 2007, 10:18 PM

UAH is taken to be impeccable, but it's had plenty of work on it's temperature records as well.

Schneibster

31st October 2007, 12:36 AM

Meg didn't include 2007, is that deceptive?Depends on the data, doesn't it? Do you have a source that says that his source had 2007 data? Considering 2007 isn't over yet, I suspect you don't, and that this is therefore another lie.

Another "you are lying"? Try responding to the post. I did. How else am I supposed to reply to lies other than to point out they're lies? Your credibility is below zero, and rapidly heading further down.

Lyman made a correction to the original 2006 paper on ocean heat content change. What is the correction? Complete non-sequitur. The subject here is your credibility, and it is not improved by attempting to change the subject, nor is it improved by the fact that you have not responded to repeated positive proof that what you said did not correspond to well-known facts, not once, not ten times, but in nearly every post you have made here. In every case, you whomp up some more fake data, post a few more fake graphs, and change the subject. I see no further point in doing anything but repeatedly pointing this out until you stop.

Constructive criticism: when you write long novels, I don't bother reading. I don't really care whether you do or not. My point is not that you should read them; having noted the above behavior on so many occasions, my only concern is that anyone reading what you write not confuse it with reality.

Your last post was precise and to the point with the customary personal attacks, but at least I read it.So?

CD errantly stated "An inflow of warm water from the Atlantic made a contribution to that". According to JPL (link included), that is not the case. You'll have to take that up with him. Since you addressed this post to me, it seems you're having trouble keeping it straight who you're talking to. Considering what I've seen of your habits so far, that's no surprise.

I'm interested in your take on why we are witnessing 30 year lows in tropical storm activity.I am uninterested in discussing fake statistics other than to note that they are fake.

stevea

31st October 2007, 04:20 AM

Aside from the model, Hansen had a supposed "scientific basis" for discovering global warming. I am curious what your opinion is of it.
....
Whichever way you take it, he is asserting that the surface temperature data should be used, and > 3SD is the 99% percentile of variation and therefore must be manmade....

I'm rather impressed with Hansen's method of evaluating forcing functions from such a meagre set of data. But I'd like to see some of his primary papers. The slide-show stuff is both alarmist and not particularly supportive of his argument. Parts detract from the main points.

I'd like to understand where you are seeing 3.SD from Hansen and precisely what it refers to. Could you provide a reference ? TIA

stevea

31st October 2007, 05:00 AM

It certainly has no influence on climate change.

I see, so you argue the admittedly pointless.

Well there's a thing.

The model has worked very well, though, hasn't it? Twenty years on of more or less Scenario B, ...

20 yrs is chicken-sh*t in this time scale. We could certainly find a unique weather feature for any 20 year period since accurate records have been kept. All that is lacking in these other cases is a correlated anthropomorphic variable and a chicken-little.

Of course all the other "models" would have ceased to match observation hence. Perhaps Hansen's will fail too or perhaps not, but a statistical evaluation is the only means of measuring the extent of correlation, and the improbability of chance being the cause.

Rah-rah chearleaders looking only at short term trend data is quite insufficient justification.

--
"There is more stupidity than hydrogen in the universe, and it has a longer shelf life."
- Frank Zappa

Megalodon

31st October 2007, 05:38 AM

Meg didn't include 2007, is that deceptive?

I don't know what school of thought you come from, but in mine we can't make anual averages with 9 months... call me picky.

I could, of course, make up numbers, but that would be... well, making up numbers.

But even if we discuss your made up numbers, the point stands. The global ocean is warmer now than in every other recorded year except 1998. The average temperature anomaly for the first 9 months of 2007 is bigger than the average anual anomaly of 1979-2000 by almost 0.2.

You can plot all the graphs starting in an average 1998 that you want, it doesn't change the facts.

Megalodon

31st October 2007, 05:58 AM

Here are some of your gems of scientific wisdom and understanding, most of which polite and reasonable people have not bothered to respond to.

You know, this could count as another lie, since it's perfectly clear to anyone that has read the thread that I argue the science of the subject, despite the desperate attempts of some to muudy the waters.

I can't be bothered to check where you got the qoutes, but I'll play it from memory.

Psst, don't look now, but you're lying again.

You were lying again... If you have a problem with me saying so, stop it.

I really doubt that you can sink any lower than this in your desperate attempts to explain why a lie wasn't a lie afterall.

You're right, my prediction was wrong. If I recall correctly, you did sink lower a couple of posts down.

So a liar lies again to justify is lie.

Yes, this phrase is correct, and it applied to Michaels, who has been shown here to be a liar.

Thank you... now any doubts that you are a liar are dispelled.

I think this was directed to DR right? I'm quite sure it was right, nonetheless. You see, generally it takes a lot of evidence to make me say that someone is lying. So nor

Another lie.

There were so many, so I'm assuming that this statement was also correct.

So I assume that your only purpose is to look like a fool, which you manage quite nicely.

I don't remember if this was directed to you or DR, but it applies regardless...

You are the one lying right now, by saying that I'm smearing you.

Another correct statement... what is your problem? If you want to dish it out, you better expect to take it, my dear...

You're depressing...

Oh yes, you are depressing...

Of course, you misrepresent other people's comments, too. Want to discuss Tung? Let's see, here was our last snip about Tung. I said this, and you conveniently vanished.And actually, I thought the approach by Tung in attempting to "back out" a signal for global warming quite interesting. That does not mean I agree with it, and the details of his approach could of course be discussed. I noted that he pegged natural variation at 0.2C. Not having the paper in front of me, perhaps it was 0.18C.

What do you want me to discuss with you here? You bring a paper to the table thinking that it will back up your statements. I show you to be wrong, and you immediatelly say it's interesting, but that "does not mean I agree with it". It's irretrivably stupid, and I will not be baited into defending a paper you thought was evidence for your position.

But then, that dissertation won't write itself, will it? How's it going?

Quite well, thank you. One paper out, two in press, and writing two others at the moment... Busy, busy, busy...

mhaze

31st October 2007, 08:41 AM

I don't know what school of thought you come from, but in mine we can't make anual averages with 9 months... call me picky.

I could, of course, make up numbers, but that would be... well, making up numbers.

No annual averages with 9 months? How about 5 months, then?:D

My commendations. The school of thought you come from is NOT THAT OF HANSEN who said the following..."The first five months of 1988 are so warm globally that we conclude that 1988 will be the warmest year on record unless there is a remarkable, improbable cooling in the remainder of the year".

mhaze

31st October 2007, 08:46 AM

I'm rather impressed with Hansen's method of evaluating forcing functions from such a meagre set of data. But I'd like to see some of his primary papers. The slide-show stuff is both alarmist and not particularly supportive of his argument. Parts detract from the main points.

I'd like to understand where you are seeing 3.SD from Hansen and precisely what it refers to. Could you provide a reference ? TIA

Here is one, Hansen et. al. 1988 is online. I suspect the exact definition changes from paper to paper of his but haven't had the interest to line up a number of them and check that. In any case, this is Stat 101 at work.

http://forums.randi.org/imagehosting/14224472894921ea7c.bmp (http://forums.randi.org/vbimghost.php?do=displayimg&imgid=9007)

Megalodon

31st October 2007, 08:51 AM

The new normal does stand out, doesn't it? It's the new normal that's apparently been "stagnating", which is meant to be some kind of refuge. Trust the oceans to provide the surprise shift between normals, and trust to such ponderous timescales.

It doesn't look much better in the atmosphere.

And this during a period of decreasing solar activity, that should have caused a reduction of 0.18 from around 2001 to now... instead we see an increase of around 0.11 (attention, the data is still not all in in 2007, so it might actually be a smaller increase, especially if we have a very cold November and December).

The next El Nino will start from the new normal base. That's gonna be warm.

I hope not, but I think so...

mhaze

31st October 2007, 08:52 AM

Two more, from the abstract and conclusion of Hansen et. al. 1988.

http://forums.randi.org/imagehosting/14224472896a2b3a3e.bmp (http://forums.randi.org/vbimghost.php?do=displayimg&imgid=9008)

http://forums.randi.org/imagehosting/14224472896bb09cae.bmp (http://forums.randi.org/vbimghost.php?do=displayimg&imgid=9009)

Megalodon

31st October 2007, 09:40 AM

No annual averages with 9 months? How about 5 months, then?:D

My commendations. The school of thought you come from is NOT THAT OF HANSEN who said the following..."The first five months of 1988 are so warm globally that we conclude that 1988 will be the warmest year on record unless there is a remarkable, improbable cooling in the remainder of the year".

So now you can't read either?
He made an - accurate - estimate from the observation of the first 5 months. He addead that his estimate would be wrong if "there is a remarkable, improbable cooling in the remainder of the year".
How you get from there to 5 months averages, it's anyones guess...

varwoche

31st October 2007, 10:34 AM

False.

B-C were discarded as moot points You have planted yourself unabashedly in the black=white white=black realm.

Schneibster

31st October 2007, 10:46 AM

He made an - accurate - estimate from the observation of the first 5 months. He addead that his estimate would be wrong if "there is a remarkable, improbable cooling in the remainder of the year".
How you get from there to 5 months averages, it's anyones guess...I get the impression mhaze isn't all that good at math. Seems to have general problems with noting that graphs that are lower on the left and higher on the right are going up, adding 1500 to 1100 and getting 2000, and averages in general.

BobK

31st October 2007, 11:07 AM

When someone is unfamiliar with something, they really shouldn't be making assertions about it. Such as the time period required to create a yearly mean temperature.

Many of the stations commonly have missing months of data. I've seen a few as 7 months and yet they will determine a mean temperature for the year. Depends on distribution. Sounds ridiculous, but it's true. Makes you wonder about the size of the error. If Hansen can do it, why not other people?

Here is an actual year of temperatures used by Hansen in determining the state of the global temperature. 999.9 means no data for the period. I've broke the lines for easier reading.

YEAR JAN FEB MAR APR MAY JUN JUL AUG
2001 -21.4 -21.4 -25.4 -22.2 -8.9 -1.1 0.4 999.9

SEP OCT NOV DEC D-J-F M-A-M J-J-A S-O-N ANN
999.9 999.9 999.9 999.9 -21.1 -18.8 -0.2 999.9 -12.64

The station is Gmo Im.E.T. Site ID 200460003 located 80.6N 58.0E. The most northern station now in use by GISS. Their station list is here. (http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/station_data/station_list.txt)

I can't provide a direct link to the data. The pages are only temporarily created. They make you access each site from the search box on this page. (http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/station_data/)

Put in the site name or ID. Then you have to click another link containing the site name. Then you get a chart. Finally, at that page you click the link that says 'download monthly data as text'. They don't make it easy if you want a lot of sites.

Megalodon

31st October 2007, 01:11 PM

Many of the stations commonly have missing months of data. I've seen a few as 7 months and yet they will determine a mean temperature for the year. Depends on distribution. Sounds ridiculous, but it's true. Makes you wonder about the size of the error. If Hansen can do it, why not other people?

Well, for what I was able to discern, the trimester that was missing was replaced by some sort of weighted average of the previous years.
Not something that I was willing to calculate, for the purpose of an internet debate.
So no, it was not made with 7 months, and it does not depend on distribution.

They don't make it easy if you want a lot of sites.

Par for the course... I was trying to dig out some data on tropical storms and sunspots, and there the tables are not even formatted properly.
On the other hand, data availability is improving in all fields. Trying to find any kind of database 10 years ago would have been much more complicated :)

mhaze

31st October 2007, 01:58 PM

I get the impression mhaze isn't all that good at math. Seems to have general problems with noting that graphs that are lower on the left and higher on the right are going up, adding 1500 to 1100 and getting 2000, and averages in general.

Where do you get these gems, Schneib? They are definitely quite good. And this one, you never answered -
What kind of idiot would maintain that a climate cycle with a period of 1500 years peaked 500 years ago and is peaking again now?
Where is the quote from the original person who said that?

mhaze

31st October 2007, 02:01 PM

CapelDodger

31st October 2007, 05:50 PM

It doesn't look much better in the atmosphere.

And this during a period of decreasing solar activity, that should have caused a reduction of 0.18 from around 2001 to now... instead we see an increase of around 0.11 (attention, the data is still not all in in 2007, so it might actually be a smaller increase, especially if we have a very cold November and December).

(Point of detail : climate years are measured from December to November, by some freak of history. December 2006 is included in 2007, and it wasn't noticeably cool.)

That 0.18 is de-trended, the 0.1 decadal trend being what it was de-trended by. The reduced range is evidence of a new and growing influence. Even Solar Cyclists are conceding a "stagnation" of climate during this solar minimum. No cooling. That's always just over the horizon.

I hope not, but I think so...

There is a new normal, and the next big El Nino will start from there. It's a sample of one, but 1998 did usher in that new normal. The next El Nino may usher in the next new normal :).

Add in the solar cycle and the next three-to-eight years should be definitive. There's bound to be an El Nino on that timescale.

CapelDodger

31st October 2007, 05:56 PM

CapelDodger

31st October 2007, 06:09 PM

I get the impression mhaze isn't all that good at math. Seems to have general problems with noting that graphs that are lower on the left and higher on the right are going up, adding 1500 to 1100 and getting 2000, and averages in general.

mhaze brought this cycle in via Singer, who makes it a 1500 plus or minus 500 year cycle. Which fits. It would fit almost anything. Singer introduces the plus-or-minus entirely independently. All of a sudden, there it is. And shortly after, there's mhaze quoting it.

mhaze can add up. What he can't do well is discriminate. Without that plus-or-minus he never would have bought it. With it, he did.

mhaze

31st October 2007, 06:13 PM

Did 1988 turn out to be the warmest year on record?

I have no problem with that. Just noting that less than 12 months can and is used to draw conclusions from. Averages being one such conclusion.

mhaze

31st October 2007, 06:16 PM

mhaze brought this cycle in via Singer, who makes it a 1500 plus or minus 500 year cycle. Which fits. It would fit almost anything. Singer introduces the plus-or-minus entirely independently. All of a sudden, there it is. And shortly after, there's mhaze quoting it.

mhaze can add up. What he can't do well is discriminate. Without that plus-or-minus he never would have bought it. With it, he did.

Thanks for the clarification (but that does not excuse Schnieb's misquote).

You are correct, I wouldn't have given Singer's theory the time of day except for the plus or minus 500. Whether that means one can't discriminate is another issue, not really sure where that argument might head...seemingly anywhere, quite indiscriminately.:)

CapelDodger

31st October 2007, 06:39 PM

So now you can't read either?
He made an - accurate - estimate from the observation of the first 5 months. He addead that his estimate would be wrong if "there is a remarkable, improbable cooling in the remainder of the year".
How you get from there to 5 months averages, it's anyones guess...

From your "accurate" I infer that 1988 did turn out to be the warmest year on record, and no remarkably improbable cooling cropped up. The guy's right, and the argument is that he had no right to be. He just lucked out. Again. It's sad.

David Rodale has made a thing about Sep '07 being no warmer than Sep '88, ergo no warming, while mhaze has made a thing about the NH summer of '88 being remarkable. At the time. Which it was, we all remarked on it at the time. Every other month of '07 has been warmer than the '88 equivalent, and it was normal.

The new normal is evident in the eight-year (should by nine by now, but habits die hard) non-warming timescale that contrarians make up so much of. The stagnation, the pause, the peak even. Year-on-year in the new normal, everything's normal. Ergo (here's the fallacy) the normal doesn't change.

If that 0.18C de-trended solar influence is for real, there's going to be a serious surge-effect on warming in the next three-to-eight. If it's not, why are we talking about it?

CapelDodger

31st October 2007, 06:59 PM

Thanks for the clarification (but that does not excuse Schnieb's misquote).

You are correct, I wouldn't have given Singer's theory the time of day except for the plus or minus 500. Whether that means one can't discriminate is another issue, not really sure where that argument might head...seemingly anywhere, quite indiscriminately.:)

So where did Singer come up with the plus-or-minus from? He's hot on D-O events with the 1450-year cycle, but there's no such plus-or-minus there. A cycle of 1500 plus-or-minus 500 is no cycle at all. It fits any pattern of "things go up sometimes and down other times".

Of course you needed the plus-or-minus pasted on, and from a trusted source. Singer and the other chap. Paladins.

There's no more behind the plus-or-minus than it being required to make this latest refuge fit with the MWP, in which so much was invested earlier on.

BobK

31st October 2007, 07:09 PM

Well, for what I was able to discern, the trimester that was missing was replaced by some sort of weighted average of the previous years.
Not something that I was willing to calculate, for the purpose of an internet debate.
So no, it was not made with 7 months, and it does not depend on distribution.
:)
Just to clarify. I never said that particular year was done from seven months data. I simply said that is what I've noticed. The Dec. of the previous year had data so that ANN was composed of eight months.

The distribution does matter. If two of the quarterly periods during the Dec.-Nov. year have less than two months of data they won't compute a yearly mean. They can actually use as little as six months of data with the correct distribution. Entirely miss one quarter since they only require three quarters to compute a yearly mean. Also miss one month in each of the others since they only require two months to compute a quarter. One might begin to think they are more interested in getting another data point than in the actual accuracy of the result.

CapelDodger

31st October 2007, 07:22 PM

I have no problem with that. Just noting that less than 12 months can and is used to draw conclusions from. Averages being one such conclusion.

The first five months of 1988 were far from average, so much so that it was already remarkable and unusual enough to make 1988 a record year unless something equally remarkable happened later in the year in the opposite sense. Which, unsurprisingly, it didn't. Temperature peaked in September, then cooled off normally.

Hansen made this prediction in '88 for good reason. It wasn't just five months of an average year, it was five remarkably warm months of a record year (as it turned out). The connection isn't hard to make, but the "unless something equally unusual happens in the opposite sense later" covers the outliers.

David Rodale

31st October 2007, 09:19 PM

I don't know what school of thought you come from, but in mine we can't make anual averages with 9 months... call me picky.

I could, of course, make up numbers, but that would be... well, making up numbers.

But even if we discuss your made up numbers, the point stands. The global ocean is warmer now than in every other recorded year except 1998. The average temperature anomaly for the first 9 months of 2007 is bigger than the average anual anomaly of 1979-2000 by almost 0.2.

You can plot all the graphs starting in an average 1998 that you want, it doesn't change the facts.
Megalodon, you’re missing the point entirely. The only intent on my part was to illustrate the fact there is no warming and hasn’t been since 2001 after the recovery from El Nino 1998. Surface measurements are not the absolute metric for determining whether global warming is occurring, ocean heat content is. If it is not increasing each year, neither will surface temperatures.

Ocean heat content is the true indicator of ‘global warming’. If you choose to believe otherwise, you have the right to be wrong. The oceans absorb and store 1000x more heat than the atmosphere. If the ocean depths are not warming, there is no global warming occurring.

CD was correct in his assessment of El Nino in that it is a release of heat, however the oceans have not regained the heat loss since 1998. This is why Met O blew their prediction for another very strong El Nino for 2006/2007 which in turn was their platform for 2007 to be the “hottest year on record”. The so-called experts didn’t see this coming.

Land/SST are dependent on ocean heat content, not the other way around.

Lyman’s 2006 article said there was a 48 zJ heat loss in the oceans. A draft for a correction was released in April 2007 however was only preliminary. The correction was officially released today:
Finally, a revised estimate of upper-ocean ocean heat content suggests than no significant warming or
cooling has occurred in recent years, with ocean heat content increasing by only 1 (± 16)
11 × 1021 J between 2004 and 2006.
This version includes the obligatory AGW clause which did not appear in the original 2006 version. Maybe he’s up for a budget review

Couple that with the 30 year record low tropical storm activity, is anyone still willing to argue the earth is warming? My “stagnant” temperature remarks don’t appear so silly now do they? Where's that AGW signal?
Disclaimer: Schneibster stated the data below is fake. View at your own peril
http://www.coaps.fsu.edu/~maue/tropical/update1.jpg
http://forums.randi.org/imagehosting/thum_103234729439732b45.jpg (http://forums.randi.org/vbimghost.php?do=displayimg&imgid=9019)

Since the Lyman article is based on 2003 to partial 2006 data, what will be most interesting is the next data release in the coming year, and observe what happens the next six months. Keep in mind there is always a lag response to solar and oceanic change.

CD, like it or not, Sep07 is no warmer than Sep88, and it's on it's way down.

It looks like you guys may just have to wait until 2009 now ;)

mhaze

31st October 2007, 09:28 PM

So where did Singer come up with the plus-or-minus from? He's hot on D-O events with the 1450-year cycle, but there's no such plus-or-minus there. A cycle of 1500 plus-or-minus 500 is no cycle at all. It fits any pattern of "things go up sometimes and down other times".

Of course you needed the plus-or-minus pasted on, and from a trusted source. Singer and the other chap. Paladins.

There's no more behind the plus-or-minus than it being required to make this latest refuge fit with the MWP, in which so much was invested earlier on.

why 1500 plus or minus 500?

well, do solar cycles occur on an exact schedule? No.

El Nino? No.

Etc.

Also note. Bond et al. 2001

Iciness in the North Atlantic, as registered by grit dropped on the ocean floor from drifting and melting ice, is a good example of the climate data now available. Gerard Bond of Columbia University and his colleagues showed that, over the past 12 000 years, there were many icy intervals like the Little Ice Age – eight to ten, depending on how you count the wiggles in the density of ice-rafted debris. These alternated with warm phases, of which the most recent were the Medieval Warm Period (roughly AD 900–1300) and the Modern Warm Period (since 1900). A comparison with variations in carbon-14 and beryllium-10 production showed excellent matches between high cosmic rays and cold climates, and low cosmic rays and the warm intervals.

mhaze

31st October 2007, 09:40 PM

CD was correct in his assessment of El Nino in that it is a release of heat, however the oceans have not regained the heat loss since 1998. This is why Met O blew their prediction for another very strong El Nino for 2006/2007 which in turn was their platform for 2007 to be the “hottest year on record”. The so-called experts didn’t see this coming.

How could that have been so? Was evidence of PDO shift not clear?

a_unique_person

31st October 2007, 10:07 PM

Just to clarify. I never said that particular year was done from seven months data. I simply said that is what I've noticed. The Dec. of the previous year had data so that ANN was composed of eight months.

The distribution does matter. If two of the quarterly periods during the Dec.-Nov. year have less than two months of data they won't compute a yearly mean. They can actually use as little as six months of data with the correct distribution. Entirely miss one quarter since they only require three quarters to compute a yearly mean. Also miss one month in each of the others since they only require two months to compute a quarter. One might begin to think they are more interested in getting another data point than in the actual accuracy of the result.

Conspiracy theory forum is down the hall, on the left.

Megalodon

1st November 2007, 04:15 AM

It's simple. You just made the part up about 5 month averages. I followed the comment with the exact quote as to the use of the partial year data. Duhhh....

I'm really getting tired of you... You said:

No annual averages with 9 months? How about 5 months, then?

There is no way to parse that sentence that doesn't relate "5 months" to "annual averages".

So I guess your accusation of me making things up is just another lie, right?

I know that you're itching to be able to show that 'the other side makes things up to', but it's not happening yet.

Megalodon

1st November 2007, 04:58 AM

Megalodon, you’re missing the point entirely. The only intent on my part was to illustrate the fact there is no warming and hasn’t been since 2001 after the recovery from El Nino 1998.

David, stop it. I posted the graphs, provided you with the explanation for them. You refuse to see what is in front of you. Now you shift the goal posts to 2001 as the beginning of the "no warming". Let me refresh your memory:
-you already claimed that the warming trend in the last 30 years was mainly due to the 98 El Niño, and I proved you wrong;
-you claimed that if the plot started from 98 it would show cooling, and I proved you wrong;
-now you shifted the start of this trend to 2001 -the start of the decrease in solar activity- and guess what

http://forums.randi.org/imagehosting/2814729a9ef4fee0.jpg (http://forums.randi.org/vbimghost.php?do=displayimg&imgid=9025)

I proved you wrong again.

Ocean heat content is the true indicator of ‘global warming’. If you choose to believe otherwise, you have the right to be wrong. The oceans absorb and store 1000x more heat than the atmosphere. If the ocean depths are not warming, there is no global warming occurring.

Talk about moving the goalposts yet again... Some parts of the "deep ocean" will not be in contact with the atmosphere for 2000 years. I guess you could warm up the atmosphere to 100ºC tomorrow, and be happy for a couple of decades that there was no GW, since the "deep ocean" was not warming up.

This version includes the obligatory AGW clause which did not appear in the original 2006 version. Maybe he’s up for a budget review

So now you're getting a piece of Diamond's act? That's cool, it's a good sign that I should stop addressing you...

Couple that with the 30 year record low tropical storm activity, is anyone still willing to argue the earth is warming? My “stagnant” temperature remarks don’t appear so silly now do they? Where's that AGW signal?

I don't know if the data is fake, but I do know that someone took it very lightly to make a calculation of "cyclone energy" before the end of the hurricane season. It smells like propaganda, especially since the number of named storms, and the number of cat.3+ doesn't seem to be unusually low. But I have to look deeper into it before making any big statements on the matter.

CD, like it or not, Sep07 is no warmer than Sep88, and it's on it's way down.

Here are your cooling Septembers

http://forums.randi.org/imagehosting/thum_2814715cd9281d19.jpg (http://forums.randi.org/vbimghost.php?do=displayimg&imgid=8818)

Megalodon

1st November 2007, 05:39 AM

Now if we indicate the % of months that are within tenths of degrees of temp. anomaly, from September 2001:

http://forums.randi.org/imagehosting/thum_2814729b8d9282d6.jpg (http://forums.randi.org/vbimghost.php?do=displayimg&imgid=9026)

As you can see, the 73% of the months are between 0.2 and 0.4, and 50% are between 0.3 and 0.5. 92% of the months are above 0.1, 84% above 0.2.
Only one month is below 0, and one month is above 0.5.

See in it what you want...

Megalodon

1st November 2007, 06:01 AM

mhaze

1st November 2007, 08:52 AM

Originally Posted by mhaze
you and I are in agreement probably on 90% of the issues relating to AGW

We differ on the CO2 argument (which means that we differ on All Important Things to you, and on Unimportant Things to me).That is interesting. Let's see just how that breaks down.... ...<stuff snipped> All we are saying is that right now, the most important driving force is GWGs, and of those, the most important is CO2.

In the face of all of these well-documented facts, and of our extensively stated beliefs and the documentation that underlies them, and in the face of the statements you have made in this post, I have to ask you: what the hell do you think you're arguing against? Because based on what you've written here, you have no basis upon which to argue other than politics, which you have stated you are uninterested in discussing.

Would you care to explain your behavior?

You've just agreed with me. As I mentioned, I'm pretty much uninterested in politics, and more along the lines that CD takes, have something of a longer view on human events. A search for your moniker and the current president on GW threads brings up many hits, though. A possible conclusion: You are very interested in politics. No big deal, of course, but please do not think that your motivation necessarily apply to other people. They don't.

Some people are actually interested in understanding the issues underlying the science, the state of understanding of it, the various quite divisive concepts within it, and in looking at the ramifications of various resolutions to them.our extensively stated beliefs and the documentation that underlies them
Some of those are brought into question by recent scientific work that I and others have quoted from and referenced. But as I mentioned we are probably in agreement on 90% of the issues concerning AGW as could be esablished by making a list of such things and going down them.

It seemed to me worthwhile to clarify this rather than to watch this great titanic "AGW skeptic vs Warmer" battle on an obscure little internet forum proceed with presumptions that may be somewhat differ from reality.

Schneibster

1st November 2007, 09:05 AM

OK, then this boils down to a single, easily stated question: why do you keep presenting fake science in this conversation?

Megalodon

1st November 2007, 09:26 AM

OK, then this boils down to a single, easily stated question: why do you keep presenting fake science in this conversation?

I actually have a feeling of dejá vu about this last post of mhaze. I could swear that this conciliatory tone happened before, just to be followed by more nonsense.

But I might be wrong, and there's no way I'll search 55 pages of thread for a single post :)

mhaze

1st November 2007, 09:43 AM

I actually have a feeling of dejá vu about this last post of mhaze. I could swear that this conciliatory tone happened before, just to be followed by more nonsense.

But I might be wrong, and there's no way I'll search 55 pages of thread for a single post :)

"Might be wrong" is indeed a wise thing to say.

Taking a brief look at your last several posts with little clustergraphs and your assertions. Here is my suggestion.

Please go off and read a bit about ocean heat content, PDO and its historical interaction with the climate cycle. Read about Lyman 2006 and the updates. Note the comments on Lyman at say, www.realclimate.org and Pielke's blogs. Certainly you wouldn't want to miss the discussion at Climateaudit.

That would keep the "might be wrong" on the scientific issues down to a much lower probability. I don't feel obliged to educate you on these things, given your general demeanor. Alternately, keep talking from a position of absolute ignorance. It's pretty funny.

Schneibster

1st November 2007, 09:45 AM

Moving right along, if it's not fake science, why do you have to use so many rhetorical arguments to support it?

Megalodon

1st November 2007, 09:47 AM

:dl:

What a maroon!

Let's put it this way, hazy: You come up with an argument for dismissing the graphs, instead of saying I should get educated.

That, you know, is an ad-hominem, the logical fallacy you so like to throw around (without getting it right once).

Here's laughing at you...

mhaze

1st November 2007, 09:53 AM

I don't know if the data is fake, but I do know that someone took it very lightly to make a calculation of "cyclone energy" before the end of the hurricane season. It smells like propaganda, especially since the number of named storms, and the number of cat.3+ doesn't seem to be unusually low. But I have to look deeper into it before making any big statements on the matter.

Hmm.....

You don't like DR's using nine months of a year....
You do like Hansen using five months of a year....
You don't like "cyclone energy" computations before the end of the hurricane season....that "smells like propaganda". But I have to look deeper into it before making any big statements on the matter.
Yes, indeed. Please let us all know what you find. I'm particularly interested in whether you do find it "smells like propaganda", and whether the data is fake.

Can we expect that big statement shortly?

Megalodon

1st November 2007, 10:18 AM

Hmm.....

You don't like DR's using nine months of a year....

Don't have a great problem with him doing it... Now, I don't make yearly averages with 9 months... I know it's a distinction dificult to grasp, but do try.

You do like Hansen using five months of a year....

You don't get tired of lying, do you?
You are again equating the calculation of a yearly average based on 9 months with a general forecast (a correct one) for a year based on the first 5 months of that year, with the acknowledgement that it might be wrong, even if unprobable.

You don't like "cyclone energy" computations before the end of the hurricane season....that "smells like propaganda".

It's one thing to make a general forecast, the other to put a value on a graph. Maybe someday you'll learn the difference between the two situations.

Yes, indeed. Please let us all know what you find. I'm particularly interested in whether you do find it "smells like propaganda", and whether the data is fake.

Since I didn't claim that the data was fake, should I count that one as a lie, poor reading comprehension or just general slopiness?

I did say it smelled like propaganda, and I stand by that comment. But it will be interesting to see the result by the end of the season. In the meanwhile, it doesn't help that they say things like

While the number of named storms is above normal, their integrated intensity has not matched the hyper-active expectations of many seasonal forecasters

So they actually agree with me when I said that the number of named storms, and the number of cat.3+ doesn't seem to be unusually low. So now it's a question of what metric to use, right? And what the rest of the season has to offer...

mhaze

1st November 2007, 10:43 AM

D
Since I didn't claim that the data was fake, should I count that one as a lie, poor reading comprehension or just general slopiness?

I did say it smelled like propaganda...

So they actually agree with me when I said that the number of named storms, and the number of cat.3+ doesn't seem to be unusually low. So now it's a question of what metric to use, right? And what the rest of the season has to offer...

Thank you for your prompt response. Well as to whether to count it as a lie, I don't know. One argument would be, be consistent. Count everything anyone says as a lie (well, if they are anti AGW). That'd be one approach. But you did mention possibly the data being faked, as I understood it. So I just presumed you were going to check that out. You will check it out, right?

Thank you for the clarifications.

You don't like DR's using nine months of a year....
You do like Hansen using five months of a year....
You don't like "cyclone energy" computations before the end of the hurricane season....that "smells like propaganda". But I have to look deeper into it before making any big statements on the matter.
Yes, indeed. Please let us all know what you find. I'm particularly interested in whether you do find it "smells like propaganda", and whether the data is fake.

When can we expect that big statement?

Oh. By the way. While you are looking into the various research topics mentioned in my other comment, please check on the relationships of hurricane intensity to AGW. See if there are inter relationships between Pacific Decadal Oscillations, ENSO, and these subjects.

Can you report back on that also?

Megalodon

1st November 2007, 11:04 AM

Schneibster

1st November 2007, 11:43 AM

I'm still waitin', hazy. Perhaps this will remind you: if all you want to do is talk about the science, how come you keep using fake science, and rhetorical arguments to support it, instead of real science (of which there is plenty) and straight talk?

mhaze

1st November 2007, 11:47 AM

Not everyone hazy, only the ones who blatantly lie...

I like how you strive to not understand the parts that you avoided to quote, and keep on making up a position for me.

And yes, I will do all that you suggest. I will then proceed to discover the unified theory of life, the universe and everything, and also bake you some cookies... grow up.

All the blatant liars should be exposed.

There may be a whole lot of them. Let us know how you do on that. I may help a bit. I can suggest additional sources of people and articles that you may want to examine for blatant lies.

Let us know about all these liars and about the propaganda.

I'll pass on the cookies, thanks. But when you cook them, heat up some warm milk to go with them. Right before beddy by time?

Megalodon

1st November 2007, 12:03 PM

You missed this, mhaze

You come up with an argument for dismissing the graphs, instead of saying I should get educated.

That, you know, is an ad-hominem, the logical fallacy you so like to throw around (without getting it right once).

I know you don't like my graphs, now give us the scientific rationale why they are so wrong that I should educate myself in internet blogs...

Put up, or shut up.

Schneibster

1st November 2007, 12:44 PM

And you STILL don't have an answer, do you? You know, I'm just beginning to realize I hit the nail on the head.

Who the hell are you, anyway?

mhaze

1st November 2007, 08:18 PM

Schnieb....

The Times they are a-changing. No Realclimate...

Varoche... Junkscience...

http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=2317#comment

2007 Weblog Award Finalists (http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=2317)

By Steve McIntyre
The Weblog Award (http://2007.weblogawards.org/news/finalists-announced.php)s are the world’s largest blog competition, with over 525,000 votes cast in the 2006 edition for finalists in 45 categories. Nominations for 49 categories ended October 17, 2007 and voting is scheduled to begin November 1, 2007. Final results will be announced November 8, 2007 at the BlogWorld & New Media Expo in Las Vegas.
Nominations for Best Science Blog are:
SciGuy
Junk Science
In the Pipeline
Journey By Starlight
Paryngula
Bad Astronomy Blog
Invasive Species Weblog
Sciencebase
Climate Audit
Bootstrap Analysis

Schneibster

1st November 2007, 08:29 PM

I haven't got the slightest idea what you think that has to do with anything. Are you going to answer my questions? Because from the fact you're not answering, I'm concluding that your entire agenda here is political; that it has nothing to do with science and never did. And I'm pretty sure there are a lot of people reading this, many more than comment on it, who are rapidly coming to the same conclusion.

David Rodale

1st November 2007, 09:27 PM

Now to see how those percentages compare with the previous decades

http://forums.randi.org/imagehosting/thum_2814729bfd3b18c7.jpg (http://forums.randi.org/vbimghost.php?do=displayimg&imgid=9027)

Neat, no warming... The mean just decided to move from 0 to 0.3 for a beer, and it will be right back.

At least CD understands what El Nino and El Nina are. Please look into the matter so you don't waste more time making graphs and apply your skills to more productive matters. I never said it has not warmed; it is not warming in the current decade and the latest ocean heat content numbers verify it. There would appear to be a connection to the low tropical storm activity as well. Nevertheless, it is true as of Sep07 we are at about at the same point as in Sep88, and dropping.

http://forums.randi.org/imagehosting/thum_103234703ba621b1ee.jpg (http://forums.randi.org/vbimghost.php?do=displayimg&imgid=8634)http://forums.randi.org/imagehosting/thum_103234703ba9de0770.jpg (http://forums.randi.org/vbimghost.php?do=displayimg&imgid=8635)

Schneibster

1st November 2007, 11:38 PM

mhaze is busy figuring out how to hack the polling computer so he can announce that Climate frAudit won the award for most popular "science" web site.

a_unique_person

1st November 2007, 11:50 PM

a_unique_person

1st November 2007, 11:52 PM

fsol

2nd November 2007, 01:41 AM

Megalodon

2nd November 2007, 05:32 AM

Argument by award show? Al Gore and the IPCC just won the Nobel Peace Prize didn't they?

Yes, but the Nobel Commitee are a bunch of commies with their heads set on world domination... or something...

Megalodon

2nd November 2007, 06:51 AM

At least CD understands what El Nino and El Nina are.

Don't presume to know what I do or do not understand, DR... Your record in this thread makes you the least suited for it.

Please look into the matter so you don't waste more time making graphs and apply your skills to more productive matters.

Your concern over my productivity is touching... Does it have anything to do with the fact that my graphs keep showing that you're wrong?

And I see a pattern here also. Mhaze tells me to look into blogs, you tell me to look into El Niño, but none of you feels like actually discussing the shift of temperatures in this decade...

I never said it has not warmed;

Yes you did, repeatedly...

it is not warming in the current decade and the latest ocean heat content numbers verify it.

So trying to shift the goalposts again, are we? Where was your preocupation with the heat content of the oceans when you started posting your global atmosphere temperature anomaly graphs? Shown to be wrong, you now take refuge on a different metric. Ok, link to the database, so that I can use my time in more productive ways...

BTW your figures have no attribution, which is bad form. And you didn't explain us what you think they tell, anyhow. I guess you think they back up your argument.

There would appear to be a connection to the low tropical storm activity as well. Nevertheless, it is true as of Sep07 we are at about at the same point as in Sep88, and dropping.

It does? Why don't you show that connection? All you have are vague assertions.

Locri

2nd November 2007, 07:24 AM

This is kinda sad... in the last page or so, the "discussion" has degraded to the point where I would expect this type of arguing in a pre-school. Seriously, what's up with all the name calling?

Anyways... maybe we can salvage this discussion yet, I'm going to try to get things more on topic.

So, my question to start with is this (for the AGW side, and we can happily do the Anti-AGW side later, but things will get too muddled if there are two many things brought up at once): What evidence/type of argument would be able to convince you that AGW is not happening, or at least to a minimal extent that would not cause any of the ills that are reported as things that will happen?

mhaze

2nd November 2007, 08:42 AM

If McIntyre is serious, why no auditing of any denier claims?

Well, that's a decent question. In the absence of help from him, we may have to do it.

I believe I've found a skeptical claim (Denier may be not a good word to use) which should be discussed, and for which the Warmers could contribute serious input to determining whether, in fact, the claim is bogus or not.

Schneibster

2nd November 2007, 08:55 AM

I ask a second time: who the hell are you?

mhaze

2nd November 2007, 10:24 AM

Argument by award show? Al Gore and the IPCC just won the Nobel Peace Prize didn't they?

Umm, yes. But you see, these awards were for "Best Science Blogs". So even if you delete the word "Blog", Gore would not qualify, and the IPCC, by virtue of being grouped with Gore in that award, is correspondingly degraded. Speaking of which, not all wanted that prize -

From an editorial in the WSJ, written as he rejects his fractional portion of the "peace prize", John Christy writes - (http://mobile2.wsj.com/beta2/htmlsite/html_article.php?id=1&CALL_URL=http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119387567378878423.html?mod=opinion_main_comment aries)

I've had a lot of fun recently with my tiny (and unofficial) slice of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize awarded to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). But, though I was one of thousands of IPCC participants, I don't think I will add "0.0001 Nobel Laureate" to my resume.

The other half of the prize was awarded to former Vice President Al Gore, whose carbon footprint would stomp my neighborhood flat. But that's another story....

Both halves of the award honor promoting the message that Earth's temperature is rising due to human-based emissions of greenhouse gases. The Nobel committee praises Mr. Gore and the IPCC for alerting us to a potential catastrophe and for spurring us to a carbonless economy.

...I see neither the developing catastrophe nor the smoking gun proving that human activity is to blame for most of the warming we see. Rather, I see a reliance on climate models (useful but never "proof") and the coincidence that changes in carbon dioxide and global temperatures have loose similarity over time.

There are some of us who remain so humbled by the task of measuring and understanding the extraordinarily complex climate system that we are skeptical of our ability to know what it is doing and why. As we build climate data sets from scratch and look into the guts of the climate system, however, we don't find the alarmist theory matching observations. ....

....Mother Nature simply operates at a level of complexity that is, at this point, beyond the mastery of mere mortals (such as scientists) and the tools available to us. As my high-school physics teacher admonished us in those we-shall-conquer-the-world-with-a-slide-rule days, "Begin all of your scientific pronouncements with 'At our present level of ignorance, we think we know . . .'"

I haven't seen that type of climate humility lately. Rather I see jump-to-conclusions advocates and, unfortunately, some scientists who see in every weather anomaly the specter of a global-warming apocalypse. Explaining each successive phenomenon as a result of human action gives them comfort and an easy answer.

.....Bjorn Lomborg's Copenhagen Consensus 2004, a cost-benefit analysis of health issues by leading economists (including three Nobelists), calculated that spending on health issues such as micronutrients for children, HIV/AIDS and water purification has benefits 50 to 200 times those of attempting to marginally limit "global warming."

Given the scientific uncertainty and our relative impotence regarding climate change, the moral imperative here seems clear to me.

Schneibster

2nd November 2007, 10:27 AM

David Rodale

2nd November 2007, 10:47 AM

Don't presume to know what I do or do not understand, DR... Your record in this thread makes you the least suited for it.

Your concern over my productivity is touching... Does it have anything to do with the fact that my graphs keep showing that you're wrong?

And I see a pattern here also. Mhaze tells me to look into blogs, you tell me to look into El Niño, but none of you feels like actually discussing the shift of temperatures in this decade...

Yes you did, repeatedly...

So trying to shift the goalposts again, are we? Where was your preocupation with the heat content of the oceans when you started posting your global atmosphere temperature anomaly graphs? Shown to be wrong, you now take refuge on a different metric. Ok, link to the database, so that I can use my time in more productive ways...

BTW your figures have no attribution, which is bad form. And you didn't explain us what you think they tell, anyhow. I guess you think they back up your argument.

It does? Why don't you show that connection? All you have are vague assertions.

The Lyman paper was not official until October 26, and posted October 31. Would it be wise to quote the former versions which were erroneous? I could only imagine the howling now.

While you were busy trying to find every last .01 degree of warming, I was waiting for the Lyman update. Truth is, it's not warming just as I proposed. Get over it, you were snookered. If you want to argue his findings, that's great, maybe it is still wrong. However, there's nothing to indicate a positive move, so what is the likelihood the oceans have warmed since one year ago?

Maybe you should get your information from various sources rather than the "CO2 is the center of the universe" dogma. Pielke repeatedly discussed OHC right up until the last day before retiring his blog in September.

BTW, NOAA predictions for 2007 hurricane season in August. How can consensus be wrong (again)?:
http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/outlooks/hurricane.shtml
NOAA is predicting a very high likelihood (85% chance) of an above-normal 2007 Atlantic hurricane season, a 10% chance of a near-normal season, and only a 5% chance of a below-normal season, according to a consensus of scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Climate Prediction Center, National Hurricane Center, Hurricane Research Division, and Hydrometeorological Prediction Center.

mhaze

2nd November 2007, 11:53 AM

And a third time: who the hell are you? What are you hoping to accomplish here? Why do you keep presenting fake science over and over, and why are you using rhetorical tricks instead of talking plainly about it if it's not fake science?

Hi Schneib. Sorry, I have missed a number of your posts. You have a bad habit of reverting into troll mode, and I just put you on the ignore list at those times.

Are you civil again now? If so, let me help you out a bit. You'd like to see some fake science, right? I've got some for you.

Here it is. This was posted by UC at climateaudit. UC's blog is pretty interesting, by the way.

Now, let me explain what this is. This chart comes from Mann et al 1998 algorithm which as you are aware produced the famous hockey stick of global warming. What you are looking at here is solar energy plugged into the same algorithm.

Bingo! Another Hockey Stick. How about that. Any data series you pick, plug it into Mann's formula, and you get a hockey stick.

http://forums.randi.org/imagehosting/thum_14224472b61ff07d23.png (http://forums.randi.org/vbimghost.php?do=displayimg&imgid=9044)

UC posted the following interesting figure on Unthreaded (http://www.climateaudit.org/) as follows:BTW, got interesting result when I replaced Temperature PCs with solar (http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/ei/ei_data/solar.dat) in MBH98 algorithm. Similar RE values as in the original, and R2 goes down in the verification. I’d try this with 1980-present data, but the proxies are not yet updated.
Ooopss. I guess the fake science presented here was AGW Warmer Science, huh? Sorry about that. I'll try again. I'm sure I can find some fake GW-Skeptic science.

Schneibster

2nd November 2007, 12:02 PM

Who are you, and why are you posting here? You're posting fake science, and the proof it is fake is that you're supporting it with rhetoric and denial. Why bother to post fake science on a skeptical forum, and why do you think anyone will fail to see that you're using rhetoric? If all you have is propaganda, why don't you go post it somewhere else where it's more likely to work?

fsol

2nd November 2007, 12:10 PM

Umm, yes. But you see, these awards were for "Best Science Blogs". So even if you delete the word "Blog", Gore would not qualify, and the IPCC, by virtue of being grouped with Gore in that award, is correspondingly degraded.

Hey if I just remove the word "creation," presto! An encyclopedia of science!

http://creationwiki.org/Main_Page

Amazing.

Of course none of that has any bearing on why some blog or other being nominated for a popularity contest has any bearing on the discussion.

Speaking of which, not all wanted that prize -

From an editorial in the WSJ, written as he rejects his fractional portion of the "peace prize", John Christy writes - (http://mobile2.wsj.com/beta2/htmlsite/html_article.php?id=1&CALL_URL=http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119387567378878423.html?mod=opinion_main_comment aries)
Oh goody, an editorial. How very scientific.

That's this Christy right?

Previously reported discrepancies between the amount of warming near the surface and higher in the atmosphere have been used to challenge the reliability of climate models and the reality of human induced global warming. Specifically, surface data showed substantial global-average warming, while early versions of satellite and radiosonde data showed little or no warming above the surface. This significant discrepancy no longer exists because errors in the satellite and radiosonde data have been identified and corrected. New data sets have also been developed that do not show such discrepancies.

This Synthesis and Assessment Product is an important revision to the conclusions of earlier reports from the U.S. National Research Council and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. For recent decades, all current atmospheric data sets now show global-average warming that is similar to the surface warming. While these data are consistent with the results from climate models at the global scale, discrepancies in the tropics remain to be resolved. Nevertheless, the most recent observational and model evidence has increased confidence in our understanding of observed climatic changes and their causes.http://www.climatescience.gov/Library/sap/sap1-1/finalreport/sap1-1-final-execsum.pdf

David Rodale

2nd November 2007, 01:08 PM

Hey if I just remove the word "creation," presto! An encyclopedia of science!

http://creationwiki.org/Main_Page

Amazing.

Of course none of that has any bearing on why some blog or other being nominated for a popularity contest has any bearing on the discussion.

Oh goody, an editorial. How very scientific.

That's this Christy right?

http://www.climatescience.gov/Library/sap/sap1-1/finalreport/sap1-1-final-execsum.pdf

Which AGW blog talking points did you get that from? That is not Christy's quote. Very disingenuous of you. It would be akin to saying because Steve McIntyre was an expert reviewer for IPCC that he agreed with the Mann hockey stick.

Can't you folks be objective and honest in anything you post?

A history and assessment by Dr. Roger Pielke Sr. who was a lead author of CCSP and resigned due to the same chicanery as IPCC; both corrupt and politically charged bodies.
http://climatesci.colorado.edu/publications/pdf/NR-143.pdf
http://climatesci.colorado.edu/index.php?s=Temperature+Trends+in+the+Lower&submit=Search

Schneibster

2nd November 2007, 01:25 PM

Gee, looking at the list of authors, there he is, J. R. Christy, Univ. of AL in Huntsville.

From your link: "The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration satellite data we analyze at the University of Alabama in Huntsville..."
Bold is my emphasis.

Did someone say something about "honest?" I thought I heard that, but there's an echo in here.

mhaze

2nd November 2007, 01:38 PM

mhaze

2nd November 2007, 01:44 PM

That's this Christy right?

http://www.climatescience.gov/Library/sap/sap1-1/finalreport/sap1-1-final-execsum.pdf

Hmm....

Don't think you've got the whole story there.

Wasn't there a dissenting, minority report by Christy?

Locri

2nd November 2007, 01:46 PM

Is there a point that you are attempting to make, if so, what?

I'm pretty sure his point is that Christy's name is on the paper, yet DR was saying that the quote above wasn't from Christy.

I guess the assumption is, just because Christy's name is on the paper that he must agree to that quote. Judging by what I know of Christy and how he feels on the topic of AGW, I kind of wonder why his name is on the paper.

Schneibster

2nd November 2007, 01:48 PM

Who the hell are you, mhaze, and why are you posting here? This is a skeptical science forum, not a propaganda site. Your continual use of rhetorical tricks and fake science makes it obvious you have no interest in the truth; if you did, you'd be straightforward instead of playing rhetorical games, and the sources you cited would be peer-reviewed science. You'd answer scientific arguments with science, and admit when you were wrong, neither of which you have ever done here. I repeat, who are you and why are you here? What possible agenda could be served by posting fake science and using political rhetoric on a skeptical science forum?

I'm just going to keep asking that until you either answer, stop playing rhetorical games and posting fake science, or go away. I see no point in playing logic-chopping games with someone who so obviously abuses skepticism by posting fake science and attempting to support it with rhetoric. Anyone who sees what you write will see what I write and know your game. Do you think no one can see what's happening to kleinman, or what's happening on the nuclear energy thread? Equally well can they see it here. It's the same thing, no difference at all.

mhaze

2nd November 2007, 06:33 PM

At least CD understands what El Nino and El Nina are. Please look into the matter so you don't waste more time making graphs and apply your skills to more productive matters. I never said it has not warmed; it is not warming in the current decade and the latest ocean heat content numbers verify it. There would appear to be a connection to the low tropical storm activity as well. Nevertheless, it is true as of Sep07 we are at about at the same point as in Sep88, and dropping.

http://forums.randi.org/imagehosting/thum_103234703ba621b1ee.jpghttp://forums.randi.org/imagehosting/thum_103234703ba9de0770.jpg

But your chart does not go up a little bit toward the right.
That's not fair.
Give Warmers at least something to clutch at.

http://forums.randi.org/imagehosting/thum_14224472bbd966fbd3.png (http://forums.randi.org/vbimghost.php?do=displayimg&imgid=9049)

Mine goes up a little bit since we just came out of a Little Ice Age.
Warmers can deny the Little Ice Age, and say that this chart shows BUNCHES OF WARMING!

http://forums.randi.org/imagehosting/thum_142244723654333cdb.png (http://forums.randi.org/vbimghost.php?do=displayimg&imgid=8960)

SCARY! SCARY! SCARY!
Here is the hockey stick.

http://forums.randi.org/imagehosting/thum_14224469a1ba13420f.png (http://forums.randi.org/vbimghost.php?do=displayimg&imgid=7039)

AGW sceptics
If climate is strongly determined by natural factors such as the Pacific decadal oscillation, then we are now seeing clearly the influence of those natural factors. Temperatures should stay about the same and go down.

AGW Warmers
If climate is strongly determined by man made factors such as CO2 and the greenhouse warming, then we should be seeing a greenhouse warming signal that overpowers the natural factors. Temperatures should show a steady rise for the next several decades.

Pipirr

2nd November 2007, 06:44 PM

Here it is. This was posted by UC at climateaudit. UC's blog is pretty interesting, by the way.

Now, let me explain what this is. This chart comes from Mann et al 1998 algorithm which as you are aware produced the famous hockey stick of global warming. What you are looking at here is solar energy plugged into the same algorithm.

Bingo! Another Hockey Stick. How about that. Any data series you pick, plug it into Mann's formula, and you get a hockey stick.

You can Bingo! all you want. A posting on climateaudit is not equivalent to a peer reviewed paper, nor to an assessment by the US National Academy of Sciences (http://books.nap.edu/execsumm_pdf/11676.pdf). I find it helps to try and keep these things in perspective. UC may have you convinced, but for me blog postings are pretty much at the bottom of the scale.

I presume UC's discovery is going to be submitted to a peer reviewed climate science journal? That hockey stick won't debunk itself, and climate scientists should be told how wrong they are. Get it through peer review, and I (and no doubt many others) may start to think that your accusations of ‘fake science’ have merit.

Pipirr

2nd November 2007, 06:54 PM

Well, that's a decent question. In the absence of help from him, we may have to do it.

I believe I've found a skeptical claim (Denier may be not a good word to use) which should be discussed, and for which the Warmers could contribute serious input to determining whether, in fact, the claim is bogus or not.

You don't like 'Denier', but it's acceptable to use 'Warmers'?

Personally, I wouldn't describe myself with either term. I'm no 'Warmer', whatever that is, but I'm more and more certain I'm not in the same camp as you either.

For one thing, I think peer review is bloody marvellous. Whereas for your camp, it's like kryptonite.

mhaze

2nd November 2007, 07:09 PM

Locri

2nd November 2007, 07:50 PM

You don't like 'Denier', but it's acceptable to use 'Warmers'?

Personally, I wouldn't describe myself with either term. I'm no 'Warmer', whatever that is, but I'm more and more certain I'm not in the same camp as you either.

For one thing, I think peer review is bloody marvellous. Whereas for your camp, it's like kryptonite.

I'm not really fond of the term "Denier" either... "Denier" gives the impression that a person is denying something that is true (must like 9/11 "truthers" call themselves that because it gives the impression that they are the truthful ones). I prefer the simplistic terms of AGW and Anti-AGW myself. It saves all the silly loaded terms from being thrown around.

Anyways, peer reviewed papers is what everyone here seems to want, right? Ok... have at them:

New Peer-Reviewed Scientific Studies Chill Global Warming Fears (http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=84e9e44a-802a-23ad-493a-b35d0842fed8&Issue_id=)

Pick a paper and let's get to work. According to this article, at least, these are all peer reviewed and published papers.

Pipirr

2nd November 2007, 08:30 PM

mhaze

2nd November 2007, 08:37 PM

I'm not really fond of the term "Denier" either... "Denier" gives the impression that a person is denying something that is true (must like 9/11 "truthers" call themselves that because it gives the impression that they are the truthful ones). I prefer the simplistic terms of AGW and Anti-AGW myself. It saves all the silly loaded terms from being thrown around.

Anyways, peer reviewed papers is what everyone here seems to want, right? Ok... have at them:

New Peer-Reviewed Scientific Studies Chill Global Warming Fears (http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=84e9e44a-802a-23ad-493a-b35d0842fed8&Issue_id=)

Pick a paper and let's get to work. According to this article, at least, these are all peer reviewed and published papers.

Here is the first one listed in Inhofe's commentary. Good work; very clever analysis.
“Anthropogenic (man-made) global warming bites the dust,” declared astronomer Dr. Ian Wilson after reviewing the new study which has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Geophysical Research. Another scientist said the peer-reviewed study overturned “in one fell swoop” the climate fears promoted by the UN and former Vice President Al Gore. The study entitled “Heat Capacity, Time Constant, and Sensitivity of Earth’s Climate System,” was authored by Brookhaven National Lab scientist Stephen Schwartz. (LINK (http://www.ecd.bnl.gov/steve/pubs/HeatCapacity.pdf))

David Rodale

2nd November 2007, 08:40 PM

mhaze

2nd November 2007, 09:15 PM

a_unique_person

2nd November 2007, 09:56 PM

Well Pipirr, since you brought it up, let's start with this one:
http://www.atmos.washington.edu/~juminder/pcc587/lectures/Roe_Baker_2007.pdf (http://www.atmos.washington.edu/%7Ejuminder/pcc587/lectures/Roe_Baker_2007.pdf)

Had the climate modelers simply read Poincare, they would have known the folly of their ways.

What your side is trying to create is an irrefutable hypothesis.

:rolleyes:

http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/current/statements/scs14.pdf

For large parts of southern and eastern Australia, dry conditions have now persisted since October 1996, a total of eleven years. For some areas, the accumulated total rainfall deficit over this period now exceeds a full year’s normal rain.
For the agriculturally important Murray-Darling Basin, however, October 2007 marks the sixth anniversary of lower than average rainfall totals, with the November 2001 to October 2007 period being its equal driest such six-year period on record.
This extreme dry period for the Murray-Darling Basin has also been accompanied by high temperatures, exacerbating the low rainfall. Both daytime maximum and daily mean temperatures for the six years from November 2001 to October 2007 have surpassed the previous records by a considerable margin.

It's happening, plenty of proven projections.

Megalodon

3rd November 2007, 03:49 AM

The Lyman paper was not official until October 26, and posted October 31. Would it be wise to quote the former versions which were erroneous? I could only imagine the howling now.

David, you brought up the Lyman paper without even a link. That, again, is bad form.

Anyhow, there's a manuscript that addresses Lyman et al 2006. Please see

http://oceans.pmel.noaa.gov/Pdf/heat_2006.pdf

Now, if I understand from your unreferenced posts, Lyman corrected the OCHA values recently. Was the correction the removal of the data from the ARGOs, or did he correct for the bias of the XBTs also?

You quoted the paper saying that there was no cooling or warming. How does that support your assertions that the oceans are cooling?

The original paper was focused on a cooling (described as spurious in their 2007 manuscript) from 2003-2005. Does the new version you're talking about include later years? Or did you assume this global cooling from the two last years in a 12 year trend?

Levitus et al. (2005) estimated an increase of 14.5x10E22 J for the period between 1955 and 1998 (0-300m depth), and Willis et al.(2004) estimated an increase of 9.2x10E22 J from 1993 to 2003 (0-750m). Do you think this trends are to be discarded in favour of the 2 years added by Lyman et al (2006)?

Get over it, you were snookered. If you want to argue his findings, that's great, maybe it is still wrong. However, there's nothing to indicate a positive move, so what is the likelihood the oceans have warmed since one year ago?

First things first... You still have to answer why, if the atmosphere temperatures are not important, you introduced them into the debate (until proven wrong);

Then, you didn't explain what was so wrong about my graphs that I had to go educate myself. It must have been something scientific and obvious, since both you and hazy refused to talk about it;

Then, you can explain why you're arguing that the planet is not warming because a 22 year strongly positive trend turned flat in the last 2 years...

Lyman et al (2006) explicitly say about the 55-98 and 93-03 trends:

"These increases provide strong evidence of global warming. Climate models exhibit similar rates of ocean warming, but only when forced by anthropogenic influences"

Maybe you should get your information from various sources rather than the "CO2 is the center of the universe" dogma. Pielke repeatedly discussed OHC right up until the last day before retiring his blog in September.

Well, isn't that nice? and who exactly said anything about CO2 being the centre of the Universe? Maybe you're just making things up, again?

BTW, NOAA predictions for 2007 hurricane season in August. How can consensus be wrong (again)?:
http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/outlooks/hurricane.shtml

Yes, the old 'how can we model climate when we can't forecast weather' question... Well we can, and we did, and it panned out. It's out there, open the window.

mhaze

3rd November 2007, 06:02 AM

David, you brought up the Lyman paper without even a link. That, again, is bad form.

Anyhow, there's a manuscript that addresses Lyman et al 2006. Please see

http://oceans.pmel.noaa.gov/Pdf/heat_2006.pdf

Now, if I understand from your unreferenced posts, Lyman corrected the OCHA values recently. Was the correction the removal of the data from the ARGOs, or did he correct for the bias of the XBTs also?

You quoted the paper saying that there was no cooling or warming. How does that support your assertions that the oceans are cooling?

The original paper was focused on a cooling (described as spurious in their 2007 manuscript) from 2003-2005. Does the new version you're talking about include later years? Or did you assume this global cooling from the two last years in a 12 year trend?

Levitus et al. (2005) estimated an increase of 14.5x10E22 J for the period between 1955 and 1998 (0-300m depth), and Willis et al.(2004) estimated an increase of 9.2x10E22 J from 1993 to 2003 (0-750m). Do you think this trends are to be discarded in favour of the 2 years added by Lyman et al (2006)?

First things first... You still have to answer why, if the atmosphere temperatures are not important, you introduced them into the debate (until proven wrong);

Then, you didn't explain what was so wrong about my graphs that I had to go educate myself. It must have been something scientific and obvious, since both you and hazy refused to talk about it;

Then, you can explain why you're arguing that the planet is not warming because a 22 year strongly positive trend turned flat in the last 2 years...

Lyman et al (2006) explicitly say about the 55-98 and 93-03 trends:

"These increases provide strong evidence of global warming. Climate models exhibit similar rates of ocean warming, but only when forced by anthropogenic influences"

Well, isn't that nice? and who exactly said anything about CO2 being the centre of the Universe? Maybe you're just making things up, again?

Yes, the old 'how can we model climate when we can't forecast weather' question... Well we can, and we did, and it panned out. It's out there, open the window.

That answers my question as to how to disregard Baker 2007.

Here is Lyman.

http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/people/gjohnson/hc_bias_jtech_v1.pdf and
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/people/gjohnson/hc_integrals_v1.pdf

Pipirr

3rd November 2007, 03:34 PM

Well Pipirr, since you brought it up, let's start with this one:
http://www.atmos.washington.edu/~juminder/pcc587/lectures/Roe_Baker_2007.pdf

What your side is trying to create is an irrefutable hypothesis.

That is an interesting paper, isn't it? Peer reviewed, and in Science, no less. Pretty much at the top of my personal scale of credible sources.

Do you have a commentary from, shall we say, 'your side', on this paper? I'd like to be able to get an overview of opinion from both sides. Or even add your own, if you wish.

As for creating an 'irrefutable hypothesis', how do you get that? To which particular hypothesis are you referring?

mhaze

3rd November 2007, 04:48 PM

Originally Posted by mhaze
Here it is. This was posted by UC at climateaudit. UC's blog is pretty interesting, by the way.

Now, let me explain what this is. This chart comes from Mann et al 1998 algorithm which as you are aware produced the famous hockey stick of global warming. What you are looking at here is solar energy plugged into the same algorithm.

Bingo! Another Hockey Stick. How about that. Any data series you pick, plug it into Mann's formula, and you get a hockey stick.
You can Bingo! all you want. A posting on climateaudit is not equivalent to a peer reviewed paper, nor to an assessment by the US National Academy of Sciences (http://books.nap.edu/execsumm_pdf/11676.pdf). I find it helps to try and keep these things in perspective. UC may have you convinced, but for me blog postings are pretty much at the bottom of the scale.

I presume UC's discovery is going to be submitted to a peer reviewed climate science journal? That hockey stick won't debunk itself, and climate scientists should be told how wrong they are. Get it through peer review, and I (and no doubt many others) may start to think that your accusations of ‘fake science’ have merit.

You will be happy, then that the assessment by the US National Academy that you cite lists many serious criticisms of the hockey stick. Published as I recall in June, it was followed in July by the Wegman Report, which focused strictly on statistical methods used by Mann et al. Other peer reviewed work also indicates the use of principal components analysis as done by Mann is flawed.

Two others briefly -

Burger and Cubasch 2005 "Are Multiproxy Climate Reconstructions Robust"

Burger et. al. criticism of Osborn and Briffa 2006 paper debunked the "anamolous 20th century warming" found by Osborn and Briffa, that supposedly supporting the zombie-like re-emergence of the hockey stick (Previously discussed on this thread).

Accordingly, then I requote your concerns and allay them.You can Bingo! all you want. A posting on climateaudit is not equivalent to a peer reviewed paper, nor to an assessment by the NAS.
Agree completely with you on these matters.

Abundant peer reviewed papers, and the assessment by the NAS and the Wegman report in agreement with the premise of improper use of statistical techniques by Mann., I am inexorably lead back to the conclusion (noted in satire, but technically correct by UC) -Bingo! Another Hockey Stick. How about that. Any data series you pick, plug it into Mann's formula, and you get a hockey stick.
Has Mann corrected his use of the statistical procedures in accordance with the guidance provided to him by NAS and the Wegman report?

a_unique_person

3rd November 2007, 05:42 PM

You will be happy, then that the assessment by the US National Academy that you cite lists many serious criticisms of the hockey stick.

Have you actually read that report? It's a storm in a teacup that the NAS pretty well ignores in the context of all the other evidence available for consideration. McIntyre makes out he was the star witness, he was just a small curiosity.

a_unique_person

3rd November 2007, 05:54 PM

A reproduction by a climate scientist of an opinion piece in The Australian newspaper.

It touches on a lot of the misrepresentations and myths that are out there, including here.

http://johnquiggin.com/index.php/archives/2006/07/26/a-critique-of-wood-on-global-warming/

The Wegman et al. paper is interesting but for the wrong reasons: It summarises palaeoclimatic proxies and carries out an analysis of how to produce hockey sticks from random data. They did not produce a bootstrap analysis of the data used by Mann et al., which would prove that the hockey stick through Mann et al’s analysis was or was not an artifact. They merely showed that the analysis could produce spurious results, not that it did. The corroborating scientific analyses produced since (by scientists that were unrelated to Mann in Wegman et al’s analysis) show that underlying data was not red noise.
The social network analysis is highly flawed. It all hangs on the following statement: In particular, if there is a tight relationship among the authors and there are not a large number of individuals engaged in a particular topic area, then one may suspect that the peer review process does not fully vet papers before they are published. Indeed, a common practice among associate editors for scholarly journals is to look in the list of references for a submitted paper to see who else is writing in a given area and thus who might legitimately be called on to provide knowledgeable peer review. Of course, if a given discipline area is small and the authors in the area are tightly coupled, then this process is likely to turn up very sympathetic referees.
So one may suspect peer review does not fully vet papers and it is likely that the reviews will be sympathetic. That word likely is the same one that the IPCC used to say that the 20th century Northern Hemisphere warming was the largest in the past millennium and that the 90’s were the warmest decade and 1998 the warmest year. So, without any foundation, suspicion and likelihood is attributed. To then link the Mann network which is a close network, with the palaeoclimate reconstruction network, which is not, the authors use common data sets of temperature proxies. This is like accusing economists of collusion when they use the same GDP data. Wegman and his colleagues manage to gainsay recent debates that have surrounded the use of peer review. Those debates have been widely publicized and have concluded that it is not flawless but is the best method going.
The recommendations about the IPCC and how it operates come with no analysis in the report, and thus there are no grounds for the recommendations the report makes. The report attacks the whole notion of peer review both within science and the IPCC without a shred of evidence.
That they want to involve statisticians in ongoing work is interesting. What level of education in statistics does one need to have? Skill in statistics does not mean a better understanding of science or even uncertainty. For example, Bjorn Lomborg in his book The Skeptical Environmentalist notoriously misrepresents the underlying science contributing to a range of environmental risks (not to mention his selective use of statistics). Ian Castles also, attacked the IPCC SRES scenarios on statistical grounds, without showing that the underlying assumptions relating population and energy use were in fact incorrect. The idea of using statisticians without training and a publication record in the relevant science, or as an integral part of a larger team should not be given air. However, more resources would also be required to fund the greater scrutiny if it were applied. My own experience in the current funding environment is that the biggest restriction to peer review is resources. I apply a skeptical filter to the papers I review and to my best knowledge, so do my colleagues. However, peer review is a gift economy that does not sit well with targeted funding.
What the Wegman et al. report does not do is assess the scientific nature of Mann et al.’s work and whether it has been supported by other research (although it summarises some of that research).
In his article Wood also overlooks a National Academies of Science report published in the previous week that does address the science. http://www.nap.edu/catalog/11676.html
However that report was not conclusive on the matter of the hockey stick. The NAS report says:
Not all individual proxy records indicate that the recent warmth is unprecedented, although a larger fraction of geographically diverse sites experienced exceptional warmth during the late 20th century than during any other extended period from A.D. 900 onwards. Based on the analyses presented in the original papers by Mann et al. and this newer supporting evidence, the committee finds it plausible that the Northern Hemisphere was warmer during the last few decades of the 20th century than during any comparable period over the preceding millennium. The substantial uncertainties currently present in the quantitative assessment of large-scale surface temperature changes prior to about A.D. 1600 lower our confidence in this conclusion compared to the high level of confidence we place in the Little Ice Age cooling and 20th century warming. Even less confidence can be placed in the original conclusions by Mann et al. (1999) that “the 1990s are likely the warmest decade, and 1998 the warmest year, in at least a millennium” because the uncertainties inherent in temperature reconstructions for individual years and decades are larger than those for longer time periods, and because not all of the available proxies record temperature information on such short timescales.
The report confirmed that the latter part of the twentieth century was warmer than for the previous 400 years but ducked on extending this conclusion to the last millennium despite the attribution of plausibility above. However, that the larger fraction of sites showing that a warmer 20th century has occurred suggests that the “warmest period over the last millennium in the Northern Hemisphere” could only be false if some contra-indication was introduced into the numbers and analysis (this allows also for area-weighting of the data).
The NAS report has been claimed as vindication by Mann and his supporters and also by McIntyre and McKitrick and their supporters. Why is this so?
By not quantifying their levels of confidence in these conclusions the NAS committee has allowed the reader to interpret this information in any way they see fit. But, they do not say that Mann et al.’s statement was implausible. The inference is that it is difficult to verify on the available evidence.
However, the committee does say that support evidence exists for the statement that warming during the late twentieth century is more spatially coherent at any other time since the 9th century A.D. and the larger number of sites shows exceptional warming. Given that the committee found itself unable to clarify any levels of confidence in their findings, or even come to any conclusions as to whether simple or area-weighted averages were preferable to determine areal trends, the whole report does little to clarify an issue where entrenched views that have little to do with the science of palaeoclimatology abound.
The NAS report suffers by not treating uncertainty and confidence in any rigorous manner, so has served to muddy the debate rather than clarify it. People will interpret words like likely, plausible and less confidence but still plausible in the way they see fit if not provided with internally consistent methodology and guidance. In its Third Assessment Report, the IPCC introduced methods to quantify and clarify uncertainty and confidence. Although not perfect, this development should now be seen as best practice in communicating contentious issues. It is a pity that the NAS does not do this.