The denialosphere is atwitter about a new paper by McLean, Freitas, and Carter (2009, J. Geophysical Res. 114, D14104). They seek to relate variations in tropospheric temperature to the southern oscillation index (SOI). The concluding sentence is:
Finally, this study has shown that natural climate forcing associated with ENSO is a major contributor to variability and perhaps recent trends in global temperature, a relationship that is not included in current global climate models.
That ENSO is a major contributor to variability in global temperature, is ancient news. In fact I’ve shown it myself.
That ENSO is a major contributor to recent trends in global temperature, they have not shown — not even “perhaps.” In fact it’s downright impossible for their methodology to do so.
The reason for the celebratory tone in denialist web posts (Grima Wormtongue is especially excited) is the extreme correlation claimed between SOI and tropospheric temperature.
Change in SOI accounts for 72% of the variance in GTTA for the 29-year-long MSU record and 68% of the variance in GTTA for the longer 50-year RATPAC record.
(“GTTA” is “global tropospheric temperature anomaly”). Even stronger correlation is claimed for tropical tropospheric temperature.
Although it’s not stated outright, the paper clearly implies that the strong correlation accounts for so much of the tropospheric temperature variation that little is left to attribute to greenhouse gases. One of the authors, Bob Carter, does say so outright in a press release related to the paper:
“The close relationship between ENSO and global temperature, as described in the paper, leaves little room for any warming driven by human carbon dioxide emissions.”
We already knew that there’s strong correlation between SOI (or other el Nino measures like MEI) and temperature, whether surface or tropospheric temperature, whether global or tropical. But the real reason they note such strong correlation is that their analysis method removes all temperature variation which is due to trend — which of course makes it impossible for their analysis to indicate anything whatever about the trend.
First, they analyze 12-month running averages rather than raw data. This won’t by itself inflate the correlation, although it does make correlation estimates much more uncertain (by introducing strong false autocorrelation). More to the point, they don’t compute correlation between temperature and SOI, but between the time derivatives of temperature and SOI. They estimate time derivatives by taking the difference between 12-month running averages, 12 months apart.
And therein lies the problem. Suppose temperature is the sum of a function of time which shows a lot of variation but no trend, and a linear trend
where 
Note that the coefficient of 
Allow me to illustrate.
Let’s start with the SOI data they use and the UAH tropospheric temperature data they use [Note: they explicitly state they're using "lower troposphere" UAH data but the link they give is to mid-troposphere UAH data; it has no effect on the argument]. Now let’s do as they do and compute 12-month running means (I’ve rescaled the SOI data according to the formula determined by the authors):
We can already see a strong correlation, and that there’s a lag between the SOI and the temperature — but as I’ve already said, we already knew that. The times when the correlation breaks down are the times following major volcanic eruptions (we already knew that too).
Now let’s estimate derivatives by taking the difference between each variable and its value 1 year previously (I’ll plot the derivative of SOI data lagged by 7 months, the lag chosen by the authors, to emphasize the correlation):
The dashed lines indicate times during which major volcanic eruptions (el Chicon and Mt. Pinatubo) have an impact. They eliminate those time intervals from the data, but we don’t need to in order to make the point. When we compute the cross-correlation function we see that there’s strong correlation when 
Now let’s repeat the exact same analysis, but first let’s add a huge artificial trend to the temperature data so it looks like this:
Now let’s take 12-month running averages, then difference the time series at 1 year, then compute the cross-correlation again:
Does that look familiar?
It should. The correlation between the derivatives of temperature and of SOI is utterly unchanged when I introduce a trend into either of the time series — no matter how big or small the trend might be. The fact is that their methodology, the process of estimating derivatives by taking 1-year differences, transforms any trend into a constant and thereby eliminates its impact on all variation and correlation.
It’s certainly not true that their analysis shows “natural climate forcing associated with ENSO is a major contributor to variability and perhaps recent trends in global temperature.” It shows no such thing; their analysis removes all the effect of trends.
Their only justification for the claim that ENSO has affected trends is to point out that “For the 30 years prior to the 1976 shift (i.e., 1946–1975) the SOI averaged +1.93 but in the 30 years after 1976 (i.e., 1977–2006) the average was -3.06, which represents a shift from a La Nina inclination to an El Nino inclination.” While a shift from la Nina to el Nino can cause a shift in temperature, there’s no evidence at all (nor do the authors provide any) that it can introduce a trend. This argument is nothing more than hand-waving, and is only apparently supported by the strong correlation they estimate using a methodology which eliminates all effect of trends.
Bob Carter’s statement in particular, that “The close relationship between ENSO and global temperature, as described in the paper, leaves little room for any warming driven by human carbon dioxide emissions,” shows how little he understand the analysis he himself participated in. Of course, he wouldn’t be the first to fail to understand the impact of using estimated derivatives on correlation analysis.
A valid way to estimate the impact of el Nino on global temperature is to use multiple regression on actual data rather than on estimates of time derivatives. On can include the impact of volcanoes, el Nino, solar changes, and greenhouse gases. When one does so, it’s clear that without the influence of man-made climate forcing it’s just not possible to explain the trend in global temperature. But I’m hardly the first to point that out.
514 responses so far ↓
Tony O'Brien // July 24, 2009 at 12:22 am |
So if I remove the trend to analyse the El Nino La Nina effect, that proves the trend does not exist.
David Gould // July 24, 2009 at 12:28 am |
How on earth did they get it published?
Chad // July 24, 2009 at 1:24 am |
David,
That was the first thing I thought when I finished reading the post. Amazing.
Carol // July 24, 2009 at 2:08 am |
Clearly they didn’t seek your services as a reviewer for this paper, Tamino. More’s the pity..
Deep Climate // July 24, 2009 at 2:09 am |
Maybe they found a sympathetic (or gullible) editor. That’s happened before in two cases involving Chris de Freitas …
{Emphasis added]
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/climate-change/news/article.cfm?c_id=26&objectid=3516830
Would anyone be surprised to learn that de Freitas was also one of the original “scientific” advisors to Friends of Science?
Deep Climate // July 24, 2009 at 2:28 am |
The reviewers of the BCPG de Freitas article mentioned above were none other than …
Granted, JGR is a cut above the Bulletin of Canadian Petroleum Geology. And presumably the reviewers in this case are anonymous.
Still it would be good to know who the editor was. I imagine JGR will be flooded with responses (like when McKitrick and McIntyre published in GRL).
Philippe Chantreau // July 24, 2009 at 3:04 am |
And we all know how much of an in-depth statistical analysis the paper is going to receive from the “skeptics.” I wonder if Lucia or Jeff Id are going to comment.
Gareth // July 24, 2009 at 5:10 am |
Great to see the Open Mind RRT (Rapid Response Tamino) in operation ;-) . One of the first comments at my place picked up the same thing…
Chris S. // July 24, 2009 at 7:45 am |
Tamino. That is a lovely deconstruction of the paper, when can we expect to see it written up & in press?
PeterPan // July 24, 2009 at 7:58 am |
Very clear and illustrative.
Thank you, Tamino.
Gavin's Pussycat // July 24, 2009 at 8:06 am |
Thanks for spoiling my day.
As a long-time AGU member thiis makes me especially sad. Their editorial process clearly has issues.
Tamino, time for a “comment”? You did the work already…
Andrew Glikson // July 24, 2009 at 8:16 am |
THE BEHAVIOR OF THE ENSO IS A CONSEQUENCE, NOT A PRIMARY DRIVER, OF GLOBAL WARMING.
In so far as McLean et al. JGR paper implies the ENSO is a PRIMARY FORCING OF CLIMATE CHANGE, these people don’t seem to be able to distinguish between primary climate forcings (orbital forcing, volcanism, human release of geologically stored carbon). The ENSO is closely linked to the Pacific Ocean circulation/current system, where the cold circum-Antarctic current is in part diverted northward along the Humboldt Current which gets mixed with tropical water off NW South America.
In my understanding, the decadal global warming trend results in warming of southern oceans and the circum-Antarctic currents, weakening the Humboldt current and the Pacific NW-directed Trade Winds. This leads to an increase in the frequency of the El-Nino, as warm water flow eastward along the equatorial Pacific.
Thus, the El-Nino was near-permanent during and prior to the mid-Pliocene, when tempratures were 2 – 3 degrees warmer than in the early 20th century.
It is not the first time these people “mistake” consequences and feedbacks of global warming with primary forcings. The other instance concerns water vapor, they repeatedly invoke as a “primary driver” of climate change.
Patrik // July 24, 2009 at 8:20 am |
Ok, but if there is not trend to be reckoned with?
As I read it, they’r simply naming the variations in T as just that – variations.
Of course, if there is an underlying trend, it has to be explained, but if one reasons that there is no ongoing increase of any forcing – why worry about the trend?
Lazar // July 24, 2009 at 9:31 am |
other comments which are unjustified…
“We have shown here that ENSO and the 1976 Great Pacific Climate Shift can account for a large part of the overall warming”
… they showed no such thing
and a statement without citation…
“Climate modelers acknowledge that their models do not adequately hindcast average global temperatures from 1950 to 1990 and apply a human influence factor to make up the deficit.”
the paper is boring… there’s no analysis beyond the correlation… as tamino says is old hat…
doskonaleszare // July 24, 2009 at 9:56 am |
You can prove even much more if you remove the trend and ENSO.
Paz // July 24, 2009 at 9:56 am |
Beautiful analysis, thanks a lot!
quick question: in the correlation plot, the correlations for lag at 6 months seem to be *negative*. Why is that?
[Response: Because SOI (the "southern oscillation index") is a measure of the air pressure difference between Tahiti and Darwin. Negative values are indicative of el Nino conditions, positive values of la Nina conditions, so the correlation between SOI and temperature is indeed negative.
However in the plots I transformed SOI according to the formula estimated by the authors themselves, which reverses the sign of SOI, so that the correlation would be plainly visible. You may if you wish imagine a 2nd y-axis on the right-hand side of the graphs for SOI, whose numerical values go in reverse order.]
Paz // July 24, 2009 at 10:27 am |
Another question:
they calculate their correlations for the period of 1978 to now, a time where the warming trend was (more or less) constant throughout the interval, and will therefore be removed by their method.
Couldn’t you therefore use the same analysis they did to identify the CO2 effect on warming? What if you used a longer interval (say from 1800 to now)? In such an interval, the warming trend is NOT constant but is present only for the last 50 years or so. Correlations should therefore be deflated, and – using an appropriate regressor (say delta CO2) – the recent warming signal should be detectable. Is this correct?
Son of Mulder // July 24, 2009 at 11:26 am |
So why assume a linear addition to the trendless function? Why not add a function proportional to log t (because that’s how CO2 behaves). The derivative is then 1/t and would be present in the derivative and trend of the derivative.
[Response: CO2 forcing is *not* proportional to log(t). It's proportional to log(CO2 concentration), but since CO2 concentration has risen faster than exponentially, CO2 forcing has risen *faster* than linear (but just a little faster than linear).
The point is that the *net* trend is reduced to a constant by the differencing, so its impact is eliminated from correlation analysis.]
Bill DeMott // July 24, 2009 at 11:37 am |
Good journals often select reviewers that represent both sides of a true controversy. One interesting question is whether the authors were deceitful, or whether they were just naive in their data manipulations.
seesdifferent // July 27, 2009 at 8:43 pm |
anyone who’s taken calculus knows the effect of differentiating a constant. So the authors and/or reviewer is/are either fools or dishonest.
sod // July 24, 2009 at 12:31 pm |
thanks Tamino.
highly instructive, as always.
alas, i fear they will not learn…..
Mac // July 24, 2009 at 12:50 pm |
re: “But the real reason they note such strong correlation is that their analysis method removes all temperature variation which is due to trend — which of course makes it impossible for their analysis to indicate anything whatever about the trend.”
Exactly, it is this ‘removal’ that highlights how little warming there is left that can be attributed to other forcings – be it man made or natural.
After this paper warmists have been left with very wriggle room now to make their case for AGW.
[Response: Look again at the data with the artificial trend added. Are you saying that there's no warming there to be explained by other factors than el Nino?]
Alan Burke // July 24, 2009 at 1:27 pm |
Thanks for the excellent and quick analysis; I’ve linked to it in my commentary to contrarian bragging on the online edition of the CBC News in the story “Warming oceans mean less cloud cover”.
http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2009/07/23/warm-oceans-less-cloud-cover.html
george // July 24, 2009 at 1:35 pm |
Tamino says
The “mirror” of that statement also might make (even more?) sense in this case:
dhogaza // July 24, 2009 at 1:45 pm |
Anthony Watts response is hilarious and I think is about what we can expect to see from the denialsphere at large:
Pure ad hom. Didn’t discuss the analysis at all.
I’m sure we’ll see a lot of this …
Paz // July 24, 2009 at 1:53 pm |
thanks for the clarification, Tamino. I had missed this in your post.
Mac // July 24, 2009 at 1:58 pm |
re: Look again at the data with the artificial trend added. Are you saying that there’s no warming there to be explained by other factors than el Nino?
Again, you fail to see where AGW (just one factor of the many you have now conceded, including ENSO) fits particulary into all this warming, be it remnant or otherwise.
Remove all natural factors ( a legitimate nullifying process), this study concentrates on just one, and see how your AGW arguements fit the study period.
[Response: We have "now conceded" that there are other factors besides greenhouse gases? That's a lie. Legitimate climate scientists emphasized numerous factors affecting global temperature, including solar forcing, volcanic aerosols, ENSO, albedo changes, land use changes, orbital changes, and *natural* changes in the carbon cycle, long before denialists invented the lie that they're ignored or discounted.
As for removing natural factors to see how the "AGW arguements" [sic] fit, that’s been one of the most prominent evidences of the reality for man-made global warming for quite a long time.]
Christopher Hogan // July 24, 2009 at 2:07 pm |
I just wanted to say thank you for your timeliness. The abstract of this article was posted on a website I frequent (priuschat.com), and wanted to post some intelligent reply. I actually went to the trouble of downloading it and reading it, thinking it might be of some consequence. I’m an economist, but even I understand that first differencing removes (linear) trend. Seeing that argument here let me know that, no, I wasn’t misunderstanding what they did, they sifted to find the tightest correlation they could between changes in two timeseries, and then discussed that as if it explained temperature trends.
So I just wanted to reinforce what a valuable service you provide to the intelligent lay audience. Please keep up the good work.
Son of Mulder // July 24, 2009 at 2:47 pm |
“The point is that the *net* trend is reduced to a constant by the differencing, so its impact is eliminated from correlation analysis.”
Only if CO2 growth is exactly exponential not faster than exponential as you state.
george // July 24, 2009 at 2:55 pm |
Translation:
“You’re very clever, young man, very clever … but it’s turtles all the way down”
Gavin's Pussycat // July 24, 2009 at 2:56 pm |
Paz,
no, that wouldn’t work very well. See, the differentiation applied by the authors apply not only eliminates trends, it de-accentuates any long-term, i.e., low-frequency variation. Compared to the 3-5 year ENSO variation, the CO2 imprint is interdecadal, i.e., low frequency.
Re-thinking, I am even more amazed at the … well … I’m lost for words. First they cut out the sub-annual variability by smoothing, then they tune out the decadal and longer variability by differentiation, and — surprise! 70% ENSO.
Hal // July 24, 2009 at 2:57 pm |
How about those Indians (No I’m not talking about the Cleveland baseball team).
They put all this silly arguing about peer review this and that totally into the background. They won’t play the AGW game and, together with ,,will keep putting more of that good plant food, CO2, into the atmosphere.
All this Crap and trade stuff by the US, EU and AUS will be in vain. The Asians are voting with their feet.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c2896b88-77bd-11de-9713-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1
Stick that into your pipe and smoke it.
Hal // July 24, 2009 at 2:58 pm |
How about those Indians (No I’m not talking about the Cleveland baseball team).
They put all this silly arguing about peer review this and that totally into the background. They won’t play the AGW game and, together with China, will keep putting more of that good plant food, CO2, into the atmosphere.
All this Crap and trade stuff by the US, EU and AUS will be in vain. The Asians are voting with their feet.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c2896b88-77bd-11de-9713-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1
Stick that into your pipe and smoke it.
Shawn H. // July 24, 2009 at 3:29 pm |
I think the issue here boils down to a simple question:
Does the presence of CO2 or other anthropogenic influences significantly affect the timing or extent of fluctuations in the SOI?
If so, then attribution of the majority of the long-term trend to anthropogenic forcing is unaffected.
[Response: Wrong. That SOI can cause a shift in temperature is undisputed, and was shown by legitimate climate scientists long before denialists glommed onto the idea. That it can cause a trend is unsupported by any evidence at all.]
If not, then presumably natural forcings do have the potential to explain the majority of the long-term trend.
[Response: Then why do McLean, Freitas, and Carter apply an analysis which eliminates all effect of trend?]
Unfortunately, answering that question is a bit tricky, at least so far.
[Response: The only "question" is why denialists have to resort to such ludicrous arguments to support the idea that man-made greenhouse gases are not warming the climate.]
Cheers, :)
Mac // July 24, 2009 at 3:30 pm |
re: “As for removing natural factors to see how the “AGW arguements” [sic] fit, that’s been one of the most prominent evidences of the reality for man-made global warming for quite a long time.]”
If you do the math from this study you will see that warmists have only been left with a very small warming trend to deal with. Try to argue from that stand point that man-made global warming is now more than a first-order forcing – it’s been made damned difficult by this study. That’s now your difficulty, deal with it, using only science at your disposal.
[Response: I did the math. Unlike McLean, Freitas, and Carter, I understood it.
To get that "result" the authors had to apply an analysis which completely deletes the effect of trend, and not only remove the low-frequency variation, they removed the high-frequency variation as well. Are you really so blind that you can't see this?]
t_p_hamilton // July 24, 2009 at 3:32 pm |
I wonder if the denialosphere will continue to tout this paper. It is so easily refuted by first year calculus. Will this be the wake up call to many that the “skeptics” are incompetent?
Not to “Son of Mulder” or “Mac” or “Hal”, apparently.
dhogaza // July 24, 2009 at 3:50 pm |
Tamino:
My first thought is that clearly Watts has never taken first-year calculus, and the same is true of most of his followers …
t_p_hamilton:
Exactly …
The anti-science crowd that dominates the denialsphere, including those like Morano and Inhofe who have real political clout, quite obviously don’t have the educational background to *see* how incredibly incompetent they are.
Paz // July 24, 2009 at 3:51 pm |
Thanks, Gavin’s pussycat!
I had just played around with Excel and see now what you mean.
My method seems to work very well if SOI and Warming are the *only* contributors to the signal (i.e. if they explain 100% of the variance). In such a case, a simple regression analysis detects both SOI and the constant warming signal i put in in the second half of the time series.
However, as soon as I let the total signal also be affected by additional random noise, the regression only detects the influence of SOI, but has much less power to detect the warming trend. The more residual noise there is in the system, the more the chance of detecting the warming signal goes down.
(and this is even though I cheated and knew of course perfectly well when the warming signal started and could shape my regressor accordingly).
I herewith withdraw my idea ;-)
Son of Mulder // July 24, 2009 at 4:08 pm |
t_p_hamilton said “I wonder if the denialosphere will continue to tout this paper. It is so easily refuted by first year calculus. Will this be the wake up call to many that the “skeptics” are incompetent?
Not to “Son of Mulder” or “Mac” or “Hal”, apparently.”
Well I’m sorry I started with an assumption that CO2 growth was linear. Having been told that the growth was “faster than exponential” the logic of my original argument stands and the linear elimination following differentiation argument is not valid except if growth in CO2 is exponential.
Where’s the incompetence in pointing that out?
Gavin's Pussycat // July 24, 2009 at 4:37 pm |
Paz, you could try see what you get without differentiating ;-)
george // July 24, 2009 at 4:46 pm |
From post by Shawn H
Tricky indeed!
Damned if they do and damned if they don’t.
PS, the “question” obviously does not refer to the one posed in Tamino’s response, but the juxtaposition of the two is humorous.
Douglas Watts // July 24, 2009 at 5:26 pm |
The analogy I would apply (and correct me if I am wrong) is that summer and winter (ie. the tilt of the earth’s axis) accounts for most of the annual variability in temperature in Earth’s temperate and polar regions, but has nothing to do with trend (unless, of course, it can be shown that the tilt of Earth’s axis is actually changing significantly).
lucia // July 24, 2009 at 5:55 pm |
Philippe Chantreau
Quite honestly, I didn’t plan to read the paper. I usually find papers trying to say all of global warming is due to ENSO/PDO/AMO/SOI unconvincing.
But now, having read it, I’m probably not going to discuss it at length. I mostly like to compare what is or was prognosticated to data that came afterwards. This paper seems to use current data, so it’s a bit difficult to start now. Remind me in 2012 and I can check whether equations (1), (2) and (3) hold up. (I’m not optimistic.)
Tamino–
It looks like results (1), (2) and (3) all contain positive constants α , specifically 0.0326, 0.0424 and 0.0252. I don’t know if the units but given their differencing scheme it C/year seems likely. The paper doesn’t seem to discuss statistical significance and only mentions R^2 which seems to be based on fits to differences in running averages.
Gavin's Pussycat // July 24, 2009 at 6:49 pm |
It’s on RealClimate now. And on Michael Tobis. And he and thingsbreak arrive at pretty much the same analysis as presented here — MT not before slapping his forehead.
Paul // July 24, 2009 at 7:32 pm |
What is it with Australia??
In New Zealand, Salinger got the sack for speaking.
Yet these people and Plimer keep their jobs for doing really, really bad science.
TrueSceptic // July 24, 2009 at 8:12 pm |
Son of Mulder,
I see that you are ignoring the point of this thread, i.e., the methodology employed in the paper is so designed that any trend is removed by definition. Whether this is due to simple incompetence or shameless dishonesty is another question, but it is obvious to anyone with UK GCSE level maths or above that we need go no further than deciding which of those is the major motive.
Lucia,
You disappoint me. Show some genuine scepticism and address Tamino’s point. Is the methodology used in the paper valid? We are not talking rocket science!
Hank Roberts // July 24, 2009 at 8:26 pm |
> unless, of course, it can be shown that the tilt of
> Earth’s axis is actually changing significantly
well, yeah. You wouldn’t want to rule that out.
t_p_hamilton // July 24, 2009 at 8:55 pm |
Son of Mulder wonders:”Well I’m sorry I started with an assumption that CO2 growth was linear. Having been told that the growth was “faster than exponential” the logic of my original argument stands and the linear elimination following differentiation argument is not valid except if growth in CO2 is exponential.
Where’s the incompetence in pointing that out?”
The CO2 trend in forcing, while not exactly linear, would have a nonlinear component that would be lost in the noise.
Paz // July 24, 2009 at 8:57 pm |
Gavin’s:
without differentiating the correlation with the warming signal is of course clearly revealed.
robert // July 24, 2009 at 9:58 pm |
On this notion of incompetence — and being so incompetent as to not know how incompetent one is — there’s actually a name for this. It’s called the Dunning-Kruger Effect:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning-Kruger_effect
I’m convinced it’s one of the major problems facing our society today.
Miguelito // July 24, 2009 at 10:41 pm |
Dr de Freitas published a major study last year in the Bulletin of Canadian Petroleum Geology, edited by his brother Dr Tim de Freitas, of Talisman Energy in Calgary, arguing that “there is no reason to believe that catastrophic [climate] change is under way”.
Not a surprise. The CSPG has had a major denialist bent on climate change for well over a decade. They’ve been running typical denialist articles by Dr Neil A Hutton in their monthly newsletter for the past year. Hutton is such a prolific climate researcher that no climate-science articles can be found authored by him, presumably because there are so many good ones that nobody can choose which ones to cite. The same problem all denialists face because they’re just so “good” at the science. Of course, there’s no counter arguments to these denialicious rants. For those who crave “balance” in the “debate”, the CSPG sure doesn’t like to give any.
I was a very happy non-member of CSPG for quite some time until it became necessary to join so I’d get discounts on their conferences. I’m still on the verge of canceling my membership.
Ironically, they did offer a great conference on climate change last year. I was originally dreading going because the CSPG was behind it all. I’m sure the CSPG would’ve liked to have seen a denialist bent, but the conference chair ended up asking Richard Peltier at U of T for advice on who to ask to give talks. And the chair went and picked scientists who actually work in the field and publish in it too! James White. David Archer. And others. It was fantastic and probably completely the opposite to what the CSPG hoped for.
Shawn H. // July 24, 2009 at 10:46 pm |
[Response: Wrong. That SOI can cause a shift in temperature is undisputed, and was shown by legitimate climate scientists long before denialists glommed onto the idea. That it can cause a trend is unsupported by any evidence at all.]
I think you missed the point of my post. If the changes in the SOI do in fact determine 70% of the changes in temperature(after a lag time), then the relevant issue (for that portion of temp change) is what causes the SOI to change?
If the SOI changes are caused by anthro forcings, then no big deal for AGW. OTOH, if SOI changes are not caused by those forcings, then 70% of the temp change cannot be anthro in origin. Any trend will simply be a trend in SOI(or whatever causes it to change).
Cheers, :)
[Response: Are you being deliberately dense? SOI can only account for 70% of the variation IF you remove the low-frequency variation by differencing after removing the high-frequency variation by moving averages.
But hey -- only an idiot would do that!
As for "trend in SOI," there isn't one.]
Aaron Lewis // July 24, 2009 at 10:53 pm |
Its easy! It is the heat from all those anchovies swimming around that warms everything up. Oh, wait, that is La Nina. OK, it is the energy not used by all the anchovies swimming around that warms everything up.
Did these guys think about the system they were working with before they started doing all this silly math?
P. Lewis // July 24, 2009 at 11:28 pm |
I note that the Mclean et al. paper has the following acknowledgement:
So, it might be interesting if Dr Loehle* indicated what aspects of the statistical analysis he was asked to comment on in the study and whether he had sight of the aspects of the statistical analysis discussed herein. And if he had sight of the statistics discussed herein …
*
Jim // July 24, 2009 at 11:34 pm |
So you cut my last post because you know GISS and HADcrut are both garbage in/garbage out monstrosities. Oh well, other people know and are spreading the truth about those. We don’t need your site.
[Response: I deleted your last post because you're so far over the stupid threshold.]
Deep Climate // July 24, 2009 at 11:38 pm |
I’m pretty sure that is the 2002 article that I referred to above (de Freitas stepped down as editor in 2004).
My impression is that the CSPG is less rabidly anti-AGW than it used to be, although to be sure a majority of its Alberta members are surely still in the “skeptic” camp.
Deep Climate // July 25, 2009 at 12:02 am |
I’ve read the full text of the JGR paper. It’s available here, by the way:
http://nzclimatescience.net/images/PDFs/mclean_defreitas_carter_jgr_2009.pdf
At several points, the authors obfuscate the distinction between “trends” and “variations.”
One section in particular stands out for me:
The phrase “overall warming” surely refers to the warming trend since 1976, especially since the preceding sentence refers explicitly to “overall warming trend”. But I can not see where the authors have shown that ENSO “can account” for “a large part of the overall warming” in the tropics.
Notwithstanding this apparent disconnect, the speculation in the last sentence of the article seems to be based, at least in part, on this finding. For if one accepts that ENSO “can account” for “a large part” of tropical warming, then “perhaps” it is also “a major contributor” to global warming as well.
But obviously there are large apparent gaps in this chain of reasoning. How could the reviewers fail to see that?
cugel // July 25, 2009 at 12:36 am |
Watts gives himself away by his “could prove 2+2=4″ analogy. He demonstrates that he does not believe in an objective reality. Along with his ignorance of mathematics, which hardly needed further demonstration.
How can Watts believe any mathematical presentation – including the one in question? If the people presenting it are clever it could be nonsense. If they’re stupid …
My guess is he goes with with his gut.
Deep Climate // July 25, 2009 at 12:42 am |
Well, well.
This post just became the WordPress “Hawt Post”, replacing WUWT’s post on the same subject. Well done, Tamino.
Rattus Norvegicus // July 25, 2009 at 1:22 am |
First year calculus? More like first week calculus!
Robert Grumbine // July 25, 2009 at 1:25 am |
tamino both got the answer faster than me. I’ll take credit for two things. One being, I told a commenter who’d suggested I look at the paper to suggest it here. Second is, I occasioned Michael Tobis’ forehead slap.
I’ll also make a small ad, in that Monday I’ll take up the paper myself, again from the signal processing/time series analysis point of view. But a different flavor of it than tamino presented. Not least, less math (which is a drawback for some readers, I realize). Folks who haven’t had a brief intro to time series analysis can take a look at my today (24th) post. Nearly math-free, but covering some basic concepts.
suricat // July 25, 2009 at 1:29 am |
Tamino.
I’m no scientist, I’m an engineer, but I can see no fault in the production of a paper that “engineers” data in an effort to highlight a factor that may provoke discussion within the science community on climate variability. This was probably inspired by the recent coincidence of ave global temp following a great period of time, but perhaps badly conceived because of its incompatibility with the solar cycle that wasn’t addressed there (I say this from reading this blog and not the paper per se).
Why would I believe that the solar cycle is important? Simply because IR only penetrates a few metres of ocean depth, visible spectra only penetrate several metres of ocean depth (though the short end of the spectrum penetrates more), but UV penetrates to about 700 metres of ocean depth (and ice) when unimpeded by impurities. Thus, the deep ocean energy levels are an important “base” for the SSTs that promote ENSO, etc. with regard to solar maxima/minima!
The start date for the analysis is 1958 (when solar maximum was apparent) and the end date was 2008 (near to solar minimum). Perhaps I’m out of my depth here (pardon the pun), but to me it looks like the attractor of UV is deep ocean and the solar cycle is pertinent to any analysis.
This may cause some confusion because both subjects tend to adhere to roughly a ten year cycle. However, are they consecutive, or concurrent (or just random)?
Best regards, suricat.
george // July 25, 2009 at 1:56 am |
Perhaps not, but people like Bob Carter who provide them with “expert” testimony certainly do.
So what’s Carter’s excuse?
Carter and his co-authors might not have been aware that they were removing the impact of the trend on the correlation with their derivative method, but they were almost certainly aware that they were increasing the correlation between SOI and UAH over that obtained with the non-differentiated UAH record.
In fact, it is quite likely that that is precisely why they chose (invented?) the method.
Now, whether it occurred to any of them to ask “why is it that the correlation with SOI increases when we use the derivative method” is another matter entirely.
Douglas Watts // July 25, 2009 at 2:54 am |
Watts gives himself away by his “could prove 2+2=4″ analogy. He demonstrates that he does not believe in an objective reality.
As any actual scientist knows, you tend to fall in love with your pet hypotheses, and you tend to hope and cheer them on, even as a good scientist you carefully construct experiments and studies designed to falsify them, because that’s what your peers and your discipline demands.
All of this “scientific method stuff” seems to be lost on Mr. Anthony Watts.
chriscolose // July 25, 2009 at 4:45 am |
suricat,
The authors of the paper in examination (mostly Bob Carter) have a history of dialogue outside the scientific literature which clearly dissents from the mainstream view of climate change, is usually backed by poor arguments, and is usually intended for laymen audiences. As such, they create a certain impression when a poor paper with a poor methodology comes out in a journal, and then the authors over-inflate their conclusions in non-technical sources. The whole point is to “hype up the debate.” Maybe it’s to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the peer-review process, or maybe just to make noise.
What they did not do is highlight any important factor which climatologists are currently unaware of. I also have a hard time they wanted to create scientific discussion. It is well known that ENSO influences temperature variability, and papers exist in the literature that examine the trend with ENSO effects removed. It is also not physical to blame the long-term global warming signal on ENSO as evidenced by the increase in ocean heat storage and top of the atmosphere energy imbalance.
It’s not unreasonable to propose a connection between the 11-year cycle and ENSO behavior. Indeed, research does suggest a linkage between the two. However, it is not possible to use any of this as a suitable alternative to anthropogenic causes and that’s what Carter and others want to do.
Ninderthana // July 25, 2009 at 5:06 am |
[edit: Utter nonsense, but this part is too precious not to share:]
[Here is the bit that will wipe the smile off your face] I have found strong evidence that an external factor (from outside the Earth) plays a critical role in determining the onset times for El Nino events. Hence, there is a strong possibility that it is this external factor which may control the relative frequency of El Nino/La Nina events and hence Earth’s long term temperature trends.
Look for a publication coming out in the near future that will force you to reconsider your position on AGW.
[Response: Space aliens?]
Oakden Wolf // July 25, 2009 at 5:10 am |
That ENSO is a major contributor to variability in global temperature, is ancient news.
On Jennifer Marohasy’s blog, I made the same point several posts before your excellent rebuttal article here was linked. Wish I could say that great minds think alike, but yours is well above mine in this realm. This is what I said:
It is utterly unsurprising that ENSO events expressed by SOI are correlated with global measures of temperature: the abnormally high temperature of 1998 was connected with the extreme 1997-1998 El Nino, and the past two years of cool temperatures have been mainly caused by a moderately strong La Nina.
RealClimate even echoed my “unsurprising” adjectival pejorative.
MT hit the nail square on the head when he said “We are going to be stuck with this stinker for a while. This is new and different; it seems the authors were aiming to score propaganda points as much as to publish a modest result.”
Senator Inhofe will be waving it as Proof that anthropogenic warming is a hoax at the Senate hearings on Waxman-Markey, and will shout to the heavens “and it’s PEER-REVIEWED SCIENCE!”
He can say that in two minutes. It’d take a half-hour to explain what you did here, and by then everybody in the commitee room would be Twittering to their respective conservative or liberal blogs about who’s “winning”. Sad.
Son of Mulder // July 25, 2009 at 8:03 am |
Robert said, “On this notion of incompetence — and being so incompetent as to not know how incompetent one is — there’s actually a name for this. It’s called the Dunning-Kruger Effect:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning-Kruger_effect
I’m convinced it’s one of the major problems facing our society today.”
An awareness of this leads some people to repeatedly ask the question “why?” until they get a rigorous answer. Funnily these people get called sceptics and deniers.
Barton Paul Levenson // July 25, 2009 at 8:43 am |
Hal writes:
There is no CO2 fertilization effect in nature, because CO2 is not usually the nutrient availablem in least quantity (Liebig’s Law of the Minimum). That factor is usually water, followed by fertilizer.
In 1970, 12% of the Earth’s land surface was “very dry” (Palmer Drought Severity Index). By 2002 that figure was 30% and rising (Dai et al. 2004). Global warming is going to be a major disaster for agriculture. If allowed to continue unchecked, it was destroy human agriculture and human civilization along with it.
lucia // July 25, 2009 at 12:42 pm |
TrueSceptic
Valid for what?
I can say: a) MdF&C did not show that all recent warming can be explained by natural variability. They didn’t come close. All they show is what we already know: that SOI affects temperatures. Who didn’t know this.
b) Tamino is correct that the trend doesn’t appear in the correlation between SOI and TTL or GITA. MdF&C focus correlations use for their conclusions. But, Tamino’s response is a bit of a strawman because reading the paper, I don’t think MdF&C ever claimed the trend appears in the correlation. (Maybe I need to read again–but while MdF&C don’t support their conclusion, I don’t think they made that particular mistake.)
c) When suggesting I put my true skeptic hat on, I think you should ponder the part of my comment to Tamino:
Now, think a bit: In principle if Tamino ran his synthetic data, and computed the intercept instead of just the noise, the trend should appear in the intercept.
If the constant 0.0326 C/year (i.e. 3.26 C/century) represents the trend in temperatures when the rate of change in SOI =0, would you think MdF&C have shown that SOI explains away warming? To the contrary: They have shown it’s worse than we thought.
I’m not blogging on this yet because I only downloaded the paper after Tamino blogged. I then had things to do including mowing the lawn, planting flowers, cooking dinner, and running various errands. Also, I need to try to estimate the bias and uncertainty in that number– which is a bit time consuming in the first place and an even bigger PITA due to their method of dealing with the volcanos.
dhogaza // July 25, 2009 at 1:01 pm |
And you’ve been given a rigorous answer, at least in regard to this paper. The bad math in this paper has nothing to do with global warming, climate science, left-vs.-right, etc.
george // July 25, 2009 at 2:43 pm |
Son of Mulder says
As Tamino points out,
Back in 1980, the atmospheric CO2 level was rising at about 1.4ppm per year (5 year average about 1980) and the CO2 level stood at about 339ppm
Given a climate sensitivity of 3 deg C for CO2 doubling and using the logarithmic relationship (logarithmic with concentration) for temperature increase, that translates to an upward temp change back in 1980 due to the yearly CO2 increase of about 0.018 deg C per year.
Recently, CO2 has been rising at about 2 ppm per year.
Again based on the same assumption of sensitivity and today’s CO2 concentration this would translate to an upward temperature change due to yearly CO2 increase of about 0.022 deg C per year.
Based on the same logarithmic relationship you can also estimate how much temp should have gone up per year (on average) due to the change in CO2 from 1980 to present and that comes out about 0.020 deg C per year.
So, the theoretical yearly increase in temp due to CO2 has changed over that period (it’s roughly 20% higher today than it was back in 1980 due to the increase in yearly CO2 emissions)
And if you assume that the temperature change due to CO2 increase had continued upward with the linear trend back in 1980 of 0.018 C per year (as opposed to the average over the period of about 0.020 C per year) that would underestimate the overall change by about 10%.
But as Tamino has also made clear
In other words, if you took the yearly increase back in 1980 (about 0.018 deg C) as the “linear trend” and then tacked on an additional non-linear “component” that increased slightly with each passing year , the majority of the temperature variation due to CO2 increase (the “linear trend”) over the period 1980-present would have no impact on the correlation analysis when the “derivative method” of Carter was used.
The only part of the temperature change due to CO2 increase that would impact the correlation analysis would be the small non-linear “component” that had increased with time.
The additional nonlinear “component” undoubtedly accounts for at least part of the temperature variability that Carter found “unaccounted for” (about 30% of the variability) by SOI.
The latter fact is actually kind of ironic, if you think about it a little. Carter et al were essentially saying that CO2 change could only (potentially) account for a small part of the variation in temperature (because SOI accounted fro 70%). But given that their analysis effectively only included the impact of small fraction of the temperature change due to CO2, that’s not really surprising.
Note: I am considering only CO2 here (not other greenhouse gases) and not taking into account that the temperature change due to a CO2 increase is not realized immediately.
But I think it nonetheless illustrates what Tamino said about “CO2 forcing [having] risen *faster* than linear (but just a little faster than linear) and the fact that the majority of the temperature variation due to CO2 (the linear trend ) over that period has no impact on the correlation with Carter’s derivative method.
At any rate, the actual linear temperature trend over the period 1980 – present was about 0.017 deg C per year.
Mark // July 25, 2009 at 2:52 pm |
Since the trend is removed and 72% of the variation is accounted in this paper, doesn’t that rather prove that it isn’t cooling because the differences that are being touted as “cooling” could be explained as the combination of both the trend that is constant and the SOI.
Mark // July 25, 2009 at 3:00 pm |
The Truth^W^WTruth^WSon Of Mulder: “Only if CO2 growth is exactly exponential not faster than exponential as you state.”
Nope, it has to be about exponential.
Taking a log changes the differences and so the difference on being more than exponential is reduced by taking the logs.
Its called “mathematics”.
africangenesis // July 25, 2009 at 3:09 pm |
Barton Paul Levinson writes:
“There is no CO2 fertilization effect in nature, because CO2 is not usually the nutrient availablem in least quantity (Liebig’s Law of the Minimum). That factor is usually water, followed by fertilizer.”
The CO2 fertilizer effect is DUE to water. Evaporative losses of water are less because the pores don’t have to be open as wide to exchange enough CO2.
Correlation is not causation. Desertification in Africa and China have human causes other than CO2. Precipitation increased with the recent warming. Unfortunately, the models only simulated one-third to one-half of the increase, so are not yet advanced enough to be good guides to what the precipitation will be in the future.
MarkB // July 25, 2009 at 3:49 pm |
Influence of the Earth’s tilt on Hemispheric Temperature
Abstract:
…Overall the results suggest that the Earth’s tilt in relation to the Sun exercises a consistently dominant influence on mean hemispheric temperature. That mean hemispheric temperature in the troposphere has for the last 50 years fallen and risen in close accord with the Earth’s tilt in relation to the Sun shows the potential of natural forcing mechanisms to account for most of the temperature variation.
Conclusion:
…Finally, this study has shown that natural climate forcing associated with the Earth’s tilt in relation to the Sun is a major contributor to variability and perhaps recent trends in hemispheric temperature, a relationship that is not included in current global climate models.
Bob Carter: “The close relationship between the Earth’s tilt in relation to the Sun and hemispheric temperature, as described in the paper, leaves little room for any warming driven by human carbon dioxide emissions. ”
This episode makes me curious as to the review process of GRL. Aren’t reviewers supposed to be experts? Shouldn’t the editor have basic competency?
Shawn H. // July 25, 2009 at 4:40 pm |
Tamino, I suppose I may be dense here, but, unfortunately, for me its not deliberate. Perhaps this comes from not actually reading the paper, so I will try to read it first before commenting further.
This is my understanding of the issue the paper is raising, as I understand it. Perhaps, someone can point out the where I have missed something.
The temperature trend(T1) from 1958-1983 is quite different from the temperature trend from 1984-2008(T2). According to the paper, 70% of the reason T2>T1 is due to fluctuations in the SOI.
Cheers, :)
tango990 // July 25, 2009 at 4:44 pm |
They try.
george // July 25, 2009 at 6:59 pm |
Lucia claims
Really?
I think you need to re-read what Tamino actually wrote above, wherein he takes context into account (a press release by Carter wherein he indicates the “take home lesson” of his paper)
Perhaps you would like to explain how that statement by Carter can be interpreted so that it does not at least imply that “the trend [due to greenhouse gases] appears in the correlation.”
I don’t expect you (or anyone else) to have read “press releases’ but is it really too much to ask of you to read what Tamino actually writes above (including the press release by Carter) if you are going to accuse him of using a “strawman”?
Nick Stokes // July 26, 2009 at 2:55 am |
Lucia, there are statements in the press release, which are not vague and incomprehensible. They are just wrong, and not based on anything shown in the paper. They are easy to find – the press release is at WUWT, and Anthony helpfully puts them in bold, eg, as has been quoted “The close relationship between ENSO and global temperature, as described in the paper, leaves little room for any warming driven by human carbon dioxide emissions. “.
And there’s “According to this study little or none of the late 20th century global warming and cooling can be attributed to human activity.”.
Carter was not talking to a journalist. This was a prepared press release publicising the paper.
Boris // July 25, 2009 at 7:46 pm |
“[Response: Space aliens?]”
Bzzt. Over at Anthony Watts International House of Climate Chicanery the answer is revealed to be…tides.
:(
Son of Mulder // July 25, 2009 at 7:48 pm |
Mark said “Nope, it has to be about exponential.
Taking a log changes the differences and so the difference on being more than exponential is reduced by taking the logs.
Its called “mathematics”.
Exponential means dx/dt=ax more than exponential mean dx/dt=ax^b where b>1. Nothing to do with logs. It’s called mathematics.
Son of Mulder // July 25, 2009 at 8:00 pm |
george // July 25, 2009 at 2:43 pm |
Good answer George.
Hank Roberts // July 25, 2009 at 8:17 pm |
Good grief, there _are_ people posting that the earth’s axial tilt is changing, over at WTF.
Sarcasm is dead.
lucia // July 25, 2009 at 9:21 pm |
George–
I read what Tamino quoted and you requoted. In that quote, Carter refers to the rather vague “close relationship between ENSO and global temperature, as described in the paper,” What’s the “close relationship”? Dunno.
I don’t read that as indicating that Carter thought or said “the trend [due to greenhouse gases] appears in the correlation.”.
Carter thought… something. He thoughts may have been vague, which resulted in the blunder. But, what those thoughts were, I do not know. I don’t think you, Tamino or anyone knows. But, no, I don’t see any particular evidence that Carter thought “the trend [due to greenhouse gases] appears in the correlation.”.
Philip Machanick // July 25, 2009 at 11:26 pm |
Although there is some harm done by this sort of propaganda spin posing as science, every time this sort of thing happens, it increases my confidence in the mainstream. It is quite reasonable and normal in science to challenge the mainstream; that’s how theories get tested. If there were genuine flaws in the theory, this is how they would be outed. That those challenging the theory including some extremely experienced scientists can do no better than this is strong evidence that the theory is sound.
Recently Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd set up a blog with his first topic for discussion climate change. One Malcolm flooded the blog with embarrassingly wrong “facts” that as far as I can tell were all from the Plimer book (which I haven’t read). I picked up some of the choicest examples to debunk both at the PM’s blog and my own blog, where they are easier to find (less noise), from which I conclude Plimer has written the Monty Python Climate Change Phrasebook.
John McLean // July 26, 2009 at 12:01 am |
From J. D McLean, C.R. de Freitas, R.M. Carter
25/7/09
The paper by McLean et al (JGR, 2009) does not analyse trends in mean global temperature (MGT); rather, it examines the extent to which ENSO accounts for variation in MGT.
The research concludes that MGT has for the last 50 years fallen and risen in close accord with the SOI of 5–7 months earlier and shows the potential of natural mechanisms to account for most of the temperature variation.
It is evident in this paper that ENSO (ocean-atmosphere heat exchange) is the primary driver of MGT (i.e. El Ninos cause global warming and La Ninas cause global cooling). The reason given is Hadley circulation (which affects convection, clouds etc) linked to changes in sea surface temperature (ocean heat supply) and the Walker Circulation (i.e. ENSO). These processes might be significant factors in affecting net solar heating as well as the transfer of heat from Earth to space.
Since so much of the criticism in the blogosphrere to date is about the failure of the McLean et al paper to detect trends, which was not the aim of the paper, these critics may be interested in a research paper that does.
Compo and Sardeshmukh (Climate Dynamics, 32:33-342, 2009) state: “Evidence is presented that the recent worldwide land warming has occurred largely in response to a worldwide warming of the oceans rather than as a direct response to increasing greenhouse gases (GHGs) over land.”
Further regarding trends, the warming trend from 1965 to 2000 is the same as the pre-CO2 warming trend of 1900-1940. It is clear from this the climate models promoted by the IPCC have been tuned to extra warmth associated with ENSO as is apparent in the Mclean et al paper.
[Response: First let's dispense with the false claim that "the warming trend from 1965 to 2000 is the same as the pre-CO2 warming trend of 1900-1940." You just made that up; both GISS and HadCRUT3v data indicate considerably faster warming for the latter period. Even if it were true it's irrelevant, you just said it for the double purpose of attempting to discredit global warming and to change the subject from the real issue -- that the analysis of McLean et al. is deeply and fundamentally flawed.
And for your information, 1900-1940 is not "pre-CO2"; although CO2 concentrations are much higher later in the century, the period 1900-1940 represents significantly higher CO2 concentration than pre-industrial. Is this more dishonesty -- or did you really not know that?
The claim that "the climate models promoted by the IPCC have been tuned to extra warmth associated with ENSO as is apparent in the Mclean et al paper" is likewise patently false and blatantly dishonest.
The fact that the method used in McLean et al. removes all effect of trend from the result isn't the *only* problem with this paper. The methodology greatly inflates the correlation between SOI and global temperature, so much so that it gives a ludicrous estimate of the degree of influence of SOI on global temperature.
As for the lame excuse that "The paper by McLean et al (JGR, 2009) does not analyse trends," of course it doesn't, it eliminates them. Which makes us all wonder why the very last sentence of the paper says:
This statement doesn't belong in the paper; the analysis given shows no such thing, doesn't even indicate it, this is nothing more than totally unsupported allegation. But far more egregious are statements in the press release such as Bob Carter's
Nothing more nor less than an attempt to use the correlations claimed in the paper (which are ludicrously inflated anyway) to discredit the influence of CO2 in bringing about a trend in global temperature.
Since this comment appears to come from the paper's authors, be advised: the dishonesty you display in this comment is deplorable. Don't bother responding here if you're willing to be similarly dishonest.
Let's "duke it out" in the peer-reviewed literature, shall we? Expect a comment on your paper to appear soon in JGR. I can hardly wait to see how you'll respond there.]
george // July 26, 2009 at 1:20 am |
Lucia:
I’m having real trouble following your logic.
Here’s wikipedia’s definition of a “straw man” argument:
With that definition in mind, allow me quote you
So, you don’t know what Carter’s position is (on the “close relationship between ENSO and global temperature”) but you do nonetheless (somehow) know that Tamino is (somehow) misrepresenting Carter’s position (whatever it is).
I see (said the straw-man).
Hank Roberts // July 26, 2009 at 1:23 am |
Well, he claims some kind of relationship “leaves little room for any warming driven by human carbon dioxide emissions.” What do you suppose he was thinking?
lucia // July 26, 2009 at 2:15 am |
george–
Gosh, we seem to be going off on some weird tangent discussing the meaning of words.
Stating that person A said “X” when they did not say “X” is misrepresenting what person A said. The fact that person A said something vague and possibly incomprehensible doesn’t mean you can say they claimed “X” when they only claimed “something incomprehensible”
If Tamino had criticized Carter for using vague mushy incomprehenhensible language which the journalist conveyed to the world, I’d say, “Yep!”.
But saying Carter claimed “X”, and criticizing hin for saying “X”? Sort of a strawman. (If you prefer, it’s a mirage-strawman because people generally want to infuse meaning into these vague statements. I can’t entirely blame Tamino for trying to do so. I’m sure I do the same frequently. Nevertheless, it’s a strawman.)
Hank–
Beats me! Possibly Carter’s thoughts about what these fits mean were so muddles even he didn’t know exactly what he meant to convey to the journalist. Or perhaps the journalist asked things many ways, and things got muddled.
Now you may say, “But being muddled and not knowing what you really think is even worse than making the claim Tamino inferred.”
Well… BINGO!
But still, who knows the precise nature of the mistake inside Carter’s head. So, saying we do and counter arguing that: Sort of a strawman.
What we do know is that a) his analysis does not show that accouting for ENSO makes long term warming go away and b) whatever it was he was thinking, he somehow overlooked that any linear trend would either show up in the constant to his linear fit or the residuals.
The fact is, I think Tamino gave the best discussion of what Carter did wrong. But that doesn’t mean ever single thing he said was flawless. We don’t actually know what precisely Carter thought the correlationalone told us about the trend. Maybe he made the mistake Tamino suggested… or not.
Lazar // July 26, 2009 at 2:53 am |
john mclean,
from your paper…
suricat // July 26, 2009 at 3:17 am |
chriscolose.
“The authors of the paper in examination (mostly Bob Carter) have a history of dialogue outside the scientific literature which clearly dissents from the mainstream view of climate change, is usually backed by poor arguments, and is usually intended for laymen audiences.”
Surely this is an agenda for a policy site (is this one of those?).
“It is well known that ENSO influences temperature variability, and papers exist in the literature that examine the trend with ENSO effects removed. It is also not physical to blame the long-term global warming signal on ENSO as evidenced by the increase in ocean heat storage and top of the atmosphere energy imbalance.”
Then I see no wrong in isolating the ENSO effect for an alternative perspective, but I’ve still not read the paper yet so I’ll need to get back to you on the “blame” factor.
“It’s not unreasonable to propose a connection between the 11-year cycle and ENSO behavior. Indeed, research does suggest a linkage between the two. However, it is not possible to use any of this as a suitable alternative to anthropogenic causes and that’s what Carter and others want to do.”
Well I can’t speak for “Carter and others”, but all I wanted to add is the possibility than deep ocean energy levels are probably affected by solar UV. UV also happens to be the greater variable for solar variability in the solar (half) cycle of about 11 yrs. In fact, I’m more interested in what causes ENSO type behaviour per se.
Best regards, suricat.
lucia // July 26, 2009 at 3:34 am |
Nick–
In the context of the on going discussion with Hank, Lazar, george and true skeptic here, my reaction to you point that Carter made some generic mistakes in his press release is: So?
The issue Hank , Lazar and True Skeptic are discussing with me is not whether Carter made some incorrect statements in general, but whether he made a very specific incorrect claim. Surely you understand that making mistaken claim or claims “B” is not the same as making mistaken claim “A” .
Anyway, if you want to explain the general incorrect claims in the press release, knock yourself out. I’ve already said that there are mistakes in MdF&C here and at my blog. That they made some very important mistakes is not a point of disagreement bewteen me and those responding to me above.
Hank Roberts // July 26, 2009 at 3:54 am |
Shorter talking point: [___________] “leaves little room for any warming driven by human carbon dioxide emissions.”
dhogaza // July 26, 2009 at 4:09 am |
Good effing grief, Lucia. You lying b*****. Carter is claiming that CO2 has nothing to do with climate. He claims his sign-on’d paper “proves” it.
The fact that you tilt at climate science windmills while letting this stupid crapola of a paper pass proves what many of us have believed for some time:
You’re an ideologically driven denialist, dishonest as hell.
[Response: Lucia has explicitly stated there are mistakes in the paper. And she's only had a short time to consider it in detail. Perhaps you're being too harsh; give it some time and see what final conclusion she comes to. Meantime ... relax.]
dhogaza // July 26, 2009 at 4:10 am |
You and Carter suffer from the same disease … it’s obvious.
dhogaza // July 26, 2009 at 4:13 am |
It’s perfectly acceptable at a science site. If so-called scientists have a history of trying to publish fantasy rather than science, well, they’re going to suffer for it.
[edit]
dhogaza // July 26, 2009 at 4:14 am |
“mistakes”? “So?”
He’s LYING, and you say … “So?”
Sorry, totally expected. I’ve been trying to maintain some respect for you the last year or so, but …
No more.
george // July 26, 2009 at 4:30 am |
Lucia:
So, let me see if I follow this.
You are now claiming that Tamino stated that Carter said something that Carter did not say and is thereby misrepresenting him?
Perhaps you can point me to the specific place above where Tamino does that (ie, where Tamino “states that Carter said “X” when he (Carter) did not say “X” )
What I see is what I quoted above:
Perhaps Tamino simply “made up” that Carter quote? (ie, Carter never said any such thing)
Or, perhaps you simply know* that Tamino’s interpretation of the paper (indicated by his use of the word “implies”) is a “misrepresentation”?
*without your actually knowing what Carter’s position is on the “close relationship between ENSO and global temperature”, of course.
Carter refers to the rather vague “close relationship between ENSO and global temperature, as described in the paper,” What’s the “close relationship”? Dunno…
etc
Finally, with regard to your statement about “going off on some weird tangent discussing the meaning of words”, all I can say is that I’m sorry if you do not like having to explain your own use of words when you accuse someone of using a “strawman” argument and get challenged on it.
dhogaza // July 26, 2009 at 4:42 am |
Her first reaction has been to accuse you of erecting a strawman argument, then to claim that his making “mistakes” in his press release is worthy of a “so?”.
She won’t spend the effort to attempt to trash it that she does regarding real science.
You know that … it’s not her come-to-truth moment.
Hank Roberts // July 26, 2009 at 5:47 am |
http://www.cartoonstock.com/newscartoons/cartoonists/amc/lowres/amcn39l.jpg
Zeke Hausfather // July 26, 2009 at 6:12 am |
dhogaza,
If anything, Lucia’s post on this subject is even more brutal to Carter’s statements about trends than Tamino’s post:
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2009/that-soi-paper-climate-change-worse-than-we-thought/
Not sure what your beef is with her in this case.
Michael Tobis // July 26, 2009 at 7:07 am |
The main problem with this episode is that the conclusion being flogged to the press is not the conclusion stated in the abstract or supported by the evidence. Rather, what is being played up is merely the existence of some (in fact very dubious) parenthetical speculation.
McLean above, claiming innocence, states “The paper by McLean et al (JGR, 2009) does not analyse trends in mean global temperature (MGT); rather, it examines the extent to which ENSO accounts for variation in MGT.” Whether or not the methodology to achieve that goal is valid, or whether it is a sufficiently open question to merit publication, are issues within normal scientific discourse. If this were the case, the paper would not be worthy of much attention one way or another.
What is abnormal is the casual, completely unsupported, and not really contextual statements that form the basis for the ensuing public relations campaign.
These would include the claim that “suggests that variation in the poorly modeled ENSO may account for the deficit and may be the cause of a large part of the observed warming” and the similar fragment that “natural climate forcing associated with ENSO is a major contributor to variability and perhaps recent trends in global temperature, a relationship that is not included in current global climate models”.
Nothing in the exposition can be said to address these questions.
Yet it is these very statements, which are not even remotely supported by the evidence presented, that characterize the way the authors are describing the study to the press. This is the problem.
I have not before heard of a study where the authors went around trumpeting an off-topic speculation that is not in the abstract of the publication, to the exclusion of the major result.
Only a few sentences in the concluding paragraphs, which are not relevant to the case about variation, are inappropriate. These should be removed.
Alternatively the abstract should be restated to appropriately allude to those those surprising assertions, and the paper should be submitted to a new review. The significant claims made in a publication should appear in the abstract so as to focus the attention of the reviewers on the nature of the argument being made.
Son of Mulder // July 26, 2009 at 7:27 am |
george // July 25, 2009 at 2:43 pm said”Given a climate sensitivity of 3 deg C for CO2 doubling and using the logarithmic relationship (logarithmic with concentration) for temperature increase, that translates to an upward temp change back in 1980 due to the yearly CO2 increase of about 0.018 deg C per year.”
Oh dear after I praised your contribution I’ve discovered other sensitivity estimates for doubling of CO2 from preindustrial (ignoring feedbacks) ranging from 0.9 deg C to 1.6 deg C. Why have you used 3 deg C?
Lazar // July 26, 2009 at 10:29 am |
john mclean,
this statement is impenetrable… “it is clear”… what is?… why is “it” “clear”?… what “extra warmth” is “associated with ENSO” and why?…
isotopious // July 26, 2009 at 10:36 am |
Tamino, for the record…
Do you accept the possibility that ENSO, at least in part, is driving the global warming trend?
Yes or No.
[Response: For the record... No.]
Lazar // July 26, 2009 at 10:38 am |
the paper is laced with statements of vague or double meaning…
what does “adequately” mean…
what is the “human influence factor”…
how do they “apply” ‘it’…
we may never know because there’s no citation…
bigcitylib // July 26, 2009 at 11:58 am |
De Freitas and Mclean bail on their own release in the comments to WUWT and RC.
http://bigcitylib.blogspot.com/2009/07/chris-de-freitas-back-pedals.html
Barton Paul Levenson // July 26, 2009 at 12:20 pm |
AfricanGenesis writes:
Certainly there are other inputs to desertification, but there’s no reason to think rising temperature isn’t the main factor. As to CO2, I can tell you for sure that it’s not having a ferrtilization effect because I’ve done that analysis. I took time series data for 1961-2002 on cereal production, CO2, temperature anomaly, and fertilizer consumption. All seemed to be correlated, but CO2 and temperature turned out to be spurious correlations. Only fertilizer mattered.
I’m submitting the paper to a peer-reviewed journal. I’ll post here when it’s accepted (assuming, of course, that it passes peer review!)
Layman Lurker // July 26, 2009 at 6:45 pm |
BPL, you have tweaked my interest. Could you expand a bit? Did you only look at cereal production?
Barton Paul Levenson // July 26, 2009 at 12:26 pm |
suricat,
Can you point me to some time-series data on solar UV? So far I’ve been using TSI, sunspot number, years since minimum, and years since maximum to analyze solar influence on climate since 1880 (and haven’t found any of significance, BTW).
suricat // July 27, 2009 at 12:16 am |
I’m not surprised that you can’t find any series for UV, as most don’t seem to take this seriously. You need to look for interested parties that would want to know the levels of UV insolation at surface. The best that I can come up with is the Swiss record that has interest with both health issues and protection of their ski slopes:
http://www.meteoschweiz.admin.ch/web/de/forschung/projekte/cost_726.html
It’s purported to be the longest continual record, but I think the “provenance” needs to be proven for true UV TSI as a standard for global UV.
I think it’s time someone took this to task as the data is “so” thin!
Hope this helps.
Best regards, suricat.
Ryan O // July 26, 2009 at 12:55 pm |
I find it interesting, dhogaza, that in spite of Lucia’s agreement with Tamino’s analysis (she takes it one step further on the Blackboard) and agreement that the paper in no way demonstrates that SOI explains the 20th century warming trend, that you lose all respect because she chooses not outright agree with your value judgement on Bob Carter’s motives and chooses not to speculate about what he may or may not have meant outside of his specific quote.
.
Besides, I doubt you could prove that Bob was “lying”. Indeed, I would be willing to bet that he believes what he says, regardless of how scientifically justifiable those beliefs may be.
.
From the outside looking in, this makes your criteria for giving respect appear ideological rather than scientific – which is was you typically criticize in others.
Ryan O // July 26, 2009 at 12:56 pm |
*which is what you typically criticize in others*.
There. That makes that last sentence actually make sense.
Gavin's Pussycat // July 26, 2009 at 1:00 pm |
I must identify with dhogaza here. One mark of a real scientist is losing your temper when liberties are being taken with the truth. I’m suffering from this myself, though slowly learning to replace it by icily sarcastic wit, like the Wabett practices. Still, Hell hath no fury like that becoming a lying scientist.
Perhaps you’ve been blogging too long, tamino… the diplomat taking over from the scientist. Good you’re in on the Comment gig… cannot wait to see it!
george // July 26, 2009 at 1:13 pm |
Carter at al in the abstract of their paper:
Carter in his press release:
Finally, Tamino on the paper:
All 3 of those say pretty much the same thing and simply amazes me that anyone who has read this stuff would claim ignorance of what Carter meant (and actually claim that Tamino has “misrepresented” it) when it is there for all to see, plain as day.
*mean global tropospheric temperature has for the last 50 years fallen and risen in close accord (with the SOI of 5–7 months earlier):
means there is a “high correlation” between temperature and SOI over the last half century, to the statistically uninitiated.
**natural forcing mechanism:
***most of the temperature variation:
Brian Brademeyer // July 26, 2009 at 1:49 pm |
Son of Mulder // July 25, 2009 at 7:48 pm |
“Exponential means dx/dt=ax more than exponential mean dx/dt=ax^b where b>1.”
“More than exponential” would be x=bt+c*exp(at), for b>0, giving for the derivative: dx/dt=ax+b(1-at).
Your formulation (dx/dt=ax^b) confuses the derivative of a function with the function itself. Oh, right, that’s just what the authors of this paper did!
tamino // July 26, 2009 at 2:07 pm |
For the record: by “faster than exponential” I mean that![d^2 [\ln(x)]/dt^2 > 0](http://web.archive.org/web/20100105151009im_/http://l.wordpress.com/latex.php?latex=d%5E2+%5B%5Cln%28x%29%5D%2Fdt%5E2+%3E+0&bg=ffffff&fg=000000&s=0 "d^2 [\ln(x)]/dt^2 > 0")
.
george // July 26, 2009 at 2:08 pm |
Son of Mulder:
3 C is the value given by IPCC, which includes feedbacks. The believe the generally accepted value without feedbacks is about 1C. But if you want to know the theoretical rise in global temperature with CO2 concentration, you have to include the feedbacks (and that’s the way it is normally given by IPCC and others, at any rate)
But the sensitivity to CO2 doubling is not really relevant to what i was saying (or to Tamino’s argument). It’s merely a factor that multiplies all the numbers I gave (0.018, 0.020, 0.022 etc).
Divide them all by 2, 3 or whatever if you want.
Lazar // July 26, 2009 at 2:16 pm |
i agree with mt’s interpretation …
Hank Roberts // July 26, 2009 at 3:26 pm |
I agree with MT as well.
1) Get paper published in reputable journal
2) Make baseless claims in press conferences
3) Defend those claims on others’ blogs
4) Make vague retraction in blog comments
5) Do not call press conference for retraction
6) Do not correct published work
7) ….?
Son of Mulder // July 26, 2009 at 4:28 pm |
Tamino said “For the record: by “faster than exponential” I mean that d^2 [ln(x)]/dt^2 > 0.”
Sorry but that is -1/(x^2) which is always negative unless x is complex.
[Response: You are mistaken. That's d/dt, not d/dx.]
Gavin's Pussycat // July 26, 2009 at 5:33 pm |
Ryan O and Lucia are kind spirits… Lucia loves flowers, always a redeeming quality. No, nobody can prove that Bob Carter is consciously lying — not without looking inside his head. He may well be lying to himself also… human beings are weird that way.
I’ll believe Lucia is a kind spirit once I see the same assumption of innocence until proven guilty applied to Mann, Rahmstorf, Steig and other hardworking scientists whose intellectual honesty and self-critique I have learned to know and value.
chriscolose // July 26, 2009 at 6:50 pm |
An analysis of pages by McClean such as http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24315169-7583,00.html or http://mclean.ch/climate/global_warming.htm shows that he is clearly associated with the political end of things and does not have the understanding sufficient to be publishing in the climate literature; his comment above on this site clearly demonstrates that he just won’t admit his paper is worthless and full of problems. This, along with Bob Carter’s press release, is just evidence of the straws that people will grasp to deny human-induced influence in climate change (as if we needed more?). The simple fact is that the paper should never have been published, and the reports about the paper (which were of course intended for lay audiences) were giving false and misleading impressions about the actual conclusions. It is a shame that these tactics are allowed to continue unchecked.
lucia // July 26, 2009 at 7:50 pm |
Gavin’s Pussycat–
I didn’t clear Carter of innocence on lying in the press release. Maybe Carter lied. Maybe he didn’t. It is true the press release doesn’t fairly represent the contents of the paper. It’s pretty clear Carter either a) doesn’t know what his paper really shows, b) is suffering from confirmation bias, c) is lying or d) some combination of the the previous .
I’m not reluctant to say those things and never have been. If someone poting at my blog claimed Carter’s press release correctly described what his paper showed, or I read such a claim in comments at a blog whose comments I frequent, I’d say contradict them. ( I admit I might skip commenting if there 5 other people were already explaining Carter’s folly. I also admit I sometimes skim comment particularly when many pop in between the late evening and early morning.)
I don’t think it’s useful to rehash what I did say in detail. Suffice it to say, I thought I the context of the discussion was this question posted by george:
lucia // July 26, 2009 at 8:55 pm |
Hhmm… looks like I failed to close some blockquote.
Bill Flastic // July 26, 2009 at 9:29 pm |
McLean et al have done good work; They have simply claimed too much for it.
The noisiness of the climate signal, of the air temps, is important, and they have helped to explain this. It should now be easier to remove ENSO noise from the data and quantify all other trends.
They have also reminded people that atmospheric temperature change is not the same as “Global” temperature change, as the oceans hold heat.
Gareth // July 26, 2009 at 10:01 pm |
More on the NZ perspective here, including an update with responses from real NZ climate scientists.
bigcitylib // July 26, 2009 at 11:03 pm |
I can’t be bothered to sign into Gareth’s “Hot Topic”, but as to why Gorman went with the story he did, there is a brief message from one Brian Leyland on the Climate Skeptic list:
“I twisted Gorman’s arm – but it didn’t need much twisting.”
I don’t know where Leyland fits into the Aussie denialist scheme, but that seems to have been the route.
Ray Ladbury // July 26, 2009 at 11:10 pm |
Lucia, OK, let me get this straight. You are claiming we should allow Carter to plead to the lesser charge of total inability to use the English language rather than mendacity? I might be more likely to buy this if Carter didn’t have a long track record of distorting the science. At least he is consistent, since he distorts even the conclusion of his own paper!
If we are to believe Carter is simply unable to communicate in English, we must also believe that his learning curve does not have a positive slope.
Lazar // July 26, 2009 at 11:11 pm |
gareth thanks…
from the link…
ahem…
more from the first link…
Hank Roberts // July 27, 2009 at 12:01 am |
Hmph. The editors and associate editors for the journal are listed.
“… ad hoc cooling. That mean global tropospheric temperature has for the last 50 years …”
So they’re talking about “that mean global temperature” (as opposed to some other mean global temperature?).
They can’t be anthropomorphizing — that nasty, mean, obnoxious, unfriendly global temperature …. nah. Editors would have caught that.
suricat // July 27, 2009 at 12:25 am |
Barton Paul Levenson.
Please see my “in line” comment.
Best regards, suricat.
Gareth // July 27, 2009 at 12:47 am |
Lazy bugger!
Can you email me with full attribution for your Leyland link? I’d like to add it to the post.
For the rest: Bryan Leyland is an “energy consultant” and prominent NZ climate crank. He has an aggressive approach to the local media, and has often been able to get indefensible rubbish into print. Here’s a particularly egregious example.
Hank Roberts // July 27, 2009 at 1:21 am |
Hey!
http://www.planetthoughts.org/?pg=vid/ShowVideo&qid=2968
lucia // July 27, 2009 at 3:05 am |
Ray–
Hank,
Huh? Carter isn’t pleading to anything; he isn’t even involved in the conversation at this blog. If you buttonhole him, you can ask him and discover what he will plead. I’m sure he doesn’t care what “we” (whoever is in that group,) “allow” him to plead.
What I was saying well above was that it does not appear Carter made the specific claim that the correlation coefficient in his regression contains the trend. That’s it. This observations neither clears nor indicts him of mendacity.
If you suspect him of lying, you suspect him. If others suspect him of bumbling, they suspect him of that. Etc. I neither know, nor care about his history on that subject.
What I know is this: The analysis in his paper does not support the claim that recent warming trends can be attributed to natural variations. No way. No how.
Hank Roberts // July 27, 2009 at 3:13 am |
I didn’t say that, Lucia. Please be careful with your attributions.
lucia // July 27, 2009 at 3:16 am |
I should clarify:
When I say “I neither know, nor care about his history on that subject. “, I mean “When evaluating what his paper shows, or trying to evaluate whether Carter made the specific claim that the trend is contained in the correlation coefficient of his regression, I neither know, nor care about his history of mendacity.”
More generally, I do care about mendacity. But I don’t need to know anything about it to evaluate what his paper actually showed or whether he made a very specific mistaken claim.
caerbannog // July 27, 2009 at 3:24 am |
Hey!
http://www.planetthoughts.org/?pg=vid/ShowVideo&qid=2968
“This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Anthony Watts Surfacestations.org”
I just checked greenman3610’s youtube channel, and it seems that the video has been removed from the playlist there too!
Let’s home that greenman3160 can successfully challenge what appears to be a frivolous, chickens**t DMCA takedown action on the part of that lowlife sleazeball dirtbag Anthony Watts.
I watched that video, and I for the life of me cannot figure out what possible sort of copyright infringement occurred.
Let’s home that Peter Sinclair aka greenman3160 will be able to obtain some pro-bono legal assistance regarding this matter.
caerbannog // July 27, 2009 at 3:59 am |
(Regarding my previous post which has been held for moderation)
Arrrgh! Make that Tamino, not Romm! I have too many damned browser windows opened on my laptop here!
Once again, check out the results of Anthony Watt’s chickensh*t DMCA action: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKY_MtKK6Uk&ytsession=McNCokH9M0IaU87ay-b_q4PQc7lksqkiL8njtm1rMxOPsu0YWpPngTn5rTpPck3xEmXuC6Uc00ot6C_swgSUAVfwWXKk5vSU7gVqjYHcLvm_aviLf6Pobnh3pIgAMCK-FAvbwgsGxycvXGXR6RGaSXuBNV3AH59tW2NGdw8UwYS0pRNtlEjQ8MGig5wMxw3xu0NNeFGU7D-ljo08_zP4kW0ZfP4GvYqxzicNUiiNEiczvdgwUZXfm8Qp6OSQNrdMqPYxriLXJ71Vj0V1-9PAPRas7jVeeHsHP3Fu3we8c1d_xXkTuGe7QYRC1WVB7GEN
dhogaza // July 27, 2009 at 4:52 am |
I can accept that instead of lying, he’s a [edit].
Then why should any of his work be published in venues that supposedly are [edit] proof, and why should anyone defend him, unless they’re pleased that his [edit] supports their own political position (you, lucia).
Tamino may choose not to allow this, but …
You guys are defending the undefensible, and the reason why is obvious.
No interest in truth, or science, or anything other than supporting your own small-minded ideological crap.
[Response: If for no other reason than your own blood pressure ... calm down.]
dhogaza // July 27, 2009 at 4:55 am |
He’s out in public, along with at least one of his co-authors, saying that the paper proves that CO2 isn’t causing warming, no action is needed, blah-blah-blah.
He doesn’t need to participate here, nor be buttonholed by anyone here, for any rational person to understand he’s LYING.
Lucia … I’ve always felt that you’re intrinsically dishonest. I suppose I should thank you for lying wood upon the smoldering kindling, and making it clear.
He Flips // July 27, 2009 at 4:59 am |
Ok, way off topic here (sorry feel free to delete) but my favorite Youtube series, Greenman3610’s Climate Denial Crock of the Week had a video “Watts up with Watts.”
Well that video was DMCA’ed by Watts:
“This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Anthony Watts Surfacestations.org ”
His response to questions of fair use:
” I don’t care to discuss my reasons here as they are private and unrelated to this discussion. Google agreed that complaint was valid and removed the video. – Anthony”
Obviously, if anyone is familiar with google and DMCA, they remove the video after every complaint, that’s not agreeing to validity. I hope Greenman files a counter complaint.
dhogaza // July 27, 2009 at 5:00 am |
So what kind of motive do you think Carter and McLean publicly LIE about what their paper actually shows, claiming it shows that CO2-forced warming isn’t real?
Geez. Where’s your basic morality?
dhogaza // July 27, 2009 at 5:04 am |
I posted before being aware of it, but note – she’s defending his lying in public as being …
Well, I’m not sure, other than being … defensible.
Lucia practices a form of dishonesty that’s much more subtle than Watts, Carter, McLean. Can’t decide if it’s more or less than McI, though she’s not as directly offensive, so I think maybe she is more subtle than him, too.
It doesn’t change the reality, though …
dhogaza // July 27, 2009 at 5:11 am |
I think it’s actually a brilliant tactic. Rather than publish absolute garbage in a place like E&E, publish something which in its details is not controversial, make some offhand speculative comments in your conclusion that don’t trigger the reviewers to reject (because, after all, it’s just speculative and not really related to the meat of the paper), and therefore sneak it through peer review.
And then .. voilá ! You’ve got your piece in a real peer-reviewed venue, not E&E, not the blogosphere, and then you can LIE OUT LOUD about your paper, in order to influence the political process.
And you can depend on the denialsphere picking it up, amplifying it, Morano, more importantly Inhofe, the content DOES NOT MATTER IN THE LEAST.
And then you have pseudo-serious people like Lucia saying, well, if Carter doesn’t understand his own paper and says something opposite to the press, it’s not lying! He just doesn’t understand his own paper!
And, same for McLean, and DeFraudist or whatever his name is.
Not understanding your own paper while you pontificate to the press isn’t dishonesty!
Pfffft.
This discussion is great for exposing the basic morality of Lucia and RyanO, if nothing else.
dhogaza // July 27, 2009 at 5:23 am |
Meanwhile, look at this brand-new crap from Lindzen:
Starts with a total strawman, then repeats RWingnut 101 crap verbatim…
And, to top it off, smoking doesn’t cause cancer.
I do hope RyanO and Lucia are proud of the company they keep…
luminous beauty // July 27, 2009 at 6:20 am |
“The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”
Gavin's Pussycat // July 27, 2009 at 9:01 am |
Context is important, Lucia, if you write with the purpose of informing your readership. Yes, one can choose to limit oneself in this way. Honest people don’t make that choice. Stop fooling yourself to begin with.
Barton Paul Levenson // July 27, 2009 at 9:07 am |
Son of Mulder writes:
Because that’s the approximate mean of all the estimates, and the actual value is almost certainly between 2 and 4.5 K. Here are some examples and a simple statistical overview:
http://BartonPaulLevenson.com/ClimateSensitivity.html
Barton Paul Levenson // July 27, 2009 at 9:08 am |
Layman Lurker:
Yes, so far all I’ve examined is world cereal production.
Layman Lurker // July 27, 2009 at 5:59 pm |
BPL, I hope to comment on this further (pretty busy right now). I will take my questions and comments to open thread when I have time.
africangenesis // July 27, 2009 at 10:44 am |
Barton Paul Levenson,
“As to CO2, I can tell you for sure that it’s not having a ferrtilization effect because I’ve done that analysis. I took time series data for 1961-2002 on cereal production, CO2, temperature anomaly, and fertilizer consumption. … Only fertilizer mattered.”
That isn’t controlling for very many variables and hardly justifies “There is no CO2 fertilization effect in nature”.
After all, the research plots that demonstrated the effect were “in nature” too. As far as agriculture goes, hopefully humans are less likely to invest in fertilizer when water is the limiting factor. The more efficient utilization of water may have allowed agriculture to benefit from the greater utilization of fertilizer. We are mining a lot of fossil water, in the future fresh water is expected to be even more critical due to the expansion of human population.
For the time being, if you want to try to detect a fertilizer effect outside of experimental plots, there might be less variables to control for in the productivity on non-agricultural land.
“Certainly there are other inputs to desertification, but there’s no reason to think rising temperature isn’t the main factor”
It is hypothesized that a drought caused by a prolonged pooling of cool water in the eastern Pacific caused the demize of the Anasazi civilization in the southwestern U.S. The observations show a speeding up of the water cycle and increased precipitation associated with the recent warming. The cool Younger Dryas period was much dryer.
I think the climate and human land use practices are much to complex to allow one to be sanguine about concluding that warming is the main factor in desertification.
Mark // July 27, 2009 at 11:18 am |
Lucia, with big claims you need big proofs.
Do you have any proof that Carter ISN’T being mendacious???
Mark // July 27, 2009 at 11:30 am |
Truth/the truth/Son of Mulder says “Exponential means dx/dt=ax more than exponential mean dx/dt=ax^b where b>1.”
But that isn’t the equation of how CO2 affects temperature.
That is a log relationship. The “more than exponential” is the amount of CO2 going up there, which rate is increasing.
It’s called “reading comprehension”. Get an adult to help you with the long words.
Curious // July 27, 2009 at 11:32 am |
Thank you for your analysis, Tamino. The quick response from the scientific community on blogs is enormously useful to prevent the spread of these distortions throughout the media/web/society.
Dr. Grumbine also comments on the paper, showing with the response function that the filtering inflates the correlation (as Tamino also noted above):
http://moregrumbinescience.blogspot.com/2009/07/how-not-to-analyze-climate-data.html
Cheers.
Nick Stokes // July 27, 2009 at 11:42 am |
Fig 4 in McLean et all shows a plot of the RATPAC radiosonde data with SOI, again on a scale they used which seems to exhibit the correlation. RATPAC is what they used for their correlations. I plotted the same data, on the same scale here (temperature red, SOI black and marked with the scale the wrong sign). But I also plotted the LS regression lines. The slope of the RATPAC temperature fit was 0.016 degC/year, and in the same units for comparison, the SOI slope was 0,0030 C/yr. The SOI is not “explaining” the trend shown by RATPAC.
george // July 27, 2009 at 12:15 pm |
Lucia says:
Word parsing.
Carter may have not “made the specific claim” outright, but it was nonetheless implied with the paper’s final statement:
Robert Grumbine // July 27, 2009 at 1:35 pm |
My note on the paper is finally up. I took a different route than tamino and lucia, as I completely* ignored trend issues. Instead, I looked at the response function of the digital filters used in the paper. It’s a combined low pass (averaging) and high pass (differencing) filter, giving a bandpass filter. It also turns out to be a rather bad bandpass filter, as the response in the 1.5-7 year period window exceeds unity (being about 1.5 through the middle). ENSO is often described as a 3-7 year variation. What the authors manage to do, then, is find that if you look in a distorted way at the ENSO window, you mostly see ENSO stuff.
*Truly, of course, any time series analysis does pay attention to trends. If not straightforwardly, then because the spectral decomposition of the trend gives you contributions at all frequencies. Given a trend, some of its spectral decomposition will lie within the ENSO band, yet again enhancing the correlation. The particular bandpass filter is fairly harsh on linear trends (fairly effective at suppressing such contributions), but I don’t think even the climate tendencies have been a simple straight line.
It is for this reason that the authors’ unqualified ‘major contributor to variability’, and their pleas that they are not looking at trends are at very best disingenuous, even looking only at the paper. Trends are part of the variability in the data set, as they are, in principle, for any time series. In spectral terms, they’re part of the low frequency variability. That portion, along with the high frequency, was suppressed by the digital filters. So when they claim to have explained very high % of the variability in temperatures, they are simply wrong. At most, they explain a large portion of what is happening in the ENSO bands, but not even very well there, due to the poor quality of their filter.
My blog note is longer, including illustrations of the various filtering effects and more description for those who are not already familiar with time series analysis. More useful here, perhaps, is the figure for the response function, down at the bottom.
lucia // July 27, 2009 at 1:39 pm |
George–
Word parsing?
Look, you specifically asked me whether I believed he made that that specific claim about whether the trend is reflected in the correlation coefficient. You know seem to want to say I must accuse him of that specific claim (and mistake about the definition about a specific statistical quantity) because he made another different claim that you think implies the first one.
You haven’t shown the claim Carter made implies the first specific claim about the trend being contained in the numerical value of the correlation coefficient; I think the bit you quote does not imply that specific claim.
I’ve never said Carter didn’t claim ENSO may explain recent trends. He obviously did claim that. I said he was wrong to claim that and I said that nothing in his study supports that claim.
Why it is important to you to believe that Carter made the specific claim that the trend is contained in the correlation coefficient to his curve fits, I do not know. Carter’s paper is flawed. Despite that there are all sorts of specific mistakes he did not make. For example, it does not say 2+2-5, or Force = mass * velocity. It also does not specifically claim the trend in temperaure is contained in the correlation coefficient of Temperature and SOI.
Mark–
I’ve never said Carter is not mendacious. I’ve been discussing whether or not he made one very specific claim.
Since I made on claim one way or the other about his mendacity, why would I attempt to prove whether he is or is not mendacious?
Dhgoza–
I did not defend anyone’s lying either in public or in private. I’ve only said that whether or not Carter lied is irrelevant to determining whether a) his paper is flawed or b) he claimed that the trend is contained in the correlation coefficient in his analysis. The answer to (a) is: His paper is flawed. This is true whether or not he lied to anyone, anywhere about anything. The answer to (b) is, he doesn’t seem to have made that specific claim.
I don’t think there is anything subtle about these points.
caerbannog // July 27, 2009 at 2:12 pm |
Just checked greenman3610’s youtube channel to see if he had anything to say about the DMCA thing.
Found this little item in the comments section:
I am normally against euthanasia but in the case of aggressive dishonest creatures like greenman3610, we should change the laws quickly enough before this scum starts to influence our lives.
It turns out that the individual who posted this little gem is none other than Lubos Motl!
Jimmy Haigh // July 27, 2009 at 2:27 pm |
dhogaza // July 27, 2009 at 5:23 am |
Meanwhile, look at this brand-new crap from Lindzen:
“The notion of a static, unchanging climate is foreign to the history of the earth or any other planet with a fluid envelope. ”
Dhogaza. Kindly explain what is ‘crap’ about this statement?
I really think you ought to have some professional therapy. You do seem like a very angry person.
Hank Roberts // July 27, 2009 at 2:47 pm |
Lucia, there’s nothing subtle.
Notice you’re the only person left defending these guys? Wonder why?
They’ve had a consistent answer for years no matter what the question was.
Now they’ve published a bad paper and claim it supports the same answer they’ve been giving for years.
See the problem yet?
It’s a clever PR method. You’re being wilfully blind to it.
You’re claiming moral superiority because you’re looking only at the paper, not at either the claims made by the authors about it, or the claims made by the same people over the years without a basis.
Take a look at the eugenics literature sometime.
Or the anti-vaccination literature.
Or PETA.
There are lots of highly moral, very concerned people out there who are sure of their answer, and distort the science or make things up as the basis for their moral position about what should be done.
Science — if you don’t make mistakes, you’re doing it wrong. If you don’t recognize and correct mistakes, you’re not doing it at all.
TrueSceptic // July 27, 2009 at 3:49 pm |
Jimmy Haigh,
I imagine that dhogaza is angry because of the continuing shameless dishonesty of the deniosphere.
I hope you realise why he quoted Lindzen, and in particular the sentence you singled out.
I’d give you a clue but I’d rather you work it out for yourself. :-)
TrueSceptic // July 27, 2009 at 3:51 pm |
Hank Roberts,
“Science — if you don’t make mistakes, you’re doing it wrong. If you don’t recognize and correct mistakes, you’re not doing it at all.”
Worth repeating! :D
Biker Trash // July 27, 2009 at 4:00 pm |
I haven’t followed the nitty-gritty of this issue, but I have a question.
How can a paper that is obviously nothing more than a pack of lies, written by known liars, the primary purpose of which is disinformation-level PR get published in a first-class Approved Proper Climate Science Journal after being processed by Proper Approved Peer-Review?
If the characteristics and objectives of the liar authors are so well-known, how is it possible for the reviewers to be un-aware?
Are all papers published in this Journal now suspect?
[Response: The paper itself is not a "pack of lies." It's a horribly mistaken analysis, with some totally unjustified speculation slipped in at the end.
As for peer review, it's necessary but hardly sufficient for quality research. I'd guess that the referees for this paper just didn't "do the math." Pity.
The "pack of lies" is the press release to announce the publication of the paper.]
P. Lewis // July 27, 2009 at 4:04 pm |
Jimmy Haigh writes
While I hope dhogaza is counting to 10 slowly, I will note that there is nothing intrinsically wrong in that initial Lindzen statement that dhogaza refers to when taken in isolation. The problem is is that that statement is the opening gambit in inferring that all climatologists who espouse that AGW is real and a real problem for future generations are completely unaware of it. Those climatologists, of course, are not unaware of it, being acutely aware of their palaeo colleagues’ understanding and research (indeed, I’d imagine that palaeoclimate studies form part of their education before they diverge into other areas of research).
Of course, Lindzen is not really making such comments for climatologists’ ears; he’s making them for the uninitiated and ineducable and for the denialist industry. That is, it is a statement calculated to misrepresent his opponents’ views. It’s a straw man. It’s crap when taken in context.
But then you likely “know” all that , judging from past comments over at Dim Wattage.
Peter Dunford // July 27, 2009 at 4:19 pm |
Am I understanding this correctly?
“their analysis method removes all temperature variation which is due to trend”
you explain this by saying
“They estimate time derivatives by taking the difference between 12-month running averages, 12 months apart.”
Yes that appears to be right
“Suppose temperature is the sum of a function of time which shows a lot of variation but no trend, and a linear trend”
By this you must mean that the variation cancels itself out over time, therefore temperature at any date = underlying temperature plus warming to date plus or minus variability.
The difference between any two consecutive years should be one year of trend warming plus self-canceling over-time variability, in essence the warming.
“It’s certainly not true that their analysis shows “natural climate forcing associated with ENSO is a major contributor to variability and perhaps recent trends in global temperature.” It shows no such thing; their analysis removes all the effect of trends.
But they weren’t calculating temperature the way you suggest, they were simply using the average of one year less the average of the previous. If there is any warming trend, it will still be embedded in the data.
You are generating a formula which ensures that a trend applied has no effect, it’s irrelevant to what they’ve done with the data.
The point is that the temperature changes correlate well with the ENSO effect WITH any warming, so maybe the warming isn’t what you claim it to be.
[Response: Read the post again. Their method doesn't eliminate trends from the filtered data, it reduces them to a constant. A constant contributes nothing to the variation in data. Hence their attribution of variation in the filtered data to SOI says nothing at all about the variation which is due to trend.
And: that's not the only problem with their analysis. There are lots more.]
Peter Dunford // July 28, 2009 at 11:36 pm |
I’ve read the post again. And the paper. Their method doesn’t eliminate trends OR reduce them to a constant, the maths used here to miss-interpret / discredit what they are doing does that and is applied to them.
“Suppose…”
An average of temperatures of one year less an average of temperatures of the previous year repeated over many periods does not reduce a “trend” to a constant in the absence of other manipulation (which has not been shown, only invented). Cut the math babble and get some common sense.
[Response: Try this experiment: take any monthly time series data whatever. Apply the filter used by McLean, de Freitas, and Carter, and plot the result.
Then add a linear trend to the data series. Filter again. Compare and contrast.
Then come back here and admit you're wrong.]
lucia // July 27, 2009 at 4:27 pm |
Hank,
Huh? I haven’t defended ‘these guys’ or anyone.
Deep Climate // July 27, 2009 at 4:34 pm |
As has been pointed out at least twice above, the paper claims:
This can only be read as a definite unqualified assertion that the paper’s analysis demonstrates that ENSO accounts for at least a significant part of the “overall” warming trend in the tropics. There’s not even the “perhaps” of the final sentence of the paper.
Nevertheless, Lucia continues to defend Carter:
Yes, the authors do not clearly state how they arrive at their extraordinary assertion, but what else could it be based on if not the SOI-temperature correlation analysis. It’s pretty clear that Carter, in particular, does not understand the math involved.
I would say the problem is not so much that Carter thinks that the trend is “contained” in the correlation analysis. If anything, it’s worse than that: he doesn’t even appear to understand the difference between variation and trend.
Gavin's Pussycat // July 27, 2009 at 4:44 pm |
And I honestly thnk that anybody not getting angry at the things that make dhogaza blow up has a pretty serious personaliity disorder.
The good news is that it qualifies you for a career in politics, the legal profession or the predatory side of big business. Which are you training for?
Lynn Vincentnathan // July 27, 2009 at 5:03 pm |
Barton Paul Levenson & “As to CO2, I can tell you for sure that it’s not having a ferrtilization effect because I’ve done that analysis. I took time series data for 1961-2002 on cereal production, CO2, temperature anomaly, and fertilizer consumption. All seemed to be correlated, but CO2 and temperature turned out to be spurious correlations. Only fertilizer mattered.”
I’m doing a paper on “Food Rights and Climate Change,” and would appreciate it if you could contact me with any good info you have. My university email is: lvincent@utpa.edu
Thanks for any info you can provide, and for all the good work you do here and at RealClimate….
Igor Samoylenko // July 27, 2009 at 5:25 pm |
One of Lindzen’s statements in that piece quoted by dhogaza will go down particularly well here:
“This contradiction is rendered more acute by the fact that there has been no statistically significant net global warming for the last fourteen years.”
(emphasis mine)
As for the rest – what a depressing read! I cannot believe it is coming from Lindzen, the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at MIT. It is poorly written, almost incomprehensible in places, badly referenced!
As Philip Machanick said earlier – the more I read these supposedly-serious sceptics such as Lindzen the more confidence I have in the mainstream and IPCC. These sceptics really have nothing of substance to say; it is all just a PR campaign aimed at general public/politicians (like Pielke Sr’s recent exchange with RC)…
Brian Dodge // July 27, 2009 at 9:30 pm |
Lucia said “What I know is this: The analysis in his paper does not support the claim that recent warming trends can be attributed to natural variations. No way. No how.”
Doesn’t the way that the analysis was done actually support the claim that the apparent cooling or flattening of temperature (HadCRUT, GISS, UAH atmospheric data) since about 1998 is attributable to ENSO(and possibly other internal climate mechanisms), and that the increased energy being retained by increasing anthropogenic CO2 (plus methane, Nitrogen oxides, CFCs, etc) is continuing to cause Arctic sea ice, glaciers, ice caps, and Ice shelves to melt/disappear/collapse?
What I’m getting at, and I’m typing while I’m thinking it through, is that internal physical climate processes that we see as ENSO (or NAO, PDO, and the other alphabet soup of descriptors) have strong influences over where the energy flows in the climate system; the strong correlation between changes in SOI(air pressure diff) and UAH(temperature) seen by McLean et al requires transfer of energy between global temperature and SOI pressure difference. Or more precisely, between one energy reservoir which we measure indirectly as UAH temperature, and another energy reservoir which we measure indirectly as SOI barometric pressure difference. So there must be an internal climate process which can transfer energy on the massive scale required to cause the correlated global changes shown by McLean et al, and it can also surely transfer energy to melting ice or heating the ocean, hiding it from air temperature sensors, but not making it go away. Doesn’t their paper also put another nail in the coffin of the argument that small (relative to the diurnal or seasonal) changes in temperature will be harmless, by showing that (global average UAH) temperature changes of less than 1 degree are coupled by energy transport to ENSO changes that cause drought, flooding, change tropical storm intensity & tracks, and other human catastrophes? (see reference to Anasazi by africangenesis // July 27, 2009 at 10:44 am)
McLean et al have in effect analysed the outputs of position sensors on the trunk and tail of an elephant, and shown that they move left and right together, mostly, when you filter out the tail flicks. This is useful, but not sufficient to describe the elephant; and doesn’t tell us where the elephant is going(despite press release & blog claims to the contrary).
David B. Benson // July 27, 2009 at 9:56 pm |
To emphasize a point made earlier, a band pass filter (as in the bad paper being considered on this thread) removes the DC componenet, i.e., the trend.
Deech56 // July 27, 2009 at 11:17 pm |
It appears that Bob Tisdale is trying to resurrect McLean, et al. The money comment:
“…and these are my peers.” (OK – I made that quote up.)
MarkB // July 28, 2009 at 12:00 am |
Deech56,
I’ve had various discussion with Bob Tisdale on AccuWeather. When I’ve suggested that he submit his work for review, I usually don’t get a response. I think some are content with the relative fame the blogosphere brings. Some get more fame and name recognition being promoted uncritically by political types like Watts than they would doing the hard work of careful research published in reputable journals, and facing genuine critical review.
pete of perth // July 28, 2009 at 2:33 am |
What is the accuracy of the collected data? How were the instruments calibrated & to what reference standard? Where are the error bars on the presented data? Untill these questions have been answered then any data presented is worthless.
[Response: Is this sarcasm?]
Jimmy Haigh // July 28, 2009 at 3:21 am |
Gavin’s Pussycat // July 27, 2009 at 4:44 pm | Reply
“And I honestly thnk that anybody not getting angry at the things that make dhogaza blow up has a pretty serious personaliity disorder.”
I disagree.
“The good news is that it qualifies you for a career in politics, the legal profession or the predatory side of big business. Which are you training for?”
Ha Ha Ha!!!!
Jimmy Haigh // July 28, 2009 at 3:22 am |
Gavin’s Pussycat // July 27, 2009 at 4:44 pm
Actually, I’m training to be a photographer of wild birds.
Jimmy Haigh // July 28, 2009 at 3:35 am |
TrueSceptic // July 27, 2009 at 3:49 pm | Reply
“I imagine that dhogaza is angry because of the continuing shameless dishonesty of the deniosphere. ”
I’m a denier. I’m also honest. You agree with me that dhogaza is angry but I think your diagnosis of the cause of his anger is wrong.
“I hope you realise why he quoted Lindzen, and in particular the sentence you singled out.”
I didn’t single out that sentence – dhogaza did. I simply asked him how he formed the opinion he has.
“I’d give you a clue but I’d rather you work it out for yourself. :-)”
No – can’t work it out.
It’s a funny thing this climate change business – we all have the same evidence and information but people on each side of the subject come to totally different conclusions.
I’m a geologist and I have seen evidence of climate change recorded in rocks of all ages all over the world. If the climate had never changed at the end of the Cretaceous period humans would never have evolved because the dinosaurs would still be ruling the planet.
As for anthropogenic global warming? I simply do not agree that we caused it. No more than we are causing the global cooling that has been going on for the past decade or so.
There is a lot of anger and irrational beaviour on the AGW side. You should all really calm down a little. Don’t you realise that you expel more CO2 into the atmosphere when you are angry and hyperventilating?
[Response: Global cooling that has been going on for the past decade or so?
Ha ha ha!!]
Nathan // July 28, 2009 at 4:37 am |
Jimmy
“I’m a geologist and I have seen evidence of climate change recorded in rocks of all ages all over the world. If the climate had never changed at the end of the Cretaceous period humans would never have evolved because the dinosaurs would still be ruling the planet.”
Is there some big mystery as to why the climate changed at the end of the Cretaceous?
Now what was the CO2 level during the Cretaceous. What was the global temp?
Perhaps if you actually read some research you would find that one of the reasons the Cretaceous was so much warmer than now is becuase the CO2 level was so much higher.
dhogaza // July 28, 2009 at 4:45 am |
He was asked to do so for his top-post at WUWT today, and explicitly said, “no, I won’t, I’m a blogger”.
I’d say that makes it clear that he’s not interested in taking science and scientists head-on.
He’s got a clear political agenda, and it’s best served by convincing the RWingnut masses, rather than do something serious.
dhogaza // July 28, 2009 at 4:45 am |
How can one say these two sentences without their head exploding???
dhogaza // July 28, 2009 at 4:49 am |
So, essentially you’re saying, as a geologist, it’s time for Homo sap. to become extinct, so the next dominant taxonomic group can become dominant, due to evolutionary changes forced by AGW.
Now, that’s a comforting thought. Why do you hate people?
dhogaza // July 28, 2009 at 4:52 am |
Oh, Deech56 beat me to the punch regarding Tisdale:
(regarding Tisdale’s refusal to write up his work and submit to the scientific literature)
Phil Scadden // July 28, 2009 at 4:57 am |
Jimmy, ” No more than we are causing the global cooling that has been going on for the past decade or so.”
So you are a geologist too? Right we should speak the same language. However, you claim global cooling for a decade or too. Is that how you were taught to analyze data in your classes?
You can find proper statistical analysis of the data on this site showing no such thing. Now show us where you get the idea of “global cooling”. Would your method of data analysis stand up to any kind of scrutiny at all?
dhogaza // July 28, 2009 at 4:58 am |
Americans who got angry at what Nazism meant in Germany, and then in Spain when the fascist Franco took over with German support, got labeled as …
“Premature anti-nazis”
And sent to the Pacific.
So maybe I’m a “Premature anti anti-science” guy?
dhogaza // July 28, 2009 at 5:02 am |
Because it’s a strawman argument, and they’re always crap.
No one make the claim that Lindzen dishonestly suggests is being claimed.
If you’re not bright enough to figure that out, well, not our problem.
You’re his target audience, the ideologically-driven RWingnuttery or science illiterate.
Take your choice.
Mark // July 28, 2009 at 7:31 am |
pete burbles:
“What is the accuracy of the collected data?”
To within the reading accuracy of the instrument,
“How were the instruments calibrated & to what reference standard?”
That is called “metrology”. Check it out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrology
Gavin's Pussycat // July 28, 2009 at 8:06 am |
> I’m a denier. I’m also honest.
Doesn’t compute. Denialism per definition is a state of self-deception, i.e., not honest.
The first half of your statement is obviously truthful… good news, you are not always dishonest ;-)
Gavin's Pussycat // July 28, 2009 at 8:10 am |
> Don’t you realise that you expel more CO2 into the
> atmosphere when you are angry and hyperventilating?
But that only helps agricultural production…
Good luck with your bird photography BTW. Stick to what you know.
James Anderson Merritt // July 28, 2009 at 8:57 am |
I have noticed that, whenever “AGW deniers” dare to say anything — even about just the alleged scientific consensus, never mind the actual science itself — they are shouted down by those who demand to see “peer-reviewed papers in respected journals.”
So, here is your peer-review; here is your respected journal. I realize that neither the peer-review process nor a journal’s prestige guarantees that the science is ultimately correct. And you are certainly making the case that the process and the journal got it incredibly wrong in this case. But if there are no guarantees, can we at least get the AGW peanut gallery to quit the duckspeak shouts about peer-reviewed articles?
Can the facts and theories merely be discussed on their own merits? From the shrill shouting I have heard from both sides, I fear not.
Lazar // July 28, 2009 at 10:15 am |
ouch…
Steve Bloom // July 28, 2009 at 10:46 am |
James Annan winkles out yet another error in the paper.
Mark // July 28, 2009 at 11:05 am |
“As for anthropogenic global warming? I simply do not agree that we caused it. ”
And why does CO2 not produce warming?
Please show your empirical evidence that it doesn’t.
Thank you.
TrueSceptic // July 28, 2009 at 11:55 am |
Jimmy Haigh,
“I’m a denier. I’m also honest. You agree with me that dhogaza is angry but I think your diagnosis of the cause of his anger is wrong.”
Of course he’s angry. Who’s denying it? I said that I “imagine” the reason. Others seem to agree. Let’s see what he says himself.
At least you call yourself a “denier” so you have some self-awareness.
“I didn’t single out that sentence – dhogaza did. I simply asked him how he formed the opinion he has.”
He merely separated the first sentence from the rest of the paragraph. You quoted only that first sentence. Not that it matters much.
“No – can’t work it out.”
Really? Are you feigning innocence (and ignorance)? For those lacking comprehension skills, P.Lewis spelt it out very nicely.
“It’s a funny thing this climate change business – we all have the same evidence and information but people on each side of the subject come to totally different conclusions.”
Funnily enough, that happens with Creationism vs. Evolution too. What’s your point?
“I’m a geologist and I have seen evidence of climate change recorded in rocks of all ages all over the world.”
And? Who didn’t already know this? It’s hardly arcane knowledge.
“If the climate had never changed at the end of the Cretaceous period humans would never have evolved because the dinosaurs would still be ruling the planet.”
I thought the cause of the extinction of the dinosaurs was still a subject of research and debate but other than that, what’s the relevance of this?
Anyway, we know that *deniosaurs* still roam.
“As for anthropogenic global warming? I simply do not agree that we caused it.”
On what grounds?
“No more than we are causing the global cooling that has been going on for the past decade or so.”
What global cooling is that? Perhaps you could show us some actual data?
“There is a lot of anger and irrational beaviour on the AGW side. You should all really calm down a little. Don’t you realise that you expel more CO2 into the atmosphere when you are angry and hyperventilating?”
The irony is too much! You clearly don’t read much of what is posted by fuming nutters at the many sites that discuss climate matters.
Barton Paul Levenson // July 28, 2009 at 12:15 pm |
Jimmy Haigh writes:
Well, you’re wrong.
http://BartonPaulLevenson.com/GlobalWarmingBriefLecture.ppt
There isn’t one:
http://BartonPaulLevenson.com/VV.html
Ray Ladbury // July 28, 2009 at 12:42 pm |
Jimmy Haigh,
To say, simply, “Oh, it’s warmed before, so there’s no problem,” is to utterly misunderstand the science. There was no global civilization dependent on climate for its infrastructure in those events. Those events unfolded over millennia rather than decades. Do you see the difference.
The outrage you see stems from the fact that the evidence is undeniable, and yet you deny.
Do you dispute that the globe is warming? There’s a temperature record going back over a century and a trillion tonnes of ice lost in 5 years that say you are wrong.
Do you dispute that CO2 is a greenhouse gas? There’s nearly 200 years of science and a very successful model of climate that says you are wrong.
Do you dispute that greenhouse gasses are largely responsible for the current warming epoch? Then how do you explain simultaneous tropospheric warming and stratospheric cooling, a consistent record of shorter winters and other phenological evidence…
The only way you can maintain your current position is to ignore the evidence. There is no scientific debate here. There’s science vs. anti-science, and it is clear which side of that line you are on.
george // July 28, 2009 at 12:49 pm |
Aside from the problems with the carter paper pointed out above.
“Differencing” (as used by Carter et al) is notorious for introducing noise into a signal.
If carter et really insist on using this “derivative method” it seems like a much better approach would be to use something like a Savitzgy-Golay first derivative filter that simultaneously does some smoothing.
i’d be curious to see the results of the latter applied to the same data.
not that it would change their conclusions or anything (my guess is it would probably actually enhance the correlation), but it would at least give an idea of how much spurious noise their procedure had introduced.
It strikes me that (after nullifying the effect of the trend and omitting periods of volcanic activity) all Carter et al are really doing here is finding the correlation between ENSO and the remaining (non-volcanic) “noise” in the climate signal (ie, the noise about the long term trend)
Should anyone really be surprised to find that ENSO can account for a lot of this noise?
Jimmy Haigh // July 28, 2009 at 1:47 pm |
I seem to have stirred up a hornet nest here. You guys are so easily wound up. Chill out!
Anyway it’s obvious that I’m not going to change any of your minds and you certainly aren’t going to change mine. I’ve got far better things to do than waste my time here.
Lee // July 28, 2009 at 3:04 pm |
@James Anderson Merritt:
“Can the facts and theories merely be discussed on their own merits?”
That is precisely what is happening. Instead o whining about how badly you think “the AGW peanut gallery” is treating your ideas, why don’t you participate?
Philippe Chantreau // July 28, 2009 at 3:37 pm |
Has anyone tried to get on NSIDC’s web site today? It’s asking for a login ID and password, which I have never seen before.
TrueSceptic // July 28, 2009 at 3:56 pm |
BPL,
Excellent summation but I have a quibble: one of the slides refers to Human Agriculture. Is there any other kind? ;-)
Craig Allen // July 28, 2009 at 4:02 pm |
Jimmy, I think the more relevant criterion for weather we are wasting our time is ‘are we learning anything in the process of reading and commenting on blogs like this’. You’ll find that you can learn a hell of a lot more hanging around on science based blogs than on denialist blogs. (Even with dhogaza wigging out now and again.)
TrueSceptic // July 28, 2009 at 4:02 pm |
Jimmy Haigh,
“I seem to have stirred up a hornet nest here. You guys are so easily wound up. Chill out!”
Hardly, and a hilarious description considering that you frequent WattsUpWithMyBrain.
You can’t support your claims so you bail out.
Craig Allen // July 28, 2009 at 4:04 pm |
Ha, my use ‘weather’ instead of whether was not an intentional pun, just my dyslexia showing through.
Ray Ladbury // July 28, 2009 at 4:19 pm |
James Anderson Merritt,
Peer review means one thing–that some of my colleagues thought that the work was sufficiently interesting and correct that it might merit attention of the wider community. Sometimes they get it wrong–particularly when the analysis contains a lot of smoke and mirrors as the current manuscript does. What matters ultimately is whether the community sees the results as providing a way forward in understanding the subject.
If it does not, it will sit there like a dog turd on a New York sidewalk until someone sweeps it off the curb.
What matters is whether the work is useful. This one isn’t. However, it’s a step above the usual denialist crap, since they at least tried to publish.
Tom C // July 28, 2009 at 4:23 pm |
My, my tamino -
I sent in a comment suggesting that it was wrong of you to let dhogaza call lucia a vile name and you would not print it.
“Open mind” my foot. You coward.
[Response: Your suggestion that it was wrong of me to let dhogaza call lucia a vile name, had nothing to do with your comment's deletion. It was because of the vile falsehoods you added after that.
And as I've often said, keeping an open mind doesn't mean removing your brain.]
Jimmy Haigh // July 28, 2009 at 4:47 pm |
TrueSceptic // July 28, 2009 at 4:02 pm |
“Hardly, and a hilarious description considering that you frequent WattsUpWithMyBrain. ”
I do frequent Watt’s Up With That. The “best science blog on the web”. You obviously frequent it too otherwise you would not know that I did. Why don’t you contribute? In actual fact, it’s more constructive when you use your real name.
“You can’t support your claims so you bail out.”
Oh – I could. But I can’t be bothered – you wouldn’t listen. Life’s too short.
You guys have serious issues. You should really grow up. I gave up reading The Guardian when I was 13.
Jimmy Haigh // July 28, 2009 at 4:48 pm |
Craig Allen // July 28, 2009 at 4:04 pm | Reply
“Ha, my use ‘weather’ instead of whether was not an intentional pun, just my dyslexia showing through.”
I would not call it an ‘intentional pun’ or dyslexia. It was a Freudian slip.
caerbannog // July 28, 2009 at 4:52 pm |
Has anyone tried to get on NSIDC’s web site today? It’s asking for a login ID and password, which I have never seen before.
There probably has been a sudden increase in the sea-ice extent and now coverage is back to normal for this time of year. If the public found out, then the grand conspiracy to allow 40K/year postdocs to continue enriching themselves by publishing alarmist research would unravel. Hence the news userid/password requirement. It’s all part of the grand coverup!
Hank Roberts // July 28, 2009 at 4:53 pm |
TS, yes, so far we know of four other kinds of agriculture. It’s a wonderful world.
PLB143: Pre-human agriculture: Ants, termites, and beetles
Societal structure…the fact that ants, termites, and ambrosia beetles are social animals is important to their development of agriculture …
http://www.plantsciences.ucdavis.edu/gepts/pb143/…/pb143l13.htm
… besides humans, four kinds of animal are known to farm fungi (fungiculture)—leaf cutter ants, termites, ambrosia beetles, and marsh snails …
http://itotd.com/articles/451/non-human-farmers/
Aside (far, far aside):
I’ve always wondered if the primate threat display– tearing up and throwing plants growing underfoot — had any selective advantage for those that could discriminate between useful food plants and weeds, instead of throwing everything they could reach indiscriminately.
TrueSceptic // July 28, 2009 at 5:12 pm |
Tom C,
Do you similarly complain at denialist sites when members of the climate science community are called vile names?
george // July 28, 2009 at 5:35 pm |
TrueSceptic inquires
“one of the slides refers to Human Agriculture. Is there any other kind? ;-)”
How about ant “farming”?
From wikipedia article on aphids
george // July 28, 2009 at 5:45 pm |
James Anderson Merritt asks
“Can the facts and theories merely be discussed on their own merits?”
Maybe if they had some we could discuss them.
Personally, I’d rather discuss ant “farming.”
Tom C // July 28, 2009 at 6:35 pm |
TrueSceptic -
Point me to a similar offense as dhogaza’s 7-26 comment and I will complain.
counters // July 28, 2009 at 6:44 pm |
Philippe Chantreau,
I’m not having any problems getting to any data on NSIDC.
Mark // July 28, 2009 at 7:11 pm |
“I do frequent Watt’s Up With That. The “best science blog on the web”.”
The best science the denialists can manage on the web. This doesn’t mean it’s the best science. Or even science.
“Oh – I could. But I can’t be bothered – you wouldn’t listen. Life’s too short.”
Well go forth and multiply then.
Mark // July 28, 2009 at 7:13 pm |
And isn’t WUWT by the same guy who complains incessantly that they MUST have HadCRUT data but whines and bitches about NOAA getting hold of “his” data at surfacestations and using it without his approval? The same guy who writes a DMCA takedown notice over someone displaying the FRONT COVER of a report whilst the voiceover is talking about the report?
The guy (if such he is) has a severe problem in seeing straight.
TrueSceptic // July 28, 2009 at 7:29 pm |
Jimmy Haigh,
“Oh – I could. But I can’t be bothered – you wouldn’t listen. Life’s too short.”
I asked you to support your claim about cooling and you made no effort to do so. It shouldn’t be hard if you are as confident as you make out.
“You guys have serious issues. You should really grow up. I gave up reading The Guardian when I was 13.”
How utterly childish and pathetic, and you do realise that most contributors here are not from the UK?
But anyway, as you took the trouble to come here, how about addressing the central point of Tamino’s OP? It’s only GCSE level maths, after all.
Yes, I skim Watts every now again to see if it’s still as reality-free as ever. Why would I waste my time doing anything more? Anyway, I think there are a few trying to educate the ignorant there. Quite why they bother, I don’t know, as the same nonsense is repeated ad nauseam, showing that some never learn.
TrueSceptic // July 28, 2009 at 7:33 pm |
Hank Roberts & george,
Thanks for the information. It didn’t occur to me that “agriculture” also includes what you describe.
Fred Staples // July 28, 2009 at 7:36 pm |
Tamino, you say that it is generally accepted that much of the apparently random variation in global temperatures can be attributed to Pacific oscillations. Although this reduces the “noise” in the data, it says nothing about the “signal”, or long term trend.
The trend in the UAH mid-troposphere data, over 30 years, is 0.4 degrees centigrade per century, hardly different from zero. The trend in the Southern hemisphere is actually negative.
Are we to conclude, therefore, that without “the influence of man-made climate forcing” the “natural” trend would be strongly negative?
[Response: You were already corrected on RC about this. The UAH MT data include significant effect from the rapid cooling of the stratosphere. And since that stratospheric cooling is due to increased CO2, without the influence of man-made climate forcing it wouldn't exist.]
The trend in the UAH lower troposhere data – a more robust 1.2 degrees C per century – is also instructive. For its first 18 years the trend in this data was also negligible, 0.2 degrees per century to 1997/1998.
[Response: Your numbers are wrong. The trend in UAH TLT up to 1997 is 0.35 per century, not 0.2. Then trend up to 1997.5 is 0.3 per century, not 0.2. And the trend up to 1998 is 0.43 per century, not 0.2.
And OF COURSE you don't mention the uncertainty in those estimates. The UAH trend up to 1997 is 0.35 +/- 1.3.]
All regression trends pass through the mean of their data, and are sensitive to the data at the ends of their time periods. So it was that the 1998/99 El Nino spike created the trend in the UAH data, and it was further reinforced by the sharp temperature increase from 1999 to 2001.
As has frequently been remarked, the strange thing about this increase was not its magnitude, but the fact that it did not fall back until 2006/2007.
Perhaps this relatively sustained increase was also caused by Pacific oscillations? In any event, the trend line peaked at 1.44 degrees C per century in 2007. Rapidly falling temperatures have since brought the trend line down to 1.24 degrees per centigrade, and it will fall to below 1 degree per century if current recorded temperatures (around 1979/1980 levels) continue for the next few years.
So, there was no trend to speak of before the post-1998 excursions, and the current 30 year trend is falling. In spite of the faulty methodology, it is at least arguable that the South Pacific oscillations are indeed responsible for the “signal”, as well as the “noise”.
[Response: The estimated trend is fluctuating. The only surprise would be if it wasn't. The recent la Nina causes the fluctuation to be negative -- again no surprise. But you conclude from this that south Pacific oscillations are responsible for the signal? Non sequitur.
And frankly, there are very good reasons not to trust the UAH temperature record.
Your "contribution" continues to be limited to grasping at nonsense to support your belief. Goodbye.]
Mark // July 28, 2009 at 7:44 pm |
“Point me to a similar offense as dhogaza’s 7-26 comment and I will complain.”
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2009/3/23/propaganda-in-schools.html
“We really don’t do education in this country anymore. Frankfurt School Marxist indoctrination we seem to do in spades though. ”
Nice.
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2009/2/12/vicky-pope-on-climate-change.html
“Hysterical global warmists tells everyone to cool it. Priceless!”
Smooth.
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2008/10/30/met-office-tea-leaves.html
“If they were posessed of the power of thought, James, they would dump all of this Climate Change Bill nonsense immediately!”
Hominemhominem!
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2008/9/21/climate-cuttings-24.html
“The hockeystick algorithm was so robust one of Shakespeares monkeys could have produced it during the coffee break.”
Balmerian!
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2008/9/18/worlds-premier-scientific-journal-says-kumbiya.html
“Nature’s descent from serious scientific publication to journal of record for the darker fringes of the green movement continues apace with a hilarious piece from hippie-chick editor, Olive Heffernan.”
Let’s hear it for misogyny now!
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2008/9/13/climate-cuttings-23.html
“Back in March, global warming’s canine-in-chief, Tamino, ”
Ah! So appropriate!
And this is quite a tame site!!!
Gavin's Pussycat // July 28, 2009 at 7:50 pm |
Tom C: does Lubos Motl ring a bell?
You may do the searching… I just showered.
Hank Roberts // July 28, 2009 at 7:55 pm |
Before Believing
(Danny Flowers)
…
How would you feel if the world was falling apart around you
Pieces of the sky were falling in your neighbor’s yard
But not on you
Wouldn’t you feel just a little bit funny
Think maybe there’s something you oughta do ….
africangenesis // July 28, 2009 at 8:20 pm |
Barry Paul Levenson,
“Well, your wrong http://BartonPaulLevenson.com/GlobalWarmingBriefLecture.ppt”
I looked it over. The most you can get out of your argument is that CO2 makes a warming contribution. Not that it is the cause of global warming. Perhaps you are reading too much into the “correlation”.
Of course, there is nothing new in this, the IPCC acknowledges that positive feedback is required for the climate sensitivities required.
caerbannog // July 28, 2009 at 8:31 pm |
Tom C: does Lubos Motl ring a bell?
You may do the searching… I just showered.
This will make you want to take a long, hot Lysol shower:
(from the comments section at http://www.youtube.com/user/greenman3610)
“I am normally against euthanasia but in the case of aggressive dishonest creatures like greenman3610, we should change the laws quickly enough before this scum starts to influence our lives.”
dhogaza // July 28, 2009 at 8:54 pm |
They had a notice up on the site a day or two ago (not exactly sure when, very recently) saying it would be unavailable for about four hours.
Probably doing a software upgrade and restricted access while doing so, something like that.
bluegrue // July 28, 2009 at 9:03 pm |
Jimmy Haigh,
I do frequent Watt’s Up With That. The “best science blog on the web”
Let me share my experience on WUWT as a scientist who follows climate change only on a hobbyist level.
Have you ever asked yourself, why Watts still compares raw anomalies across GISTEMP, HadCrut, RSS, UAH, despite knowing that he needs to compensate for the different base periods? A large portion of the readers seems to never have caught on to that concept.
Another example: When Watts posted Spencer’s flawed analysis of C13/12 he waved off tamino’s objections and the example of how Spencer’s “results” were utterly independent of the data used. Watts was content with Spencer posting a “response” which never addressed the critizism and closed the thread when another commenter became too insistant. When Spencer’s “analysis” came up again, I was challenged by Watts to give a mathematical proof that it was flawed – and delivered. Watts chose to ignore my post and never look back.
A million monkey’s clicks flooding a poll does not make a blog a “science blog”.
Oh, and because of reminding him that he fooled many of his readers into believing 2007 news covered a current event and selling Tom Tripp as an “IPCC lead author” (he’s not of any assessment report) I was awarded the honorary title of “a mighty hunter”, I think; “nimrod” was his exact choice of words. I love the civil tone over on WUWT so much better.
dhogaza // July 28, 2009 at 10:49 pm |
Are you sure about the “knowing” part? Watts has been told, but I really wonder if he understands that those telling him are right.
Hank Roberts // July 28, 2009 at 10:52 pm |
> CO2 makes a warming contribution.
> Not that it is the cause …
————===———-
Congratulations, Af, you’ve understood one of the basics about the physics — there is no single thing that is _the_ cause.
There are things that go up and down naturally, and there’s the thing that goes up and up, artificially.
Add’em up.
Deech56 // July 28, 2009 at 11:33 pm |
RE: bluegrue // July 28, 2009 at 9:03 pm
But you didn’t use your real name. ;-)
Points aren’t valid unless there’s a name attached. Otherwise, your post vanishes into the wattosphere.
Phil Scadden // July 29, 2009 at 12:10 am |
Jimmy, “you certainly aren’t going to change mine.”
So tell me, what evidence would cause you to change your mind? I can certainly state what change my mind.
Or do you mean that no matter what data is presented to you, you are going to put your fingers in your ears and go lalala? (reading WattsUp would be equivalent). If that is the case, then you may have trained as geologist but you are certainly no longer a scientist. I only have a vague idea about what the Guardian is but that comment makes me suspect that you are more influenced by a political point of view than by data.
Tom C // July 29, 2009 at 12:31 am |
Mark -
None of the comments you quote from Bishop Hill sink to the level of calling a woman who has been a respectful commenter a b****. That was vulgar and misogynistic.
In regard to Motl, I could not follow the link to get the context, but he is frequently out-of-bounds, so I will concede the point and register a complaint next time.
Soil Creep // July 29, 2009 at 1:45 am |
Tom C –
Obviously many of us wish for a more polite exchange, but it really is an old canard to nullify the validity of blog post based on the occasional rude comment.
So what is your point anyway, you feeble minded wanker? ;)
j/k
george // July 29, 2009 at 1:51 am |
Tamino:
Since Carter and his co-authors are essentially finding how well the derivatives of two time series correlate, what does their result really say about the relationship between the time series themselves?
You noted above that adding a constant has no effect on the correlation.
So, for example, that would mean that if one of the time series was a perfect sine curve varying with time and the other was the same sine curve added to some linear function of time, the derivatives of the two series should correlate perfectly.
But what about the inverse of this?
For example, say I find a perfect correlation between the derivatives of two (artificial) time series. That would seem to imply that the two series themselves can differ by “at most” a linear trend (including the flat trend in which case they would be identical).
Is that correct or am I missing something?
[Response: You're basically right, you just left out a possible proportionality constant between the series. If the derivatives of two time series x and y correlate perfectly, then dx/dt = a dy/dt + b (where a and b are constants) so x = ay + bt + c (where c is another constant). However, if the derivatives of two series x and y don't correlate perfectly (which is the case here), this relationship will not hold. In that case, their method suppresses *any* long-term variation in the data, whether trend or not.
And McLean et al. don't just compute the correlation of derivatives but of *smoothed* derivatives (don't forget the 12-month moving average step). This removes variation in the the derivatives on short time scales.]
Hank Roberts // July 29, 2009 at 4:07 am |
Oh … dear …. some history I’d forgotten about:
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/07/ahh_mclean_youve_done_it_again.php
citing:
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2007/05/bolt_pranked.php
Gavin's Pussycat // July 29, 2009 at 4:35 am |
Actually caerbannog’s example is literally not a good one, as Google/Youtube is not a climate denial blog, and not pre-moderated. I’m sure you can get this one removed if you try. You don’t even have to try hard as greenman can testify.
Trying to remove Motl’s vile language on his own blog isn’t worth it.
BTW note that one important difference between dhogaza’s outburst and those found on denialist sites is that the latter are also untrue, i.e., libelous. I’m not female, but as a scientist I figure I’d rather be called a bitch than a fraud, even if the latter is done in language staying on the inner edge of the Terms of Use.
dhogaza // July 29, 2009 at 5:41 am |
Oh gosh, Jimmy, I’d missed this sidewise personal insult directed at me.
The fact that I do have a fairly large list of international credits selling photos of wild birds, boats, landscapes, and the like …
Makes me … what?
That, like my selling non-fiction writing to the international market, and working as a field biologist, isn’t how I make my living.
So, exactly, what is your point?
dhogaza // July 29, 2009 at 5:48 am |
Oh, gosh, and look at the last couple of days of McI and Watts and the names they’re calling Phil Jones, and they’re bragging that managed to potentially, illegally download raw data files, the accusations against UK authority, not to mention the continuous slurs and accusations of scientific fraud, corruption, etc against hard-working scientists …
And my calling out Lucia, arguably as dishonest as they come, is unacceptable?
You might get my attention if you even more forcefully slam the slanderous crap coming from the denialsphere.
Your side tries to ruin careers.
Me? I just give my personal opinion of a dishonest person who just happens to be a woman.
Wolfman // July 29, 2009 at 6:35 am |
- Hank Roberts
There are things that go up and down naturally, and there’s the thing that goes up and up, artificially. Add’em up.
There are things that go round and round too but, hey, don’t jump to conclusions. This is Open Mind.
Joseph // July 29, 2009 at 7:36 am |
dhogaza: [Good effing grief, Lucia. You lying b*****. Carter is claiming that CO2 has nothing to do with climate. He claims his sign-on’d paper “proves” it.]
Lucia has agreed with the facts about the paper itself – that its conclusions and methodology are flawed. What you insist that she does, which she refuses to do, is also morally condemn one of the authors as a lying.’
dhogaza: [quote]You and Carter suffer from the same disease … it’s obvious.[/quote]
Why do you feel the need to personally insult people so much?
dhogaza: [quote]Sorry, totally expected. I’ve been trying to maintain some respect for you the last year or so, but …[/quote]
I’m sorry her failure to get angry enough to call somebody a bitch over the internet and interject all sorts of other ad homs into a comment thread is some sort of moral failure on her part.
dhogaza: [quote]You guys are defending the undefensible, and the reason why is obvious.[/quote]
Now that I’m defending her, am I defending the indefensible also? Am I paid by oil companies to write this post? Am I a eugenecist? Do I vote for the American Nazi Party, or fantasize about strangling children?
[quote]Where’s your basic morality?[/quote]
Amazing. Not only is lucia is an immoral, lying bitch for refusing to make a judgment for the cause behind the author’s statements, people who suggest that you might be incorrect for giving her shit are also immoral.
Gavin’s Pussycat: [And I honestly thnk that anybody not getting angry at the things that make dhogaza blow up has a pretty serious personaliity disorder.
The good news is that it qualifies you for a career in politics, the legal profession or the predatory side of big business. Which are you training for?]
It looks like Tamino has asked dhogaza to calm down, among many others (lots of people read this thread and didn’t feel the need to call lucia a bitch.) Where do we all sign up to make millions oppressing and murdering people?
dhogaza: [Americans who got angry at what Nazism meant in Germany, and then in Spain when the fascist Franco took over with German support, got labeled as …]
I didn’t realize that fans of common civility were the moral equivalent of Nazis. Thanks for filling me in.
Lee // July 29, 2009 at 7:49 am |
@bluegrue, re WattsUp.
A year and a half ago, Watts made several posts that contained promises to respond to criticisms in followup posts.
I made the “mistake” a couple months later of asking him when he was going to make the followup posts and respond to the criticisms.
Watts banned me. He not only banned me, he went back and deleted every post I had ever made – all of which had been approved by him when I made them.
Gareth // July 29, 2009 at 8:08 am |
For the interested: the authors seem to be trying a new defence… (See update 4 here)
Apparently we’re expected to eyeball fig 7 and the lack of obvious trend means there isn’t much of one… Such glorious precision…
Mark // July 29, 2009 at 8:32 am |
“None of the comments you quote from Bishop Hill sink to the level of calling a woman who has been a respectful commenter a b****.”
Ah, seems you cannot read.
“hippie-chick editor, Olive Heffernan.”
With the statement as fact that she is driving Nature into disrepute “because she’s a hippie chick”.
Or “canine-in-chief, Tamino, ”
Now, what does B**** mean? A female dog.
Now YOU may see that as not a problem, but that’s purely because you hate people who don’t believe AGW is false because you ***KNOW*** it is. Therefore, Scientology-like, consider them not just wrong, but DANGEROUS.
And anything goes.
PS look at the denialist love-fest on the BBC blogs. Lots of “they are all just wanting money, there’s nothing to AGW” and so on.
And again has ANYONE heard of someone saying after a denialist ranting “Well, that’s it! I’m for AGW because if all the anti-side has is swear words and slander, they don’t have anything”?
No?
That’s because it isn’t a reason to pick a position. It’s used twofold:
1) “Look at me, I’m just being neutral!”. They aren’t denying AGW is wrong, they are just being nice and police and not wanting to associate with nasty people. At least this is what they want to project.
2) If they can avoid the sarcasm and scorn they so actively and richly deserve (see Ray on deltoid for an example), then the fence-sitters they are playing to (you thought they were discussing science???) can see that there’s still polite debate about it so maybe it’s too early to make drastic decisions (after all, it will cost TRILLIONS to change…).
With the great advantage that they don’t EVER have to move away from the denialist camp. If everyone pro-AGW is nice and polite, all they have to do is find one example from long ago. If anyone anti-AGW is mean and nasty, just ignore it.
As you do.
Mark // July 29, 2009 at 8:39 am |
“Of course, there is nothing new in this, the IPCC acknowledges that positive feedback is required for the climate sensitivities required.”
Not climate sensitivities REQUIRED.
Climate sensitivities that are seen to EXIST.
Without CO2 *and* feedbacks, you cannot get the interglacial/glacial temperature changes from Milankovich orbital changes alone.
Can
not.
Now if you meant “required to explain the data” then this is fine.
But that is likewise a part of the physical theory:
H2O cannot go up without extra temperature to keep it there.
CO2 can go up without extra temperature to keep it there since it isn’t liquid at STP.
But CO2 can increase temperatures.
So now H2O can increase because the temperature to keep it there has gone up.
See how the feedback is part of the physics? It isn’t just “curve fitting”. Which, oddly enough, the occasionally seen move of “CO2/temp changes are not log but a reducing exponential” WAG *was*.
Alan C // July 29, 2009 at 10:34 am |
Hi, I don’t mean to derail here but I wanted to enquire if anyone was familiar with a book called ‘Air Con’ written by Ian Wishart. Hot Topic reviewed it here
http://hot-topic.co.nz/somethin%E2%80%99-stupid/
which has lead to a bit of a slinging match as Wishart is on that attack as he is completely deluded [or lacking in integrity] into believing he is right, maybe it’s the fundamentalist in him, I don’t know. He’s also got stuck into the one negative review on it out of five so far on Amazon. I’m somewhat concerned about it though, this doesn’t need to be out there confusing the public [or are there other equally nonsensical 'works' out there already?]
I’ve just recently been working to learn what I can on this despite my lack of higher science education beyond secondary school. There almost seems to be a religious anti-science bent to most of this denialism that I’ve encountered so far [or the authors have ties to vested interests].
Hope this ramble isn’t out of place.
TrueSceptic // July 29, 2009 at 11:04 am |
Phil Scadden,
‘The Guardian’ is a UK daily newspaper. It is seen as being on the ‘left’ politically (all UK newspapers have a political slant, most being conservative).
It is the paper that George Monbiot and Ben Goldacre write for and takes a stand against pseudoscience. I understand the website is read by many outside the UK. http://www.guardian.co.uk/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/series/badscience
TrueSceptic // July 29, 2009 at 11:09 am |
Tom C,
Try this. All from one person on one blog, collected by me. http://notahedgehog.wordpress.com/2008/12/25/the-christmas-spirit/
I recognise that you can hardly complain about comments you are unaware of, but there’s a lot of nasty stuff out there!
Barton Paul Levenson // July 29, 2009 at 11:15 am |
TrueSkeptic,
You have a point. Very little agriculture on Earth is nonhuman.
Barton Paul Levenson // July 29, 2009 at 11:23 am |
africangenesis writes:
Feedbacks can’t cause the trend, can they?
We know from radiation physics that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, so putting more of it into the atmosphere should cause warming. It has. The effect is amplified by positive feedback. That doesn’t mean the feedbacks are the cause of the phenomenon.
Craig Allen // July 29, 2009 at 2:06 pm |
Hey dhogaza. I’m on your side re the dishonesty of the denialists, but I really do think you do owe Lucia an apology. Your remark was out of order. Call her dishonest sure, but the other bit was beyond the pale.
Mark // July 29, 2009 at 2:21 pm |
Joseph asks
“Why do you feel the need to personally insult people so much?”
Because they deserve it?
Why do denialists HAVE to say “The scientists are wrong because they want to continue having more money” or all the other same ol’ same ol’ destroyed pavlovian rebuttals of AGW science that has nothing to do with science?
The thought processes (if there are any, it could just be emergent behaviour of a blind process) of the denialist remain unknown…
Mark // July 29, 2009 at 2:23 pm |
Lee: “Watts banned me. He not only banned me, he went back and deleted every post I had ever made – all of which had been approved by him when I made them.”
Pop along to RealClimate and tell Stephen about it. He thinks he’s being persecuted by Gavin on RC.
If he feels like a crusade against mod-banning, maybe he should work on Watt’s site too…
Bet he doesn’t.
Hank Roberts // July 29, 2009 at 2:36 pm |
> very little agriculture
Ahem. Just a few examples the interest:
http://www.jstor.org/pss/3599084
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/218/4572/563
http://aem.highwire.org/cgi/content/abstract/73/6/2024
We are only beginning to attempt to model biological responses to climate change; we know they’re important.
Gavin's Pussycat // July 29, 2009 at 2:48 pm |
TrueSceptic,
you must be in need of a shower :-)
Craig Allen // July 29, 2009 at 2:52 pm |
Regarding the insults. I understand the frustration. We’re accelerating toward a catastrophe and professional denialists are frigging around with semantics and lying through their teeth.
But not everyone who visits blogs such as this and is sceptical is a lost cause. I’m sure that plenty of people are trying to get their heads around what is a very complex topic, perhaps start out sceptical and end up realising how shaky and dishonest the denialist reasoning is.
The gratuitous use of insults will drive a lot of these people to the dark side. Like it or not people don’t come to conclusions through purely rational means. Someone who is not sure about something, and reads an exchange between two people arguing about it, is naturally going to be biased against the person who is using foul language. They are therefore less likely to impartially assess the relative merits of the arguments.
Unfortunately the vast majority of people do not have scientific training, so they naturally use a lot of gut instinct in assessing the relative merit opposing views. Please people, hold back on the expletives.
And for pities sake the “but they call us worse names” justification belongs in prep school.
tamino // July 29, 2009 at 3:02 pm |
dhogaza –
I think I agree that your comment to Lucia was excessively hostile. I understand your anger, really I do, but I think Craig Allen is right that we don’t serve our cause by venting it so.
And although I certainly have much to disagree about with Lucia, in my opinion she’s not in the same league with the real denialist idiots who outrage me.
To those who believe dhogaza was out of line: he should have to wear a sign that says “human being.” To those who believe he was not out of line: let’s agree to disagree.
And move on.
Gavin's Pussycat // July 29, 2009 at 3:11 pm |
> Or “canine-in-chief, Tamino, ”
Mark, cool it. Tamino chose that name himself: “Hansen’s Bulldog”.
From the feline-in-chief
Biker Trash // July 29, 2009 at 3:34 pm |
“Call her dishonest sure, …”
On what basis can such statements make any contributions to rational discussions? Why call anybody anything?
Presumptive labeling, having no basis in facts, is as equally bad as ‘name calling’.
How about showing, without any hand and arm waving involved, her/their work to be incorrect and leave it at that?
africangenesis // July 29, 2009 at 3:54 pm |
Barton Paul Levenson,
“We know from radiation physics that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, so putting more of it into the atmosphere should cause warming. It has. The effect is amplified by positive feedback. That doesn’t mean the feedbacks are the cause of the phenomenon.”
CO2 is a warming forcing, whether it is THE cause of actual net warming is complicated by the sign and magnitude of other forcings such as solar, black carbon and aerosols and the respective climate sensitivities to each. If we could assume that the feedbacks and sensitivities to different forcings were equivilent, we wouldn’t need models of the nonlinear dynamic climate system, would we?
In regards to your CO2 fertilization work, on further thought, I doubt you could properly attribute grain production unless you also factored in the impact of human wealth effects and the market prices and price expecations for the grains themselves. Human behavior, including the investment in relative inputs, like fertilizer and irrigation is responsive to both the price expectations and the investment capital available, and to the costs of the inputs and the advances in technology, such as new energy saving selective herbicides, low till methods, etc. I note also, that you did not include aerosols as an influence, recent work on nutrient poor lakes reported in Nature, should remind us that light itself may be a limiting factor in primary productivity.
TrueSceptic // July 29, 2009 at 4:24 pm |
Tamino,
I agree about the language, hard though it sometimes is to hold back from calling someone what they deserve.
dhogaza stepped over the line.
I have to say that Lucia *is* a *lot* better than most of the other “sceptics”. For instance, she looked at one of Lord Munchkin’s (I know it’s name calling but I can’t resist) works http://rankexploits.com/musings/2009/moncktons-artful-graph/ and said
“I found the Monckton article and I have concluded that I consider the representation of IPCC temperature projections sufficiently wrong so as to call it a figure that lies.”
There was a follow-up http://rankexploits.com/musings/2009/monckton-bullet-list-version/ where she says,
“What Monckton shows is. . . something else.” She won’t actually call Munchkin what he deserves but this a huge leap from how the deniosphere treats his every word. Do WattsUpWithMyBrain or ClimateFraudit ever get close to doing what she does? She’s almost a true sceptic!
t_p_hamilton // July 29, 2009 at 4:29 pm |
Africangenesis ignores the elephant in the room about CO2 fertilization – weather!
bluegrue // July 29, 2009 at 4:51 pm |
@ Gareth
In case further sources go down the memory hole here are webcites to the ClimateDepot press release and the blog post containing de Freitas’ comment on WUWT.
@ Lee
Didn’t know Watts would be that thorough. It always annoyed me that he peeked into IP and e-mail addresses in order to out people if they pointed out mistakes. And of course, anonymous posters agreeing with him are fine.
Mark // July 29, 2009 at 5:01 pm |
“dhogaza stepped over the line. ”
Did he step or was he pulled?
Mark // July 29, 2009 at 5:06 pm |
“CO2 is a warming forcing, whether it is THE cause of actual net warming is complicated by the sign and magnitude of other forcings such as solar, black carbon and aerosols and the respective climate sensitivities to each.”
Ah.
So you have figures on how much the others are changing?
Solar: sunspot cycles less than 0.1%. Out of 450W/m^2 that makes it about 0.5W/m^2.
Black Carbon: Yeah, you know what happens to that? It gets rained out or covered. But do you have any figure on the average global forcing of it?
Aerosols: Also known as “condensation nuclei”. They rain out too. And got any forcings for that?
Sun only: no consistent change for 50 years. 0W/m^2
CO2. Accumulates. About 1-2W/m^2
Now, WHICH do you think will have the biggest effect?
Also read the IPCC report and its chapter on attributions.
It seems only denialists think that AGW is “CO2 and CO2 alone”.
Mark // July 29, 2009 at 5:07 pm |
“Mark, cool it. Tamino chose that name himself: “Hansen’s Bulldog”.”
Ah, so Bulldog == Canine == Good.
Then B***c == Canine == Good.
Yes?
No?
If not, where are these rules written down?
Mark // July 29, 2009 at 5:19 pm |
“The gratuitous use of insults will drive a lot of these people to the dark side.”
Craig, show me ONE INSTANCE of someone who did that when denialists have spewed their vitriol?
IT DOES NOT HAPPEN.
So why is it only in the one direction?
Or, maybe, it doesn’t happen that way either. And some denialists say they went off AGW (despite never having been ON AGW: note how many people start in a blog saying “I was just wondering…” and then after being told what the answer is going into “well, I don’t believe it’s right”? Strange, huh?).
Thing is, 95+% of people do not care enough to come on blogs. The only ones that do are ones who have something to say.
And if at that point at this time after all the years of data and facts STILL doesn’t know what’s going on, they aren’t telling the truth.
Mark // July 29, 2009 at 5:20 pm |
PS See Billy Connolly on swearing.
“Show me the English equivalent of ‘F**k Off’ and I’ll happily use it. It certainly isn’t ‘Go Away’”.
Mark // July 29, 2009 at 5:21 pm |
“And for pities sake the “but they call us worse names” justification belongs in prep school.”
The point of that isn’t to justify swearing at them but to show that the idea that someone will be moved away from one side or the other DOES NOT HAPPEN.
Else the denialist side would be empty.
Hank Roberts // July 29, 2009 at 5:45 pm |
The rules aren’t written down. The editors just break out the tools when needed.
http://www.cartoonstock.com/newscartoons/cartoonists/amc/lowres/amcn39l.jpg
Mark // July 29, 2009 at 8:03 pm |
You misunderstand, Hank.
Where is the rule or rules that say if someone says “canine” this means “Bulldog” and this is good, yet when someone says “B-word” this is not “canine” which means “Bulldog” which is good?
I mean, if you want to say “Bulldog”, there’s already a word for it: Bulldog.
Canine != Bulldog
Just like Canine != B***h
Even though that IS a Canine, just as a Bulldog is.
My position is that they said “canine” because they wanted to denigrate. It’s not like “bulldog” is such a hard word to spell.
Julian Flood // July 29, 2009 at 8:36 pm |
Tamino wrote “You just made that up; both GISS and HadCRUT3v data indicate considerably faster warming for the latter period. Even if it were true it’s irrelevant, you just said it for the double purpose of attempting to discredit global warming and to change the subject from the real issue — that the analysis of McLean et al. is deeply and fundamentally flawed. ”
Eyeballing the UEA graphs, the slopes from1910 to 1940 and from 1975 to 2000 do look very similar.
[Response: They didn't say 1910-1940 and 1975-2000, they said 1900-1940 and 1965-2000. Their choice, not mine. There's no support for such a statement, they just made it up.
If you eyeball the GISS graph rather than HadCRU, they don't look very similar. And as I said, even if the claim were true it's irrelevant; it's nothing more than their attempt to deflect attention from the real issue.]
Tamino wrote: “And for your information, 1900-1940 is not “pre-CO2″; although CO2 concentrations are much higher later in the century, the period 1900-1940 represents significantly higher CO2 concentration than pre-industrial. Is this more dishonesty — or did you really not know that? ”
Eyeballing a pair of GISS graphs:
Greenhouse gas forcing increase 1900 to 1940 — 0.5W/m^2
CO2 increase 1900 to 1940 — 295 ppm to 310 ppm
Greenhouse gas forcing increase 1940 to 2010 — 2 W/m^2
CO2 increase 1940 to 2010 — 310 to 390 ppm
roughly.
So a large majority of the forcing increase was from 1940 on. Would you like to bet that 0.5 W/m^2 shows above the noise? Pre-CO2 does as a first approximation.
[Response: This is nothing more than "spin." Even by 1900 CO2 levels were above pre-industrial, which are estimated at 280 ppm. From 280 to 310 isn't as big as the rise to 390, but it's not trivial either, and to say "pre-CO2 does as a first approximation" is just plain wrong.
And 0.5 W/m^2 is hardly trivial -- but it is revealing how willingly you trivialize it.]
A couple of questions puzzle me: why, with the large forcing increase discrepancy, does the warming rate not increase markedly from 1975 on, and how long is the Enso cycle? Has the science of aerosol cooling been pinned down tightly enough to explain the former (measurements, not hand-waving explanations) and how many Ensos will we need to watch before we can safely say that we are not extrapolating from just a section of the slope either up or down? I will await Lucia’s clear-sighted exposition on this paper at The Blackboard (and her accompanying exuberant and tropically-coloured graphs) with interest.
It’s a shame that governments are not taking this whole affair seriously — if they were there would be a fleet of satellites, ships, aircraft, balloons, floats etc deployed and monitoring every inch of sky and ocean. I know the science is being pushed as hard as possible by dedicated teams, but if this thing is as important as people say then a huge effort, the equivalent of a war mobilisation, seems a more reasonable response than the half-hearted efforts world leaders are making at the moment. VOCALS got one aircraft — it should have been a dozen.
Gavin’s Pussycat wrote: “Perhaps you’ve been blogging too long, Tamino… the diplomat taking over from the scientist. ”
Good grief…
Craig Allen wrote: “But not everyone who visits blogs such as this and is sceptical is a lost cause. I’m sure that plenty of people are trying to get their heads around what is a very complex topic, perhaps start out sceptical and end up realising how shaky and dishonest the denialist reasoning is.
The gratuitous use of insults will drive a lot of these people to the dark side.”
That’s something that everyone who posts should remember. My experience of the bluster and outright rudeness shown to those who asked questions about the hockey stick — like ‘why does it stop so soon? Isn’t there later data and what does it say?’ — has made me very wary of the warming hypothesis. That’s why I’m now a luke-warmer having initially been totally convinced of the AGW case. Politeness costs little and makes friends and allies. Rudeness and bluster don’t.
JF
Mark // July 29, 2009 at 9:09 pm |
“My experience of the bluster and outright rudeness shown to those who asked questions about the hockey stick — like ‘why does it stop so soon? Isn’t there later data and what does it say?’ — has made me very wary of the warming hypothesis”
And my experience is that only those who merely DO NOT want AGW to be right say this.
As shown by your really rather ridiculous assertions that Tamino has pointed out inline.
If your only problem was the rudeness, why did you manage to get the wrong end of the stick so easily?
Mark // July 29, 2009 at 9:13 pm |
Trueskeptic, when you say “dhogaza stepped over the line.” would it not be more accurate to say “dhogaza stepped over a line I wouldn’t have crossed”?
As Brian told all the people worshipping him outside his room: We Are All Different.
OK, one of them wasn’t, but he doesn’t count…
africangenesis // July 29, 2009 at 10:51 pm |
Mark,
“Sun only: no consistent change for 50 years. 0W/m^2
CO2. Accumulates. About 1-2W/m^2
Now, WHICH do you think will have the biggest effect?”
Over the last half of the 20th century? Probably aerosols. In general, probably solar, since it couples to the oceans much better than the other forcings. CO2 penetrates mere microns, while solar penetrates 10s of meters. Much has been made of the plateau in solar activity over the latter half of the 20th century, but that plateau was at a solar maximum level that the climate system had not yet reached equilibrium with. The warming that should have continued for some time, was apparently delayed by anthropogenic aerosols. You appear to be unaware that the GCMs have been under-representing black carbon by a factor of two or so:
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v1/n4/full/ngeo156.html
In a nonlinear dynamic system, we can’t just the magnitude of the effects by comparing the magnitudes of the forcings linearly. The feedbacks and climate sensitivities to each cannot be assumed to be the same. That is why we must await models that are up to the task of attributing a mere 0.75 W/m^2 of energy imbalance (for 1998, per James Hansen). The models currently have correlated biases far larger than that, and suspected cloud errors 2 orders of magnitude larger.
We also need a better understanding of solar variability, our current understanding is based on only 3 cycles from the same solar maximum. If the coming cycle is unusually low, it should round out our understanding quite nicely.
You need to familiarize yourself with the literature in addition to just the IPCC FAR and earlier reports.
TrueSceptic // July 29, 2009 at 11:14 pm |
Mark,
“Trueskeptic, when you say “dhogaza stepped over the line.” would it not be more accurate to say “dhogaza stepped over a line I wouldn’t have crossed”?
Actually, I often want to call the worst (most arrogant, most ignorant, most offensive) denydiots *very* bad things and the only that stops me is that it’s a) only stating the obvious and b) not helping. Aren’t we better than them?
I also think it’s not a good idea to insult someone who might not be as sceptical (true meaning) as I’d like but does at least show much more of that admirable trait than the vast majority of the deniosphere. We should encourage, not alienate.
P. Lewis // July 30, 2009 at 12:06 am |
Beats me why everyone (… well, one or two) are getting uptight about dhogaza’s use of ‘b*****’ (studiously avoiding the easier and more easily misunderstood “dhogaza’s ‘b*****’”).
No way can that asterisk pattern equate to “bitch”, as that is one too few letters to match the sequence. And it can’t have been meant to be (euphemistically) “barsteward”, because that’s one too many (non-euphemistic) letters to match the asterisk pattern.
So, it must be that dhogaza can’t count asterisks, his spelling went awry, or he meant something else. My working hypothesis is that he meant to write “You flying banana” and somehow the “f” got missed out (which is quite easy to do when you get “a little uptight” with someone).
Mind you, I wouldn’t want to be labelled a yellow bent curvilinear fruit either. That would be just too despicable. (Perhaps he meant ‘blon..’ No! Don’t go there.)
P. Lewis // July 30, 2009 at 12:09 am |
Doesn’t strikeout work any more? “bent curvilinear” looks odd, and it shouldn’t have.
Ray Ladbury // July 30, 2009 at 12:38 am |
African Genesis, google skin effect. Learn the physics.
Ray Ladbury // July 30, 2009 at 12:54 am |
While I think dhogaza probably crossed a line (and I should know given my propensity to straddle said line), whether he ventures an apology or whether Lucia even wants one is between them.
Having said this, I do understand the frustration. McLean, deFreitas and Carter is a significant step below the usual abysmal paper. It is the sort of paper about which Pauli would have declaimed: “This is so bad, it’s not even wrong.” Wrong can be corrected. MdF&C is not merely wrong, it is misleading and wrongheaded. Their analysis is carefully constructed so as to dispose of any trend–and yet their conclusions are brash and irresponsible, devoid of any caution or caveat. Carter’s press release is even worse. Now it may be that the authors’ abilities and understanding are sufficiently limited to explain their errors. However, particularly in Carter’s case, there is a long track record of quoting questionable research (e.g. Beck’s abysmal paper in Energy and Environment) and distorting mainstream research. It is clear that he is pontificating well beyond his sphere of understanding and doesn’t even really care if he is wrong. Why one would not condemn such behavior in a scientist is difficult to understand. These authors do the denialist side no credit. Could condemning them do any harm? Instead, we are left to wonder what it would take to merit oprobrium in the denialosphere. It would appear that even Motl’s advocacy of homicide doesn’t cross that line.
Ray Ladbury // July 30, 2009 at 1:00 am |
Julian Flood, are you forgetting that CO2 forcing in the current regime is logarithmic in CO2 concentration?
george // July 30, 2009 at 1:01 am |
Nothing I have ever read by Lucia has ever made me think she doubts anthropogenic global warming. In fact, she has actually stated that she does not doubt/question its reality.
Now, she has made some claims regarding IPCC projections that I do question (largely on the basis of what Tamino has shown on this blog, since I’m not a statistician) but that’s really something different than questioning the basic science, at any rate.
As I indicated above, I also think her “strawman” comment was really uncalled for and actually wrong, but that’s really a fairly minor thing in the “grand scheme of things” and certainly no reason to call her a nasty name.
I nonetheless do find it a bit difficult to fathom how Carter’s press release can be interpreted as anything other than how Tamino has interpreted it.
I certainly don’t think Carter deserves any benefit of the doubt in that case. i think he made himself perfectly clear.
In fact, I would still draw that very same conclusion even if I knew nothing else about Carter and had never read anything else he had ever said.
But, alas, I do have additional information which is relevant — as does anyone who has really made any effort to look.
I think Michael Tobis is right on the money on this one. I don’t think it is any accident at all that the claims made in the paper itself were much less controversial than the claims Carter made about the paper in the press release.
PS I think that the one person who really deserves to be called a nasty name in this case is Carter. But I’m not sure there is enough room in this box for all the needed a***terisks.
africangenesis // July 30, 2009 at 1:26 am |
Ray Ladbury,
While we may speak colloquially of a “skin effect”, for our purposes here, we are really discussing “interface physics”.
t_p_hamilton // July 30, 2009 at 2:02 am |
Mark asked: “Sun only: no consistent change for 50 years. 0W/m^2
CO2. Accumulates. About 1-2W/m^2
Now, WHICH do you think will have the biggest effect?”
Africangenesis tries to b*******: Over the last half of the 20th century? Probably aerosols. In general, probably solar, since it couples to the oceans much better than the other forcings.”
Even though change in solar forcing is ~0 over that period, aerosols increased greatly, and still it warmed by 0.1 degree C per decade from 1950 to 2000?
If you could get your basic facts straight first you might convince some people you actually understand climate physics.
africangenesis // July 30, 2009 at 2:34 am |
t_p_hamilton,
The solar forcing was still there when the aerosols responsible for the mid century cooling were being cleared up. CO2 doesn’t explain the latter half of the 20th century any better than solar, neither the mid-century cooling, nor the steepness of the temperature increase of the 80s and 90s, nor the flattening of the temperature after 1998. Keep in mind that CO2’s forcing is logrithmic with the increase in concentration.
A case can be made that the direct effects of CO2 could explain about 30% of the recent warming, anything more or less requires net positive or negative feedbacks respectively. For this attribution, we need models, but these models aren’t up to the task. All the AR4 models “match” the recent warming while under-representing the positive surface albedo feedback (per Roesch). They all fail to represent the amplitude of the response to the solar cycle seen in the observations (per Camp and Tung, and per Lean, et al). They couple CO2 to the whole mixing layer of the oceans, just like solar, so it is no surprise the models produce a similar climate sensitivity to solar forcing. The models only reproduce one-half to one-third of the increase in precipitation seen in the observations. (per Wentz). The energy imbalance to be attributed is less than 1W/m^2 globally and annually averaged. The average correlated surface albedo bias in the AR4 models is more than 3 W/m^2. The uncertainty in the cloud effects is 10s of watts.
Yes, solar varied little from the maximum it reached in the first part of the century. It is unlikely to be a coincidence that warming occurred at the end of the century while solar activity was still at an unusually high level. The temperature would have continued to increase after 1950 due to the continued high level of forcing. You should read the climate commitment studies if you don’t understand that. Something else intervened to prevent that, presumably the aerosols that the west started cleaning up later in the century.
Bob Tisdale // July 30, 2009 at 3:37 am |
Deech56: You wrote, “It appears that Bob Tisdale is trying to resurrect McLean, et al.”
Apparently you didn’t read the post. Its title is “Regression Analyses Do Not Capture The Multiyear Aftereffects Of Significant El Nino Events”. No mention of McLean et al in the title. Truth is, I did not mention McLean et al anywhere in the post. I used Lean and Rind (2008) as the example.
Here’s a link:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/07/regression-analyses-do-not-capture.html
And a link to the WUWT version:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/07/27/why-regression-analysis-fails-to-capture-the-aftereffects-of-el-nino-events/
If you had commented about the content of my post, you must have used a different name, because I can’t find a comment by Deech56 anywhere in the thread.
dhogaza: You wrote, “He’s got a clear political agenda, and it’s best served by convincing the RWingnut masses, rather than do something serious.”
I do? That’s news to me. Actually, I don’t side with a political party. Unlike most, I vote for candidates from multiple parties every election, depending on who I, not a party, believe is best suited for the position at that time. Please don’t tell the RWingnut masses.
BTW: I’ve been published. That was decades ago, in an entirely different field. I’m retired now. For fun, I research topics that interest me, I write posts for my blog, and occasionally Anthony Watts posts them at WUWT. No politics enter my posts or my thoughts as I write them.
But if you insist, feel free to continue writing your fictional comments about me and my affiliations and my motivations.
Have a nice day.
mariondelgado // July 30, 2009 at 3:41 am |
The expectation that one paper, or a handful, can recalibrate a little of the global warming danger, and can create a lot of controversy, seems sensible to me. Dishonest, sociopathic, neurotic, but sensible – it could happen.
The other idea, which seems to me to be that one paper will refute all of modern climate science, is utterly insane.
It’s almost like saying you can solve a system of 10 variables with 2 equations.
dhogaza // July 30, 2009 at 4:30 am |
This seems fairly basic.
OK, so you must know something about why they fail.
Where, exactly?
dhogaza // July 30, 2009 at 4:38 am |
While, of course, “proving” that the rate of change calculated by scientists is totally wrong, far too high.
No, it’s not. She builds a smokescreen. The IPCC projections follow from the basic science.
She’s arguing much like creationists concede so-called “micro-evolution” while denying so-called “macro-evolution”.
In other words, concedes something not important to the debate, to appear reasonable, then jumps on the meat.
Oh, gosh, her “fame” in the denialsphere is *built* upon such strawmen.
There is always the possibility that besides my being rude, I understand her better than you …
Julian Flood // July 30, 2009 at 5:11 am |
Tamino wrote: And 0.5 W/m^2 is hardly trivial — but it is revealing how willingly you trivialize it.]
No, you are reading motivation into a simple question about numbers: from the GISS graphs (that’s why, RL, I didn’t have to do the log sums, I just read the forcings off — if someone could work the forcing changes from first principle I’d be interested) I read .5W/m^2 for the first period, 2 for the second.
Tamino [Response: They didn't say 1910-1940 and 1975-2000, they said 1900-1940 and 1965-2000. "
Which makes matters worse does it not? That means the higher forcing applies over a shorter period so the later slope should be even steeper. Do you not find it intriguing that the slopes of those two periods are so similar? Hadcrut is, after all a widely respected set, but thank you for the pointer to the Giss figures. Now I will have to puzzle about why the two graphs are different.
"trivialising": not trivialising, asking questions about whether it matters that much in a system where we know the anthropogenic forcing is .6 to 2.4 W/m^2, a spread of nearly 2 whole degrees. Half a degree seems _comparatively_ trivial in that case. Total aerosol uncertanty is mind-boggling, which is why I suggested VOCALS should have had extra resources, as should any study of clouds and albedo.
I've read that the CO2 forcing signal only emerged from background noise from 1975 on, but I'd be pleased to learn otherwise.
Mark, I've learned over the years that bluster and rudeness are often used to bludgeon down dissent. It is easy to avoid giving the impression that questions are unwelcome -- welcome them, sigh and roll your eyes but welcome them and answer them. It's the long haul and convincing people of the facts has to be done by politely repeating the science over and over again, no matter how tedious it may seem. After all, this is important enough to be polite about, isn't it?
JF
[Response: Sigh... (rolls eyes).
When you make statements like "I've read that the CO2 forcing signal only emerged from background noise from 1975 on," we learn that you've not thought critically about what you're claiming. By 1975 the forcing from CO2 alone is over 1.2 W/m^2. This is vastly more than the "trivial" you paint it as (which is exactly what you do, despite your denial) -- whether it dominated over other forcings or not. You are *trivializing* the effect of CO2, mainly because you don't want to believe the implications of its continued rise.]
Hank Roberts // July 30, 2009 at 5:46 am |
The answer to the Fermi Paradox: any species that becomes intelligent enough destabilize its ecosystem, and thereafter will dither and dally after setting itself on the road to ruin, spending its last years making cases that are arguable and nitpicking til they kill themselves and much of their biosphere off.
Anyone have any evidence to the contrary to offer?
Please?
barry // July 30, 2009 at 6:29 am |
Jimmy, one last try at explaining dhogaza’a criticism of Lindzen’s comment. Here it is again.
This is a straw man. Why? Because no one in climate science posits such a loony concept. This parlous rhetoric does nothing to augment Lindzen’s argument, but does much to demonstrate his argumentativeness!
It’s a rhetorical cheap shot, and maddening on three fronts: the first as I’ve described; secondly because it is ubiqutous and Lindzen will spawn a new round of idiots saying, “alarmists thinks world temperatures have never changed before!”; thirdly and related to the first two points, is that Lindzen absolutely knows that this conceit is bunk.
And because he does know better, and because he is a luminary, this sly bit of propaganda is all the more shameful. (Or should I say shameless?)
Gavin's Pussycat // July 30, 2009 at 7:22 am |
Ah, africangenesis is a browbeater!
Stringing together jargon in ways that look superficially plausible and may fool some of the readers here — except for the giveaways. Well, you didn’t fool me.
All one needs to know about the 20st century warming contributions and how they act together is found in the IPCC report, resulting in their Figure 9.5, compiled by real scientists that know and understand the subject. There is no mystery left to explain. And no need for me to copy/paste.
> The uncertainty in the cloud effects is 10s of watts
Per Lindzen? Sure :-)
Mark // July 30, 2009 at 8:18 am |
“Yes, solar varied little from the maximum it reached in the first part of the century. ”
Yet the temperatures went up, if anything, quicker after that stasis.
Maybe your WAG needs work…
Mark // July 30, 2009 at 8:27 am |
“and the only that stops me is that it’s a) only stating the obvious and b) not helping. Aren’t we better than them?”
But you aren’t as far as swearing goes.
You still WANT to swear.
But you hold back to give an impression more favourable.
And as to “it doesn’t help”, for many people (BobJF? Max?) nothing helps. And treating some of those winkers with respect they have not earned gives them (to those inclined to prefer their conclusion) the idea that they are serious people discussing serious things in a serious manner so have serious and real arguments. Because nobody is calling them a “-ing tea***ng idiot without the brains to pull their head from there a**e”).
And it’s a personal judgement call as to whether that is a better call to do than restrain.
Your way leads to the weasel-words where “I’m not saying you’re lying, I’m saying that you’re wrong and know it”. Or, in the Commons: “the right honourable gentleman is mistaken”. It MEANS “lying f-wit”. But if you say “you’re lying” in the commons you get thrown out. So you find words to SAY it without using the word.
Mark // July 30, 2009 at 8:28 am |
“Over the last half of the 20th century? Probably aerosols.”
Proof? Or did that factoid get extracted from where the sun shines not?
I *did* ask you for your figures, remember. You just waved your hands and went “these are the figures you’re looking for”.
It only works on stormtroopers.
Ray Ladbury // July 30, 2009 at 9:58 am |
Africangenesis,
Golly gee-willikers, you mean there’s an interface. Who could have anticipated…
You know, if you spent one tenth the time actually trying to learn the science as you do pretending you know it, you wouldn’t be a total ignoramus.
Ray Ladbury // July 30, 2009 at 10:01 am |
African Genesis, You contend it is solar. OK. Constrct a model that demonstrates that. You will note that no such model exists to date, and it is not for lack of trying. Put up or shut up, and fergodsake, quit with the handwaving, airy-fairy arguments.
Barton Paul Levenson // July 30, 2009 at 12:11 pm |
africangenesis writes:
So use differential equations! If there were a big pulse in sunlight 50 years ago, the initial effect would have been greatest right away. It would not have been flat for 20 years and then start to steeply rise. There’s no real physical process that does that.
Sunlight has been flat for 50 years. Global warming turned up sharply in the last 30. Co2 correlates closely with warming. Sunlight does not. Case closed.
Barton Paul Levenson // July 30, 2009 at 12:16 pm |
africangenesis writes:
It has been warming for 160 years.
You don’t understand what “forcing” means. It doesn’t mean “input.” It means “change in input.”
Nick Stokes // July 30, 2009 at 12:31 pm |
Gareth:
Nick Stokes // July 30, 2009 at 12:33 pm |
Sorry, the blockquote failed to close in my previous comment.
chriscolose // July 30, 2009 at 1:47 pm |
Africangenesis,
You have already been corrected on your misinterpretation of Roesch (by an e-mail from Roesch in fact) on a forum several years ago. Please stop targeting new audiences with the same bogus. You have also been repeatedly corrected about your misunderstanding of solar influence, which encompasses a negligible aspect of the late 20th century warming, even with an over-inflated response.
Hank Roberts // July 30, 2009 at 2:52 pm |
Can you turn up that posting Chris?
Searching, I find Af over at WTF posting about Roesch a few days ago, and at Fred Moolten’s a few years ago, and multiple other instances in between.
Fred Moolten was patiently trying to educate him on this a few years back:
http://forums.myspace.com/p/3625153/35044128.aspx?fuseaction=forums.viewpost
“Sorry, I can’t let you get away with that. Once again, you are trying to dodge the fact that you cited a scientific report as challenging current concepts of anthropogenic warming when in fact they reinforced them. In each case, you misunderstood, misinterpreted, or misrepresented their content in a way that reflects your preconceived notions. You have simply been wrong on both occasions tonight, as well as on many previous occasions. ….”
TrueSceptic // July 30, 2009 at 2:59 pm |
Mark,
“You still WANT to swear.”
Much of what you say is correct, but in practice using certain words is very likely to get our comments removed. Tamino doesn’t want his blog to become a foul-mouthed slanging match, and I’m sure that others like Tim Lambert have limits too.
If our comments get removed then few see them. In the real world we have to use “weasel words” more often than we would like.
Can we agree to disagree on this now? :D
t_p_hamilton // July 30, 2009 at 3:04 pm |
Africangenesis is confused: “The solar forcing was still there when the aerosols responsible for the mid century cooling were being cleared up.”
The change in solar forcing was zero during this period. No contribution from solar to the trend in 1950-2000. Your mentioning solar again shows your stupidity right off the bat.
Aerosols increased during this period, only in the last decade (1990-2000) did they flatten out. Wrong again.
” CO2 doesn’t explain the latter half of the 20th century any better than solar,”
Solar change is is zero (1950-2000), CO2 is a positive forcing, and it warmed. A positive forcing explaining a positive trend is “better” than a zero forcing. Ditch the solar fantasy.
“neither the mid-century cooling,”
aerosols and CO2 opposed each other
“nor the steepness of the temperature increase of the 80s and 90s,”
CO2 forcing is steeper in the 80’s and 90’s. Just a coincidence? Not.
” nor the flattening of the temperature after 1998. Keep in mind that CO2’s forcing is logrithmic with the increase in concentration.”
And growth is faster than exponential, making the forcing grow at a slightly greater than linear rate.
The recent “flattening” is nothing more than noise from El Nino and La Nina.
[Rest of bafflegab deleted - reads like a poor imitation of a Dr. Who episode in an attempt to sound sciency].
Mark // July 30, 2009 at 3:09 pm |
“Much of what you say is correct, but in practice using certain words is very likely to get our comments removed.”
I was more along the idea that you aren’t any better because you just refrain from swearing when you want to.
As far as I see it, the only disagreement is whether dhagoza should be villified.
You say yes. I say no.
On that, yes, we can agree we disagree.
Mark // July 30, 2009 at 3:14 pm |
“Mark, I’ve learned over the years that bluster and rudeness are often used to bludgeon down dissent.”
No, you’ve dissented with no thought behind it and recieved rudeness because of it.
On recieving such, a TRUE skeptic would think of two options:
1) They are being shouted down
2) They are talking bull
And would investigate option 2.
However, you KNOW you are right and that AGW is wrong. Therefore any dissent of your delusions you see as proof of your position you see as only possibly due to being shouted down.
I am not responsible for your insanities.
TrueSceptic // July 30, 2009 at 3:41 pm |
Mark,
No, not vilified. Where did I say that? I just think he let his (justified IMO) anger take over.
I don’t know if it’s “better” to refrain from swearing; all I know is that it improves the chances of our posts not being edited or deleted (in any forum).
Deep Climate // July 30, 2009 at 4:30 pm |
Nick,
I’ve been plotting SOI vs. MSU as well. I’m just finishing a post on this subject today (which also touches on various shenaigans from the skeptic groups involved).
Meanwhile here is a screenshot of annual (not monthly) SOI vs. MSU from 1980-2008.
http://deepclimate.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/soi-uah-rss-1980.gif
There are a few minor differences from McLean et al shifting and scaling, but as far as I can see the SOI trend is slightly negative over this period and MSU strongly positive. So how can SOI account for global warming?
If you or anyone else sees a problem with that chart, please post a comment as soon as you can. I should be posting in a couple of hours.
I’ve also got charts that remove volcanic influence in a couple of different ways. None show any possible relationship between SOI and temp trends.
africangenesis // July 30, 2009 at 4:46 pm |
The change in forcing from solar that contributed to the warming was mostly before 1950. If you read the climate commitment studies, the RESPONSE to that forcing takes decades as the mixing layer of the ocean adjusts, and centurries for the deep ocean. No further change in forcing is necessary.
The acid rain and leaded gasoline particulate eras reflected and obscured sunlight (global dimming) and then as the west changed its practices in the 80s and 90s, the sun could exert its full effect then.
Chriscolose,
You didn’t understand the discussion back then, perhaps if you go back and reread it you will now.
Gavin’s Pussycat,
“All one needs to know about the 20st century warming contributions and how they act together is found in the IPCC report, resulting in their Figure 9.5, compiled by real scientists that know and understand the subject. ”
So the science stopped in 2007 and fortunately they were infallible at that time.
Ray Ladbury,
“You contend it is solar. OK. Constrct a model that demonstrates that. You will note that no such model exists to date, and it is not for lack of trying.”
I don’t really contend it is solar, because I realize it is a matter of semantics. The steepness of the temperature rise in the 80s and 90s is due to a reduction in the cooling effects of aerosols. But I suspect that if solar is given its due among the warming influences, given that it was arguably at a grand maximum, it might merit credit for a third or more of the recent warming. If we get a cooling response to a return to normal solar activity levels or a Dalton minimum and credit the sun for that, then our accounting would be a bit out of balance if we don’t also give it some credit for the warming.
Your “construct a model” defense is just that. You should know that models are dozens of man years of development and the runs necessary require many CPU years of computing power. In any case, if the lack of existance of such a model is a valid argument, then the lack of existance of models which reproduce the amplitude of the observed response to the solar cycle is a valid argument as well. Add to that the lack of models that reproduce the observed increase in precipitation, the lack of models that don’t underestimate the black carbon forcing by a factor of two, the lack of models that correctly attribute 3 to 4 watts/m^2 of the warming to surface albedo feedback, etc.
This 3 to 4 W/m^2 globally and annually averaged of surface albedo bias in the AR4 models is particularly insidious, because this advancing of the high lattitude snow melts is already in the observed climate of the 1990s. The models do have some advance in their snow melt, but as you can see their errors are globally and annually about 4 times larger than the energy imbalance, all biased in the same direction (read Roesch). Correlated error can’t be statistically eliminated by ensembles of models. Further more, the models will catch up to this particular kind of feed back during their CO2 scenerio projections and climate sensitivity runs. They will add 3 to 4 watts/m^2 of feedback in addition to the CO2 forcing scenerios. I call it “Models Gone Wild”. The projections and climate sensitivities will both be inflated by these model errors. In addition since the models “matched” the 20th century warming, without this feedback, without the amplitude of the response to solar, without the quantity of black carbon forcing, and with an underrepresentation of the acceleration of the water cycle the models must have had additional compensating errors. These may also have a continuing net warming effect over the course of the projections and sensitivity runs. This is the type of stuff that Gavin Schmidt over at realcliamte.org censors, perhaps because it might confuse his pussycats.
[Response: This is the type of stuff I should censor, and just might, because your snide insult of Gavin Schmidt is an unjustified detestable lie. Your "scientific" nonsense is babble.]
george // July 30, 2009 at 5:38 pm |
To my
dhogaza says
Her “IPCC projections falsified” meme deals primarily with excluding from her 95% confidence intervals what she has termed the “central tendency” [sic] of the IPCC’s suite of projections given in AR4.
When I looked into this some time ago (when she first began her “IPCC projections falsified” meme) she was claiming that the 95% confidence interval for most data sets, except GISS (and the average thereof) excluded what she claimed to be the “central tendency” of the IPCC projections (she claimed that central tendency was 0.2C/decade).
The last thing I want to do is get into a rehash of all this here because it has basically been beaten to death — and I believe tamino has dealt with this in some depth) .
In fact, I don’t believe she even really understood what she was claiming by “IPCC projections[which ones?] falsified” (and her claim seemed to actually “evolve” with time, so who knows?).
But suffice it to say that for most of the cases she considered (for which she gave a 95% confidence range), there was actually overlap between the confidence intervals she found and the confidence intervals given by the IPCC itself for several of the IPCC scenarios given in their AR4 report.
In particular, the B1 scenario actually overlapped even her “worst case” (Hadcru) whose upper value she claimed to be 1.1C/century (at 95%) .
The range specified for scenario B1 by IPCC in Ar4 was this: +1.8°C (1.1°C to 2.9°C) . So Lucia had not even “falsified” IPCC scenario B1 at 95%.
I actually commented on this here
Sure, compared to the other scenarios, B1 is a “lower emissions” scenario, but the difference between that scenario and the higher emissions ones does not really kick in until well beyond the first decade. Over the first decade of this century, B1 and the higher emission scenarios are pretty much indistinguishable with regard to temperature development.
Finally, here’s a more recent example of one of her “IPCC falsified” claims
forget about whether Lucia’s claim about the uncertainty is correct (suffice it to say i am skeptical) and focus on her central trend value: 0.0168 C/year.
That’s well within the ranges given for many of the IPCC scenarios given in AR4
There are lots of problems with Lucia’s claims but her statements about the central value of 0.2C/century being excluded from the 95% confidence interval do not mean she has rejected basic science (used in the IPCC’s own scenarios) Not that I can see, anyway.
george // July 30, 2009 at 6:07 pm |
Correction for above “There are lots of problems with Lucia’s claims but her statements about the central value of 0.2C/century ”
should be “2C/century”
KW // July 30, 2009 at 7:03 pm |
Proving how climate change is dangerous is the most difficult thing to prove.
Danger, in its most attention grabbing aspect, usually – if not always – corresponds to immediate threats.
Being threatened by climate change is similar to being threatened by turning up the thermostat by .1*F every 5 years.
TCO // July 30, 2009 at 8:54 pm |
Tammy, was the denialist mistake here similar to Ritson’s mistake in the How Red are Your Proxies post on Real Climate?
Biker Trash // July 30, 2009 at 9:03 pm |
Here’s a radical concept.
Why don’t we simply stick to using only the words that we use in our peer-reviewed publications?
Or, put another way, don’t use words that we wouldn’t use in our peer-reviewed publications.
Deep Climate // July 30, 2009 at 9:08 pm |
Variations in SOI are negatively correlated with global temperature variations. So negative SOI imples El Nino warming episodes, and SOI is usually plotted in opposite orientation to temperature (as I have done).
So I should have written:
… as far as I can see the SOI trend is down slightly (in the direction of increased cooling), while MSU temperature strongly positive. So how can ENSO as measured by SOI account for global warming?
Jacob Mack // July 30, 2009 at 9:21 pm |
Tamino excellent post and great way in explaioning the errors in Mclean’s mathematics–overall methodology!
Hank Roberts, good call on Fred Moolten! I have been chatting with him on Myspace the past several years as well and he is a wealth of information! Him and I have had our series of well spirited debates as well, but he is a kind and intelligent man.
I would like to see, one ay the terms “alarmist,” and “denialist” removed from our vocabulary in these discussions, but I will not hold my breathe… the problems are twofold: calling each other names trivializes the discussion which makes it more difficult to educate people on climate science and the issues of AGW; on the other hand Nazi Germany was a huge travesty directly performed by people against other people. Humans certainly influence both weather and climate, and there is NO doubt about that; forget error bars and standard deviations for a sec, this is 100% certain. Even “experts,” lay persons, and science writers who doubt the seriousness of AGW or that AGW is still occuring concur that human activities have a cause–effect relationship. Now, hard as this may be to understand for people on both “sides,” AGW trends are still quite clear from the data, models and resulting charts, however, short term variations and pauses in warming are still important issues, as models did not predict such phenomena for given years. AGW can and will resume due to changes in inputs (e.g. forcings) as Hank Roberts pointed out, however, we are facing a potential pause or “cooling,” over the next 8-15 years or so…more data from obervations are needed to see if this will, in fact, be the case. Now, AGW is not going to make humanity extinct, atleast NOT, in the next 75-150 years. And it is clear from paleoclimate data and archaeological findings that Neandertal and early, modern Hominids did survuve more severe weather and climate shifts than we have been experiencing from 1850 to the right now. For further references see this month’s issue of Scientific American, and varied paleoclimate papers from the NOAA website.
Deep Climate // July 30, 2009 at 10:23 pm |
FWIW, here’s my take on McLean et al. and associated PR campaign:
http://deepclimate.org/2009/07/30/is-enso-responsible-for-recent-global-warming-no/
Here’s the concluding summary:
In explanation of the third point (for those who won’t wade through the whole post):
http://deepclimate.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/icsc-july-26-short-2.jpg
That’s right – according to the International Climate Science Coalition website, the title of the paper was – wait for it:
“Nature not Man responsible for recent global warming”.
Well, that’s one way to sneak a preferred title past reviewers.
TrueSceptic // July 30, 2009 at 11:55 pm |
Deep Climate,
I’ve only seen the abstract. It *appears* that the paper itself does nothing more than tell us what we already know, albeit with exaggerated correlation between temperature *variation* and SOI.
We know that Carter, one of the authors, has misrepresented his (partly) own paper, and the deniosphere has hugely inflated that, but is the paper itself really that bad?
Where can we see the paper itself?
p_adic // July 31, 2009 at 12:36 am |
Hank Roberts // July 30, 2009 at 5:46 am
“The answer to the Fermi Paradox: any species that becomes intelligent enough destabilize its ecosystem, and thereafter will dither and dally after setting itself on the road to ruin, spending its last years making cases that are arguable and nitpicking til they kill themselves and much of their biosphere off.”
My guess is that the time window for intelligent life is very narrow, i.e. the time span from when they start making devices that radiate into space their signatures until they self-destruct is like the time span of a Dirac delta pulse at a given point in the cosmic time axis. This is, we barely started emitting signals on electromagnetic waves (about 1 century ago). The power of these signals decays rapidly with distance as they propagate into space, vanishing into the noise background. If this time window was much wider we or some distant, future and similar intelligent life would still be able to recover the signal from the noise by integrating over a long time. The signal would slowly start to emerge, maybe aided by some extra processing (e.g. Fourier spectral analysis).
Unfortunately I don’t think much will be done to prevent dangerous global warming, we are creating a global Easter Island, the power stations will be our statues. The science and technology that helped to create all these machines, that allow humans to very efficiently, i..e. in a short time, pump back into the atmosphere vast amounts of carbon that had been locked well underneath in the Earth for millions of years (the sudden release effectively creates an open loop system), is the same science and technology that now seems not to be trusted and is even ridiculed when warning about the pernicious secondary effects of those machines and/or technology. What is at stake is not the credibility of the denialists (they have none), it is the future of science itself. But of course this will be irrelevant in case of self destruction. Anyway, tamino is doing a great job here.
Jacob Mack // July 31, 2009 at 12:40 am |
Bottom line, the Mclean paper is pure rubbish….there are some good papers out there showing warming will not be catastrophic anytime soon, but no validated, peer reviewed paper demonstrates zero global warming or zero detrimental effects. AGW is still a serious issue and here people need to stop being so ignorant.
What frightens me is people who use the higher end estimates, or lowest ones to predict climate sensitivity; over and underestimating climate variability is still an issue I see on many legitimate science blogs, where the papers are dressed up to be something they are not.
suricat // July 31, 2009 at 1:20 am |
Tamino: “This is the type of stuff I should censor, and just might, because your snide insult of Gavin Schmidt is an unjustified detestable lie. Your “scientific” nonsense is babble.”
As an engineer, I recognise this post as being made in “engineering speak”. To me it is perfectly valid and not “”scientific” nonsense”! Yes! I, myself, also have a problem understanding the “IPCC speak” that your site proffers!
If I can expand on this incongruity a little, there are only three “forcings” that I can recognise with my “engineers hat” on. These are solar insolation, gravitational forces (solar and lunar) and a possible intervention by an extraterrestrial body (asteroid/comet collision). The “forcings” that the IPCC declare as such are understood as “attractors” in “engineering speak”!
I’ve no intention of being a translator here, but solar insolation to the Earth’s climate systems isn’t obvious. For example, IR and visible insolation doesn’t penetrate more than a limited depth of ocean and ice (IR a few metres and visible a bit more [the "frequency" is important]), but UV is another animal. If there are no impurities UV can penetrate to depths of 700 metres of ocean and ice, thus deep ocean (and deep ice) is an “attractor” for the UV insolation component of TSI (total solar insolation).
Your “site consensus” claims that there is negligible solar flux, but the UV component of this insolation alters by about 30% (varying between solar cycles) dependant on the solar cycle observed.
Surely a 30% change in UV that affects deep ocean temps, thus eventually surface temps (based on deep ocean as an attractor of UV), must affect the surface temp record, or haven’t you followed this thread of logic?
It’s after 2 am here now and I’m tired. I could add more, but I hope this helps.
Best regards, suricat.
Jacob Mack // July 31, 2009 at 1:22 am |
Truesceptic,
yes the paper is that bad because it denies human influences in climate and uses faulty mathematics–attribution methods in addition to your statements as well.
Ray Ladbury // July 31, 2009 at 1:30 am |
African Genesis, I know full well that YOU are not capable of constructing a model. You run screaming at the slightest suggestion of nonlinearity. A climate scientist could–and would be more than happy to do so if it were possible. Models with low CO2 forcing would be very interesting, regardless of whether they were correct. Unfortunately, they don’t work. You don’t get anything that looks remotely like Earth. That ought to tell you something–it certainly suggests something to a scientist.
Jacob Mack // July 31, 2009 at 1:41 am |
Ray Ladbury,
good to see you posting again…it has been sometime since I have seen you in the blog world on the regular….I hope all is well with your life and health; I look forward to more of your insightful posts.
africangenesis // July 31, 2009 at 2:31 am |
Ray Ladbury,
I will respond to you on my blog where we won’t be censored, so you won’t mistakenly believe that you or others have gotten the last word. I’m just a beginner mind you, but I will try to have a truly “open mind”. I beleive now that I am logged in, just clicking my name will get you to africangenesis.wordpress.com
regards
Hank Roberts // July 31, 2009 at 5:11 am |
Suricat, you wrote:
> Surely a 30% change in UV that affects
> deep ocean temps
Citation needed.
I looked and did not find whatever you read.
What have you read so far? Any of these?
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2002/2002GL015345.shtml
http://ams.allenpress.com/perlserv/?request=get-abstract&doi=10.1175%2F1520-0442%282004%29017%3C0906%3ATRIOSA%3E2.0.CO%3B2
http://ams.allenpress.com/perlserv/?request=get-abstract&doi=10.1175%2F1520-0442%282003%29016%3C4079%3ADMUTSC%3E2.0.CO%3B2
suricat // August 2, 2009 at 12:34 am |
Tamino: Sorry, but I can’t remember if I actually posted this note. If I did and you deleted it, then just delete it again. However, I’m trying really hard to “brainstorm” here so I’ll post it as a “reply”!
Hank Roberts: “> Surely a 30% change in UV that affects
> deep ocean temps
Citation needed.”
As an ‘experiment’ in cross-discipline communication I’ll keep my “engineers hat” on.
I don’t do “citations, or papers”, but I do “do”, patents! Thus, your request is unreasonable because it doesn’t include my sphere of discipline. Your first link is closed to me, the second is only interested in observation of ozone (Table 1. List of experiments) and your third link is about the verification of models. As an engineer I am dubious of anything other than observations!
However, I can talk you through the logical reasoning for my posts here if you want me to.
“I looked and did not find whatever you read.”
Reading also requires insight. Earlier I posted this link:
http://www.meteoschweiz.admin.ch/web/de/forschung/projekte/cost_726.html
Look at the graphs near the bottom of the page and tell me what you think.
Best regards, suricat.
[Response: Note the website states that "Most of the variation in the estimated UV level is explained by the changes in total ozone column and sunshine duration."]
Douglas Watts // July 31, 2009 at 5:11 am |
Models with low CO2 forcing would be very interesting, regardless of whether they were correct. Unfortunately, they don’t work. You don’t get anything that looks remotely like Earth. — Ray Ladbury.
Well said. One might say that models of the Pleistocene with Ice Ages occurring every 10,000 years are very interesting. Or that starfish with bilateral symmetry are very interesting. Or that two headed fish are very interesting. Or that Earth’s climate without a 23 degree axis tilt would be very interesting.
Ray’s comment, “You don’t get anything that looks remotely like Earth,” says all you need.
If Chinook salmon could leap a thousand feet straight up in the air, there would still be 60 pound “June hogs” in the Columbia above Grand Coulee.
Unlike the free-form “what if” fantasies of denialists, scientists must remain mired in the dreary, mundane realm of facts.
Hank Roberts // July 31, 2009 at 5:22 am |
Nope, looked further, still can’t come up with a source for 30 percent, nor deep penetration affecting deep ocean temps.
http://www.springerlink.com/content/ht03437lh777l1t3/
Mark // July 31, 2009 at 8:25 am |
“Your “site consensus” claims that there is negligible solar flux,”
And this is where you stop talking as an engineer and start talking as a denialist making stuff up:
The “site consensus” as you put it is that there is negligible CHANGE in solar flux.
A crane holding up a steel beam is generating a LOT of force. But the beam isn’t going anywhere. If the force remains constant, it will STILL go nowhere. If the force changes, however, then the load will move.
CHANGE.
Gavin's Pussycat // July 31, 2009 at 9:04 am |
> So the science stopped in 2007 and fortunately they were infallible at that time.
Call it self correctng. No, it isn’t helping you much.
David Horton // July 31, 2009 at 9:39 am |
Probably too late to post this. I guess you have all gone home to dinner leaving me in the playground all alone.
But having thought about it at length, I would like to give Bob Carter the benefit of the doubt (and that’s a sentence I didn’t think I’d eevr write). And to agree with Lucia (another sentence …).
I’m trying to do a reconstruction of Carter’s thought processes here. Bob Carter is a geologist, and I’m guessing as a consequence knows no more of mathematics than it takes to count the number of geological picks in your rucksack.
He gets invited to put his name on this paper, presumably to attract attention (which succeeded). The other two do the analysis, and they say to him, “Bob, we’ve found that the SOI explains all the variability in climate recently”.
Now, Bob knows the climate of the Earth is variable, always has been. I’m with him there, climate bounces up and down like a yo-yo used by an incompetent yo-yoist (again, a sentence …). So Bob’s point has always been – “Hey, you pitiful non-geologists out there, climate varies, is still varying, that’s all that’s going on. Nothing to do with human beings – hell, humans have only been on the planet for .0000001 of the age of the planet and it has been varying all the rest of the time anyway. So what makes you think that non-geologist worms like you can have any impact at all on this great climatically cycling sweep of Earth’s history?”
But people, climatologists and the like, non-geologists, keep saying “Bob, climate is warming, fast”. And he keeps saying “Natural variability”. And they keep saying “Too fast for natural variability”. And all he can do is grunt in reply, but he knows it does not warm. Well, nothing compared to the Permian or whenever.
But suddenly, here are these guys, mathematicians, and they do all this really clever analysis and such which he doesn’t really understand. But they say to him – “Hey, Bob, ENSO explains all the recent variability, nothing to do with Humans”. And he says “Hah, I knew it, knew it was just natural variability, these idiot climatologists wouldn’t know a variable planet if they fell over it.” And he rushes out to tell the world that there is no warming, it’s all ENSO. Probably cool down again soon, just like it always does. But John McLean had forgotten to tell him that all the clever mathematics was designed to REMOVE the non-ENSO warming trend. Just forgot. Thought he understood the maths (one geological pick + one geological pick – one geological pick = one geological pick)
So, not dishonest, but an idee fixe so strong that every piece of data is rushed in to support it. Even when it says the exact opposite.
I almost feel sorry for Bob Carter (another sentence …).
Mark // July 31, 2009 at 10:30 am |
“I’m trying to do a reconstruction of Carter’s thought processes here. Bob Carter is a geologist,”
A realm of science whose biggest and most lucerative employer is the fossil fuel industry.
Check the job adverts. Compare the salaries of geologists to climatologists.
Medical degrees for research for Big Medicine are the only ones that give money at something like the same level as geology surveying for fossil fuel companies.
Now, if we stop using fossil fuels what point will there be in looking for more fossil fuel reserves?
If fossil fuel companies lose money, will they lay off geological survey groups looking for resources to exploit in 10 years time (after the CEO has changed, likely), or workers are currently productive sites that are producing money for the company now?
Lazar // July 31, 2009 at 11:29 am |
nothing on the 30% figure but this looks interesting
Rind, D., J. Lean, J. Lerner, P. Lonergan, and A. Leboissetier, 2008: Exploring the stratospheric/tropospheric response to solar forcing. J. Geophys. Res., 113, D24103, doi:10.1029/2008JD010114.
Ray Ladbury // July 31, 2009 at 12:25 pm |
Jacob Mack,
Just back from a conference in Quebec–and the preparations for that have pretty much sucked up all my free time–that and weeding in my garden, which the deers and rabbits have now devoured (voracious little bastards). The day job at “The International House of Rockets,” has been pretty crazy. More projects than people.
Ray Ladbury // July 31, 2009 at 12:36 pm |
African Genesis, As noted above, I am afraid my schedule precludes venturing into the blogosphere unless it’s to a site that can teach me something. I also do not see how you can equate an admonition to avoid calumny with censorship.
As to your contention that the Sun could account for 30% of warming, you are at least in the ballpark. That’s about where Solanki puts his upper limit–based on the very conservative assumption that ALL warming prior to 1900 was solar. Of course, we know the Sun was not the only contributor prior to 1900. And then there’s that pesky stratospheric cooling–kind of hard to explain with a solar mechanism. The only way you can remain a denialist is to ignore (or deny) most of the evidence.
Gavin's Pussycat // July 31, 2009 at 1:11 pm |
> So, not dishonest, but an idee fixe so strong that
> every piece of data is rushed in to support it.
Hmmm… lying to yourself is lying too — and dishonest. Not a victimless crime. And very human… that’s why we have these peer review mechanisms etc. in place.
caerbannog // July 31, 2009 at 3:26 pm |
hat and weeding in my garden, which the deers and rabbits have now devoured (voracious little bastards).
This brings to mind an off-topic but amusing little story. I couple of weeks ago, I was talking to my mom (who lives near Denver). She told me that a number of people in her neighborhood had been complaining for the last couple of years about the local coyote population (eating small pets and all) and wanted the authorities to do something about it. Well, the animal control folks finally did come out and got rid of many of the coyotes in the area.
With the coyotes gone, the local rabbit population exploded. My mom told me that they are now up to their armpits in rabbits.
Now my mom’s neighbors are complaining about all those “f***ing rabbits” devouring their gardens!
I guess you could call this “unintended consequences on a small scale”.
Craig Allen // July 31, 2009 at 4:16 pm |
I’ve had a look at the Paper by Wentze et. al. which africangenesis mentioned.
> How Much More Rain Will Global Warming Bring? Science 13 July 2007:
Vol. 317. no. 5835, pp. 233 – 235
I’m curious about whether the questions raised about rainfall and wind projections arising from the climate models have been or are likely to be resolved, and what implications this has for regional predictions. (I’m in South East Australia so both rainfall and wind projections are uppermost in my mind – there is a ominous feeling building in anticipation of yet another hot summer and bad fire season).
From the paper:
“Climate models and satellite observations both indicate that the total amount of water in the atmosphere will increase at a rate of 7% per kelvin of surface warming. However, the climate models predict that global precipitation will increase at a much slower rate of 1 to 3% per kelvin. A recent analysis of satellite observations does not support this prediction of a muted response of precipitation to global warming. Rather, the observations suggest that precipitation and total atmospheric water have increased at about the same rate over the past two decades.”
“The difference between a subdued increase in rainfall and a C-C increase has enormous impact, with respect to the consequences of global warming. Can the total water in the atmosphere increase by 15% with CO2 doubling but precipitation only increase by 4% (1)? Will warming really bring a decrease in global winds? The observations reported here suggest otherwise, but clearly these questions are far from being settled.”
Barton Paul Levenson // July 31, 2009 at 4:44 pm |
TrueSkeptic writes:
Yes, it’s really that bad. They matched SOI to the first time derivative of the temperature anomalies, which wiped out the trend. Their conclusion amounts to “if you take out the trend, carbon dioxide has no effect on the trend.” Duh. The paper never should have been published. It’s incompetent.
TrueSceptic // July 31, 2009 at 4:47 pm |
Just a mention of our visitor Jimmy Haigh. We know that he’s a dishonest coward: he made claims here and made no attempt at all to support them.
He’s a geologist who’s worked for the oil industry. Nothing wrong with that but one has to ask if there’s an “interest” in the subject that might make him less than objective.
I’ve just skimmed Watts’s version of the Climate Crock story and the comments. Haigh’s contributions are as beyond-belief cretinous as any there.
I think we were far too polite to this…err…person.
Hank Roberts // July 31, 2009 at 5:37 pm |
A book I’d highly recommend for Caerbannog’s mother:
http://www.beastinthegarden.com/
dhogaza // July 31, 2009 at 7:30 pm |
Well, since you’ve mentioned Watt’s version of the climate crock story, Watts makes it clear he doesn’t understand the fair use exceptions to copyright:
Here’s what US Copyright Law says about fair use:
Obviously, news reporting isn’t the only grounds for fair use.
As far as the four criteria …
1. It’s obviously non-profit
3. He used the cover of the report and possibly a couple of graphics
4. The PDF is free for download
Sorry, Anthony, you don’t know WTF you’re talking about.
TrueSceptic // July 31, 2009 at 9:23 pm |
dhogaza,
Thanks. Someone should go over there and point this out. In any case, there’s so little of the book to be seen in the video that I can’t see how copyright would apply anyway.
Ray Ladbury // August 1, 2009 at 1:26 am |
Hank,
I’ll take my shot at the Fermi Paradox. Basically, as the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy says:
“Space,” it says, “is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly hugely mindbogglingly big it is. I mean you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist, but that’s just peanuts to space.”Couple that with the facts that,
1)Stars are overwhelmingly concentrated in the centers of galaxies
2)We are way out in the suburbs
3) Light travels at only ~300000 km/s
4) Broadcast is a very wasteful method of communication, so any sufficiently advanced civilization is bound to develop point-to-point communication after a fairly short broadcast epoch.
5) Any civilization that has survived for a few hundred years with modern technology will be more likely to be listening for signs of life, rather than announcing itself to the Universe. Listening is cheaper, and having faith in the benevolence of spacefaring civilizations might be unwise before one has some experience with them.
So, I don’t believe the search for intelligent life in the Universe is hopeless–despite the disappointment Earth has turned out to be in that matter. It could be that our radio signals have reached them already, and their silence is because they don’t want us to know they are there.
bugs // August 1, 2009 at 2:11 am |
Bob Carter is as slippery and deceptive as any denier, don’t give him an inch.
Just watch this interview he did on New Zealand TV.
The interviewer asks a good, and difficult, question. Bob completely ignores it, like anyone trained in the art of spin, and instead talks about what he wants to talk about.
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2008/04/20/global-warming-101-professor-carter-explains-climate-realism
Jacob Mack // August 1, 2009 at 4:07 am |
Dhogaza and truesceptic, I respectfully disagree with both you…clearly this business is in violation of copyright law, after reading Anthony’s post, reviewing the laws, and assessing the situation as best I can. I certainly see issues on Anthony’s site as well in regards to improperly interpreting data and poor usage of mathematics, however, that does not people the rigth to in turn, distort or steal information protected by copyright laws, which here clearly work from his published book is.
[Response: I'm not a lawyer, but in my opinion the use made of Watts' work in the video is absolutely, unequivocally, fair use. Watts doesn't have a leg to stand on in his protest.]
Jacob Mack // August 1, 2009 at 4:10 am |
Now, that Mclean paper on the other hand and the usage of first order derivatives eliminating the trend is just unethical and deceiving.
I hope we can get more studies where both trends and shorter term variations are compared in a more holistic mathematical and empirical manner. (where applicable) If anyone has links to recent peer reviewed literature I can see which does comparative time series analysis for the two side by side, I would be very grateful.
dhogaza // August 1, 2009 at 4:33 am |
If someone were to take it, and claim it as their own work, then yes, copyright you apply.
But in regard to the video in question, it’s clear that it was quoting work, not presenting it as an original work.
Mark // August 1, 2009 at 9:17 am |
“clearly this business is in violation of copyright law”
“Fair Use” provisions are merely places where the law is giving examples of what copyright IS NOT TO CONTROL.
Copyright isn’t to control review of a work.
Copyright isn’t to control parodies or news of a work.
Why isn’t the news in trouble over using the trademark’d name of “Mc Donalds” when talking about something that happened at an McD’s? After all, use of someone else’s trademark is just as illegal as use of a copyrighted work.
Because when you’re talking about a copyrighted work, you can USE that copyrighted work in a way to show what copyrighted work you’re talking about.
Without the ability to do that, all information about new copyrighted works would have to be “Something was written by Fred Singer today. Can’t tell you the name because the name is part of a copyrighted work and that would be illegal to name it…”
Yeah, that’d work…
Mark // August 1, 2009 at 9:21 am |
My take on the Fermi Paradox is that there’s no way to travel faster than light and so travel to a star 1000 light years away will take 1000 years.
And organisms working fast enough to manage that level of technology are too energy intensive to live that long.
Therefore ALL interstellar travel is one-way. Spaceships are fire-and-forget seeding ships. And communication worthless: nobody who knows where you went to will live long enough to remember to listen for “I got here OK” message.
Therefore there’s no real need to communicate.
So they don’t.
They may listen and think “OK, we won’t bother going there. There’s people already there and you can’t win a war when your supply line doesn’t exist because it’s 10 lifetimes long”. But it’s pointless sending a message.
Barton Paul Levenson // August 1, 2009 at 9:23 am |
Jacob Mack writes:
I’ll reproduce a post I just made to Tim Lambert’s Deltoid blog (this is fair use, everybody):
*****
cohenite writes:
<<>>
Here’s why I think so, cohenite. Haven’t done ENSO yet, but when I compare SOI to Hadley Centre CRU temperature anomalies for 1866-2008, I get r = -0.25, which means r^2 = 0.06.
If I then regress SOI on year for that period (N = 143, remember, a nice big set of data), I find that the t-statistic on the trend is -1.5, which is statistically insignificant. The t-statistic on temperature anomaly for the same period, however, is 15.3, which is well beyond the 99.9% significance level.
So it looks like SOI accounts for a bit of the up-and-down variation (about 1/17th of it), but none of the trend. See?
*****
Barton Paul Levenson // August 1, 2009 at 9:24 am |
Darn, didn’t get Cohenite’s comment in. It was:
dhogaza // August 1, 2009 at 1:15 pm |
The passage I quoted above is directly from US copyright law.
Let me repeat:
The video is clearly commentary and criticism, and is entirely fair use.
IANAL, but I’ve worked extensively with lawyers on copyright issues involving software and photography.
TrueSceptic // August 1, 2009 at 1:31 pm |
Jacob Mack,
I’m not a lawyer either (obviously) but if this is both a breach of copyright and not covered by “fair use” then a large proportion of material on any website, and especially Youtube, simply wouldn’t be there.
Hank Roberts // August 1, 2009 at 2:29 pm |
Jacob, you’re completely wrong. Look at any of the lawyers’ comments or any of the cases, or go to your library and ask the librarian about “Fair Use” — they have to understand this, because they help you make fair use of copyrighted material in your academic work. Any professional comedian can also give you the same kind of help, as they routinely make fair use of copyrighted material. You’re just wrong on this question. It’s easy to check.
Mark // August 1, 2009 at 3:21 pm |
You also have the legal term de minimis: the reproduction is so small a segment of the whole as not to impinge on the value or marketability of the whole.
What information is held on the front page???
Hank Roberts // August 1, 2009 at 4:16 pm |
This is why anyone who is not a lawyer should not opine that something on YouTube violates copyright — first, it’s likely you’re wrong; second, it’s likely you’ll encourage someone to believe your bad advice; third, someone believing your bad advice might claim a copyright violation, get a video taken down under the DMCA (which is automatic and immediate) and then have to pay the penalty for filing a false claim.
Bad advice from a non-lawyer, no matter how brilliant the person may be in other areas, is still bad advice.
This could be you, or someone who takes bad advice from you, if you’re not a lawyer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_MYyc-PtH4
Hat tip to http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/07/anthony_watts_abuse_of_the_dmc.php#comments
No, I am not a lawyer. I’m telling you not to listen to me, nor to any guy on the Intartubes who claims to tell you what it or isn’t a copyright violation.
TrueSceptic // August 1, 2009 at 4:25 pm |
Mark,
That’s what I was getting at, although I didn’t know there’s a legal term for it.
dhogaza // August 1, 2009 at 5:51 pm |
One of my favorite videos … it would be great if Watts had the opportunity to star in his own version …
Deep Climate // August 1, 2009 at 5:56 pm |
BPL,
See also my comment on multiple regression of UAH against SOI (and time) for the period 1980-2009 here:
http://deepclimate.org/2009/07/30/is-enso-responsible-for-recent-global-warming-no/#comment-250
Since SOI has a slight cooling trend over the period, SOI-accounted trend actually in UAH LT actually rises by 0.01 deg C/decade. There doesn’t appear to be a significant influence from SOI, and the trend is in the wrong direction in any case.
Paul Vaughan // August 1, 2009 at 6:33 pm |
Thanks for the link to the Bob Carter interview on New Zealand TV bugs. Dr. Carter is far more gentlemanly & sensible than I had imagined based on comments.
Paul Vaughan // August 1, 2009 at 6:50 pm |
Hello Jacob Mack,
I see you have labeled the paper being discussed as “rubbish”, “unethical”, & “deceiving”.
Have you:
a) read the paper carefully,
b) reproduced the calculations,
c) explored alternate (perhaps superior) calculations, &
d) reviewed related literature?
Thank you if you are willing to respond to my questions without prejudice.
Regards,
Paul Vaughan
[Response: I can't speak for Jacob Mack, but for myself. Yes I have read the paper -- carefully. Yes I have reproduced the calculations. Yes I have explored alternate (and definitely superior) calculations. Yes I have reviewed related literature.
The paper is rubbish. The press release based on it is deceiving and unethical.]
TrueSceptic // August 1, 2009 at 8:35 pm |
Paul Vaughan,
Yes, of course Carter seems pleasant and reasonable on TV. What would you expect?
Re the paper, did you actually read Tamino’s OP? It doesn’t look like it or you wouldn’t ask such odd questions.
Paul Vaughan // August 1, 2009 at 8:44 pm |
Public relations hype, which is usually slanted in just about any context, is a not a factor in assessing the science.
My concern in reviewing this discussion:
Many people are *imagining* what was claimed rather than being well-informed about what was claimed.
[Response: As I already told you *I* read the paper very carefully. I know what's claimed in it, which is rubbish because of faulty analysis. I also read the press release, and I know what's claimed in it by the authors. This is not my imagination; it's deceptive, unethical statements by the authors of the paper.]
There were 2 prongs to the paper:
a) calculations.
b) literature review.
Some of the conclusions rely on a combination of the 2.
If I get very specific I can count on one hand the questionable statements in the paper. I’ve no doubt that the authors could have applied more sensible judgement in constructing these *specific* sentences.
[Response: You are the one indulging in "Public relations hype," acting as an apologist for this paper.]
The arguments presented in defense of the calculations are ridiculously weak (see below). However, it is “Old News” that SOI is related to temperature oscillations; “correcting” the calculations does not change this.
I see 3 ethical failures:
1) failure of the authors to come clean about why they applied the 2nd smoothing. (Many people think it has something to do with inflating correlations; if this is what you think, you are missing what is *really* being concealed. Hint: The authors’ choice of temperature series got them into a bind….)
[Response: Spare us the guessing games. If you've got something to say, say it.]
2) the above-mentioned handful of questionable statements (that could *easily* have been balanced).
3) failure of many people to [put politics & personalities aside and] assess the specifics of the paper *fairly* & *objectively*.
[Response: It seems to me that every charge you have levelled, you yourself are guilty of. In spades.]
Some may want to add press spin to the list. If so, I will not object, but I would add that press spin is a distraction (from objectivity) that flies in *all* directions. I’m NOT interested in having my head spun, but I _love studying nature & climate.
TrueSceptic // August 1, 2009 at 10:53 pm |
Paul Vaughan,
“Many people are *imagining* what was claimed rather than being well-informed about what was claimed.”
Really? Would you like us to cite those claims by the bulk of the deniosphere (who have merely expanded the claims of the authors)? No imagination is required by anyone, other than by those in fabricating that tripe.
Have you been there to object?
David Horton // August 1, 2009 at 11:19 pm |
Another analysis of the paper here http://www.skepticalscience.com/Global-warming-and-the-El-Nino-Southern-Oscillation.html on which a poster has just included a quote from Carter – “The paper does not address trends as such (which Real Climate and similar websites often appear to be obsessed by).” This has to be the quote of the century from the denialosphere!
george // August 1, 2009 at 11:36 pm |
Paul Vaughan says
If by “2nd smoothing”, you mean the “differencing” procedure, that’s not “smoothing” at all (at least not according to standard usage by the vast majority of engineers and scientists)
The differencing acts as a “filter”, but not as a “smoothing” filter.
In fact, quite the opposite is true:
An actual “smoothing” filter would act to suppress the noise (high frequency components under standard usage).
“Differencing” does not reduce “noise” but instead actually enhances (and even introduces) noise. *
[*Perhaps Carter and the other authors of that paper are under the impression that a "trend" is part of the "noise"?]
Finally, with regard to
“failure… to [put politics aside and] assess the specifics of the paper *fairly* & *objectively*”:
if anyone is guilty of that, it’s Carter himself.
His paper certainly does not support his press release claim that
Paul Vaughan // August 1, 2009 at 11:42 pm |
It is interesting to see how twisted my comments appear with biased responses interspersed. [This is my first experience with this blog format.]
My interest is not in defending McLean, de Freitas, & Carter, as should be evident from my comments (which point out flaws in MdFC).
The only reason I read the paper (which upon a glance seemed to be conveying VERY “Old News”):
There was a lot of fuss being made about it (which is an interesting sociological phenomenon) and I encountered a lot of comments that appeared politically-motivated rather than objective.
Before commenting here I reproduced the calculations and explored alternate analyses. I arrived at “Old News” (which I have previously explored using other, related datasets – and seen addressed in other research articles, some of which date back decades).
The reason I decided to post here even though I expected a [potentially] hostile reception:
My concern is that someone without the right background will review this thread and:
a) perceive a mixed-message about ENSO-temperature connections.
b) conclude that “all smoothing is bad in all contexts” and “all differencing is bad in all contexts”.
These concerns are independent of politics and the specific paper being discussed.
My interests include:
1) parks, wilderness, plants, & trees.
2) a fair & sustainable society.
3) interdisciplinary education.
I do not support distortionist media stunts …from *any* “side”. I suggest that we not even focus on them as they are eroding the image of both science & the environmental movement (2 things I want to see flourish, which is part of the reason I take the time to comment here).
[Response: You say your interest is not defending McLean, de Freitas, Carter. I don't believe you. When you say you "can count on one hand the questionable statements in the paper," I reply that either you don't understand the science, or you can't count, or you're so keen to defend them that you'll say any ridiculous thing.
You asked about reading the paper, repeating the analysis, exploring alternatives, and reviewing related literature. I stated that I had done all that. You then refer to "public relations hype," which is pure hypocrisy when in fact it's what you've been doing all along. It's just a clever but very dishonest attempt to deflect attention from the public relations hype which is the press release associated with the paper and the public statements made by its authors.
You claim that you're concerned about people getting the wrong idea about ENSO-temperature connections. This is total bull. I made it clear at the outset that such relationships are "old news." If you were really concerned about that then you'd be on the denialist blogs which have trumpeted Bob Carter's claim that "The close relationship between ENSO and global temperature, as described in the paper, leaves little room for any warming driven by human carbon dioxide emissions." THAT is the wrong idea at work.
I will give you credit for having balls. In spite of your comments being a PR ploy based on biased views, you consistently imply that we're just indulging in a PR ploy based on biased views.]
Nick Stokes // August 2, 2009 at 12:04 am |
Paul Vaughan,
Responding to your questions of Jacob Mack
Yes, I’ve reviewed related literature. Kristen Byrnes, in a 2006 school project, covered their main points:
And yes, I’ve read the paper carefully, and reproduced many of the calculations. There was some difficulty here because they actually used for MSU not the mid-troposphere data as they referenced (uahncdc.mt), but the LT set (which is more appropriate). But that fixed, I generated Figs 1,4 and 7.
As I mentioned above (July 27, 11.42am), Fig 4 looks very different if you add regression lines. It becomes clear that despite the near-matching of oscillations, RATPAC-A temperatures have a definite uptrend, not matched by SOI.
Apologists for the paper,including the authors, are now pointing to Fig 7 as the real evidence for SOI explaining the trend. But Fig 7 is thoroughly deceptive. They have put together a hybrid temperature, RATPAC to 1979, then MSU. But if you look carefully, they aren’t even plotted on the same scale. And there is an offset crossing 1980. Now this might be needed to match the different base periods, which would require some discussion in the text. But I don’t think this is what they have done, Instead I believe they have adjusted the scaling for the two parts independently to get the best fit, and then claimed to show a trend match over the whole period.
In any case, there is no justification for analysing one set, and then illustrating with a different, artificial set to make it look better,
One last oddity – I can’t actually reproduce their GTTA vs SOI regressions. I haven’t tried hard enough to say they’re wrong on that basis alone, but taken with Lucia’s observation that their coefficient implies very rapid heating, I think they probably are wrong.
Paul Vaughan // August 2, 2009 at 12:58 am |
Re: george [11:36 pm]
George, I’m talking about the 2nd smoothing (not differencing) and distinguishing between conclusions based on calculations and conclusions based on the literature review.
Paul Vaughan // August 2, 2009 at 1:02 am |
Tamino: “In spite of your comments being a PR ploy based on biased views, you consistently imply that we’re just indulging in a PR ploy based on biased views.”
If this is what you think, there has been a misunderstanding.
Paul Vaughan // August 2, 2009 at 1:11 am |
Re: Nick Stokes [12:04 am]
Their *calculations* were NOT aimed at assessing trends. Their conclusions about trends are based on their literature review.
To all:
I am in favor of fair & constructive criticism.
Jacob Mack // August 2, 2009 at 1:32 am |
Hank, Dhogaza, and True sceptic, I will not continue in this conversation, except to say I did ask a lawyer friend personally, and it could be a matter of copyright infringement, and not just “fair use.” At any rate I digress becasue this is not an important discussion in regards to this topic on this blog. Barton, thanks for the little piece of quotation, however, I never thought SOI was going to change the trend, I was just looking for more recent papers that delve into analysis…but once again thank you for the quote.
TCO // August 2, 2009 at 1:49 am |
I think copyright is being used more and more by people to minimize criticism (Scientology, Watts, etc.). All good libertarians (nannygov) should be piling in here. Copyright has been expanding a lot (Mickey protection Act, etc.)
Jacob Mack // August 2, 2009 at 1:53 am |
Now, who can get me more information on this Heartland Institute? They are portrayed on Youtube as a supporter of the tobacco industry…
“The Video Climate Deniers Tried to Ban – Climate Denial Crock of the Week.”
Also, I know Watts cherry picks stations and has little mathematics background. I also acknowledge that he seems to miss the averaging in of many data sets, bioecological indicators, and sattelite, infrared applications.
ERJ // August 2, 2009 at 1:59 am |
So, what is the consensus on the correct trending function that should have been applied?
Paul Vaughan // August 2, 2009 at 2:01 am |
Tamino: “I don’t believe you [...] you don’t understand [...] you can’t count [...] you’ll say any ridiculous thing [...] pure hypocrisy [...] very dishonest [...] total bull.”
I have expressed 2 main concerns:
1) This thread is giving a mixed-message about ENSO-temperature connections. The hammering about trends is particularly [& severely] misleading. I question your motives for not differentiating between conclusions MdFC based on their calculations and conclusions they based on their literature review. You are an authority figure. Many in your audience will simply defer to your judgement whenever they do not understand.
[Response: Their conclusions about trends are not based on the existing literature but on a misunderstanding of it, coupled with a good deal of nonsense. And Bob Carter's statement about how the extreme correlations they derive (from their analysis, not their literature review) leaves "little room for any warming driven by human carbon dioxide emissions” is based entirely on the analysis reported in the paper.]
2) Your readers may be left with the (false) impression that “smoothing is bad in all contexts” and that “differencing is bad in all contexts”. I spent years teaching stats. I know the impact of quantitative mislearning. I question your motives for not being clear with your audience that these operations have legitimate purposes.
[Response: The only person who has gotten the impression, or suggested, that I have in any way implied even the slightest possibility that smoothing or differencing is bad in all contexts, is you. I have repeatedly extolled the virtues of smoothing (as well as the statistical dangers of same) and occasionally mentioned the virtues of differencing. You're just plain wrong and you should admit it.]
I respect the knowledge you possess Tamino — and I hope you (& your readers) will misunderstand neither my comments nor my intent.
The image of both science & the environmental movement is being damaged by the climate change controversy. I do not condone MdFC’s failings (including their media-failings), NOR do I condone counter-reactions that went overboard to the other extreme.
[Response: Since you're so concerned about misunderstandings, here's a question for you: how many blogs have you visited which tout the results of McLean et al. as disproving global warming, to warn them about the misrepresentation based on this paper?
Don't post here again without answering that question. If your answer is greater than zero, provide links to your comments.]
What interests me is the study of nature & climate (not MdFC, nor “denier”-”warmist” polarity spectra). I have spent 2 decades studying in 7 disciplines for the simple reason that NO ONE DISCIPLINE has everything necessary to understand the complexity of nature.
Nick Stokes // August 2, 2009 at 2:01 am |
Paul Vaughan, The authors have a defence of their paper on the NZ Climate Science Coalition site. Here’s an extract:
And one reason why it doesn’t “rise away” is that in the second half, they have moved the scale down.
Jacob Mack // August 2, 2009 at 2:10 am |
Okay, never mind I have seen the site.
Jacob Mack // August 2, 2009 at 2:37 am |
Paul,
a resounding yes to all of your questions…I have literally read thousands of peer reviewed papers, the appropriate textbooks, and I have reproduced the calulations; pure rubbish.
Jacob Mack // August 2, 2009 at 2:46 am |
Quote:
“If you would like to reuse any content from New Scientist, either in print or online, please contact the syndication department first for permission. New Scientist does not own rights to photos, but there are a variety of licensing options available for use of articles and graphics we own the copyright to.”
Even in terms of educating, one must first ask permission; this is taken from a site linked to RC Wiki…now I will move on.
[Response: Certainly for education, yes. But for criticism, no.]
Jacob Mack // August 2, 2009 at 3:39 am |
Tamino,
there I agree 100%, no further argument.
John Nicol // August 2, 2009 at 3:41 am |
It should be pointed out that in the McLean et al. paper, Figure1 and 2 include the trends which show clearly both a negative correlation in short term variations (Figure 2) and a negative correlation in terms of the trends (Figure 1).
I don’t see where Glikson has demonstrated that the ENSO variations result from Global Warming. Certainly the oscillatory nature of the ENSO must define it as the prime forcing agent since increases in carbon dioxide are linear, indicating that any consequent warming should be linear. Glikson seems to imply that the forcing from carbon dioxide produces an oscillatory characteristic in the global warming which in turn produces the observed changes in ENSO. This seems to be quite physically implausible and would require a substantive justification which he might like to add to his otherwise incomplete comment.
John Nicol
[Response: Figure 1 clearly indicates that SOI is trending the wrong way to explain the trend in tropospheric temperature. Figure 2 is of derivatives, hence any trend in the data has been reduced to a constant.]
Paul Vaughan // August 2, 2009 at 4:18 am |
“how many blogs have you visited which tout the results of McLean et al. as disproving global warming [...]? Don’t post here again without answering that question.”
Answer: None.
Hank Roberts // August 2, 2009 at 4:20 am |
Jacob, you asked who can help you with the Heartland Institute and tobacco.
Have you talked to a librarian? Or used Google?
If so, what have you read so far? Any of these?
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22Heartland+Institute%22+tobacco
Or to narrow your search a bit, read this and the footnotes and then follow it forward by reading the citing papers:
http://jech.bmj.com/cgi/content/abstract/55/8/588%20
Or you could write your own searches in the archive, of course:
http://www.library.ucsf.edu/tobacco
But, seriously, ask a reference librarian, to get the best advice.
Paul Vaughan // August 2, 2009 at 4:29 am |
Re: Jacob Mack [2:37 am]
Using other methods & related datasets doesn’t change the analysis results much. What conclusions do you think they could have drawn? Or are you just objecting to the 2nd application of smoothing? I’m trying to understand what *specifically* people are objecting to here (aside from the trend stawman & the media nonsense ….and “rubbish” does not help me see the specifics you (as an individual) see). Thank you for addressing my earlier questions Jacob – much appreciated. Regards, Paul.
[Response: The trend issue is not a strawman. Eliminating all effect of trend eliminates much of the variance which is not correlated to SOI, which is one of the reasons that McLean et al. can claim such ridiculously high correlations between variations in SOI and variations in tropospheric temperature.
Their estimates of correlation between SOI and temperature are ridiculously inflated. The numbers they get are only because of their filter, not because that much correlation is anywhere near real. It isn't.
And they have used those completely wrong numbers in public statements to imply, or state explicitly, that one can conclude there's "little room for any warming driven by human carbon dioxide emissions."
Do you get it?]
dhogaza // August 2, 2009 at 4:40 am |
Paul Vaughan : concern troll.
And, Tamino, regarding education, US Copyright Law says explicitly:
Now, I know from personal experience that educators at every level are ultra-cautious about using material (including elementary school teachers having their children e-mail me for permission to use my photos in school reports), but the reality is that much of this is covered by fair use anyway.
But I deeply appreciate the respect shown by asking me for permission, even if it’s not really necessary.
Paul Vaughan // August 2, 2009 at 5:20 am |
Tamino: “Do you get it?”
There is ALREADY obsessive focus on GHGs. My interpretation of the WUWT phenomenon is that a large portion of the population is developing a healthy interest in NATURAL climate factors. I see the current research focus as imbalanced. For example in my area when I needed to renew my funding I encountered funding criteria that directed me to find evidence of global warming and illustrate the consequences. Since my research is on natural climate factors, I do not qualify for the funding. (This is the main source of funding in my area – and at a time when funding is VERY scarce.) Should I be punished for wanting to study natural aspects of climate? The answer I am getting (in practical terms) is yes.
-
As for MdFC09: I understand what they did right, what they did wrong, and how to do much better.
Paul Vaughan // August 2, 2009 at 5:39 am |
dhogaza [4:40 am] “Paul Vaughan : concern troll.”
I defended you at WUWT in the past when you faced hostility there. However, I would not defend your conduct in this thread (specifically: hysteric accusations & obscenities unwarrantedly hurled at Lucia). The concerns I have expressed here are genuine (and the reactions are informative).
Paul Vaughan // August 2, 2009 at 5:49 am |
Tamino: “I have repeatedly extolled the virtues of smoothing (as well as the statistical dangers of same) and occasionally mentioned the virtues of differencing.”
This sounds interesting! Can someone point me to the relevant threads?
Deep Climate // August 2, 2009 at 7:04 am |
Paul Vaughan,
This paper and associated press releases are nothing less than a concerted PR effort to convince the general public that the MdFC analysis has demonstrated that ENSO is the main driver of global warming (and therefore there is no need to regulate human activity).
The first press release is entitled “Nature not Man responsible for recent global warming”.
The third states:
The results in Figure 7 clearly show that the SOI related variability in MGT is the major contribution to any trends that might exist, although the McLean et al study did not look for this. The key conclusion of the paper, therefore, is that MGT is determined in most part by atmospheric processes related to the Southern Oscillation.
I don’t see how the situation could be any clearer.
You can look up several such MdFC statements, both in the paper and in the three press releases, on the attribution of global warming and temperature trends here:
http://deepclimate.org/2009/07/30/is-enso-responsible-for-recent-global-warming-no/
By the way a new post on the political links and possible funding source of the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition is here:
http://deepclimate.org/2009/08/01/meet-alan-gibbs-builder-of-amphibious-humvees-and-climate-science-coalitions/
Gavin's Pussycat // August 2, 2009 at 7:40 am |
> Dr. Carter is far more gentlemanly & sensible than I
> had imagined based on comments.
“Please allow me to introduce myself, I’m a man of wealth and taste…”
Gavin's Pussycat // August 2, 2009 at 8:04 am |
But studying natural climate factors is an essential part of unearthing evidence of anthropogenic climate change! It is what you have to eliminate to get what you want — one guy’s noise is another guy’s signal.
What I see in the literature is that, even focusing on climate change, accounting for confounding factors is the bulk of the work. And pretty demanding when it’s early days and the signal has only barely risen out of the noise.
I see no reason why you couldn’t make a contribution doing what you’re doing now… if you wanted to, and assuming you’re good at it. There is art to writing an application. And why are you unhappy that organizations handing out the taxpayers’ money would want to see societally relevant research?
Mark // August 2, 2009 at 10:32 am |
“My interpretation of the WUWT phenomenon is that a large portion of the population is developing a healthy interest in NATURAL climate factors.”
Which
a) we can’t do anything about
b) are not the overwhelming cause of the current trend
when I have an engine block through my sternum after a car crash, I would rather the medics worry about the unnatural lump of metal intruding into me rather than whether my blood cholesterol is healthy or not.
Lazar // August 2, 2009 at 10:35 am |
paul vaughan,
whilst i think the response to you has been overly hostile, i do not agree with many of your points…
that’s not what the authors claim…
paul…
where in the paper do they make conclusions about trends with reference to other work?
the only statement tamino made with regard to smoothing, is..
… and the context of criticisms of differencing are clearly restricted to this paper and calims made by the authors about trends… any individual with average logic and language comprehension can recognize the claims are not being made in a universal context…
there is a global emergency… there are still many unknowns about impacts which need resolving…
no… a very small but vocal ideologically blinded and deeply dishonest section of the population…
perhaps it would be more productive to push for more overall funding for climate science… distracting from a very real threat is neither sane and perhaps in terms of your funding goals may even be counterproductive…
Mark // August 2, 2009 at 10:37 am |
[Response: Certainly for education, yes. But for criticism, no.]
Not in the UK or in many countries world wide.
Educational use is EXPLICITLY out of copyright’s regime.
Since copyright is intended to increase the learning available (which is WHY there’s a financial incentive, the financial incentive is NOT the reason for copyright, no matter how much the gatekeepers want you to think so), if it were to be used to limit education, it would negate its own purpose and be dropped.
PS why is it those who want to treat “IP” as real property when it comes to controlling it do not want it treated as real property when it comes to taxing it?
Even abandoned property is taxed. And if left alone (abandoned) becomes anyone’s property who can improve on it.
Paul Vaughan // August 2, 2009 at 11:01 am |
Re: Nick Stokes [2:01 am]
Thanks for the link Nick. I see one major slip-up there:
“If an underlying trend existed, it would have shown up in Figure 7.”
Lazar // August 2, 2009 at 11:06 am |
nick stokes…
according to figure 1, the msu in plot 7c should trend well above soi… i’ve done a very scrappy collage of figure 1 and figure 7(b,c)… green soi from figure 1 tracks black soi from 7b&c, but red msu of figure 1 diverges from grey msu of figure 7c after 1995… what have they done?
Deech56 // August 2, 2009 at 11:46 am |
RE: Paul Vaughan // August 2, 2009 at 5:20 am
Paul, I think you are missing the big picture. I believe the importance of this paper was in the press it received, stating with Marc Morano’s blog. It’s interesting that the titles of both Morano’s post and Watts’ take used quotations from the press release. The PR was the message. You must give our host credit for his analysis which certainly led to backtracking by the authors.
Assigning motive is always difficult, but it is important to look at this paper in light of the claims by AGW opponents that natural forcings are the primary driver of the multi-decade trend*. Deep Climate wrote an excellent post on the goings on surrounding the publication of this paper. The public statements cannot be dismissed as irrelevant.
* Of course, the inconsistency of denying that such a trend exists in the first place is another matter.
TCO // August 2, 2009 at 12:01 pm |
You know I think the Carter fallacy is educational. We discussed a similar issue a while ago on this blog wrt global warming effect on agriculture.
At that time, the paper that someone (Hank, Dhog) pushed me towards when I started digging was one that had only examined differenced effects. IOW, it could show that a warmer than normal year (and yty variaion is higher than trend) created poor growing. However, it could not in any way show that growing was being made worse over time or that adaptive modifications (e.g. in crop-land usage to get an optimal average crop for the new climate) were not adeqaute to deal with the issue. (Note, I did not claim the contrary…they had made a claim and I asked them to show it.)
I think it’s useful to be sensitive to issues of how data is analyzed and instructive to watch for them whichever side they come from. I know this is harmful for the PR-side warriors, who don’t want to show any chinks in the armor of their side…or false symmetry or whatever. But screw them. I like to think and learn concepts. That’s real math. That’s real science. That’s learning to analyze things well.
TrueSceptic // August 2, 2009 at 12:01 pm |
Paul Vaughan,
“The image of both science & the environmental movement is being damaged by the climate change controversy. ”
The controversy is generated by “sceptics” and “deniers” with that very intention. Attempts to discredit climate scientists, from claims of data manipulation to conspiracy theories about the peer review process, are an ever-recurring theme of “sceptic” sites.
This, of course, is just a continuation of the decades-old war on environmental sciences by the political right. It’s just about impossible to read any climate “sceptic” blog without seeing words like “warmers”, “warmists”, “hippies”, “greenies”, “nazis”, and “fascists” used.
You won’t get your claims taken seriously until we see you criticising what I describe above.
TCO // August 2, 2009 at 12:18 pm |
Is Paul Vaughn a pseudonym? The one I found at UM is dead. However, I wonder if our Paul is Tony Lupo? In which case, he has a good publication record and is a legit scientist.
Nothing mean meant, just curious. And yes, I’m a pseudonym too. Please leave it so…
t_p_hamilton // August 2, 2009 at 1:13 pm |
Paul Vaughn:My interpretation of the WUWT phenomenon is that a large portion of the population is developing a healthy interest in NATURAL climate factors.”
Finding excuses to deny reality is NOT healthy. Your statement would be like interpreting the birthers obsession as a healthy interest in qualifications for president.
TrueSceptic // August 2, 2009 at 2:04 pm |
TCO,
It’s spelt “Vaughan”.
TCO // August 2, 2009 at 5:10 pm |
Doh! Neeeever mind. [/Gilda Radner]
george // August 2, 2009 at 2:09 pm |
Paul Vaughan from above
If the “Paul Vaughan” who made the following comment here on WUWT is the same “Paul Vaughan” commenting above, then I think it sheds a little light on his primary “concern”.
//end Paul Vaughan quote
Three Card Monte, anyone?
Ray Ladbury // August 2, 2009 at 3:19 pm |
Paul Vaughan,
If you are having trouble getting funding to look at natural climate variability, I suspect that is because ultimate the folks who control funding (e.g the voters) are ignoramuses–and proudly so. PR efforts like that by McdFC do not help you or anyone else in this effort. The risks posed by increased greenhouse forcing are real, and the consequences are still at present unbounded. I call that cause for concern, not obsessive focus. If people don’t understand the need for research into natural factors, the answer is to educate them–to make their concern a teachable moment.
TrueSceptic // August 2, 2009 at 3:34 pm |
george,
Vaughan has the nerve to say this at The Blackboard.
Mark // August 2, 2009 at 4:01 pm |
“However, I wonder if our Paul is Tony Lupo? ”
How about Matta Hari?
I know that’s a she and she’s dead, but, that name has just as much in common with Paul as Tony Lupo does.
Hank Roberts // August 2, 2009 at 4:14 pm |
> effect on agriculture
I see you’ve learned the PR lesson. Make a vague mention of something, attribute it vaguely to one person or another, then claim your research gave you the conclusion you expected and proved them wrong.
Excellent work, if you’re in PR.
Now, how would you handle that if you were in science? Expect others to find the cite for you?
TCO // August 2, 2009 at 5:14 pm |
Hank: Never ascribe to evil, what is more easily explained by stupdity. In my case, add in laziness. If you’re interested, we can go back to it. (And maybe the discussion was with Lazar…I’m reaching and admit it.) Just think it’s interesting to make connections like this. See same issue (differencing) coming up in multiple contexts…and the connection to what info we can get out of differenced data.
Are we cool? I have always said, you were a gentleman in tone and a real trooper for citation digging up.
dhogaza // August 2, 2009 at 5:21 pm |
TCO:
Wow. The difference between what that paper attempted to do – assuming you’re summarizing it accurately – and that McLean et al claim to have done are *profoundly* different.
The question asked in the ag paper is “what can we learn about the effect on agriculture when temps are warmer?”.
Then the fact that there is natural variability in the system is used to compare warmer vs. cooler years. Nothing is said about a CO2-forced or other warming trend.
McLean is arguing that since ENSO correlates with natural variability (so suprising, no?), then there’s no trend due to increased CO2, even though the paper doesn’t look for any trend.
I don’t see how you can possibly compare the two.
Of course not. They just show what happens in warm years. Now, suppose AGW predictions are right, and there are more warm years? This *combined* with their research supports a conclusion that growing will be worse over time, even though the paper *alone* doesn’t show that growing will be worse over time.
Yes, one can’t rule out that the only effect will be massive disruption in the existing ag economy …
Money grows on trees, won’t be a problem, I’m sure…
dhogaza // August 2, 2009 at 5:34 pm |
Over at Skeptical Science, there’s an e-mail response by Bob Carter regarding the paper.
Personally, I find this snippet astouding:
Lazar // August 2, 2009 at 5:46 pm |
yes it was, way back in the heady days of open thread #12 i posted this, there were bits on first differences here and here, and you nailed the “upper bound” thing here… mclean et al. would be an equivalent treatment if they reconstruct temperature by applying their regression model to undifferenced soi…
george // August 2, 2009 at 6:07 pm |
TrueSceptic says
Vaughan has the nerve to say this at The Blackboard.
Given that it’s so easy to find this stuff with google, I wonder, is that “nerve” or something else?
Perhaps Vaughan believes that no one can (or ever will) check to see what he has said elsewhere.
More amazing still, his comments here actually look they might have been written for the (largely gullible) audience at WUWT.
He does not seem to appreciate that many of those who frequent this site actually have an understanding (at least on a basic level) of many of the mathematical and scientific concepts that Tamino presents — and, unfortunately for him, know BS when they see it:
So, while hand-waving arguments might (undoubtedly do) work on many of the Wattians, they don’t work very well here.
Finally, I find it absolutely hilarious that Vaughan would level the “Strawman” criticism at those who are commenting here. There are obviously some who have difficulty with the whole irony thing.
Paul Vaughan // August 2, 2009 at 6:30 pm |
Re: Deep Climate [7:04 am]
When you came under attack at WUWT regarding your anonymity, I defended anonymity. If you review my posts here, you may note that I have indicated clearly that I do not condone dishonest media. Criticisms of the MdFC09 *paper* based on arguments about trends are unfair.
[edit]
[Response: Then trend is part of the variance. But MFC09 removed it from the variation before computing their correlations. That's one of the reasons they were able to state such ridiculously inflated correlation values. Their statements about trend are based on a bunch of fluffy babble based on failure to understand the existing literature and the physics involved. Their statement that SOI is "perhaps" a major contributor to recent trends in temperature is not supported by their analysis OR by the existing literature OR by any valid physics, either in this paper or any other that I'm aware of.
Their paper is rubbish, their correlation estimates are wrong, and your repeated assertion tha the trend issue is a strawman is idiotic. Really. Stupid.
Now run back to WUWT where you belong. Be sure to tell them what a nasty unfair ogre I am, and how all scientists are liars -- except of course McLean, de Freitas, and Carter.]
Jacob Mack // August 2, 2009 at 7:14 pm |
Hank Roberts,
perhaps my sarcasm went undetected…I went to the heartland site already…they may have first amendment protection, but they certainly are biased and downright fraudulent in regards to AGW and the harm of cigarette smoke.
Jacob Mack // August 2, 2009 at 7:17 pm |
Mark,
in the US copyrigth claims and lawsuits can get downright tempestuous and indescernible at times. Just look at the law changes and suspensions of the Bush administration suspending habeous corpus. Now in regards to Watts specifically, I was more focused on a copywritten book that he published; however, it seems that there will no furtehr legal pressure on the Sinclair’s video, so we can breathe a sigh of relief.
Deech56 // August 2, 2009 at 8:16 pm |
RE Tamino inline August 2, 2009 at 6:30 pm
That’s nasty unfair anomymous ogre. LOL.
I am not an expert by any means, but I wonder if the paper itself would have registered had it not been for the press release(s) in which the authors voiced conclusions beyond the scope of the paper. The press releases are still out there are and have not been retracted, AFAIK. The headlines of Morano’s and Watts’ articles still haven’t changed.
Ray Ladbury // August 2, 2009 at 9:15 pm |
Paul Vaughan, While I don’t think you’ve been terribly inconsistent in what you’ve said between Watts-up-is-arse and here, I do think you are to charitable to the paper under discussion. After all, if you remove all discussion of trends from the paper (and that is flat-assed wrong if not intentionally misleading), you are left with the unremarkable observation that ENSO affects climate. Can I get a big “Duh!” from the choir? What is more , their method for showing this is not explained well, is quite roundabout and is itself potentially misleading (intentionally so?) .
The paper is a mix of tautologies and self-contradictions. I do not see how it is defensible or how it can possibly reflect credit on the study of natural climate variability.
TrueSceptic // August 2, 2009 at 10:42 pm |
Link to the paper here.
Nick Stokes // August 2, 2009 at 10:58 pm |
Lazar // August 2, 2009 at 11:06 am
Yes, I was puzzled about that too. But I was able to replicate their figures. It comes back to scaling issues. Fig 1 is smoothed, so the range is less, and they have plotted it on a larger scale. The SOI scale expands by 1.56 and temp by 1.6. Discrepancies look larger. But more significantly, the temperature plots are pushed down in Fig 7. Zero SOI corresponds to 0.085C (in 7b and c), vs 0.044C in Fig 1.
This helps the match in Fig7c, and hurts in Fig7b. I think the rest is just the visuals of monthly zigzags. There really is a big discrepancy in Fig 7b, but it looks less because there is less whitespace between the curves. Another plus for smoothing :)
David B. Benson // August 2, 2009 at 11:03 pm |
Ray Ladbury // August 2, 2009 at 9:15 pm — Duh!
JCH // August 2, 2009 at 11:11 pm |
If you look at the history of the Arctic Oscillation, its influences on weather seems to match most of the weather events of my lifetime in the Dakotas from the 1950s to present.
ENSO – not so much.
So I vote no duh.
Well, not really. I guess I’m voting doo duh.
TrueSceptic // August 2, 2009 at 11:14 pm |
Jacob Mack,
I’m surprised. Do you have no idea who these people are and what’s been going on for some decades now? Climate Change/Global Warming denial is just the current manifestation of an ongoing propaganda war against any research they don’t like (vehicle safety, pollution, emissions control, tobacco). CO2 is the biggie, of course, because it’s produced or released by everything we do.
Mark // August 3, 2009 at 8:17 am |
“in the US copyrigth claims and lawsuits can get downright tempestuous and indescernible at times.”
This doesn’t make copyright cover stuff it doesn’t cover.
Sorry.
Did you think that the mere claim that copyright was infringed meant that copyright was infringed?
Well that’d be one reason why your legal system is so fooked up.
Mark // August 3, 2009 at 8:21 am |
george: “Given that it’s so easy to find this stuff with google, I wonder, is that “nerve” or something else?
Perhaps Vaughan believes that no one can (or ever will) check to see what he has said elsewhere.”
Nope, it’s not necessary to hide lies. All that’s needed is the lies get seen.
The reason to come on science blogs and repeat them, even if the wording is changed to be less blatant, is to continue the myth that there’s still valid debate about AGW.
It’s not much of a problem if their comments found elsewhere outs their denialism, the message being read is all that matters.
bigcitylib // August 3, 2009 at 12:39 pm |
Mclean is back to saying its about trends again here. See comments:
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/new-el-ni241o-threatens-world-with-weather-woe-1766555.html
I argue here
http://bigcitylib.blogspot.com/2009/08/john-maclean-is-back-to-mis.html
…that his new semantics for the term “trends” is basically bullshit.
bugs // August 3, 2009 at 1:49 pm |
“Yes, of course Carter seems pleasant and reasonable on TV. What would you expect? ”
That’s his line of spin. He is not an alarmist, he is calm and reasonable. Hence, when he is asked a question he would find difficult to answer, he just calmly and reasably ignores it completely, and answers his own question instead.
TCO // August 3, 2009 at 2:20 pm |
I dislike this so much. And I see it done by both sides. I think instead of all this concern about how things sound on the meta issue, we should have people that are just phlegmatic. Like…ask me if I’ve stopped beating my wife and I’ll just say NO. Capisce?
I mean ask if temp went down from 1998 to 2008 and the answer is YES. The literal answer is yes. If someone decides to make an argument that the trend has stopped, you can shoot that down, no problem. (And I can come up with a scenario in reverse, dhog…this is to illustrate a concept not gore the faithful.) But that’s not the initial point. It’s just the literal one. Defeat the subsequent idea, when that comes up. But engage point by point. Otherwise, we can never even talk to each other. We’re just like a bunch of whiney teen-age girls. Not men.
Hank Roberts // August 3, 2009 at 2:39 pm |
TCO, the literal answer is the raw data.
The answer you’re talking about has error bars.
george // August 3, 2009 at 5:08 pm |
TCO says “ask if temp went down from 1998 to 2008 and the answer is YES. The literal answer is yes.”
But the question itself is meaningless from the standpoint of climate, so it really makes no difference what the answer is.
In fact, it’s a waste of time even trying to answer it. And “debating” it is an even bigger waste of time.
The reluctance of scientists to answer such meaningless questions may be perceived by some members of the general public as “evasiveness” or even “dishonesty” on the part of scientists when in fact it is standard practice in science to separate those questions that are meaningful (or that even admit to an answer at all) from those that are not (eg, scientists have decided that “what is the “orbit’ of an electron about the nucleus?” is a meaningless question.)
One can even make a pretty good argument that the very best scientists are precisely the ones who are able to pick the relatively scarce meaningful questions from the almost limitless sea of meaningless ones.
Mark // August 3, 2009 at 5:29 pm |
“ask if temp went down from 1998 to 2008 and the answer is YES. The literal answer is yes.”
Actually, the literal answer is “huh?”
Temp of what?
The entire earth system likely didn’t go down in temperature. Rather like if I lose my wallet in my house I am no poorer, but my ready-cash-on-hand has.
So “Temp of what”?
Today I ate more than yesterday.
A statement of fact that has no purpose.
Just like that one TCO.
Jacob Mack // August 3, 2009 at 7:05 pm |
Truesceptic,
I am not ignorant of what is going on or that there is vast propaganda being spread to the public regarding cigarettes, global warming and so forth; I am new to being exposed to the ridiculous and fraudulent Heartland Institute, but I did look at their site with alarm and more than dismay. I support regulated markets that are somewhat free, as Adam Smith did when he worked to overthrow Mercantilism with other “radicals.” Free market economies are the superior system with some forms of independednt “watchdogs,” and some government oversite. The Heartland Institute is not a supporter of fair trade and free market, however, they are supporters of corporate America running things and for dangerous products to be labeled less dangerous and less severely taxed in order to boost sales and resulting revenue streams and profit margins. I asked, several times for Anthony to answer the question why and how is he affiliated with the Heartland Institute, and although he did not delete my posts, he did not answer them either.
Mark, President Obama is beginning to turn the country around with the assistance of top scientists, EPA director, Economists, and bipartisanship leadership; after all there are Republicans who also KNOW that AGW is real and they are fighting for a cleaner environment as well. The stock market here has been hitting over 9,000, and the increase of new unemployment is going down…yeah Mark, Bush messed things up royally, but it began as a slow progression with Alan Greenspan under Reagan, though at first Greenspan’s methods did work, until deregulation hit record highs in the US under Clinton and Bush junior. Copyrigth laws: as soon as pen hit page or MS Word has sentences on the screen it is protected by copyright laws, and then you just put your name on it with a C and it is protected. When you publish a book and it is copywrighted and selling on book shelves or on websites it can be considered infringement here in the US to quote or for what the authot claims: “taken out of context,” and “lies made about it.” I am NOT sying this is a classic example of copyrigth infringement, but I have see such happenings here in the US turn into successful lawsuits from time to time. What happens if they went before a AGW deniar judge, who is a fan of Watts? What happens when you approach certaian lawyers on this matter? I will tell you because I actually did; they can spin this into a major copyrigth issue.
Jacob Mack // August 3, 2009 at 7:08 pm |
Oh and on a side note, you guys should check out the latest issue of Scientific American 3.0 (Summer 2009) as it is a wealth of information and ideas to curb C02 and CH4 emissions.
Jacob Mack // August 3, 2009 at 7:52 pm |
Final post for a spell (I posted this elsewhere too)
I started reading my latest issue of Scientific American 3.0 (which is not funded or dominated by just the researchers SOME deniers may term “the usual suspects,” though of course they are also interevieed from time to time) and I found very practical and relatively inexpensive methodologies to reduce Green house gas emissions in meaningful ways. Also I saw some methods that would reduce other air pollutants which do increase prevalence and incidence of lung cancers, skin cancers and various other respiratory diseases (think of the “black cloud” from China.)
For one, Sally Benson an expert hydrologist from Stanford University is showing that there is atleast a 100 years of sequestering of C02, and possibly more right now. If a bolier pipe that generates 30 MW of steam is put into the 1,600 MW capacity Schwarze Pump Plant (coal fired power plant) 95% of C02 in a 99.7% pure form. Wind generated turbines are now popping up in Antartica by a Belgian research station named “Princess Elizabeth,” which has endured ice storms in Slovenia and typhoons in Japan. To generate more electricity these turbines are hooked up to diesel generators and photo voltaic cells and can supply electricity to instruments, lights and computers. Also the system has solar panels to melt snow to make water. The technology is out there, the efficiency is getting far better, and the costs though still high, are declining. There are a host of other examples, but you can read that in Scientific American 3.0, the journal Nature, Infinite Energy, Forbes (energy related issues) Google Scholar and Popular Science/Mechanics. PBS has some excellent programs as well on this subject matter. (PBS.org)
Mark // August 3, 2009 at 7:57 pm |
“When you publish a book and it is copywrighted ”
copy RIGHT ed.
The right to make copies.
“it can be considered infringement here in the US to quote or for what the authot claims: “taken out of context,” and “lies made about it.””
No, that would be slander and libel laws, not copyright.
“I am NOT sying this is a classic example of copyrigth infringement,”
Then why use it in a conversation about the DMCA takedown notice that requires copyright to have been breeched?
“What happens if they went before a AGW deniar judge, who is a fan of Watts?”
Uh, what?
What if you went up against a judge who didn’t like pinkos and you turned up in a Castro shirt?
Again, this has NOTHING to do with copyright.
It may have a lot to do with your judicial system, but then again, if the evidence says it wasn’t copyright infringement, the judge can hate you all he likes, he can’t find against you.
“What happens when you approach certaian lawyers on this matter?”
Certain lawyers have already said “no problem”.
dhogaza // August 3, 2009 at 8:07 pm |
It’s protected without the circle-C. The circle-C just makes the “I didn’t know” defense more difficult for infringers.
If you actually care a lot, you register it, which makes it possible to recover legal fees and along with actual damages, up to 3x in punitive damages. Also registration removes any question as to who actually owns the copyright.
The fair use exception can be held not to hold (how’s that for awkward wording?) when damage is done to the commercial value of the work.
Watts work is free, there is no commercial value, so that whole section of fair use determination doesn’t really apply.
Jacob Mack // August 3, 2009 at 8:22 pm |
Mark you are just being an ass#### now.
Jacob Mack // August 3, 2009 at 8:28 pm |
Quote:”It’s protected without the circle-C. The circle-C just makes the “I didn’t know” defense more difficult for infringers.” end quote;—That was my point. Still if you do not have a date and a C in court you may lose the case if someone else claims ownership/creation of IP. I know this because I have been a professional editor and co-writer for many years. I have seen this happen first hand.
Quote:”If you actually care a lot, you register it, which makes it possible to recover legal fees and along with actual damages, up to 3x in punitive damages. Also registration removes any question as to who actually owns the copyright.” end quote–agreed. No argument there.
“Watts work is free, there is no commercial value, so that whole section of fair use determination doesn’t really apply.”—Wrong!
Free works can and are equally protected under fair use, make no mistake about it.
Jacob Mack // August 3, 2009 at 8:43 pm |
Quote:”Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, 510 U.S. 569 (1994)[1] was a United States Supreme Court copyright law case that stands for the proposition that a commercial parody can be fair use. That money is made does not make it impossible for a use to be fair; it is merely one of the components of a fair use analysis.” The earning of money alone will not dictate whether it is fair use or not.
This was a relatively recent case in comparison to the ones that dictated commercial considerations. (such as loss of $ or a hurt market share in general)
Quote: “Because of the defendant’s burden of proof, some copyright owners frequently make claims of infringement even in circumstances where the fair use defense would likely succeed in hopes that the user will refrain from the use rather than spending resources in his defense. This type of lawsuit is part of a much larger problem in First Amendment law; see Strategic lawsuit against public participation.”
Quote:
First Steps
Answer these three questions to decide whether you need permission to use a copyrighted work.
1. Is the work protected?
Copyright does not protect, this Policy does not apply to, and anyone may freely use*:
Works that lack originality
logical, comprehensive compilations (like the phone book)
unoriginal reprints of public domain works
Works in the public domain
Freeware (not shareware, but really, expressly, available free of restrictions-ware — this may be protected by law, but the author has chosen to make it available without any restrictions)
US Government works
Facts
Ideas, processes, methods, and systems described in copyrighted works.” end quote.
http://netbnr.net/loc.html?http://search.live.com/results.aspx%3Fgo%3DSearch%26q%3Dgoogle%26form%3DCPNTLB
For more info see: http://netbnr.net/loc.html?
Jacob Mack // August 3, 2009 at 9:18 pm |
Well, Mark and Dhogaza we agree to disagree; this thread would be better served in getting back to discussing climate science, the trends and the errors in the Mclean paper….Fine.
Richard C // August 3, 2009 at 9:43 pm |
JM you are back-sliding. Your comments are becoming incomprehensible again.
dhogaza // August 3, 2009 at 11:14 pm |
Yes, I know that.
I meant the part of fair use doctrine that tests against a decline in commercial value.
This part:
#4 being the primary reason why Mark is wrong when he says, in reply to you:
No, Mark, if it can be shown that the “taken out of context” and “lies made about it” claim has validity, then #4 above comes into play, and it might be judged an infringement rather than fair use under US copyright law. Your mileage in the UK may vary.
AFAIK, though, it’s hard to show a negative effect of the market value of something that can be freely downloaded …
dhogaza // August 3, 2009 at 11:25 pm |
The loss of $ or hurt market share you mention in your second sentence is in regard to the piece being COPIED. Not the COPY.
The case you quote says that a COPY that is used commerically, that earns money, can still be fair use. Says nothing about the COPIED piece.
If Watts’ claims had merit, the other youtube pieces would be down by now.
The DMCA, which is evil in many ways, has some nice protections not available in normal copyright law.
Much as many states have passed anti-SLAPP suit laws, which make it financially burdensome to file such lawsuits, the DMCA has provisions which can make life painful if you file a false DMCA take-down request. That’s why Google’s form has so many clauses making sure you understand that filing unwarranted DMCA take-down requests, as Watts did, can have negative consequences.
You’re right, though, under traditional (non-DMCA) copyright law, harassing techniques can be a problem even if a use is truly fair use.
Jacob Mack // August 4, 2009 at 12:25 am |
Dhogaza,
fair enough; I just hope that future claims of copyright infringement are not made valid based upon claims made by Watts now. I also did not want to burden the thread with copying and pasting of enumerous copyright expositions and loopholes, but for now as I said before we can breathe a sigh of relief because Sinclair is back up and running.
Jacob Mack // August 4, 2009 at 12:29 am |
Richard C,
you love to make that claim as always, but that is fine; I support your right to disagree.
I would rather focus back on actual global climate issues; my only points in speaking with lawyers and other copyright experts I know and work with, is, there have been domestic cases just like Watt’s claim which ended up being upheld in a court of law; that is it; nothing more and nothing less.
Gavin's Pussycat // August 4, 2009 at 6:41 am |
…if only law was as predictable as climate…
Philip Machanick // August 4, 2009 at 3:12 am |
What I find moist amusing about this whole incident is how the the inactivist crew are so quick to accuse mainstream scientists of finagling the data – without any clear demonstration that there is a problem – yet here we have a case from their side that is obvious even with a rudimentary mathematical background. Usually I have to work through the detail when Tamino does an analysis. This time I just read the paper, and the wording “To remove the noise, the absolute values were replaced with derivative values based on variations. Here the derivative is the 12-month running average subtracted from the same average for data 12 months later.” was immediately clear as to its consequences. Anyone who has difficulty seeing this obviously has no basic mathematical skills.
bugs, the Carter interview you posted is on a site that takes you to “free daily emails about liberal bias”. I didn’t spot the hard question but didn’t pay much attention. The interviewer was keen to let him get his spin out including claiming he represents the middle ground between extremists who don’t believe CO_2 can explain warming and extremist alarmists. Smooth but so is a used car dealer.
dhogaza // August 4, 2009 at 3:38 am |
I wouldn’t worry, Watts is, if anything, more ignorant of copyright law (even DMCA) than climate science.
Draw your own conclusion :)
Jacob Mack // August 4, 2009 at 3:53 am |
Have you guys seen the propaganda at ilovemycarbondioxide.com? They get C02 p-chem wrong, they get thermodynamics wrong, they consider C02 w/o considering water vapor, they get the paleoclimate half wrong and they dismiss real experimental data.
TrueSceptic // August 4, 2009 at 10:47 am |
Jacob Mack,
Why is Sinclair’s video back up at Youtube? Is it because Watts didn’t have a case? I suspect that we’ll never know whether this did breach copyright. Perhaps if a similar case were to go to court…
TrueSceptic // August 4, 2009 at 10:54 am |
Philip Machanick,
That’s the point, isn’t it? This is “high school” (GCSE in the UK) maths. It’s staggering that the “sceptics” can’t see (or admit) what’s wrong and let Carter get away with his distortions.
I’d trust any used car dealer before I trust him!
TrueSceptic // August 4, 2009 at 11:26 am |
Jacob Mack,
Re ilovemycarbondioxide.com, you will find many sites like that. Whether the authors really believe what they write or are cynically exploiting the lack of knowledge of their target audience is hard to say.
You might have noticed that when some idiot (this is *not* an ad hom!) says something similar at Watts or Marohasy, none of the “sceptics” there tries to correct them. Are they really ignorant beyond belief or don’t they care as long as it disagrees with mainstream climate science?
2 examples from WattsUpWithMyBrain:-
This type probably cannot be educated but does any “sceptic” even try?
TrueSceptic // August 4, 2009 at 11:30 am |
dhogaza,
Let me correct that. :D
george // August 4, 2009 at 3:45 pm |
It’s interesting how the justification of Carter and the other authors for the use of their differencing/derivative procedure has “evolved” from their original:
“To remove the noise[sic], the absolute values were replaced with derivative values based on variations. Here the derivative is the 12-month running average subtracted from the same average for data 12 months later.”
So, that was then: To remove “noise” they used differencing (which actually adds to the noise [high frequency components], but we’ll ignore that totally irrelevant fact).
And this is now:
Here’s what they say in their “defense” of their paper
Finally, for those who are still not sure what Carter et al are up to (ie, who still wish to give them the ‘benefit of the doubt” [benefit of brain death?]) in their above “defense”, the Carter and the others again make their purpose crystal clear:
One has to be willfully ignorant not to see what this is all about.
dhogaza // August 4, 2009 at 4:18 pm |
The DMCA makes the *provider* – google in this case – potentially liable. So the fact that it’s no longer being taken down is a sign that either their copyright types have 1) accepted the argument that it’s fair use 2) that Watts hasn’t filed further take-down requests or 3) both.
Jacob Mack // August 4, 2009 at 7:20 pm |
TrueSceptic, they C02 phyical chemistry all wrong, Barrett misinterprets wavelengths and C02 radiation absorption/emission, and they treat the Earth as if it were a closed system! This makes me very upset. All they have to do is look at a general chem book, a HS geography textbook and see the fallacies in their claims. Never mind real P-chem with Peter Atkins and Physical Geography with Christopherson.
Mark // August 4, 2009 at 7:29 pm |
JM, Gerlich’s paper does exactly the same thing.
Errors I knew better than to make when I did A level physics.
TrueSceptic // August 4, 2009 at 7:39 pm |
Jacob Mack,
I fear you just aren’t getting it. I said that there are many sites like that. By that I mean denialist sites where there’s no limit to the dishonesty or stupidity (it’s often hard to tell which) on display. I repeat: this is part of a long running propaganda war against science, and in particular any science with environmental or health aspects.
Have you tried to correct any of the claims there? The response would be “interesting”
Joe Romm calls this ASS (Anti-Science Syndrome) and I think it’s a perfect term and acronym.
Jacob Mack // August 4, 2009 at 8:03 pm |
TrueSceptic, I am “getting it.” This is why I am so upset. I am correcting it on Watts’ site if you want to see.
Hank Roberts // August 4, 2009 at 8:36 pm |
Jacob, it can be very tempting to imagine
http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/duty_calls.png
that one can deal with this stuff wherever it pops up, but we don’t have the tool needed to end the game of endless repetition.
If only:
http://pbfcomics.com/archive_b/PBF216-Thwack_Ye_Mole.jpg
TrueSceptic // August 4, 2009 at 9:47 pm |
Jacob,
Where? Which thread? And why there anyway?
I’m still puzzled that you’re upset. This could only be the case if you were surprised by what you found.
Jacob Mack // August 4, 2009 at 10:43 pm |
TrueSceptic: I was on a long sabbatical from these threads and busy appeasing the wife and making $ teaching. I can still be shocked by the absolute disregard of scientific methods, principles and mathematics. I mean, even educated science literate people who are labeled “alarmist,” have made errors on thermodynamics or used inferior statistical methods from time to time, but to see “deniers,” botch the whole thin up like that fake documentary on the twin towers awhile back; it is truly appalling, no matter how many times I see it.
TrueSceptic // August 4, 2009 at 10:44 pm |
Jacob,
Found it! Off to read http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/08/03/cherry-picking-climate-catastrophes-response-to-conor-clarke/
TrueSceptic // August 4, 2009 at 11:18 pm |
Jacob,
You’re doing a good job there but you do realise that the people attacking you are the same type of fantasists (most polite word I can think of) responsible for iloveC02? (BTW that site contains, and links to, the most foul collection of climate-related garbage to be found anywhere.)
They are impervious to honesty, rationality, critical thinking, or real scepticism, and their claims about “real science” are both offensive and laughable.
Jacob Mack // August 5, 2009 at 1:06 am |
TrueSceptic,
it is for me about educating others, whether they will receive it or not and it keeps my mind fresh as well. Hank Roberts,
I am not trying to disprove all the wrong people online, but LOL…thanks for the much needed laugh. The recession hit me and my wife hard, so while I do freelance work, I like to stay on top of what is being stated online. At any rate, it has been fun being in the blog scene again, and more specifically discussing topics I trained for and tutor in.
Deech56 // August 5, 2009 at 2:28 am |
RE: Jacob Mack // August 5, 2009 at 1:06 am
It will be difficult to make headway at sites like WUWT. Your energy spent fighting the good fight may be better spent at an area where people with different viewpoints frequent – newspaper fora, LTEs, etc. Here in the US (can’t remember if you also live here), the people fighting against the new energy act are making their voices heard; it’s up to those who have learned the science to educate others who are on the fence and just hear the message from the denialists.
TrueSceptic // August 5, 2009 at 12:10 pm |
Jacob,
You have my respect and admiration for what you are doing at WattsUpWithMyBrain, as does bluegrue, but honestly, it’s futile.
Would you go into a lunatic asylum and expect to have a rational conversation?
We have 2 people there who are are seriously claiming that CO2 cannot go up in the atmosphere because it’s heavier. It doesn’t take a science education to know that’s wrong; it takes the “common sense” of any child of average intelligence.
Ignoring measurements showing that CO2 is well mixed (the fantasists think they’re all faked anyway), just follow the logic. Imagine that CO2 really can’t rise, or of it does through heat, turbulence, etc., it sinks down again anyway, what would be the situation? All the CO2 would be concentrated in a layer a few metres thick covering the oceans (being lower than the land). Do we see that? Do we even see a steep fall in concentration from nearly 100% at the surface to negligible by a few 100 metres? Of course not!
Until recently I thought that Watts’s crowd were above the abysmal level of Stupid to be found in the Marohasy Bog, but no longer.
Mark // August 5, 2009 at 12:43 pm |
“All the CO2 would be concentrated in a layer a few metres thick covering the oceans (being lower than the land). Do we see that?”
To quote Morpheus: Do you think that’s *air* you’re breathing?
dhogaza // August 5, 2009 at 1:05 pm |
With the director, yes. Unfortunately, at WUWT the “director” is nuttier than the inmates …
TrueSceptic // August 5, 2009 at 1:30 pm |
Mark,
I’d love to provide an environment where the CO2 lovers could breath an atmosphere of several % of their favourite gas.
TrueSceptic // August 5, 2009 at 1:33 pm |
dhogaza,
Yes, I meant the inmates. I’m not sure where Watts is on the fantasy-dishonesty scale, though.
TrueSceptic // August 5, 2009 at 1:46 pm |
Oh, and the Monckton-DDT lie has been repeated yet again.
Munchkin claims that DDT is safe enough to eat by the spoonful. I’d love to strap the preposterous potty peer into a high-chair and do the spoon-feeding. Anyone here a whizz at Photoshop?
Joost de Gouw // August 5, 2009 at 1:51 pm |
A message on behalf of the editors of JGR Atmospheres: as editors, we do not discuss the details of the peer review process and we will also not do that in this case. We will say that despite all the hard efforts made by reviewers and editors, the peer review process is not perfect. Occasionally, papers that contain errors or controversial statements without adequate discussion do get accepted for publication. In these cases, JGR Atmospheres encourages the scientific community to submit comments and discuss these papers in the peer-reviewed literature.
Mark // August 5, 2009 at 2:26 pm |
“I’d love to provide an environment where the CO2 lovers could breath an atmosphere of several % of their favourite gas.”
Apparently it isn’t toxic.
All we need do is put them in a room with the some recycling of O2 so that they don’t reduce the O2 content, but up the CO2 content to, oh, 2000ppm, say.
Lets see how non-toxic it is: it can’t be O2 deprivation since we’re ensuring that O2 is replenished…
TrueSceptic // August 5, 2009 at 4:16 pm |
Mark,
According to Wikipedia,
And we all remember this (extreme case, of course), don’t we?
dhogaza // August 5, 2009 at 4:51 pm |
TS, this by Mark:
Was meant to be sarcastic …
TrueSceptic // August 5, 2009 at 5:17 pm |
dhogaza,
Umm, yes I know. I was just citing some numbers.
Hank Roberts // August 5, 2009 at 5:32 pm |
> sarcastic
1) Poe’s Law
2) “If you can’t help, don’t hinder. Don’t make jokes about procedures that could trash the user’s setup — the poor sap might interpret these as instructions.”
http://catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
The “Kids, don’t try this at home” message:
I was talking to an emergency responder last night, and he described how awful it is to come into a situation where a space has filled with unbreathable air, and the people fall over — and then the first person to see that rushes in (and falls over) and the next person …. and so on, until finally someone comes along who knows better than to even enter the space where everyone is lying on the floor not breathing.
Nitrogen; CO2; ammonia in the holds of fishing boats; etc., etc.
Mark // August 5, 2009 at 6:34 pm |
Dhogoza:
“TS, this by Mark:
Apparently it isn’t toxic.
Was meant to be sarcastic …”
Not to climate “skeptics”.
They (if you take their words at face value and assume that they aren’t DELIBERATELY and KNOWINGLY lying) really DO believe that CO2 is not toxic.
Mark // August 5, 2009 at 6:37 pm |
TS: “Mark,
According to Wikipedia, ”
Aye, but post that up to a denialist blog and at best you’ll be ignored. It will not be considered no matter how much you post it and ask them to tell you now that CO2 is wonderful.
Some of the smarter ones may say “it’s the lack of O2 not the produce of CO2 that was the cause of death there. CO2 is LIFE GIVING!!!!!”. But they’ll ignore you because they KNOW CO2 is not toxic because Watts says so.
Jacob Mack // August 5, 2009 at 6:44 pm |
TrueSceptic,
of course you are right and I am goingt to digress there. I too thought until recently that on the average that Watts had more intelligent and inquiring minds over at his site. I was also wrong. I am not saying that “denying,” all the science is intelligent, but with Watts having a degree in meteorology and Pieke having a P.h.D., in climate science, I did think that perhaps we could atleast have a real discussion on the physics and chemistry, but alas they fail at first year chem and physics and elementary georgraphy from the fifth grade! I just needed to see fully for myself. Even the posters who throw out the right terms in proper context have no clue how they work fundamentally. It is a real shame. I am not new to seeing propaganda on the site, but I never posted there enough to realize how out there they really are!
Mark // August 5, 2009 at 7:18 pm |
“Even the posters who throw out the right terms in proper context have no clue how they work fundamentally.”
It is likely more one of:
a) they are running a canned script from someone else.
b) they know but do not work it correctly since doing so ruins their argument that AGW is wrong.
dhogaza // August 5, 2009 at 7:28 pm |
When did they start handing out high school degrees in meteorology?
(Think about what I’m implying here, JM, and yes, as far as anyone has been able to determine, the implication is true).
TrueSceptic // August 5, 2009 at 7:34 pm |
Mark,
I know, and I know that you know. :D
I do skim WattsUpWithMyBrain from time to time so I know what the denizens are like. Have you followed Jacob’s and bluegrue’s attempts to educate the terminally deluded?
I can almost (!) accept the ignorance and stupidity; it’s the HUGE arrogance and certainty they have in their idiot world that alters my view from amusement to disgust. There’s the saying, “you’re entitled to your own opinion but not to your own facts”. Well, that crowd really do ignore any facts they don’t like and make up their own!
TrueSceptic // August 5, 2009 at 8:04 pm |
Jacob,
Watts doesn’t have a degree in anything AFAIK. He’s a local TV and radio weatherman who also sells products to that industry.
Pielke Sr’s PhD was in Meteorology, Pielke Jr’s in Political Science. I don’t recall which has had guest posts at Watts, or if both have.
Most denier sites are like that. The Blackboard (Lucia) and Climate Audit (McIntyre) are less extreme IMO but then they tend to avoid the science and just discuss the data (“audit” it even). They are better moderated too.
If you want a real laugh, have a look at The Marohasy Bog
Anyway, you’ve taken the baptism of fire!
Hank Roberts // August 5, 2009 at 8:16 pm |
Be careful to be fair and clear when discussing anyone’s credentials.
Yes, when someone asserts they have a degree, they’d best be prepared to prove it. If they’re doing business claiming that, it would raise liability issues I’d expect.
But “meteorologist” is a job type–not a degree like a Bachelor’s, Master’s, or Ph.D.
http://www.unixl.com/dir/physical_sciences/meteorology/
“… What qualifications do Meteorologists need?
A bachelor’s degree in meteorology or atmospheric science is the industry recommended credential for entry level positions. Other areas of study that can lead to a meteorologist job include science, mathematics, and chemistry. ..
… various employers and industries may have specific courses they are looking for. Employment opportunities increase with a master’s degree, and a Ph.D is a requirement for positions involving substantial amounts of research.
What does a Meteorologist do?
The largest percentage of meteorologists predict the weather. Some even become television personalities, sharing their predictions on nightly newscasts. To make accurate forecasts, the meteorologist must examine air pressure, temperature, humidity, and wind velocity within the context of physics, mathematics, and known patterns. Satellites, radar, and weather stations placed in strategic locations provide the data the meteorologist needs to do his job.
A meteorologist’s job is important because not only does the general public rely on the information he provides….”
dhogaza // August 5, 2009 at 9:25 pm |
Watts doesn’t claim to have a degree on his mini-resume at WUWT. I can’t find any reference to him having a degree, anywhere. If he had a relevant degree, I’d expect him to list it. Others, apparently, have looked also and can’t find any evidence he has one.
His certificate from the AMS is of a type – no longer issued – that doesn’t require a degree. You’d think that if he had a degree, he’d go after a certification requiring it.
Etc etc etc.
TrueSceptic // August 5, 2009 at 9:29 pm |
Hank,
Watts became a television meteorologist in 1987. What was the requirement then?
Hank Roberts // August 5, 2009 at 11:33 pm |
> in 1987
You’d have to ask the station management; as the above points out, this decision is made by the people doing the hiring for any particular job.
Phil. // August 5, 2009 at 11:39 pm |
Most denier sites are like that. The Blackboard (Lucia)
Lucia has a PhD in Mech E, Fluids, she isn’t a ‘denier’ by the way.
Gareth // August 6, 2009 at 1:18 am |
A pithy comment on McLean et al has been submitted to JGR by a number of big names: details and abstract here.
Mark // August 6, 2009 at 7:20 am |
“Lucia has a PhD in Mech E, Fluids, she isn’t a ‘denier’ by the way.”
And you know this *how*?
“By thy words shall thee be known”?
bugs // August 6, 2009 at 9:00 am |
“Lucia has a PhD in Mech E, Fluids, she isn’t a ‘denier’ by the way.”
She slaps down the worst of the worst, but comments like this
Make me wonder, plus her admiration for a serial creep like McIntyre.
TrueSceptic // August 6, 2009 at 10:41 am |
Phil,
I could’ve phrased that better. My intention was to separate Lucia and McIntyre from the obvious denier ones. If only they were more truly sceptical, though…
Deech56 // August 7, 2009 at 2:01 am |
Oh snap (PDF).
Craig Allen // August 7, 2009 at 1:08 pm |
Deech, your link didn’t work. Here it is again …
Comment on “Influence of the Southern Oscillation on tropospheric temperature” by J. D. McLean,
C. R. de Freitas, and R. M. Carter Journal of Geophysical Research (2009), G. Foster, J. D. Annan, P. D. Jones, M. E. Mann, B. Mullan, J. Renwick, J. Salinger, G. A. Schmidt, K. E. Trenberth
Jacob Mack // August 7, 2009 at 6:54 pm |
Well, Hank looking at the the various news channels and the “meteorologists,” and “forecasters,” there is most definitley a difference there too. However, one of my favorite people on CBS 5, Roberta Gonzalez, a “weather anchor,” has a degree not in meteorology,but in Liberal Arts with an emphasis in journalism; yet she is also a member of the American Meteological Association .(AMS) She is quite familiar with low and high pressure, cold–warm fronts, and she is a 4 time Emmy award winner, among other things. Also she is science literate and so forth, so I guess it depends upon the individual and not just t he degree; all good points though, Hank.
Hank Roberts // August 7, 2009 at 9:40 pm |
Uh, yeah, whatever.
TrueSceptic // August 7, 2009 at 10:14 pm |
I’m shocked that a weather presenter would know such arcane science, really, I am. Whatever next?
Jacob Mack // August 7, 2009 at 10:24 pm |
Hank Roberts,
ineteresting sarcasm and lack of response; I will let it go, but this is the first time I have seen you without intelligent reply.
Jacob Mack // August 7, 2009 at 10:41 pm |
TrueSceptic // August 7, 2009 at 10:14 pm | Reply
“She is quite familiar with low and high pressure, cold–warm fronts
I’m shocked that a weather presenter would know such arcane science, really, I am. Whatever next?”
LOL, thank you for the laugh…I was merely abbreviating her knowledge and skill sets…she is aware of ENSO, SOI, radiative balance, and far more; I was not claiming she was a climate modeler, or an expert on all weather patterns, but she certainly knows more than some individuals with actual degrees in the subject at hand.
Deech56 // August 7, 2009 at 10:59 pm |
Thanks for fixing the link, Craig Allen. That’s quite a list of authors. Does anyone know whether publication awaits a response from McLean, et al.?
Mark // August 9, 2009 at 2:29 pm |
“Also she is science literate and so forth, so I guess it depends upon the individual and not just t he degree; all good points though, Hank.”
Ergo, Jacob,you have to check the PERSON.
Not that you’ve actually DONE that, have you…
It’s far more satisfying to just hint that some oblivious doofus may know about it because someone else does rather than actually go and prove whether the doofus does know or not. Since while the question remains unsolved you can continue to try and make out that the numbnut is relevant.
Jacob Mack // August 9, 2009 at 6:01 pm |
Mark // August 9, 2009 at 2:29 pm | Reply
“Also she is science literate and so forth, so I guess it depends upon the individual and not just t he degree; all good points though, Hank.”
“Ergo, Jacob,you have to check the PERSON.
Not that you’ve actually DONE that, have you…
It’s far more satisfying to just hint that some oblivious doofus may know about it because someone else does rather than actually go and prove whether the doofus does know or not. Since while the question remains unsolved you can continue to try and make out that the numbnut is relevant.”
Mark,
this is the most confusing of all your posts to date. For one, I did check out Roberta Gonzales’ experience and education; I am not attempting to make Watts or anyone else who denies AGW look credible either. Furthermore, the discussion over Watss ended between Hank and I and this thread in general; my only point was in response to Hank’s pointing out that different hiring bodies require different levels (and types) of education and work experience for consideration.
Now, since you bring it up, even though his “research,” has been showed to be quite flawed, Richard Lindzen does have the proper credentials to speak on such subject matter as does Roger Pieke Sr. who both frequent climate ’skeptic,’ blogd, like Watts’. Then again, even if Watts has no degree in the subject matter, this does not mean he did not learn proper and accurate information regarding weather and “perhaps,” some climate, even though, yes, he does twist facts and misinterpret data, his knowledge is beyond that of a lay persons so I am forced to assume he purposely spreads propaganda. It amazes me Mark, that you are so hung on this issue; I do not have time to check every single person’s claims and credentials, constantly, but what I do know is the lack of scientific literacy in general on such aforementioned sites, upsets me. I do spend considerable time on Watts attempting to educate others, despite ad hominem attacks, strawman fallacies, disinformation, and staunch opposition.
Now, Mark, I recall not too long ago you getting basic HS thermodynamics wrong, (and you assuming I knew nothing about the philosophy of science because one other person agreed with you; that is validation?) and I also recall myself , making an error on the IPCC report in a response to Hank, yesterday, over at RC and I have seen numerous typos on my part (and RC mods at that) along with putting in wrong numbers on occasion, or mispelling a great scientists’ name. I also remember the NOAA fiasco last year and how it took a while for that to be checked out thoroughly and fixed; what is your point regarding me not knowing everyone’s credentials in intimate detail, or me being appalled by the lack of basic chem and physics and geography? I am still appalled and can scarcely believe it, but I know it, so, I am not in denial, now, enough of this mundane drab please?
Hank Roberts // August 9, 2009 at 8:30 pm |
Let me repost something from RC a while back that kind of got lost that merits attention.
If you don’t find this more interesting than mud wrestling, then — you should.
—–
Got a grip on how long CO2 lasts yet? That’ll help you figure in the currently externalized costs, if you plan past your own lifespan.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/27/science/earth/27carbon.html
http://www.pnas.org/content/106/6/1704
If you don’t want to think past your own lifetime, or address people who do, there’s probably no point in trying to learn the science.
“… We estimate that the last and the current generation contributed approximately two thirds of the present-day CO2-induced warming. Because of the long time scale required for removal of CO2 from the atmosphere as well as the time delays characteristic of physical responses of the climate system, global mean temperatures are expected to increase by several tenths of a degree for at least the next 20 years even if CO2 emissions were immediately cut to zero; that is, there is a commitment to additional CO2-induced warming even in the absence of emissions. If the rate of increase of CO2 emissions were to continue up to 2025 and then were cut to zero, a temperature increase of ≈1.3°C compared to preindustrial conditions would still occur in 2100, whereas a constant-CO2-emissions scenario after 2025 would more than double the 2100 warming. These calculations illustrate the manner in which each generation inherits substantial climate change caused by CO2 emissions that occurred previously, particularly those of their parents, and shows that current CO2 emissions will contribute significantly to the climate change of future generations.”
http://www.pnas.org/content/102/31/10832.abstract
But if you do want to learn, don’t just read snippets some stranger posts on some blog; read the paper, then read the papers that cite it:
http://cel.isiknowledge.com/InboundService.do?product=CEL&action=search&SrcApp=Highwire&UT=000231102400019&SID=2E5EDII7iFa%40n7gLefb&Init=Yes&SrcAuth=Highwire&mode=CitingArticles&customersID=Highwire&viewType=summary
Jacob Mack // August 9, 2009 at 9:23 pm |
Good points Hank.