THE United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and most others who believe in anthropogenic global warming (AGW), have been influenced by the work of climatologists relying on tree-ring data to reconstruct past climate because the thermometer record only goes back to about 1850. The claim that there has been an unprecedented upswing in temperatures over the last 100 years making 1998 the hottest year of the last thousand years, has for example, been based on reconstructions from tree-ring data.
In response to recent suggestions by Canadian statistician Steve McIntyre that the official reconstructions may have been fudged, Keith Briffa, from the Climate Research Unit associated with the UK Met. Office, has responded explaining that there was no cherry picking of data in the development of the reconstructions used by the IPCC and others, rather, the methodology is not yet robust.
Given this admission from a leading UK climate scientist, it would perhaps be appropriate for the head of the IPCC, Rajendra Pachauri, to now advise world leaders that there are potential problems with the methodology used in the development of key assumptions underpining the consensus view on anthropogenic global warming and that until further notice, the big meeting in Copenhagen should be postponed.
Following is Professor Briffa’s response:
“MY attention has been drawn to a comment by Steve McIntyre on the Climate Audit website relating to the pattern of radial tree growth displayed in the ring-width chronology “Yamal” that I first published in Briffa (2000). The substantive implication of McIntyre’s comment (made explicitly in subsequent postings by others) is that the recent data that make up this chronology (i.e. the ring-width measurements from living trees) were purposely selected by me from among a larger available data set, specifically because they exhibited recent growth increases.
“This is not the case. The Yamal tree-ring chronology (see also Briffa and Osborn 2002, Briffa et al. 2008) was based on the application of a tree-ring processing method applied to the same set of composite sub-fossil and living-tree ring-width measurements provided to me by Rashit Hantemirov and Stepan Shiyatov which forms the basis of a chronology they published (Hantemirov and Shiyatov 2002). In their work they traditionally applied a data processing method (corridor standardisation) that does not preserve evidence of long timescale growth changes. My application of the Regional Curve Standardisation method to these same data was intended to better represent the multi-decadal to centennial growth variations necessary to infer the longer-term variability in average summer temperatures in the Yamal region: to provide a direct comparison with the chronology produced by Hantemirov and Shiyatov.
“These authors state that their data (derived mainly from measurements of relic wood dating back over more than 2,000 years) included 17 ring-width series derived from living trees that were between 200-400 years old. These recent data included measurements from at least 3 different locations in the Yamal region. In his piece, McIntyre replaces a number (12) of these original measurement series with more data (34 series) from a single location (not one of the above) within the Yamal region, at which the trees apparently do not show the same overall growth increase registered in our data.
“The basis for McIntyre’s selection of which of our (i.e. Hantemirov and Shiyatov’s) data to exclude and which to use in replacement is not clear but his version of the chronology shows lower relative growth in recent decades than is displayed in my original chronology. He offers no justification for excluding the original data; and in one version of the chronology where he retains them, he appears to give them inappropriate low weights. I note that McIntyre qualifies the presentation of his version(s) of the chronology by reference to a number of valid points that require further investigation. Subsequent postings appear to pay no heed to these caveats. Whether the McIntyre version is any more robust a representation of regional tree growth in Yamal than my original, remains to be established.
“My colleagues and I are working to develop methods that are capable of expressing robust evidence of climate changes using tree-ring data. We do not select tree-core samples based on comparison with climate data. Chronologies are constructed independently and are subsequently compared with climate data to measure the association and quantify the reliability of using the tree-ring data as a proxy for temperature variations.
“We have not yet had a chance to explore the details of McIntyre’s analysis or its implication for temperature reconstruction at Yamal but we have done considerably more analyses exploring chronology production and temperature calibration that have relevance to this issue but they are not yet published. I do not believe that McIntyre’s preliminary post provides sufficient evidence to doubt the reality of unusually high summer temperatures in the last decades of the 20th century.
“We will expand on this initial comment on the McIntyre posting when we have had a chance to review the details of his work.
K.R. Briffa
30 September 2009
Briffa, K. R. 2000. Annual climate variability in the Holocene: interpreting the message of ancient trees. Quaternary Science Reviews 19:87-105.
Briffa, K. R., and T. J. Osborn. 2002. Paleoclimate – Blowing hot and cold. Science 295:2227-2228.
Briffa, K. R., V. V. Shishov, T. M. Melvin, E. A. Vaganov, H. Grudd, R. M. Hantemirov, M. Eronen, and M. M. Naurzbaev. 2008. Trends in recent temperature and radial tree growth spanning 2000 years across northwest Eurasia. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences 363:2271-2284.
Hantemirov, R. M., and S. G. Shiyatov. 2002. A continuous multimillennial ring-width chronology in Yamal, northwestern Siberia. Holocene 12:717-726.”
**************************************
Notes and Links
from http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa/yamal2000/ [Thanks to Nick Stokes for the link.]
Yamal: A “Divergence” Problem, by Steve McIntyre, 27 September 2009
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=7168
Also http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2009/09/leading-uk-climate-scientists-must-explain-or-resign/
Photograph of Professor Briffa from http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/photo/keith2007b.jpg
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Interesting how he assumes he will be able to review all data from McIntyre, and makes no comment about his witholding of information for years.
Beyond that, his explanations seem feeble and tell nothing, really.
Sorry about the quick re-post.
This quote of his, ““My colleagues and I are working to develop methods that are capable of expressing robust evidence of climate changes using tree-ring data.” indicates that he is not really intereted in finding out what the trees have said.
Rather, his purpose is to use the trees to prove what he already believes.
At this point in the debate, where time and again we see clear evidence of what he claims he is not doing, would it not be better to be committed to showing what the trees actually say, and not what you want them to say?
Hunter,
I have just added to the post this conclusion:
“Given this admission from a leading UK climate scientist, it would perhaps be appropriate for the head of the IPCC, Rajendra Pachauri, to now advise world leaders that there are potential problems with the methodology used in the develop of key assumptions underpining the consensus view on anthropogenic global warming and that until further notice, the big meeting in Copenhagen should be postponed.”
I think McIntyre was attempting to perform a sensitivity analysis. Even if Briffa didn’t deliberately cherry pick data, his graph is highly sensitive to his ring selection process. I’m surprised this doesn’t concern him.
Jennifer,
The AGW community is far past reasonable caution or ocncern for truth.
The more I think about the banal retort of Briffa to a serious analysis of his work, and then reflect further on his deliberate and cynical behavior regarding transparency for years, the more I think he probably knew exactly what he was doing when he produced his report.
hunter, it’s quite possible that he didn’t knw his tree ring selection process would produce hockey stick results, but I’d like to replicate his selection process using the criteria he claims he used.
Given this admission from a leading UK climate scientist, it would perhaps be appropriate for the head of the IPCC, Rajendra Pachauri, to now advise world leaders that there are potential problems with the methodology used in the develop of key assumptions underpining the consensus view on anthropogenic global warming and that until further notice, the big meeting in Copenhagen should be postponed.
a really strange paragraph.
scientists continue to work on a subject?
the Yamal set is a key assumption?
postponing a big meeting?
Here is Antony’s response to Briffa:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/10/01/response-from-briffa-on-the-yamal-tree-ring-affair-plus-rebuttal/#more-11361
Note the most famous tree in the world!
Excellent. We need to accuse less and pressure people like Briffa to respond earlier, more often and more accurately. That is what peer review is all about. The IPCC doesn’t “check” and double check data they comment on. They also do not do their own internal freview and research. Yes copenhagen is a political stunt and it seems people are with great haste trying to create law and policy and taxes. We need to learn the science first.
It has long bothered me that tree rings can only reflect the temperature as well as other criteria like rainfall, sunshine etc in the growing season and therefore can not reflect the annual average merely the daytime average during the growing season. Finally I see Briffa qualifing his data as representing the summer only so how can this represent the annual temperature average 24 hours a day 365 days a year. I think the O18 proxy far more reliable.
Henry,
That after the billions spent worldwide to support the studies of AGW promoters it is pitiful that we still need to understand if the basic science is garbage.
sod, the normal ethical thing to do when a pattern of fraud emerges is to take time to at least study the subject that is compromised by the fraud.
Of course that is a strange concept to the AGW community, but still.
sod, the normal ethical thing to do when a pattern of fraud emerges is to take time to at least study the subject that is compromised by the fraud.
Of course that is a strange concept to the AGW community, but still.
what fraud are you talking about?
you are supposed top provide proof, or at least serious evidence, before you can claim fraud. neither of that has been shown in this case.
if you don t like trees as proxies, and mistrust all scientists, why not take another look at the revised Loehle graph?
adding the temperature trend since the end of the data in 1935, you find similar temperature to the MWP around 1992, and it is warmer now.
While instrumental data are not strictly comparable, the rise in
29 year-smoothed global data from NASA GISS (http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp)
from 1935 to 1992 (with data from 1978 to 2006) is 0.34 Deg C. Even adding this rise
to the 1935 reconstructed value, the MWP peak remains 0.07 Deg C above the end of
the 20th Century values, though the difference is not significant.
a hockeystick, without a single tree.
Sod, actually that is not a hockey stick, that is a punctuated warming trend. The burden of the hockey stick was a sudden, much faster, rate of temperature growth after a long period of relative stability.
“Given this admission from a leading UK climate scientist, it would perhaps be appropriate for the head of the IPCC, Rajendra Pachauri, to now advise world leaders that there are potential problems with the methodology used in the develop of key assumptions underpining the consensus view on anthropogenic global warming and that until further notice, the big meeting in Copenhagen should be postponed.”
Again, Jennifer, your ignorance shows. The scientists and the IPCC report tell you what the problems are with the science. You could try asking them yourself, they will tell you. I have. All science is problematic, there is nothing new in saying that. The issue we have is that the range of evidence collected in the IPCC report is lot more than a few tree rings, and hounding and victimising individual sciencts is a disgrace, especially by those who are scientists themselves. That is not how the scientific method works, and the scientific method was designed to remove such abuse and personalisation of differences of opinion. What McIntyre does on his web site could never be published.
sod,
Sorry bloke, your toothpaste is out of the tube.
You won’t be getting it back by pretending nothig is going on.
The fraud is the cherry picking,the hiding the data, the irreproducible results.
Distraction with more junk data does not any good for you.
And pretending that it is all a big consipracy theory, after you clowns have spent years claiming all skeptics are ‘denialist scum’ and paid off by big fill-in-the-blank is simply laughable.
The issue is that each & every hockey stick out there is under reasonable doubt.
Not one of them have held up under scrutiny,and this one is obvious cherry picking for only the trees that fit.
the big Mann stick failed, the Antarctic stick failed, the hurricane stick failed, and the Arctic stick fails.
And they fail for reasons of corruption each time.
“I do not believe that McIntyre’s preliminary post provides sufficient evidence to doubt the reality of unusually high summer temperatures in the last decades of the 20th century.
“We will expand on this initial comment on the McIntyre posting when we have had a chance to review the details of his work.”
Fairly clear statement of position there and an obvious parameter that will be able to be judged objectively … in due course.
Hello All, now here is an idea totally out of left field. If tree ring data is used because thermometer data is only available since 1850, well then what the bloody hell does the thermometer data tell us of the worlds temperature variations since 1850? It’s not rocket science, is it?!
Interesting news this weekend. Apparently everything we’ve done in our entire careers is a “MASSIVE lie” (sic) because all of radiative physics, climate history, the instrumental record, modeling and satellite observations turn out to be based on 12 trees in an obscure part of Siberia. Who knew?
LOL
So along comes Steve McIntyre, self-styled slayer of hockey sticks, who declares without any evidence whatsoever that Briffa didn’t just reprocess the data from the Russians, but instead supposedly picked through it to give him the signal he wanted. These allegations have been made without any evidence whatsoever.
If it’s all fair and above board why don’t they freely provide the info and code the day their papers are published.
Let’s see a genuine TV and online debate with an even number on both sides and a genuine independent MC covering the full AGW fantasy.
It won’t happen because the AGW fraudsters know that they would come unstuck after the first five minutes and even the average joe with an average IQ would easily see through the half truths and lies.
Barry Moore has raised a critical issue. The tree ring proxies only measure outcomes in the siberian growing season which is substantially less than half a year. Yet we know that the Hadley Centres own temperature records, including those going back to the 1600’s, show the major contribution to any period of mean temperature upswing to be from milder winter temperatures rather than warmer summer ones.
Consequently, tree ring proxies in temperate zones could never outline the true extent of any past warming. So while the presence or otherwise of a recent curve in a hockey stick may have some marginal relevance the key issue is the tree ring proxies failure to record the presence of past curves of equal or greater magnitude.
Briffa has confirmed that he has always been aware that the proxies are of summer temperatures only and it beggars belief that neither he nor any of his so-called “peer reviewers” would not be aware of the relevance of milder winter temperatures, from both diurnal maxima and minima.
It also beggars belief that he and his peers would not be aware that another major contributor to mean temperature upswings are extended ‘shoulder’ periods from earlier springs and later autumns which produce the same tree ring feature as a warmer summer.
One is left with little choice but to conclude that temperate zone tree ring proxies are employed for the express purpose of understating the extent of past warm periods in a context of comparison with recent actual temperature records.
Just to add to the above, where have the fantasist scientists been over the last 30 years, surely they would be demanding all the code, data and sources be made available if the AGW case is a slam dunk and so easily proven.
Then the likes of Lindzen, Spencer, McIntyre etc would just make fools of themselves ( trying to refute ) and add to the strengthening of the AGW case.
But we all know the answer for e.g just look at wong trying to respond to Fielding’s question about temp, it had to be shifted and attributed to the oceans not air temp. ( took a week to dream that up)
She was wrong there as well thanks to the argot project, so in effect she still hasn’t been able to give a reasonable answer after months of waiting.
THEY WON’T DO ANYTHING BECAUSE THE AGW CASE IS A FRAUD AND IS EASILY PROVEN SO.
sod and SJT are correct in the aspect that fraud is uncalled for, and proof has not been provided. A quick reading of the CA site, and it is obviuos that SMcIntyre is not accusing Briffa of the fraud nor has he presented evidence of this. What has been presented is more than a bit disturbing, and Briffa’s comment only adds to this sense of unease.
Contrary to the attention paid to the one tree, that is not the point of the discussion. The first cut is that one tree because it shows a direct problem for the paper. The one tree shows a multiple sigma above what can be justified by the number of samples in the modern part of the training. This indicates that the mathematical base of the claim is unsupportable. That it is not the total number, but the paucity of the number to support this outlier. Steve from his background in mining, talks of the nugget effect, others talk of discarding greater than 3 sigma, etc. These reconstructions depend on the math and asumptions being correct. Whether you agree with JeffID’s at The Air Vent reconstruction of others’ work, he shows the problems with using reconstruction algorithms when assumptions and constraints are violated. To understand what the real argument and can it really effect a result, go there.
You can also find lots of this on CA, but some don’t like the source, and it is easier to find (for me at least) at Jeff’s. One aspect neither Jeff nor Steve have finished that is more important than this one tree are the others. This is the second cut and it cuts much deeper. Whether it is to include or exclude, sensitivity is expected for one to claim “robust” or “probably”, or even to say “likely.” By Briffa’s own work, the divergence problem has been discussed. So, he cannot ignore that the sensitivity question goes not only to his work, but all who use his reconstruction or this proxy group. It has been used by some to claim that one can get the “hockey” stick without using methods, species, or proxies that NAS, and The Special Report by Wegman said should not be used for reconstructions of temperature, but could be used for other purposes, such as helping to date other proxies or precipitation studies.
Thus the claim of independent confirmation has just been severely, if not fatally challenged. Further by publishing about the divergence problem, pushing for a discussion if not funding to study this problem, Briffa writes that “”My colleagues and I are working to develop methods that are capable of expressing robust evidence of climate changes using tree-ring data.”” which indicates that it is known by him that the evidence presented is not robust, and that work to develop methods that are capable are in progress. Thus Jennifer’s claim is NOT “” ignorance.”” It does refute the claim by SJT that “”The scientists and the IPCC report tell you what the problems are with the science.””
On this there is an excellent history, but you will need to go to CA or get the information yourself from the comments to the 4AR. The IPCC claimed the “spagehtti graph was independent and robust. Apparently by Briffa’s admission almost all, if not all, of the reconstructions that used tree-rings cannot be considered robust or independent since they have either PC1 (4) from Mann, strip bark or bristlecones, or Briffa’s Yamal. Robustness and independence have been claimed in the TAR and the 4AR.
Further unease is from this quote of Briffa “We do not select tree-core samples based on comparison with climate data. Chronologies are constructed independently and are subsequently compared with climate data to measure the association and quantify the reliability of using the tree-ring data as a proxy for temperature variations.” Translation: we cherry pick. These two quotes show the real problem. As I am familiar, as is Jennifer, in a biological study of this nature, great care has to be shown to make sure that selection criteria ia a priori AS WELL as sample criteria. There were a number of studies done in the 1950’s and 1960’s such that by the 1970’s before PC’s there were published maps and methodologies for biologists that set up the methodology of criteria selection and sample number and location to reduce the possibility of confirmation bias. Sensitivity such as Steve is doing was required for publication as well as CI’s or other stats for the complete package and outlieruse or removal justified.
The third cut will be deeper still. It calls into question the assumptions used for determination of the signal. As WUWT has posted on his site, the usual reponse by an organism or a species or an ecosystem is the bell curve. Translation: for one ring width there can be two answers. One is mean + f(x) and the other is mean – f(x). This third cut will be much slower, bloodier, and effective. SInce it will take the very foundation out from underneath the method, and show it nothing more than confirmation bias. This is what should be worrisome.
Jennifer, it must be most amusing to be told “your ignorance shows”, so early in the morning, lol (see comment 8:24am). And then this person reveals he/she has already asked “them”, and – lost news flash – he/she has been told ! Why has this revelation not been previously flashed around the world? Dr Briffa, and colleagues, so difficult to contact, has all along been willing to open up to a person called SJT ! McIntyre will be devastated to know his work had been already done. Wow. Could SJT publish these reponses?
You are then subjected to a finger wagging reminder of “how science works”, he he. Your correspondent seems to have no knowledge of the repeatibilty of results, the re-testing of an hypothesis over and over by others, and the open and easy access to methods and previous results in order to do so. That was the way we worked at Adelaide as undergraduates, and lo behold, I found that same scientific method in use at Cambridge, lol.
How long has it taken to gouge the results out of this team? What methods had to be used to get hold of this data for re-testing? What a travesty of the scientific method practised by Briffa et alia! The person is correct in one statement, unintentionally though, when he/she states, “the scientific method was designed to remove such abuse..”. Indeed it was abused by the protracted witholding of method and data, the active opposition to its release, and even in this poor response from Briffa.
Please continue to air “ignorance” of the type scientists appreciate, Jennifer.
Jen, what I would like to see would be a British version of the Wegman inquiry. The British inquiry should look at:
(a) the Briffa issue – we need an independent assessment by statistical expert(s) of the credibility of his temperature reconstruction. If it is faulty the expert(s) should identify how the faults got past the vaunted peer review process. The expert(s) should also adjudge how much effect any faults have had on climate science in general, the IPCC reports in particular, and the planning for the impending Copenhagen meeting.
I would advise caution in pressing Briffa on his motivation. This can be in the eye of the beholder – if an error was made, was this malpractice or an honest mistake? And probing here could become a witch-hunt, or could be portrayed as such, especially as Briffa is reportedly seriously ill at present. One does not want to create a martyr or give the appearance of this. I would only ask the inquiry to comment on Briffa’s motivation if they find clear evidence of malpractice in the course of the other inquiries listed above.
(b) the CRU issue – they have been uncooperative in supplying data to other researchers, and reportedly have failed to store past data properly. Both are very serious inadequacies and must be corrected as a matter of urgency.
(c) the journal archiving issue – all British journals should have clear-cut policies demanding full archiving of all relevant details of a scientific paper, in the paper itself and/or on a website clearly identified in the paper; the website must allow free access to other researchers.
Reading the excellent summary of the sequence of events prepared by others and looking objectively at the evidence underpining these summaries, one doesnt have any difficulty concluding that Briffa has a case to answer.
What it does show yet again, just how flakey the whole AGW game is.
What would be the count thus far. MBH and Hansen are in the frame for starters, as is NASA GISS’s convenient adjustments of the temp records, as well as their incompetent management of that net work in the USA etc. Then we have Rajendra Pachuri peddling his spin on Kerry O’briens 7.30 Report.
How many times do these mongrels have to be caught out before the penny really drops with public and the politician,and the real questions are asked.
It all begs the question just what further advice have the AGW mafia in Australia been providing to the Government eg the Chief Scientist,the ANU the CSIRO CMAR crowd and the Melbourne University clique.
Or is that even too late, because Rudds ambitions and the AGW crowds self interests are now perfectly aligned.
Further to my previous post, it should be noted that the Yamal region in Siberia extends from 65N to beyond 70N and the actual growing season is only 4 months of the year. So of the 24 monthly maxima and minima that make up the annual mean temperature in this location, only 8 (33%) have an impact on the tree ring proxy.
So when we have a clearly demonstrated over proportionate contribution of milder winter records and milder spring and autumn minima then there can be no doubting that Yamal tree ring proxies mask the extent of past warming.
Indeed, it was not the presence of hot summer maxima that enabled crops to be grown in Greenland during the MWP. It was the early departure of morning frosts in Spring and the late arrival of morning frosts in Autumn that defined this warmer period.
Yes, excellent point Ian; the warming of winter is one of the mantras of AGW and here we see with Briffa the exclusion of this effect from his ‘robust’ study.
Well after Briffa’s response and RC wider analysis – I think that’s the end of McIntyre as a source of credibility on the this entire issue.
What a disgraceful tawdry episode full of vigilantes. Those who have have made their disgraceful comments about Briffa should hang their heads in shame.
And while the denialists obsess they’ve missed all the latest climate real science issues which would make Copenhagen even more pressing.
But that would expected a modicum of decency and intelligence from our denialists wouldn’t it.
Not likely soon.
Luke said “But that would expected a modicum of decency and intelligence from our denialists wouldn’t it.
Not likely soon.”” About as soon as AGW alarmists provide thier code and data.
But hehe, the denialists are not scientists per you and have no requirement to post code and data, especially since it does not exist per your claim. Briffa did and finally got called on it and his methodology has not been supported as he himself stated in his “rebuttal” of CA.
Wish your reading comprehension was as good as your false claim of the moral highground. Wait. It is! And just as unbelievable.
Luke wrote:
Roger Pielke, Jr: http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/
Steve McIntyre must be on to something, judging by the nasty and vituperative comments coming from Real Climate, where Gavin Schmidt levels a serious allegation.
And i have the same thought, i think Steve McIntyre hit the Jackpot.
Luke,
I’d hardly call what has been posted on RC as a wider analysis. They haven’t adressed any of the issues raised by Steve McIntyre in his posts on Briffa’s data. Indeed they have studiously ingnored any mention of sensitivity analysis in their “wider analysis”. Instead they have been reduced to creating straw men and then knocking those down instead. As usual they have done so with an uncalled for amount of vitreol and bile.
I’d suggest that you actually read what was posted by Steve McIntyre and provide your own analysis.
Luke,
Just in case you still do not “get it”.
have a look at Jeff Id’s response to RC over at the Air Vent.
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/10/01/how-to-read-rc/
You might find that RC’s style is familiar to you, Indeed it could have been written just for you/by you!
As a sceptic with a recent interest in this debate, I must say that McIntyre appears about ban order of magnitude more convincing than Briffas weak response
The simple point is, folks, AGW is not based simply on tree ring studies. Never was. Still isn’t.
Your grand conspiracies that climate scientists fraudulently manipulate data look, to be charitable, less than convincing when said scientists get to speak themselves.
Still ready to charge him (literally, in court) for fraud? I know which side the jury is likely to take, and it ain’t the jumping-to-conclusions, every-climate-scientist-is-a-fraud, let’s-go-back-and-revisit-whether-CO2-is-even-a-greenhouse-gas-which-burning-fossil-fuel-has-increased, it’s-all-a-UN-socialist-style-conspiracy corner of the court room.
And besides which, you still got ocean acidification to contend with if you pump out CO2 with no regard: http://tinyurl.com/ycfh6rz
As I see it Briffa is saying that the tree ring samples he selected were not ‘cherry picked’ but admits that had he selected those used by McIntyre he would have got a different answer that did not support the hockey stick!
So it was sheer (bad?) luck that he got the result he did that supported the global warming theory.
What an amazing thing that such unfortunate ‘luck’ could have misled the governments of the world. Can we assume that had some of the climate studies’ ‘luck’ gone the other way then there would have been papers published indicating that the world was not warming – cooling even?
Or could it be that only studies that supported global warming would ever get past the reviewers?
Briffa was fortunate indeed in his sample of tree rings for otherwise his work would not have seen the light of day.
Steve from Brisbane said “AGW is not based simply on tree ring studies. Never was.” Not even in TAR, with the Hockey Stick as the backdrop at all pesentations and a main feature throughout TAR? He added: “Still isn’t”. Really? actually it is by far the only basis for any AGW, since there is NO evidence for any correlation between changes in atmospheric CO2 and changes in temperature at any single Met station that I have studied. If you can identify just one station where there is such a correlation (and remember you have to have 95% certainty that the R2 is more than 0.5 and that the coefficient has t>2 and the Durbin-Watson is also >2, do tell, and you can share in the IPCC’s next Nobel.
Comment from: SJT October 2nd, 2009 at 8:24 am
“……and hounding and victimising individual sciencts is a disgrace, especially by those who are scientists themselves. That is not how the scientific method works, and the scientific method was designed to remove such abuse and personalisation of differences of opinion. What McIntyre does on his web site could never be published.”
——————————————————————————————————————–
You are wrong SJT…. It is Keith Briffa who has been disgraceful and who has not obeyed the principles of the Scientific Method. Briffa refused to provide his data and methodology for nearly a decade. He was directly asked on numerous occasions but refused…. His peer review also failed to point out the obvious problems with his paper.
Keith Briffa has brought himself and climate science into disrepute.
You need to acknowledge that SJT.
Now guys – ready to go ! Who’s up for the BIG court case against Briffa – come on don’t be shy denialists ?
You really do all fancy yourselves don’t you. Love those kangaroo courts.
So here you are – a whole week wasted on some 10th order issue.
s from b,
Stupid ideas don’t require conspiracy. Just banal people making sure the data fits the answer desired.
Happens in business, government, the courts, all the time.
The strawman you AGW true believers use, that *our guys* have not committed a grand conspiracy, therefor they are correct, is infantile and boring.
But it is clear that you true believers are not bothered by Briffa clerly playing hide the data for many years, in his lying, and in his lame excuse.
AGW is, for you, a matter of faith.
So Luke, You appear to agree that Briffa should be able to withhold his data and be free from any criticism for doing so? I think you are wrong if you do.
Also, Briffa has used public funds to do his research. He is answerable to the taxpayers that funded him. Would you say that is a fair assumption also Luke?
As for court cases….. I think you are a bit overwrought and hysterical….. But perhaps you are just indulging in hyperbole…. ‘eh?
J Hansford: um, the threat of court action is a hyperbolic claim that has appeared many times in comments on “skeptic” blogs. And it’s not just against scientists. I assume that Tim Curtin himself posted this in comments at economist Harry Clarke’s recently:
“Clearly you are so pisspoor that you have yet to acquire Eric Beinhocker’s book the Origins of Wealth. As you never will, you will never understand why I have you in my sights for criminal proceedings for dissemination of false and misleading information in your Power Point presentation.”
http://www.harryrclarke.com/2009/09/15/climate-delusionism-101/#comments
Hunter: “But it is clear that you true believers are not bothered by Briffa …in his lying….”
Way to show your skepticism is not a matter of faith!
Steve from Brizzie: armwaving. You have no idea what entropy is, if you did you would not hold the views you do hold. And what of my challenge? I have added another station to my list where yet again there is no correlation at all between changes in CO2 and temperature – but you are not up to that are you?
My comments to Harry were fully justified, as he has undertaken no independent due diligence on AGW but has decided it is a gravy train worth joining.
In their work [Hantemirov and Shiyatov’s] they traditionally applied a data processing method (corridor standardisation) that does not preserve evidence of long timescale growth changes. My application of the Regional Curve Standardisation method to these same data was intended to better represent the multi-decadal to centennial growth variations necessary to infer the longer-term variability in average summer temperatures in the Yamal region:
Basicly what Brif said is “we cherry picked the data”. That’s why Briffa hid the data. Knew there would be a good reason.
Briffa should have studied OJ Simpson’s law – gotta stick with your lie.
Tim: I could be wrong, as I don’t spend all my time here, but it seems to me that you’re holding views as to what would prove AGW which even the regulars “skeptics” of this blog find hard to support. That’s really going out on a limb.
And now a station break for our sponsor;
Thank you. Now back on yer heads.
By the way, somewhat off topic, but I have been meaning to ask for ages: why does the average age of prominent “skeptics” seem to be (at a guess) about 60 – 65? Bunch of the retired or soon to be retired with too much time on their hands is the impression I get. Everyone needs a hobby, I guess.
it because we’ve been done over so many times we instantly recognise another feeble attempt – and we have tooo much time on our hands 🙂
the methodology is not yet robust.
So the methodology that” the science is settled” is based on is less then robust.
Now why am I not surprised at that.
So we are about to flush our economy down the toilet on something that is less than robust.
Brizzie Steve; Here’s IPCC AR4 p.10 “most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-twentieth century is VERY LIKELY due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations…” At Box 1.1 “very likely” is defined as “more than 90% probability”, and in normal English “most” equals more than 50%. Now when at Mauna Loa, Capre grim, and some 16 locations in California (so far), I find not a single R2 for any regression of T on [CO2] that yields an R2 of as much as 0.2, which is less than 50%, and the coefficient on CO2 is never statistically significant, the IPCC’s claim is tosh, not least because they were too coy to show whatever statistical analysis they had relied on for their “most” and “very likely” assertions. If you can find any mention of their regressions of T or dT on [CO2] or dCO2 respectively, please tell me where. I asked Harry Clarke and all I got was armwaving.
BTW, when you get around to doing your own regressions, as you evidently youthful and bushy tailed, if you add in some energy consumption data, as I did for LA, suddenly the R2 begins to look presentable. Thus I would amend AR4 to read “Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures (if any) at any given location since the mid-twentieth century is VERY LIKELY due to the observed increase in anthropogenic consumption of energy…”. The inconvenient corollary is that replacing fossil fuel energy with solar etc (if you can) will have no impact on observed temperature, as “most” of that results from energy use, not the source of the energy, unless indeed energy use itself is reduced (which is the not always hidden agenda of the Greens).
As for being old, I have noticed from the AGC that not a single award has ever been made for a young lion proposing disinterested research along the lines above. Try it! Au contraire, I can name all too many who have successfully had their hands filled with AGC largesse for anything to further the AGW cause, with Steffen, Quiggin, Karoly et ad lib pre-eminent.
It does appear that Keith Briffa’s research is all sizzle and no sausage. Is it an accident that an early photo of him looks much like Karl Marx?
Karl’s barbeque lasted most of the twentieth century, and sizzled loudly in many places. The sizzling fizzled when people found there was no sausage. Zimbabwe is the dying ember of Marxism, and people there have so little sausage that they are killing the animals in the game parks – all that biodiversity down the gurgler. Poor old Karl, he meant well, but his mental model did not fit reality, and has caused a lot of grief.
AGM seems to be sizzling, leading up to Copenhagen. The news media are busting a gut. SBS showed a man practically festooned in broad red temperature lines, all heading skyward. Probably a few polar bears, cracked mud, and cooling towers emitting steam, with sinister sound effects, but my attention wandered.
How long will the climate barbeque last? When the history is written, which names will be remembered, and in what light?
Tim – stop fibbing about Mauna Loa – it’s an excellent example of AGW warming. You can’t be trusted for one minute can you. http://ormserver.arts.yorku.ca/publictalks/Direct%20Observation%20of%20Global%20Warming%20and%20Correlation%20with%20Atmospheric%20Carbon%20Dioxide%20Data.ppt
Try inland Queensland Tim. Why worry about California !
@Tim Curtin:
are you still referring to your de-trended Mauna Loa temperature data of your earlier post on this blog?
Of course, what Jennifer does not tell us is that reconstructions that do NOT use treerings give the same result as those WITH tree rings (just not that far back in time). But why confuse the general public with all the facts?
“Of course, what Jennifer does not tell us is that reconstructions that do NOT use treerings give the same result as those WITH tree rings (just not that far back in time”
Which ones are those Marco?
Anyway since luke has lapsed back to Turcotte I thought it would be fun to see what eli has done;
http://rabett.blogspot.com/2009/09/first-krammed-then-curtained-one-of.html
Eli says this to shaft Tim;
“Since CO2 concentrations are increasing approximately exponentially, and since the effect of CO2 on global temperature is approximately logarithmic, the net is that the annual CHANGE in temperature per year will be approximately constant.”
Tim of course found that there was no annual change so one has to get teleological here; is a graph which shows that there is no change in temperature of the same class as one which has a constant change; is a constant change the same as a constant non-change; only eli would know. Further, since eli believes that the annual change in temperature will be constant perhaps he can apply his wit and wisdom to this;
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/from:1998/offset:-347/scale:0.008/trend/plot/uah/from:1998/trend
Shorter Briffa.
Mac isn’t playing fair singling out our 6 “magic global warming trees”.
All Briffa is really saying is that he didnt handpick the INDIVIDUAL trees used – he used a pre existing Russian set. Then he says:- “chronolgies are constructed independently and are subsequently compared with climate data to measure the association and quantify the reliability of using the tree-ring data as a proxy for temperature variations” (In other words, data series that dont match thermoneter records are then discarded. Those that do are retained).
Briffa just cherry picked at the aggregate level instead of individual tree level – just ridiculous.
How can he have failed to notice that the data he used was quite inconsistent with the rest of the Russian data, and other Yamal data – such as the series McIntyre used as a comparision?
Then he fails to delete an obvious outlier (YAD 061), from a tiny sample.
Much of his response then actually acknowledges that his work is statistically unreliable and they are working on it. Why didnt he acknowledge that when he published? Why didnt his referess notice?
Perhaps he failed to release the data for years because he was embarassed by his incompetence? That is the most generous interpretation.
The usual suspects on this site are like political partisans – they would never disagree with anything their party leadership said in a thousand years.
Fraud may be too strong a word to use in connection with the hockey team. It would be better to say that Mann and Briffa are pioneers, blazing a trail in the nascent discipline of coproclimatology.
Firstly, good call to challenge about postponing (indefinitely?) Copenhagen.
Second, typo in 3rd paragraph, 3rd line, change ‘develop’ to ‘development’.
Third, couldn’t help myself. I sent an email to Lateline and they actually replied thanking me for my views, although I doubt Tony Jones will ever recant in his adoration of the Hadley Centre. However, if others sent emails expressing their concern as well about the “one-eyedness” of Lateline and the ABC, then perhaps you never know. Gotta get some media onboard. It at least made me feel good when I sent it. Message I sent below.
“Well Tony, can we expect a report from you any time soon about the disgraceful actions of your beloved Hadley Centre?
I have no doubt you are aware that they have lost? and not archived much of the original raw temperature data so that their outrageous claims of rampant global warming can go unchallenged. You always act as a lackey for the Hadley centre.
Secondly, as I am sure you are aware, Briffa has in the last week had his research totally trashed about tree cores from the Yamal region purportedly showing a hockey stick rise over the last 20 years or so. You would know by now that Briffa only selected 12 cores that were “cherry picked” to show what he wanted and ignored the majority. No need for me to provide links, the blogosphere is rampant with this.
If you have any integrity you would get this discussed by a competent scientist, not just a Global Warming stooge like Flannery or Karoly.
Can we expect this on Lateline anytime soon? Oh wait, there’s a pig flying by.”
Perhaps he failed to release the data for years because he was embarassed by his incompetence? That is the most generous interpretation.
yup.
“In their work [Hantemirov and Shiyatov’s] they traditionally applied a data processing method (corridor standardisation) that does not preserve evidence of long timescale growth changes. My application of the Regional Curve Standardisation method to these same data was intended to better represent the multi-decadal to centennial growth variations necessary to infer the longer-term variability in average summer temperatures in the Yamal region:”
Mayeau, that means Briffa used a different and known to be better analysis method on the same data. That is not cherry picking data.
Janama,
I would not be so condemnatory of Briffa’s reaction to this – rather it’s much like discovering that your science became inbred from a lack of fertilisation with other sciences.
I still have a good memory of the friction between the geographers and geologists at Macquarie University during the early 1970’s when I was completing my undergrad degree, followed by my post grad studies. Then as now the cultural differences were specific – the geographers tended to rely on rhetoric and quasi-quantitative measurements of things that were, perhaps, impossible to quantify.
This was also the decade when multidisciplinary studies were forced on undergraduates and I vividly recall having to attend social science lectures with ambivalence. Then I and a colleague (author of the Raff Report on the Henry Thornton site) were quite intrigued by the totally subjective manner in which social sciences were applied; both of us studied pyschology 101, or its equivalent.
I also enrolled in a subject English Language, much to my benefit I will add, and travelled from Kambalda in Western Australia to Sydney, at my own expense, to attend a week end intensive, mandatory, course. I still recall then that some NSW student complained to the lecturer that this weekend school was an imposition, and cost him/her greatly. The lecturer replied that one of the students here came from WA, and asked what the problem was. I obtained wry satisfaction from that! The silence which followed was somewhat thunderous.
The problem lies, I think, with the social scientists encroaching onto the domain of empirical science but lacking the training in the essential tools of the scientific method, and more importantly, the application of the philosophical basis of the scientific method. That is that science is about building a knowledge base on top of a previously verified scientific fact.
It is quite easy to work out the difference between science and pseudoscience – work backwards to find what the initial starting point was.
If the starting point was something demonstrated experimentally, then the deductions therefrom follow the scientific method.
However if the starting point was some agreed on idea, and assumed to be correct, or true, then any deductions from that idea have to be called pseudoscientific.
And that’s why climate science seems to be in difficulties with the AGW hypothesis.
And why GCM’s have difficulty predicting future climate states – the starting assumptions are wrong.
Louis
Thank you – I thought I was alone in having do Social Studies with Science degree back then – look where it has got us.
All – I have a query – If the AGW question is already determined and the science is in – why do the AGW crowd bother so much with fronting at blogs like this – if the science is in why bother – unless there is something else at stake?
regards.
Many thanks cohenite for link to the Rabett, fame indeed! My comments thereon are at my Mauna Loa thread below.
Luke is pathetic with his constant returns to the equally constantly demolished Turcotte. When they and Luke show they can do regressions I will be all attention.
Luke asked for “inland Queensland”. Ever willing to oblige Brizzie Steve , I had already decided to begin with Brisbane Aero (closed in feb 2000, probably for its very nonPC data showing 1999 to be its coolest year since 1959). So for Luke and Steve, here are my results for Brizzie Aero:
1. For straight regression of annual Mean T on annual Mean CO2, only a negative R2, even before allowing for auto-correlation, and a NEGATIVE coefficient on CO2.
2. For regression of dT on dCO2, the adj. R2 is 0.003 (a level which led Briffa & co into their many subterfuges with their tree rings)and the coefficient on dCO2 is hopeless, at t=1.056 so no significance, with 39 degrees of freedom it should be >2.024.
3. The above results are based on annual means, but indefatigable as ever I took the trouble to repeat with just January Temps and CO2, both absolute and with dT/dt on dCO2/dt. Again no correlation at all for the absolutes, and even worse for the dT and dCO2.
It now becomes clear why the BoM closed down that Brisbane Aero station, it just did not deliver what was required (same for Cape Grim). But Luke, I am sure you can get Turcotte to conjure up what you want to see, why not send them your bottle shop bills?
“that means Briffa used a different and known to be better analysis method on the same data. That is not cherry picking data.”
Indeed, but the “better methodology” isn’t appropriate if applied to a very small number of cores.
Tim Curtin, just a minor note:
i will apply two theories, that you have repeated over and over and over again:
no 1.: CO2 is a blessing for plants. the global high level of CO2 is the only reason, why mankind can still be fed, and it is leading to increased harvests, growth and greening everywhere.
no 2.: if a single data source, at any location on the planet (even on Mauna Loa) shows a different behaviour to what is globally expected, then it nullifies the theory.
now according to Steve McIntyre, the revised(TM) Yamal trees show no extra growth up to 1990.
can you figure out, what your idea no 2, makes out of your idea no1 under these conditions???
will you admit your errors?
or will you opt for “denialists logic” and selective application of theories that fit your bias, as always?
Now when at Mauna Loa, Capre grim, and some 16 locations in California (so far), I find not a single R2 for any regression of T on [CO2] that yields an R2 of as much as 0.2, which is less than 50%, and the coefficient on CO2 is never statistically significant, the IPCC’s claim is tosh, not least because they were too coy to show whatever statistical analysis they had relied on for their “most” and “very likely” assertions.
shorter Tim Curtin:
“i have rolled a dice 12000 times. not a single result showed the number 3.5
obviously Probability Theory is a fraud!”
sod said: “i will apply two theories, that you have repeated over and over and over again:
no 1.: CO2 is a blessing for plants. the global high level of CO2 is the only reason, why mankind can still be fed, and it is leading to increased harvests, growth and greening everywhere.”
You can check out my shortly to appear paper in E&E on CO2 and food production; it never says what you allege, only that there is a remarkable association between rising [CO2] and food production, CET.PAR.
“no 2.: if a single data source, at any location on the planet (even on Mauna Loa) shows a different behaviour to what is globally expected, then it nullifies the theory.”
Well, I have yet to find any location on the planet where there is any correlation between changes in [CO2] and changes in temperature, but when changes in Energy usage PER LOCATION are taken into account suddenly there is a relationship between dE and dT. Go figure.
3. “can you figure out, what your idea no 2, makes out of your idea no1 under these conditions???”
sod, as ever you specialise in non sequiturs.
It is perfectly possible for rising [CO2] to correlate with the amazing growth in world food production since the 1960s (without it Borlaug’s Green Revolution would have been stillborn) and not to correlate with rising temperatures anywhere on earth.
Look, the data I use (eg Brizzie Aero and Mauna Loa) are in the public domain (unlike Briffa’s until last week) – download, analyze, and show me wrong if you can. Otherwise you are just armwaving like Stern, Garnaut, Clarke et ad infinitum. Until you do that, keep quiet, very quiet.
sod says; “now according to Steve McIntyre, the revised(TM) Yamal trees show no extra growth up to 1990.” I presume you mean here;
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=7241#more-7241
the comparison of no extra growth is still with the terrific ten of Briffa but what is your point sod; that Tim is wrong in saying CO2 is not a boost to tree growth?
no 1.: CO2 is a blessing for plants. the global high level of CO2 is the only reason, why mankind can still be fed, and it is leading to increased harvests, growth and greening everywhere.”
Luke has pointed out many times before, there are many factors that limit plant growth. Enhancing one while not remedying the most restrictive isn’t going to help you much. Even then, the idea that all plants respond positively and uniformally to more CO2 is naive. The rising food production over the past years has been due to the application of science.
Well, I have yet to find any location on the planet where there is any correlation between changes in [CO2] and changes in temperature, but when changes in Energy usage PER LOCATION are taken into account suddenly there is a relationship between dE and dT. Go figure.
CO2 levels are well mixed, you can look anywhere.
You need to look up the IPCC report, which analyses the CO2 portion of the temperature record. There are several forcings, such as the sun. To leave them out when you look for a relationship between co2 and temperature means you cannot get the correct answer.
Trevor,
Thanks. Typo fixed. Jen
SJT,
Yes, there are many factors limiting plant growth.
So what? Are you hoping people will believe that more CO2 = less?
A reduction in CO2 is assured to be a factor in less growth.
The increase of CO2 in the atmosphere, by the way, has been due to aplications of technology and science.
Learn a new dribble.
No, the IPCC simply regurgitates garbage fed to it.
They are not, as they point out, a scientific organization. They are a political organization.
The difference is lost on AGW true believers.
Mayeau, that means Briffa used a different and known to be better analysis method on the same data. That is not cherry picking data.
Halpern, why are you picking on me, the village idiot, when there are all these other doctors, engineers, and statisticians to truck with?
Alright Josh, I’ll play.
…Using a simulation model to blah blah blah… negative exponential curve simulations blah blah blah…
Ah ha. Here we go.
So they cherrypicked then applied arbitrary adjustments.
Back at you el.
It occurs to me that using the word “other” while referring to doctors, engineers, and statisticians might mislead some readers to think I am one of these.
Nope. I’m the village idiot, and I’m cool with that.
You can check out my shortly to appear paper in E&E on CO2 and food production; it never says what you allege, only that there is a remarkable association between rising [CO2] and food production, CET.PAR.
Tim, you are downplaying your brilliant achievements!
your presentation on the Garnaut report, for example, says the following:
“if uptake falls… food production also falls pro rata”
(page 20) and it shows a pretty dangerous looking graph..
http://www.timcurtin.com/images/Seminar_on_Garnaut_Report_28_October2008.ppt
such a claim goes pretty far beyond “a remarkable association between rising [CO2] and food production”
It is perfectly possible for rising [CO2] to correlate with the amazing growth in world food production since the 1960s (without it Borlaug’s Green Revolution would have been stillborn) and not to correlate with rising temperatures anywhere on earth.
yes. and if your theory was true, we would find indicators in the plants that produce that food. why not for example look at apple trees? or trees in general? (old trees didn t change since the CO2 growth started..)
like the Yamal trees. according to your theory, they should all show indicators of increased growth.
but according to Steve, they don t.
and according to your Mauna Loa example, that is the end of your theory.
the comparison of no extra growth is still with the terrific ten of Briffa but what is your point sod; that Tim is wrong in saying CO2 is not a boost to tree growth?
you are misreprsenting his position. according to Tim, CO2 is a major boon to all plants.
basically all plant development indicators should show a hockey stick form. just not caused by global or regional warming, but directly by the CO2 increase.
Briffa’ use of various statistical methods to give an appearance of technical competence does not mask the fact that the use of Yamal data is, of itself, a very serious cherry pick. Arctic circle tree rings ignore 66% of the data set (the 8mths long winter maxima and minima) which normally contributes up to 80% of the flux in a temperature upswing.
The fact that he then felt the need to conduct additional manipulation of this data to further shape the outcomes is testimony to his lack of credibility. This additional manipulation and data selection was needed to ensure that the recent ring data matched the actual temperature record. The fact that the broader sample did not match the temperature record is very powerful evidence of the fundamental inadequacy of the entire Yamal data set.
The Yamal tree ring series understates past temperature changes for the very same reason it understated recent temperature changes. And one could be forgiven for suspecting that the primary motivation for withholding the data for so long was to divert attention from the fact that the use of the entire series was a serious error. The search for small lies in the processing of data obscured the bigger lie in its use at all.
Sophist sod demonstrating his mastery of smart-bum logic 101: SM says the Y trees showed no growth at a time of increasing CO2 therefore Tim’s contention that CO2 boosts plant growth is wrong; you deserve your own sitcom sod: The world according to sod; SM notes this;
“In high latitude “forests” at the treeline, canopy is not an issue. From this, they conclude that there is no inter-tree competition and use one size fits all standardization methods. Same with bristlecones.
With bristlecones, there was a constant competition for water and it seemed to me that there must have been competition for root-space, even if there was no competition for light. I presume that competition arises in some way in these treeline forests as the trees do seem to space themselves”
Extra CO2 can assist individual plants and it can assist bulk growth; its a bit like the residual time for one CO2 molecule and the bulk situation; why don’t you have a bath with little will and RW and they’ll explain it to you sod; as anyone with a reasonable bone in their body would concede there are many mitigating factors to individual plant response to extra CO2 but to think SM and Tim’s position is contradictory is just mischief making.
Mann’s team found a substantial increase in ring growth from about 1800 to 1900 that has nothing to do with temperature and is likely to derive from the greening effect of CO2.
‘They believe that the reason this increase stopped in the 20th century is there was other limiting growth factor in this very harsh environment.’
WCR March 15, 1999
el: CO2 increased maybe 10 ppm between 1800 and 1900, eg. it just started ramping up in that period. Today it is ~ 390 ppm, in other words it grew ~100 ppm between 1900 and 2009. Your argument makes little sense.
Sod seems to be showing some signs of thought capacity! But he is still not quite there although showing promise.
1. Sod said “we would find indicators [showing that rising [CO2] correlates with the amazing growth in world food production] in the plants that produce that food….” well of course we do, in rising yields per hectare. Wheat yielding at say 3 tonne/ha contains a lot more carbon than wheat yielding at 1 t/ha. Most growth in total crop production is from rising yields, for which increasing availability of CO2 is a necessary condition.
2. and “why not for example look at apple trees? or trees in general? (old trees didn’t change since the CO2 growth started..)” Old growth trees are of course moribund, having long since ceased growth from carbon absorption, as the name implies. Plantation forests and sustainable (rotational) logging of native forest both show increasing yields, see FAO or ITTO stats on world timber production since 1960, again higher YIELD from smaller areas, if Greens are to be believed, but they are not, as plantations and forests under sustainable logging cycles are increasing in area as well as showing rising yields.
3. for sod, “basically all plant development indicators should show a hockey stick form. just not caused by global or regional warming, but directly by the CO2 increase”.
Yes indeed, in the pre-industrial era apart from the Roman and MWP when warmth did boost yields as we know from manorial and abbey (eg Winchester) records. But the rise of [CO2] from around 1750 certainly facilitated the agricultural revolution of that century and since down to Borlaug. From 1750 it has been all blade and no stick, unlike MBH with no blade until after 1950.
eli has taken el gordo under his gentle wing;
“el: CO2 increased maybe 10 ppm between 1800 and 1900, eg. it just started ramping up in that period. Today it is ~ 390 ppm, in other words it grew ~100 ppm between 1900 and 2009. Your argument makes little sense”
For a contrary viewpoint see;
http://www.warwickhughes.com/icecore/
Jaworowski notes the deficiency of ice-core records of CO2 concentration; if CO2 at 1900 was more than 1900 then things take on a different perspective. In fairness to eli he is a disciple of the late Professor Oeschanger who disagreed with Professor Jaworowski.
CO2 fertilsation indeed – pigs bum – do go on. It’s beyond the limits of experimental detection. It’s all agronomic and genetic improvement mixed with temperature and rainfall variation. And no water = no crops !
Gawd – it’s getting worse – Warwickhughes and Jaworowski as source – hahahahahahahahhaa
hahahahahahaha
pigs bum #2
SJT,
Yes, there are many factors limiting plant growth.
So what? Are you hoping people will believe that more CO2 = less?
A reduction in CO2 is assured to be a factor in less growth.
The increase of CO2 in the atmosphere, by the way, has been due to aplications of technology and science.
Learn a new dribble.
False dichotomy. Maybe it’s just not that important. It’s certainly nowhere near as important as Curtin makes it out to be.
http://www.someareboojums.org/blog/?p=7
sjt
‘It’s certainly nowhere near as important as Curtin makes it out to be.”
Because?
From lukey-boy’s link:
“site admin Says:
May 9th, 2007 at 12:51 pm
My thoughts were much along the same lines. There are certain striking parallels between the creationist and climate-denialist mindsets”
What an objective site! Site admin also harps on about the 2004 US Senate Committee Hearing which show no record of J appearing. J did write his submission for that hearing but I guess he didn’t have the influence that some other spruikers had, like luke’s good mate and alternative universe man, Meehl;
http://www.assessment.ucar.edu/written_statement.pdf
Extra CO2 can assist individual plants and it can assist bulk growth; its a bit like the residual time for one CO2 molecule and the bulk situation; why don’t you have a bath with little will and RW and they’ll explain it to you sod; as anyone with a reasonable bone in their body would concede there are many mitigating factors to individual plant response to extra CO2 but to think SM and Tim’s position is contradictory is just mischief making.
i am applying Tim Curtin logic.
any cause that effects the global average of a value, has to effect every single instance of that value.
your explanation, that other factors might restrict the growth of plants at one place, is in direct contradiction to the Tim Curtin Maunal Loa theory. he claims that every single thermometer on the world must measure the glbal temperature increase.
well of course we do, in rising yields per hectare. Wheat yielding at say 3 tonne/ha contains a lot more carbon than wheat yielding at 1 t/ha. Most growth in total crop production is from rising yields, for which increasing availability of CO2 is a necessary condition.
yield of wheat is a terrible indicator. plant types changes. farming methods changed.
Old growth trees are of course moribund, having long since ceased growth from carbon absorption, as the name implies. Plantation forests and sustainable (rotational) logging of native forest both show increasing yields, see FAO or ITTO stats on world timber production since 1960, again higher YIELD from smaller areas,
this is moronic. why not take an axe and see how you can compete with the guy with the chainsaw?
you are making a comparison with values (yield) that are affected by a lot of other factors apart from CO2.
why not look at an indicator, that can really test your theory?
if you are right, every single tree in that wood should show a hockey stick form on growth indicators, like tree rings.
be brave Tim, really test your theory!
But the rise of [CO2] from around 1750 certainly facilitated the agricultural revolution of that century and since down to Borlaug. From 1750 it has been all blade and no stick, unlike MBH with no blade until after 1950.
Tim, this is simply stupid.
why don t you show us, how effective working with a wooden plough would be, in the splendid CO2 environment we have today?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Agricultural_Revolution
I try to avoid the cheery cut and thrust of you regulars, but how can anyone honestly claim “the science is settled” when Briffa aknowledges that there is “a single location (not one of the above) within the Yamal region, at which the trees apparently do not show the same overall growth increase registered in our data.”?
He also notes that “Whether the McIntyre version is any more robust a representation of regional tree growth in Yamal than my original, remains to be established.” Which doen’t sound like a huge vote of confidence in his own work
In other words we have two quite different interpretations of growth increase (and hence temp increase with all the doubts about that inkage) in the same region and even Briffa is not confident his is the more “robust”.
Is either one right?
Does either represent global trends anyway?
“The science is settled???
One good thing out of this develpment is that Briffa has responded to McIntyre, which should be welcomed as a step toward meaningful debate and critique of the whole AGW construct, outside the political control of the IPCC.
Roger – after this week’s serious climate science (not the Briffa diversion) I reckon you’re right – it’s probably a lot worse than any of us might imagine. Climate threat is quite real.
The temperature rise at Mauna Loa IS consistent with the increase of CO2.
Jaws Jaworowski? you gotta be kidding, and Beck, the flows of CO2 in and out of the atmosphere those guys require would have made living on earth sort of like inhabiting a warm fizzy Coke bottle. Hughes is slightly less than clueless on this issue. Ferdinand will be by to say it more nicely, but thems the facts.
Roger,”” He also notes that “Whether the McIntyre version is any more robust a representation of regional tree growth in Yamal than my original, remains to be established.” Which doen’t sound like a huge vote of confidence in his own work.””
This is a strawman by Briffa. What McIntyre did was show through sensitivty analysis that Briffa cannot support his conslusions.
Despite what Luke would have you believe this is a seriuos blow to the AGW alarmism.
Reality of AGW claims:
Non-robust techniques
Cherry picked data
Misleading and hidden evidence
Trivial results
So of course it is worse than we might have imagined.
Strong emphasis on the AGW true believer’s ‘imagine’.
Reality of AGW claims:
Non-robust techniques
Cherry picked data
Misleading and hidden evidence
Trivial results
So of course it is worse than we might have imagined.
Strong emphasis on the AGW true believer’s ‘imagine’.
why not stick to facts, once in a while?
sod,
but your science does not have facts – only cultural biases.
So again, Sod off.
Jaroworski? I find him mildly disquieting. Beck? Mildly slightly disquiesting, but not as much as Jaroworski.
How much do you paid to imitate a denialist parrot. Not very much I hope as it’s soooo boring.
Here’s some bullshit antidote for you
http://www.climateworksaustralia.org/Q_and_A.pdf
Its been an amusing week watching the believer trolls do the full ho-hum its nothing routine over the latest AGW scam from Dr. Briffa. What a pack of sad losers our trolls are. I haven’t had such a good laugh for quite a while. Keep it up boys.
Sod,
I do.
Your AGW emperor has no clothes.
What scam ?
Well it’s been equally entertaining watching the denialist filth waste a week on nothing.
So we agree all that’s happened is that we’ve had a good old laugh.
Hmm, let’s see now.
1. Dr. Briffa writes paper using classical AGW data diddling methods.
2. High prestige scientific journal publish said paper with inadequate peer-review.
3. Numerous colleagues use items from said paper to publish their versions of classical AGW data diddling.
4. High prestige scientific journals publish said AGW data diddled papers with similar inadequate or non-existent peer-review.
5. High-powered bureaucracy IPCC use said papers to generate massive global AGW scare.
6. Media and venal pollies spread massive global AGW scare far and wide.
Now we have:
7. Data diddling by Dr. Briffa exposed.
8. Blog dwellers say ho-hum its a non-issue, blah, blah.
And you say, there is no global conspiracy? Well I believe you but thousands may have a different perspective.
Treerings growth is quite inappropriate for assessing temperatures or other climatic phenomena. The growth of treerings is highly affected by insolation, which not always drives to dramatic changes of temperature:
http://www.biocab.org/Insolation_Treerings_Growth.html
Regards,
Nasif Nahle
Meanwhile back at RealSucks, Dr. Briffa is being…… wait for it…….vindicated!
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA
Note the desperation and increased hysterical dismissiveness of our AGW trolls.
Their shrieking is nearing ultrasonic levels, and will soon only be audible to bats.
Luke,
Your ensemble should not have posted this Australian climate propaganda piece. It is rather pitiful.
Just glancing at Q 13, they are misleading people powerfully.
To say that humans do not impact water vapor much is simply wrong.
Also, at this late date, with your side shedding credibility like dandruff flakes, I would suggest less snark and fewer conclusionary statements, and more explanations and respect for skeptics.
After all, it is our side that is being vindicated in the arena of facts, not that facts have ever mattered much to the AGW community.
Or maybe you posted this piece of propaganda as an example of things the Australian tax payer deserves a refund for?
And then of course the false assertion and lynch pin of AGW – that the atmosphere is somehow dominated by positive feedbacks.
That one holds up as well as the phony hockey sticks: not at all.
luke, that Parris piece contains every shibboleth and misrepresentation of AGW in one article; Fig 2 is particularly good, in a perverse way. But I’ll let you select any 2 of Parris’s vindications of AGW and I’ll rebut them.
Thanks Nasif, interesting piece.
Maybe Luke is right that is should go to court. Lubos Motl has accused Briffa of fraud, so wouldn’t that be grounds for a lawsuit?
There then would be discovery evidence and all of Briffa’s clique would be forced to testify under oath, and it all would be on the table for the world to see.
What are the odds Dr. Briffa will sue Lubos Motl? 🙂
Zero I’d say.
Its been an amusing week watching the believer trolls do the full ho-hum its nothing routine over the latest AGW scam from Dr. Briffa. What a pack of sad losers our trolls are. I haven’t had such a good laugh for quite a while. Keep it up boys.
But steve denies he said anything like that about Briffa.
“all of Briffa’s clique would be forced to testify under oath” – yep good –
Very Nazi DG ! Sieg Heil DG. Sieg Heil
And and and – being accused by a “string theorist” of fraud . hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
That’s so rich. You clown DG – get off the blog.
Coho – why don’t you rebut the lot.
Stick it up on your parties’s blog. Then we can rebut your skank rebuttal (like it’s not going to be very good is it).
Like with every reference pers. comm. (Bob, William, David or Steve told me for sure) or E&E – hahahahahahaha
Luke,
If you ever post anything worth Cohenite’s time rebutting, I’ll let you know!!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
dribble and you other AGW freaks, may I bring to your attention a very interesting bit in Briffa’s statement:
“Whether the McIntyre version is any more robust a representation of regional tree growth in Yamal than my original, remains to be established.”
REGIONAL TREE GROWTH??? YOU MEAN IT ISN’T A TEMPERATURE PROXY?????
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAgaspchoke
One thing, luke; on page 22 of the Parris effort he says:
“CO2 absorbs most strongly in the 13-17um zone, centred on 15um which is near the peak of the longwave radiation spectrum”
As you know the LW spectrum is based on Stefan-Boltzmann where j* = ^T4 and the distribution curve reflecting the LW energy spectrum and intensity is based on Wien where ^max = b/T; the thing is the distribution is based on Tave which, as we know from Arthur’s famous piece, is 288K; at that temperature the Wien peak is 10.0625 um. I could be wrong but will you check?
Did you see the post at WUWT where they narrowed the number of Briffa’s magic global warming trees from 12 down to one lone pine?
From a magic grove down to a magic tree.
Better put an armed guard around that sucker, otherwise some Russian lumberjack might solve your global warming “crisis” with an axe.
And wouldn’t that serve the warmers right after the way they cut down Nils Morner’s sea level tree?
Hey, a polished cross-cut of Briffa’s magic tree would make one heck of a cool exibit for Lubo’s lawsuit.
And a nice coffee table.
But don’t file the case in the UK! Those people are totally unspooled.
Comment from: cohenite October 4th, 2009 at 8:32 am
Thanks Nasif, interesting piece.
You’re welcome, Cohenite. I hope to have published the definitive paper tomorrow. There are two graphs from raw data which were not included in this preliminar article.
Oh Luki
In reference to the Comment from: cohenite October 4th, 2009 at 2:39 pm
ker-SMACK ouch. Put some ice on that and it’ll bring down the swelling.
Cohen, do you think it will leave a mark?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
“Comment from: James Mayeau October 4th, 2009 at 3:22 pm
Did you see the post at WUWT where they narrowed the number of Briffa’s magic global warming trees from 12 down to one lone pine?
From a magic grove down to a magic tree.”
Magical trees are the most robust.
Looks like Jen is gonging me. So you’ll just have to imagine my responses.
Nils Morners’ tree – what a fabrication – he made it all up you moron. Even Louis was unimpressed.
Even putting the science fraud aside using the tree ring data as a proxy was bad news and tendentious. Since by their own alleged estimation these guys are claiming higher than normal CO2 levels for the time period in question. But higher CO2 is a direct stimulant to tree growth even more than warmer temperatures. So this terrible terrible story is fraud piggy-backing on fraud. Right from the start they must have been hoping to get figures that exaggerated the warming. Any time series graph any of you see that does not have the 30’s as being warmer than the 90’s has to be considered dated or bullshit, unless you yourself can verify everything down to the nth degree.
Graeme wrote:
“Any time series graph any of you see that does not have the 30’s as being warmer than the 90’s has to be considered dated or bullshit, unless you yourself can verify everything down to the nth degree.”
I knew that that was true for the US, but I didn’t know that it was true for other parts of the world. Do you have a link for that statistic?
Luke,
Better be careful attributing to me views I may not have held – Nils actually stated that he replanted the tree for the documentary, so are you being disingenuous again?
There are many references to other parts of the world [other than the US] being warmer during the 1930s’
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/arctictemps.jpg
http://omgili.com/newsgroups/alt/global-warming/493b070cdnewstpgicomau.htm/&9=%22University+of+Alaska+Fairbanks%22
http://www.lanl.gov/source/orgs/ees/ees14/pdfs/09Chlylek.pdf
http://meteo.lcd.lu/globalwarming/Chylek/greenland_warming.html
Treerings growth is quite inappropriate for assessing temperatures or other climatic phenomena. The growth of treerings is highly affected by insolation, which not always drives to dramatic changes of temperature:
http://www.biocab.org/Insolation_Treerings_Growth.html
Regards,
Nasif Nahle
i am unconvinced. there is quite a lot of evidence, showing that treerings are a good indicator of climate variables.
for example rain:
http://www.treeringsociety.org/TRBTRR/TRBvol50_1-10.pdf
there are multiple parts of your paper, that i find highly problematic. for example declaring single years (980) as a “maximum”. (on the other hand, you decide to use a smooth, when making a comparison with sunspots)
your main claim about solar insolation being the main driving force behind tree growth sounds bizarre to me: according to you, a global phenomenon (for example sun spost) dominate trees growth everywhere. (not local droughts. local temperature. other local factors.)
Fancy that; Nasif finds a good correlation between solar and tree growth and sod finds one with water; we certainly live in interesting times.
Fancy that; Nasif finds a good correlation between solar and tree growth and sod finds one with water; we certainly live in interesting times.
global sunspots or local water. even a sceptic should be able to figure out, that one of those theories is better than the other.
we know, that trees react to warmth during certain months. please educate me: how do sunspots fit into that?!?
Briffa was attacked for choosing the wrong datset of trees. now let us takje a look at the explanations offered by “sceptics”:
Nasif assumes, that sunspost dominate plant growth. stop watering your garden. you cant influence the sun anyway.
Curtin assumes, that CO2 dominates plant growth. again, don t waste time watering your garden. your harvest will improve significantly over the next few years…
sorry, but sometimes it is a little bit hard to take you folks seriously.
The problem is in teasing apart the various inputs. Sunlight and precipitation obviously play a major role in tree growth, there’s also temperature, nutrient content of the soil, stress from insects and drought, competition from surrounding trees, etc. How are you going to extract the temperature signal out from all of that?
“global sunspots or local water. even a sceptic should be able to figure out, that one of those theories is better than the other.”
That’s right sod, water, darkness and BS; the AGW formula for all the little mushrooms.
Louis Louis Louis – you should have learnt by now I’m always prepared to back it up.
These are your skunky mates Coho – shame shame shame.
http://www.warwickhughes.com/blog/?p=118
Wolfgang Flamme Says:
June 26th, 2007 at 2:55 am
Warwick,
in the documentation, Moerner talks about ‘the message of the tree’. Actually there could have been two messages – one about an inconvenient truth and another even more inconvenient about how it’s handled. He had a film team ready, he had the tree with leaves still green nearby, he said they even talked to witnesses who watched the students rooting out the tree. A close to perfect documentation of evidence which Moerner chose to replace with a fake.
Now what evidence is left? Moerner after 4 years finally admitting faking a documentary by setting up a tree near the shore by hand. Tree with still green leaves: gone. Its roots remains: probably gone. Australians: gone. Moerner: gone. Witnesses: probably unavailable or increasingly untrustworthy. Documentation: faked by Moerner – else: nothing.
Now Warwick, don’t tell me that was a clever thing to do.
Louis Hissink Says:
June 26th, 2007 at 4:27 am
So Moerner is now the guilty party and the unknown Aussies now out of the topic?
At least Moerner admitted doing it – we are still waiting for the Team to admit theirs.
Sod,
Trees aren’t your average garden. Their roots can go deep into aquifers. Sunlight and CO2 can be much more essential on a regular basis. Particularly in places like the Yamal Peninsula.
Anyway, where’s the hockey stick here?
http://www.biocab.org/Averaged_Proxies.jpg
The problem is in teasing apart the various inputs. Sunlight and precipitation obviously play a major role in tree growth, there’s also temperature, nutrient content of the soil, stress from insects and drought, competition from surrounding trees, etc. How are you going to extract the temperature signal out from all of that?
that is what scientists have been working on, for quite some time now. in short, you take a period, on which you have good data. and comaper it to the growth of the tree.
that is exactly, what the paper i linked above does. it is about the opposite, of what Nasif does.
Thanks sod for the advert: “Curtin assumes, that CO2 dominates plant growth. again, don t waste time watering your garden. your harvest will improve significantly over the next few years…” Ever done any multivariate regressions? Steve Crimp at CSIRO (for Garnaut, too thick to understand what he was saying) and Geoff Smart and I at our local tennis club do them on crop yields as a function of new varieties, fertilizer usage, rainfall, temperature and CO2 emissions. Guess which comes out on top? Ever heard of cet.par.? Regressions are quite good at that – try it yourself if you are capable of intellectual effort of any kind.
Nasif, it appears that sod is complaining you don’t cherry pick the data.
Lukebaby,
After the hot August night we’re back to having our arses frozen down here.
Thanks sod for the advert: “Curtin assumes, that CO2 dominates plant growth. again, don t waste time watering your garden. your harvest will improve significantly over the next few years…” Ever done any multivariate regressions? Steve Crimp at CSIRO (for Garnaut, too thick to understand what he was saying) and Geoff Smart and I at our local tennis club do them on crop yields as a function of new varieties, fertilizer usage, rainfall, temperature and CO2 emissions. Guess which comes out on top? Ever heard of cet.par.? Regressions are quite good at that – try it yourself if you are capable of intellectual effort of any kind.
i am really curious: what does your multivariate regressions show? what factor is more important to yield increase: CO2 or the iron plough?
So, what are you saying luke, that Morner pulled the tree down and/or put it back up?
So, what are you saying luke, that Morner pulled the tree down and/or put it back up?
for a start, a tree on the sea does not contradict rising sea levels….
Noone said sea-level rise wasn’t occuring; it has been since the end of the LIA when Insolation increased and no doubt Briffa’s tree-rings took off; the point about sea-level is that it is the opposite of the alarmist position as stated by Steffen, that the rate of rise is increasing; it isn’t, it’s decreasing;
http://www.ocean-sci.net/5/193/2009/os-5-193-2009.pdf
To understand the Luke currently, one has to apply an ultrasonic mic and interpretation algorithm.
Here is a rough translation:
“Oh Noooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! How could my faith be doubted?????????????????How dare they prove me wrong??????????????????????????????”
And not surprisingly:
“Will the tax payers pull our funding??????????????????????????????Aieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!”
Lukes,
keep up the good work.
Comment from: sod October 4th, 2009 at 7:25 pm
Briffa was attacked for choosing the wrong datset of trees. now let us takje a look at the explanations offered by “sceptics”:
Nasif assumes, that sunspost dominate plant growth. stop watering your garden. you cant influence the sun anyway.
Hi Sod… I didn’t cherry picked information. I included the whole databases, so for treering growth as for TSI, for the analysis. I also included two databases on TSI, Svalgaard’s and Lean’s reconstructions.
The conclusion from the analysis is that insolation dominates plant growth, not sunspots.
One of the most important observations in my article is that there is an optimal index of insolation and of temperature for the bristlecone pines and Siberian larch pines maximize their growth. Below and above that optimal index, the plant slows and stops growing. There is not a methodology for distinguish when the plant slowed or stopped its growth by low insolation or temperature, and when the plant slowed or stopped its growth by high insolation or temperature.
All the green plants (C3, C4, CAM) depend on photosynthesis for growing, and photosynthesis depends on insolation, i.e. luminosity. We cannot separate photosynthesis from growth. It’s impossible. For example, you could make an experiment. Place a plant, any, into a dark camera. Increase the temperature as you wish. Do it for one week; then revise your plant and see what happened.
Re Comment from: Luke October 4th, 2009 at 11:21 am
Dur Fuhrer has been informed of the Yamal tree-core data fraud, andboy is he pissed.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
cough
HA
All the green plants (C3, C4, CAM) depend on photosynthesis for growing, and photosynthesis depends on insolation, i.e. luminosity. We cannot separate photosynthesis from growth. It’s impossible. For example, you could make an experiment. Place a plant, any, into a dark camera. Increase the temperature as you wish. Do it for one week; then revise your plant and see what happened.
i am aware of photosynthesis. so you think that luminosity in winter helps grow trees in siberia?
could you simply explain, why a global factor should dominate tree growth, and not local ones?
could you please explain your rather brave claim of having identified the single warmest year in the 10th century, while scientists can not decide which of the last couple of year was warmer than the other?
Comment from: sod October 5th, 2009 at 3:07 am
i am aware of photosynthesis. so you think that luminosity in winter helps grow trees in siberia?
It’s not what I think, but what is observed daily in nature. C3 plants, like Siberian Larch trees from which the Yamal database was taken, are profoundly affected by luminosity. You can see an explicative diagram in the last part of my article. It’s impossible to know when the growth tardiness was due to high luminosity or temperature and when the slowness was due to low luminosity of temperature.
could you simply explain, why a global factor should dominate tree growth, and not local ones?
Insolation is the dominant factor as for growth as for distribution of plants at every location you could choose on this world. Other factors are modifiers.
could you please explain your rather brave claim of having identified the single warmest year in the 10th century, while scientists can not decide which of the last couple of year was warmer than the other?
I have not identified anything more but the aim of my research consigned in the abstract. The year identified like the warmest year in the last 2000 years is the product of graphing impartially the databases. Nothing artificial or invented there. It’s good you have noticed the warmest year happened in the 10th century.
SOD,
as usual, your clarity and intelligence boggles the mind. But, in my ignorance I have a couple of questions.
“…stop watering your garden. you cant influence the sun anyway.”
And if you shade the plant from all insolation??
“Curtin assumes, that CO2 dominates plant growth. again, don t waste time watering your garden.”
And if you block all CO2 from the plant??
“could you simply explain, why a global factor should dominate tree growth, and not local ones?”
Hmmm, could we possibly agree about something?? Since the regional Yamal environment does not display a modern Hockey Stick, please explain to us ignorami again why Yamal should be validated against a Globally Averaged Hockey Stick??
In other words, does a tree on the Yamal peninsula respond to the insolation, warmth, rainfall, and nutrients present in the Amazon Basin or some other remote area, or even a globally averaged conflation of environmental inputs as opposed to what is physically present in the plants local environment??
Insolation IS a local phenomenon. The absolute amount may be relatively global at TOA, but, the actual amount received by each plant is modified by clouds, canopy, other atmospheric chemistry, sun/earth orbital geometry, terrain.
Finally,
“i am aware of photosynthesis. so you think that luminosity in winter helps grow trees in siberia?”
Actually, since AGW is primarily a signal of warmer nights and winters, exactly how does a DORMANT plant in the Yamal Peninsula register this signal??
Well it’s been equally entertaining watching the denialist filth waste a week on nothing.
So we agree all that’s happened is that we’ve had a good old laugh.
McIntyre has to keep reminding everyone, there were no accusations of fraud or cherrypicking. One has to wonder what “Most Disquieting” actually means.
Wet-blanket Larry has some general comments about the ‘magic’ tree phenomenon. Obviously, tree rings do not tell the whole story of climate history. Instead they provide several different chapters in the overall saga: availability of water (applies to Bristlecone Pines in the desert mountains of the Basin-and-Range area of the US), insolation, competition with other trees for soil nutrients, CO2, and yes temperature.
However there’s a second issue. It has also been suggested that the ‘magic’ tree is an ‘outlier’. According to Wikipedia,
“In statistics, an outlier[1] is an observation that is numerically distant from the rest of the data.”
There are 3 possible reasons for an apparent ‘outlier’ in a sample:
1. the luck of the draw in a sample of a larger population having a well-behaved Probability Density Function;
2. a relatively large methodological error that did not surface in the other measurements;
3. the data has some kind of weird non-Gaussian PDF.
There’s nothing scientific about throwing away information, not even ‘outliers’. In Cases 1 and 3, rejecting apparent ‘outliers’ is cherry-picking. And Case 2 does not apply here. Why? There was no good reason to suspect disproportionate methodological error in that particular measurement that was missing in all of the others. If you repeated that particular measurement, you’d get essentially the same result. There’s no rationale for discarding the ‘magic’ tree.
Then what is the ‘magic’ tree trying to tell us? Hey blokes, you need a much larger sample size!
So why do we have criteria–like the Q Test–for flagging and discarding ‘outliers’ in the first place? Although statistical methods are not my specialty, I’ll offer an opinion anyway.
Keith Briffa did not invent cherry-picking; it’s a perennial issue. Many years ago, the graybeards of mathematical statistics decided to get a handle on the problem. Since cherry-picking can’t be rooted out completely, they created statistical harm-reduction methods in order to cut back on the data-abuse.
Apparently, that mathematical result has been dumbed down for Cookbook Stat 101. Some magic-formula-worshippers in the scientific and engineering professions are laboring under the illusion that ‘outliers’ *should* be rejected. Unfortunately, that’s not a very nuanced view of the issue.
“to now advise world leaders that there are potential problems with the methodology”
Yes all world leaders are morons who take all statements to them as gospel truth. That’s why the poor dears are so confused. Imagine you’re a brainless world leader, “Iraq has WMD”, “No it hasn’t”, OMG brain meltdown! Perhaps that’s why there’s an epidemic of depression among the high and mighty?
Sod wrote:
so you think that tree-ring width and density correlates well with local temperature? Because if you do, then I’d be pleased to know why we need to post-hoc pick the “good” trees by their correlation to the instrumental record. Just asking…
A fine question and one which would perhaps be better aimed at Michael Mann – after all, the original Mann et al hockey stick used proxies that were “tele-connected”, and some that showed no correlation with local temperature, yet were included because they showed correlation with GMST. This aspect was defended by the authors and the RC crowd, including Briffa, so you can hardly now claim that this is some “denialist tactic” designed to confuse the unwary and ignorant without putting the same accusation up against Mann, Bradley, Hughes, Briffa et al. And since that is unlikely to happen…
SJT wrote:
Not from him there wasn’t – he doesn’t make such accusations without iron-clad proof. In fact, if you read SM’s comments, he explicitly states the exact opposite. But why let the facts get in the way of a good story, eh? Why not blame SM for comments that other people make on their own blogs, right? I mean, it’s not like anyone ever twisted, say, an RC blog rant into an accusation of fraud, or mis-represented the findings on a paper that supports the AGW hypothesis, did they? Oh wait…
What he (SM) did show, and what Briffa has since admitted is quite correct, is that the reconstruction is extremely sensitive to minor variations – hardly surprising when, as SM points out, there are only a dozen series used in the latter part, and one of those is an 8 sigma outlier! Odd really – there are more tree core data available for the 15thC than the 20thC (IIRC, 30 vs. 12).
What Briffa has so far failed to answer, and the real question that SM asked is: why, when the data certainly exists, did Briffa exclude data that seems, at first glance, to be eminently usable? It came from the same scientists and was even part of the chronologies they created, but was left out of the reconstruction. Why – that’s what we don’t know, and not for lack of asking. Briffa has obscured his data and methods for this paper for a decade, and his selection precedures remain a mystery – there is insufficient information in the paper and the SI to figure it out and he has not been forthcoming about it.
The whole thing could have been – hell, should have been – done and dusted at least 5 years ago, if Briffa had done the right thing and archived his data as per journal policies. Or if the journals had enforced their data archiving policies. Or even if the journal had pulled it’s collective head out of it’s arse and realised that asking for the data cannot be fobbed off to the author of a previous study that published it, when that is the same author now citing it and that author refuses to free the data. Fortunately, Phil Trans Roy Soc seems to be one of the few journals that rigourously enforce such policies, and now we know – it’s a long way from “conclusive” and even a goodly distance from “robust”. Exactly what that means to other published papers that relied on this paper is currently unclear. I suspect that such ramifications will be swept under the carpet in order to stay “on message”. I hope not, but past experience is not promising in this respect.
Larry Fields wrote:
In this case, it certainly appears that the “outliers” are the ones selected for! That certainly turns the whole thing on it’s head, doesn’t it? I mean, you could certainly make a case for why the outliers should be rejected, but to even attempt to suggest that the outliers are the real data and the rest is rubbish is pushing the bounds of credibility well beyond breaking point, IMO
Luke posted a paper by a World Vision/Monash Uni economist who attempts to inform us what the REAL science about AGW is all about and why Sceptics have it wrong.
I agree with Cohenite that most of his points can be easily be refuted.
Here’s a paper by a REAL climate scientist informing us why AGW science is totally wrong.
http://www.nzcpr.com/guest166.htm
Cohenite (04/10, 2:39 pm): the thing is the distribution is based on Tave which, as we know from Arthur’s famous piece, is 288K; at that temperature the Wien peak is 10.0625 um. I could be wrong but will you check?
Yes, you are wrong. The relevant temperature is the not the surface temperature (288 K), but the temperature corresponding to emission at the top of the atmosphere. As is well known from atmospheric physics textbooks (the same textbooks that so many posters here do not have the time to read and understand), that temperature is considerably lower than 288 K. At an effective (not average) temp. of 253 K (Goody & Walker), the maximum in the energy density (lambda) distribution would be calculated, from the famous displacement law, as approx. 11.5 microns. As Parris writes, the CO2 band is situated “… right near the peak of the longwave radiation spectrum”. The point is that the CO2 band is wide and extensive enough to be able to overlap with a large fraction of the outgoing LW spectral distribution
Cohenite (04/10, 2:39 pm): “As you know the LW spectrum is based on Stefan-Boltzmann where j* = ^T4 and the distribution curve reflecting the LW energy spectrum and intensity is based on Wien where ^max = b/T;”
No, not “based on Wien”. This wording makes it appear that the Wien approximation (rather than displacement law) is being assumed. The Wien approximation to the Planck distribution approximates the energy distribution in regions where the frequency is high (ultraviolet, visible), but not in lower frequency regions (infrared). (More accurately, for Wien’s approx. applicability: Planck’s constant*frequency >> Boltzmann’s constant*T.)
Further, I would not have chosen to say “…the LW spectrum is based on Stefan-Boltzmann”. SB expresses an integrated, or total, radiance over all wavelengths; for the GHG problems, we are usually interested in spectrally resolved radiances, in which case explicit Planck spectral distributions need to be evaluated.
I also disagree with an earlier, recent post of yours- I don’t remember where- in which you asserted- with no evidence supplied, that CO2 and H2O band overlap was considerable.
janama (12:59 pm): “I agree with Cohenite that most of his points can be easily be refuted.”
So, why don’t you refute them, one by one, and put the refutations on your website?
Cohenite (04/10, 2:39 pm): “As you know the LW spectrum is based on Stefan-Boltzmann where j* = ^T4 and the distribution curve reflecting the LW energy spectrum and intensity is based on Wien where ^max = b/T;”
Ask him to explain why Gerlich and Teuschner is consistent with Miskolczi to you.
Comment from: peterd October 5th, 2009 at 1:59 pm
I also disagree with an earlier, recent post of yours- I don’t remember where- in which you asserted- with no evidence supplied, that CO2 and H2O band overlap was considerable.
Oh! What’s the absorptivity of CO2 at its current Pp?
peterd wrote:
Perhaps you can help me understand your point here Peter.
It was my understanding that the radiative forcing from CO2 will increase the surface temperature until such time as an equilibrium is reached LW outgoing to SW incoming, and that, below the tropopause at any rate, we should see an “amplicification” at higher altitudes (the lapse rate should reduce – although Gavin @ RC seems to contradict IPCC on several points in this discussion). Meanwhile, above the tropopause (I hope I have that right – that’s where the lapse rate changes sign, right?), we should see a cooling as there are more radiationally interactive gasses around (ie, more CO2) to emit and less stuff between those gasses and the “ultimate heat sink” of space. Now correct me if I’m wrong, but surface temperature (at least as we measure it) has changed by less than 1C (or K if you prefer), the tropical tropospheric hot-spot has so far been unobserved (perhaps it remains unobservable, although there is much discussion on this point as I understand it), and TOA outgoing radiation has very slightly increased (although whether or not this is actually discernable above the “noise” I am unsure – I believe that Spencer has data on this, although I haven’t looked or checked). Now given IPCC’s published assessments of climate sensitivity of 1.5 to 4.5C per 2 times CO2, and given the log relationship, and given that we are 40+% of the way to a doubling, there seems to be some discrepencies arising. For instance, is there any reason to expect that we would see more effect from the second “half-doubling” than the first half, because it sure looks like, from the data we currently have, CO2 sensitivity is near – if not below – the lower estimate from IPCC. Or, to take another slant, if the conversion of SW incoming to LW outgoing is dependant on the surface (which it seems to me it is), then a lack of change in the surface temperature (or it being lower than expected, which ever you prefer) is evidence of lower sensitivity than suggested by IPCC – that is, if the only way to get the incoming SW to convert to heat and hence drive the outgoing LW higher, is for the surface to thermalise the incoming SW and thence through conduction, convection and radiation transfer that heat upwards, then a lack of (or a lower than expected value of) surface warming would seem to indicate that the hypothesis is flawed. Especially given the lack of the TTHS – which, if present and detected, may have argued that conduction, convection and radiation has somehow managed to keep the surface near the same temperature while still passing heat up the chain (atmosphere) to where it can escape. So either I’m missing something (quite possible – even likely!) or IPCC assessments of 2 x CO2 climate sensitivity is too high. It seems to me that Pielke Snr, Klobach(sp?) et al may have a point – LULC changes to surface temperature, which it has been argued is seriously underestimated by IPCC, may explain all we’ve documented to date, or at least a significant fraction of it – if Michaels & McKitrick are correct as well, maybe even all of it!
So, why don’t you refute them, one by one, and put the refutations on your website?
petered – I don’t need to refute an economist when I have the valid opinion of a reputable climate scientist. Anyway, all Parris does is quote RealClimate.
why don’t you refute Chris de Freitas’ claims?
http://www.nzcpr.com/guest166.htm
He’s quite correct when he suggests there are far more important environmental problems than AGW.
de Freitas – hahahahahaha – as source – hahahahaha – what a rambling load of pseudo-political twaddle.
as for “Currently, we are in the eleventh year of a global temperature stasis. Sea levels, which have been rising for the past 300 years, show no sign of acceleration. Antarctica is cooling. Hurricane activity is down and does not appear to be connected to carbon dioxide emissions. Annual average Arctic sea ice extent, which is determined largely by wind and ocean currents, is increasing once again – the recent decline was hardly alarming as it was less than that which occurred in 1930s.” ALL WRONG OR MISLEADING – CRAP ALERT ! SOUND KLAXHORN HORN !!
hahahahahahahaha gawd !! NZ sceptics – hahahahahahahahahahaha
Luke is quoting an economist to justify the scientific basis for AGW?
Hmmm, not having read it I will venture a guess that the economist is a Keynesian, and hence not an economist but a political proselytiser for socialism of the Fabian kind that Keynes was.
Hence the need for Luke to direct his petards to counter the science of scepticism with marxist ordnance, having run out of scientific munitions.
Interesting example of barrel scraping, none the less.
Luke,
Inconvenient data is not crap, no matter how much you wish it were so.
World cyclone levels, and more importantly, the energy of those cyclones, is down. Period.
Arctic is growing, and dissembling about volume of a floating sea pack is not going to work as a distraction.
Sea levels are not doing anything they have not done for a long time.
OHC is still vastly too low to support AGW theory.
And the Antarctic ice is growing.
The only klaxhorn howling is the emergency abandon ship alert of the good ship mv AGW, run aground on the reef of facts.
Sorry Hunter WRONG – peak storm energy speeds are UP, Arctic ice trend is DOWN, sea levels are doing what you’d expect with AGW. Antarctic should be growing !
Take a hike denialist scumbo.
Louis – nah – just thought it was a good summary. He’s just the editor.
Must say though you did write a considered piece to me the other day. Which I forgot to respond to in all the excitement. Remind me if you can find it.
Luke,
Simply chirping away in the ultrasonic does not really convey much information.
But here is the ACE, published by NOAA:
http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/outlooks/figure3.gif
You did hope no one would notice your avoidance of OHC. That is wise for someong trying to pretend AGW is meaningful:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/08/11/ocean-heat-content-and-earth%E2%80%99s-radiation-imbalance/
And I am not sorry to do this, but I do feel sorry for you in your fact-proof thinking.
Arctic ice is up year over year.
Even the BBC, propaganda tool for AGW alarmism admits that much:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8261953.stm
Screech on, Luke. Your ensemble style of shouting is winning so many friends and supporters for your religious belief.
“Arctic ice is up year over year.” no it’s NOT you utter idiot. Do a graph ! Don’t be so stupid as to assume a monotonic decrease year after year. Surely you’re not hanging on every wiggle.
OHC
– Levitus, S., J. I.
Antonov, T. P. Boyer, R. A. Locarnini, H. E. Garcia, and A. V.
Mishonov (2009), Global ocean heat content 1955–2008 in light of
recently revealed instrumentation problems, Geophys. Res. Lett., 36,
L07608, doi:10.1029/2008GL037155.
Is up fool – inability to read? !
Your problem Hunter is that fundamentally you’re a boring uninformed denialist. Wattusp as source – hahahahahahahahahahha. Indeed.
Like most denialist scum enough will never be enough for you and you’ll be forever a wiggle watcher in the face of long term trends..
Luke,
Your gang hangs on every drought, every storm and every warm sunny day as proof of the coming apocalypse.
Yet I cannot point out a three season trend in the ice?
And I do notice you have retreated away from your false claims on tropical cyclones. That is good.
The Wattsup link, dear Luke, led directly to the paper. The paper that shows the AGW prediction on OHC is wrong.
Since the instrumentation problems were tiny, and the lack of OHC is vast, perhaps you had best stop shrieking and cackling, and deal with the reality: AGW is a failed theory of how climate adjusts to greenhouse gasses. Not one of the climatic manifestations predicted have been shown to be outside of the margin of error and natural variability.
I may be boring, but your hysterical reaction to my, and nearly every other skeptical post, suggests you think otherwise.
In the light of actual measurements, I think you have hit upon the perfect description of what AGW fanatics and promoters are all about:
Wiggle watching.
It is, after all, how someone looking at random, highly variable data can convince themselves they are in fact looking at the end of the world.
Due ot Luke’s hysterical reaction, I took the time to review Chris de Freitas’ piece.
Hmmm….a reasonable, coherent outline of the issue, vs. Luke (and RC, and Hansen, and Gore, and Schmidt, and Romm, and etc. etc. etc.,) hysteria, ad hom and evasiveness.
Now who is more credible?
A bunch of hysterics who are proven to mislead and to justify it, or someone who is cogent and well informed?
Dear Colleagues… Here the definitive article on how insolation correlates to treering growth:
http://www.biocab.org/Insolation_Treerings_Growth.html
A graph from raw data was included in the article, and a short comment about how the mechanism of photorespiration works was added in the conclusions .
Regards,
Nasif Nahle
30 year trend you ignorant hillbilly !
Your gang hangs on every every cold day as proof of the coming ice age apocalypse. – hahahahahaha – inspiration in every wiggle
Another Douglas paper – hahahahahahaha
“And I do notice you have retreated away from your false claims on tropical cyclones. ” nope.
In fact
Temperature dependence of global precipitation extremes
Shaw Chen Liu,1,2 Congbin Fu,3,4 Chein-Jung Shiu,1 Jen-Ping Chen,2 and Futing Wu3
Received 27 July 2009; accepted 13 August 2009; published 5 September 2009.
[1] Data from the Global Precipitation Climatology Project
(GPCP) covering the period 1979–2007 are examined for
changes of precipitation extremes as a function of global
mean temperature by using a new method which focuses on
interannual differences rather than time series. We find that
the top 10% bin of precipitation intensity increases by about
95% for each degree Kelvin (K) increase in global mean
temperature, while 30%–60% bins decrease by about
20% K1. The global average precipitation intensity
increases by about 23% K1, substantially greater than the
increase of about 7% K1 in atmospheric water-holding
capacity estimated by the Clausius-Clapeyron equation. The
large increase of precipitation intensity is qualitatively
consistent with the hypothesis that the precipitation intensity
should increase by more than 7% K1 because of the
additional latent heat released from the increased moisture.
Our results also provide an independent evidence in support
for significant increases in the number and/or size of strong
global tropical cyclones. However an ensemble of 17 latest
generation climate models estimates an increase of only
about 2% K1 in precipitation intensity, about one order of
magnitude smaller than our value, suggesting that the risk of
extreme precipitation events due to global warming is
substantially greater than that estimated by the climate
models. Citation: Liu, S. C., C. Fu, C.-J. Shiu, J.-P. Chen, and
F. Wu (2009), Temperature dependence of global precipitation
extremes, Geophys. Res. Lett., 36, L17702, doi:10.1029/
2009GL040218.
You’re a moron Hunter …
Luke,
You can twist and turn, but it is your gang that follows the wiggles. We realists say it is all within the mean and natural range of variability.
speaking of ignorant outback hicks, you try and beat me on the head over your 30 year averages for Arctic ice, then come back and talk about interannual changes in precip, instead of time series.
BTW, you were defending the claims of Antarctic heating, now you are saying again that its growing ice is AGW expected. Are you at least fooling yourself?
And the cute line your abstract offers: “Our results also provide an independent evidence in support
for significant increases in the number and/or size of strong
global tropical cyclones. ” Where they say, in effect, ignore your eyes and anemometers, and believe our models!
And then this gem of bs:
“However an ensemble of 17 latest
generation climate models estimates an increase of only
about 2% K1 in precipitation intensity, about one order of
magnitude smaller than our value, ….”
What is interesting is that I do not recall interannual changes in world temps in the range of Xo’sKelvin. and since, as you always point out when cold or wet events happen, weather is regional and not monotonic. So my bet is that this just another garbage AGW propanada report designed to pretend there is agreat crisis coming.
The great part is their model predicts *an order of magnitude* greater storm response to AGW than the models, which have totally over stated the actual reality.
So I, who simply post the NOAA data on what storms are doing (nothing strange at all) and that ACE, like OHC, is down, am the moron.
While your gang, self-declared internet geniuses, have some made up models that predict anywhere from ~more to >10X more extreme weather than reality, are the clever ones.
You are blogging proof that intelligence falls as committee size increases.
Of course X * 0 = 0…..
Next year, when Arctic ice grows even more, and the volume continues to increase, and world ACE and OHC is still not cooperating, what tired used cow fodder are you going to be flinging then?
Thank you, Jennifer, for getting Professor Keith Briffa to comment.
I hope that world leaders will carefully study his statements below and ask if they justify the havoc that has been created by the scare of CO2-induced global warming:
1. “My colleagues and I are working to develop methods that are capable of expressing robust evidence of climate changes using tree-ring data.”
2. “We have not yet had a chance to explore the details of McIntyre’s analysis or its implication for temperature reconstruction at Yamal but we have done considerably more analyses exploring chronology production and temperature calibration that have relevance to this issue but they are not yet published.”
3. “We will expand on this initial comment on the McIntyre posting when we have had a chance to review the details of his work.”
In case Professor Briffa reads these comments, let me end my message by assuring him that the results of space-age measurements since 1969 [1,2] show unambiguously that:
(a) The Sun is a variable star, an unsteady heat source.
(b) Neutron-neutron interactions are repulsive, not attractive.
(c) Hydrogen is a solar waste product, not the primary solar fuel.
(d) The stormy Sun influence Earth’s climate much more than CO2.
(e) The Sun is a diffuser powered by repulsive interactions between neutrons.
(f) The Standard Solar Model of a Hydrogen-filled Sun is absolutely obsolete.
(g) There are no balls of Hydrogen in the sky, and solar neutrinos do not oscillate.
REFERENCES:
1. “The Sun is a plasma diffuser that sorts atoms by mass”, Physics of Atomic Nuclei 69 (2006) 1847-1856; Yadernaya Fizika 69, number 11 (2006); http://arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/0609509
2. “Earth’s Heat Source – The Sun”, Energy and Environment 20 (2009) 131-144; http://arxiv.org/pdf/0905.0704
With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel
Former NASA PI for Apollo
http://myprofile.cos.com/manuelo09
No it’s not made on models fool. My bet Hunter is that you’re a hillbilly.
OHC – yawn you would have used that before only to be disappointed in the long run. Wiggle watcher. After perusing Fig 1 in Levitus et al you’d have to feel lucky (punk).
Or perhaps you’d like:
Spatial and temporal evolution of Pine Island Glacier thinning,
1995–2006
D. J. Wingham,1 D. W. Wallis,1 and A. Shepherd2,3
Received 12 May 2009; revised 24 July 2009; accepted 5 August 2009; published 9 September 2009.
[1] We use ERS-2 and ENVISAT satellite radar altimetry
to examine spatial and temporal changes in the rate of
thinning of the Pine Island Glacier, West Antarctica, during
the period 1995 to 2006. We show that the pattern of
thinning has both accelerated and spread inland to
encompass tributaries flowing into the central trunk of the
glacier. Within the 5,400 km2 central trunk, the average rate
of volume loss quadrupled from 2.6 ± 0.3 km3 yr1 in 1995
to 10.1 ± 0.3 km3 yr1 in 2006. The region of lightly
grounded ice at the glacier terminus is extending upstream,
and the changes inland are consistent with the effects of a
prolonged disturbance to the ice flow, such as the effects of
ocean-driven melting. If the acceleration continues at its
present rate, the main trunk of PIG will be afloat within
some 100 years, six times sooner than anticipated.
Citation: Wingham, D. J., D. W. Wallis, and A. Shepherd
(2009), Spatial and temporal evolution of Pine Island Glacier
thinning, 1995 – 2006, Geophys. Res. Lett., 36, L17501,
doi:10.1029/2009GL039126.
or
Declining annual streamflow distributions in the Pacific Northwest
United States, 1948–2006
C. H. Luce1 and Z. A. Holden2
Received 1 June 2009; revised 14 July 2009; accepted 27 July 2009; published 22 August 2009.
[1] Much of the discussion on climate change and water in
the western United States centers on decreased snowpack
and earlier spring runoff. Although increasing variability in
annual flows has been noted, the nature of those changes is
largely unexplored. We tested for trends in the distribution
of annual runoff using quantile regression at 43 gages in the
Pacific Northwest. Seventy-two percent of the stations
showed significant (a = 0.10) declines in the 25th percentile
annual flow, with half of the stations exceeding a 29% decline
and a maximum decline of 47% between 1948 and 2006.
Fewer stations showed statistically significant declines in
either median or mean annual flow, and only five had a
significant change in the 75th percentile, demonstrating
that increases in variance result primarily from a trend of
increasing dryness in dry years. The asymmetric trends
in streamflow distributions have implications for water
management and ecology well beyond those of shifted
timing alone, affect both rain and snow-dominated
watersheds, and contribute to earlier timing trends in highelevation
watersheds. Citation: Luce, C. H., and Z. A. Holden
(2009), Declining annual streamflow distributions in the Pacific
Northwest United States, 1948–2006, Geophys. Res. Lett., 36,
L16401, doi:10.1029/2009GL039407.
or
El Nin˜o in a changing climate
Sang-Wook Yeh1, Jong-Seong Kug1, Boris Dewitte2, Min-Ho Kwon3, Ben P. Kirtman4 & Fei-Fei Jin3
El Nin˜o events, characterized by anomalous warming in the eastern
equatorial Pacific Ocean, have global climatic teleconnections
and are the most dominant feature of cyclic climate variability on
subdecadal timescales. Understanding changes in the frequency or
characteristics of El Nin˜o events in a changing climate is therefore
of broad scientific and socioeconomic interest. Recent studies1–5
show that the canonical El Nin˜o has become less frequent and that
a different kind of El Nin˜o has become more common during the
late twentieth century, in which warm sea surface temperatures
(SSTs) in the central Pacific are flanked on the east and west by
cooler SSTs. This type of El Nin˜o, termed the central Pacific El Nin˜o
(CP-El Nin˜o; also termed the dateline El Nin˜o2, El Nin˜o Modoki3 or
warm pool El Nin˜o5), differs from the canonical eastern Pacific El
Nin˜o (EP-El Nin˜o) in both the location of maximumSST anomalies
and tropical–midlatitude teleconnections. Here we show changes
in the ratio of CP-El Nin˜o to EP-El Nin˜o under projected global
warming scenarios from the Coupled Model Intercomparison
Project phase 3 multi-model data set6. Using calculations based
on historical El Nin˜o indices, we find that projections of anthropogenic
climate change are associated with an increased frequency
of the CP-El Nin˜o compared to the EP-El Nin˜o. When restricted
to the six climate models with the best representation of the
twentieth-century ratio of CP-El Nin˜o to EP-El Nin˜o, the occurrence
ratio of CP-El Nin˜o/EP-El Nin˜o is projected to increase as
much as five times under global warming. The change is related to a
flattening of the thermocline in the equatorial Pacific.
or
Extensive dynamic thinning on the margins of the
Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets
Hamish D. Pritchard1, Robert J. Arthern1, David G. Vaughan1 & Laura A. Edwards2
Many glaciers along the margins of the Greenland and Antarctic
ice sheets are accelerating and, for this reason, contribute increasingly
to global sea-level rise1–7. Globally, ice losses contribute
1.8mmyr21 (ref. 8), but this could increase if the retreat of ice
shelves and tidewater glaciers further enhances the loss of
grounded ice9 or initiates the large-scale collapse of vulnerable
parts of the ice sheets10. Ice loss as a result of accelerated flow,
known as dynamic thinning, is so poorly understood that its
potential contribution to sea level over the twenty-first century
remains unpredictable11. Thinning on the ice-sheet scale has been
monitored by using repeat satellite altimetry observations to track
small changes in surface elevation, but previous sensors could not
resolve most fast-flowing coastal glaciers12. Here we report the use
of high-resolution ICESat (Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite)
laser altimetry to map change along the entire grounded margins
of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. To isolate the dynamic
signal, we compare rates of elevation change from both fastflowing
and slow-flowing ice with those expected from surface
mass-balance fluctuations. We find that dynamic thinning of glaciers
now reaches all latitudes in Greenland, has intensified on key
Antarctic grounding lines, has endured for decades after ice-shelf
collapse, penetrates far into the interior of each ice sheet and is
spreading as ice shelves thin by ocean-driven melt. In Greenland,
glaciers flowing faster than 100myr21 thinned at an average rate
of 0.84myr21, and in the Amundsen Sea embayment of
Antarctica, thinning exceeded 9.0myr21 for some glaciers. Our
results show that the most profound changes in the ice sheets
currently result from glacier dynamics at ocean margins.
Be in no doubt – it’s on !
“Be in no doubt – it’s on !”
But is it Mann, man or manic made….
A new paper by Professor Richard Lindzen that shows the effect of doubling CO2 will produce less than 0.5°C of possible warming, in contrast to the model predictions of over 3°C. This is only one sixth of the catastrophic temperature predicted by the IPCC, and certainly nothing to worry about since at the current rate of 2ppmv/year it will take 193 years for this doubling and 0.5°C temperature increase to occur.
Over 20 years ago the whole global warming issue was started by climate models that used a forcing parameter based on 0.6°C of observed warming from a 100ppmv observed increase in atmospheric CO2. The world has been warming since the Little Ice Age at a rate of about 0.5°C/century, and since the observed warming of 0.6°C took place over a century the 0.5°C must be subtracted to determine the temperature increase attributable to CO2.
Since this is only 0.1°C but the climate models are based on 0.6°C the climate models have a forcing parameter that gives CO2 increases six times the forcing than what the measured values allow. It is this false six fold overstatement of the effect from CO2 that underlies the entire premise of AGW alarmism, and it has taken over two decades to finally develop physical proof that the models overstate global warming by a factor of six.
Since the work by Lindzen has clearly passed rigorous peer review, and unlike the MBH98 Temperature Proxy, there has not been a single piece of evidence, that contradicts the assertions of the Lindzen Paper, The IPCC has no choice because of its scientific mandate to discard the computer model projections and accept the six fold decrease in projected warming from CO2 as the physical basis for all further reports. This will put an end to global warming fallacies, and give world governments the “out” that they need to stop these wasteful policies addressing a problem that does not exist.
Spangled Drongo wrote:
“Since the work by Lindzen has clearly passed rigorous peer review, and unlike the MBH98 Temperature Proxy, there has not been a single piece of evidence, that contradicts the assertions of the Lindzen Paper, The IPCC has no choice because of its scientific mandate to discard the computer model projections and accept the six fold decrease in projected warming from CO2 as the physical basis for all further reports.”
Good news! I hope that you’re right about the IPCC having no choice.
pd; you say:
“Yes, you are wrong. The relevant temperature is the not the surface temperature (288 K), but the temperature corresponding to emission at the top of the atmosphere. As is well known from atmospheric physics textbooks (the same textbooks that so many posters here do not have the time to read and understand), that temperature is considerably lower than 288 K. At an effective (not average) temp. of 253 K (Goody & Walker), the maximum in the energy density (lambda) distribution would be calculated, from the famous displacement law, as approx. 11.5 microns. As Parris writes, the CO2 band is situated “… right near the peak of the longwave radiation spectrum”. The point is that the CO2 band is wide and extensive enough to be able to overlap with a large fraction of the outgoing LW spectral distribution”
11.365um actually but anyway, this is a restatement of the classic description of the process of AGW by Spencer Weart;
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/06/a-saturated-gassy-argument/
This is a nonpareil bit of rubbish; that it is rubbish theoretically is indicated, as I said, by Arthur Smith’s essay;
http://arxiv.org/abs/0802.4324
Which is to say, a TOA temperature basis for emissions is meaningless without an AGW heated surface. It is also rubbish empirically as Lindzen’s comparison of ERBE results with computer models based on the TOA temperature priority show;
http://www.leif.org/EOS/2009GL039628-pip.pdf
Page 17 is relevant and telling; if as you say the TOA temperature basis for emissions was relevant, as AGW demands, the models would be correct.
luke, you are recycling without considering previous responses to your references; your Pritchard paper says this;
“Globally, ice losses contribute
1.8mmyr21 (ref. 8),”
Yet this paper notes an error in the Jason measurements means they have overestimated sea-level rise since 2005 by ~ 2 mm yr, which is more than the modeled increase in sea level from supposed glacier melt.
http://www.ocean-sci-discuss.net/6/31/2009/osd-6-31-2009.html
This is a nonpareil bit of rubbish; that it is rubbish theoretically is indicated, as I said, by Arthur Smith’s essay;
Utter twaddle. Smith’s essay has nothing to do with the ASGA. He created a simple model to demonstrate that greenhouse gases are real, despite what many naysayers said at sites like this one. (And still believe, from what I can gather). ASGA details a more complete analysis of CO2 as a GHG.
As usual little will you obfuscate and miss the point; Smith’s essay purports to show that the surface temperature creates and is created by the GH effect; for that GH effect to be enhanced is again based on the surface temperature; the TOA effect which pd goes on about [and which doesn’t exist] is a secondary product of the surface effect. You must be confused because I criticised your hero Spencer.
As usual little will you obfuscate and miss the point; Smith’s essay purports to show that the surface temperature creates and is created by the GH effect; for that GH effect to be enhanced is again based on the surface temperature; the TOA effect which pd goes on about [and which doesn’t exist] is a secondary product of the surface effect. You must be confused because I criticised your hero Spencer.
If you keep talking like that, pd is likely to have a brain meltdown. You don’t have the first idea of what is going on.
The Luke, when confronted with point by point counters to his hysterical asertions, simply changes the subject and dumps out stuff, that if he is able to actually read it, shows his gang is really offering nothing factual.
I love the way the hype sales piece referenced claims to *know* that these processes are new, unique and apocalyptic, yet in the same abstract, state the processes are poorly understood and unpredictable.
And none of you poor mannered fear mongers seem able to actually converse on a topic you claim to know much about.
In my experience in investigating and dealing with commercial fraud, when a party behaves as you do, they are ignorant of the topic being discussed.
Your obsession in pretending that the skeptics, who simply point out the obvious fact that climate is not changing remarkably or dangerously, are wiggle watchers, when it is your side publishing libraries of junk books claiming every weather event is *proof* of AGW.
You yourselves have embarrassed yourself (if you all had any shame) making pitiful juvenile claims about droughts and heat waves.
And then you hope to bluster your way out of it by projecting your wiggle obsession onto others.
It is AGW promoters who pretend a 0.6oC change over decades is monstrous and deadly.
As if.
You silliest person. Weather my foot. When faced with numerous excellent papers showing major changes worldwide in many systems – TRENDS over decades – backed up by modelling studies on mechanisms – all you can do is wave your hands even more frantically. You can’t even construct a proper sentence in critique. Don’t try to spin your way out with pretentious comments like “new, unique and apocalyptic” – how utterly dishonest.
You dopey moron – wake up.
At some point even a thickhead like you might get a tad curious ! Every glass in the shop seems to have a crack !
This is NOT about commercial fraud – this is about dispassionate science. We’re not even talking “books”. Shows how little you even comprehend. I’m continually amazed by the sheer stupidity of your comments.
My experience with science and the level of your comments indicates to me we’re dealing with someone with little comprehension, well off the reservation and a low way from home.
Luke,
I quote the paper, point out the basic flaw in its claim, and you drivel on about my being stupid.
Between your ridiculous logo, to your over use of exclamation marks and constant, uninformative ad homs, you utterly fail to see the irony of your claiming this is ‘dispassionate’.
From big wigs like Hansen, to itty bitty gnats like you, AGW believers, when confrinted with inconvenient realities, rely on appeals to authority, ad homs, rude behavioir, etc. And when scammers like Briffa are uncovered, you hope to distract instead of explain. Andyou explanations reliably involve blaming the ones who find the scams, and telling those that are concerned over the scam how stupid they are.
In my experience if it smells like a scam, walks like a scam, and flings poo like a scam, it is a scam.
You are walking, flinging, smelly evidence of a scam.
And I would suggest that to the tax payers you creeps are shaking down with your phony ‘dispassionate science’ based policy demands, the distinction you claim about commercial fraud and what you are doing is not significant.
And as to your claims about my lack of comprehension, from you that is not really meaningful.
It is AGW promoters who pretend a 0.6oC change over decades is monstrous and deadly.
As if.
How can you get something so simple so wrong. 0.6 is the start. It’s not this part that’s the real problem, (although issues are already arising), it’s what’s to come. When the roller coaster starts it’s ride, the first few meters are quite slow and relaxing.
SJT,
You ask:
“How can you get something so simple so wrong. 0.6 is the start. It’s not this part that’s the real problem, (although issues are already arising), it’s what’s to come. When the roller coaster starts it’s ride, the first few meters are quite slow and relaxing.”
You have no evidence that this is a roller coaster or that we are at the start of one.
You have models which have proven to be unreliable.
How can you be so naive as to believe what profiteers and salesmen tell you when they are proven to be misleading?
“Good news! I hope that you’re right about the IPCC having no choice.”
Larry,
Weeell, er, seeing as the charter for the IPCC is to investigate risks posed by human influence on climate and therefore no influence no IPCC, I won’t be holding my breath until they really run out of choices and terminate themselves.
Hunter is right. My experience with science and the level of Luke’s comments indicates to me we’re dealing with someone with little comprehension, and a long way from home. Evidence for this is that in most if not all of the papers he has linked to here, with their catalogues of imminent disasters allegedly due to CO2 and other GHG, the words, carbon, dioxide, and greenhouse gases are not even mentioned. None of them attempts any regression analysis to show the more proximate causes of these disasters waiting to jump on us. Can anybody name a climate “scientist” (if there is such a creature) who has ever published results of such an analysis? Certainly not Mann or Briffa, as they could never find an R2 > 0 for tree rings vis a vis CO2.
You have no evidence that this is a roller coaster or that we are at the start of one.
You have models which have proven to be unreliable.
How can you be so naive as to believe what profiteers and salesmen tell you when they are proven to be misleading?
I was referring to what you said.
It is AGW promoters who pretend a 0.6oC change over decades is monstrous and deadly.
As if.
That is wrong. You may disagree with the projections, but most people here just do not understand the case for AGW, or wilfully misrepresent it.
SJT, with all due respect, my observation is that most people on this blog clearly do understand the case for AGW, have weighed it in the balance and found it wanting. I have read several times here where skeptical bloggers have corrected each other or asked for help on technical matters and accepted such correction with grace. On the other hand, I have not had the privilege of reading any admission of error on your behalf(or Luke etc.).
You are clearly passionate about AGW and I respect that but you are perhaps akin to an architect who is so enamored with his design that he is unable or unwilling to see any flaws in it.
SJT, with all due respect, my observation is that most people on this blog clearly do understand the case for AGW, have weighed it in the balance and found it wanting. I have read several times here where skeptical bloggers have corrected each other or asked for help on technical matters and accepted such correction with grace. On the other hand, I have not had the privilege of reading any admission of error on your behalf(or Luke etc.).
This statement is wrong, and misrepresents the case for AGW, either through ignorance, or intentionally.
It is AGW promoters who pretend a 0.6oC change over decades is monstrous and deadly.
As if.
“You are clearly passionate about AGW and I respect that but you are perhaps akin to an architect who is so enamored with his design that he is unable or unwilling to see any flaws in it.”
Good analogy, Derek. The case for AGW is strongly based on GCMs and here is just another flaw:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/10/06/aerosols-and-cloud-lifetime-effect-cited-as-enormous-uncertainty-in-global-radiation-balance/
Like the indulged baby it gets a new rattle every day.
That’s nothing new, GCMs are not perfect, work is progressing on improving them. They are the only tool we have to look into the future of climate. If you don’t like that, find another reality.
Little Luke, SJT, and old SOD, you have a SOUL MATE!!!!
PeterD,
“The point is that the CO2 band is wide and extensive enough to be able to overlap with a large fraction of the outgoing LW spectral distribution”
Apparently I am dumber than rocks cause I really need this to be shown to me in a spectrum. You know, one of those nice little graphs they draw that show what parts of the spectrum are absorbed and emitted by what?? Can you please post one that shows that your statement isn’t just slightly exagerated???
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
SJT,
If you actually believed what you said about me, you would have expounded the point.
Instead, as usual, you are all hat and no cattle.
I have said nothing not stated by the AGW community as the sum of temp changes in the past ~100 years.
Now if, as is the case every other time I have seen extremists stymied, you are annoyed that I quoted the case accurately, well too bad.
SJT,
Skeptics, unlike AGW true believers, think this reality is the one that counts, and would like to stick with it, and not get lost in the GCM daisy chain of self referential gigo that passes for climate science under the influence of AGW promoters.
Little Luke,
earlier in the thread you were scoffing about CO2 enrichment improving plant growth. I guess all those greenhouse operators that spend a lot of money on running 1000ppm CO2 rates are wasting their money for nothing??
Even better question is how plants are encroaching on the Sahara and other desert areas. How could that happen with alledged higher temps cooking them, droughts drying them out and all the rest of the AGW twaddle???
According to you Alarmists higher temps are driving plants and animals out of range and either flooding them out or dehydrating them!!! How the heck do you explain the greening of the earth during the last 30 years???
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
SJT,
Skeptics, unlike AGW true believers, think this reality is the one that counts, and would like to stick with it, and not get lost in the GCM daisy chain of self referential gigo that passes for climate science under the influence of AGW promoters.
GCMS are not perfect, they do provide a good indication of the range of climate conditions we can expect. Not perfect does not equal useless.
“GCMS are not perfect, they do provide a good indication of the range of climate conditions we can expect. Not perfect does not equal useless.”
As GCMs have a twenty year start with a six-fold overstatement plus endless known unknowns that have been accumulating almost daily plus the unknown unknowns of [naturally] unknown quantity, if “not perfect” does not yet equal “useless”, how long ’till it does, do you think?
The Models have given very good predictions, the ‘six-fold’ meme only occurs if you cherry pick your starting point at the top of a curve, when the models are only designed, and capable of, giving you the long term average. You should therefore only start there evaluation with a starting point of the long term average. Do that and very different picture is given.
So the IPCC’s SPMs and other projections which are all based on these GCMs are somewhere between imperfect and useless by your own measure.
How much should the west be prepared to sacrifice in SOL and taxes to fund this?
And what will be the cost/benefit?
And what will be the cost/benefit?
huge/nada = “indeterminate” undefined radical
Basicly the end product is socialist society where all are in thrall to the state’s quest to erase our existence.
Hunter
“Instead, as usual, you are all hat and no cattle.”
Pay that, in spades.
LOL.
KuhnKat – re 1000ppm – no they’re wasting their money (well probably not). Yes they will get good growth responses – BUT this at optimum temperature, light, water and nutrients. The real world is not like that. It’s call limiting factors. Rainfall is THE limiting factor for most production. And FACE (free air CO2 experiments) never come close to glasshouse numbers. Drought is a real concern and IS happening as the tropics expand and sub-tropics dry. But you’ll only deny it !
So CO2 is not magic dust. Try CO2 fertilising a wheat crop with no water. Still don’t grow !!
Hunter – NONE of those papers were about Hansen. Stop being so utterly disingenuous. You’re commenting on stuff you have not even read. And most likely won’t.
Derek Smith – it my opinion that people on the blog HAVE NOT studied AGW in the slightest. And of course there are problems and errors. But the case continues to mount. If you don’t see the accumulating evidence – a small amount I have quoted in this thread – your attitude to risk is “pretty risky”. What to do about the issue without massive economic upheaval and maintaining a first world standard of living is the problem. Which means nothing will probably be done. And so we will adapt (or not!). Some will, some won’t. Put major droughts through Asia and populations will move. Wars will result. Who knows where it goes.
KuhnKat – sorry “they’re not wasting their money”
Luke wrote:
Is it wrong to point out the errors? If it’s not (and I think it is not), then why the denigration of those such as McIntyre who find such errors, however small? Why the denigration of those such as Spencer who challange the assumptions? Why the denigration of those such as Pielke who claim – not without evidence either – that there are significant human climate forcings other than CO2 and that we ignore them at our peril?
Surely where the “mounting case” is based on assumptions and circumstancial evidence (and it seems to me that for AGW, this is largely the case), it is not just wise, but actually vital that we both question the assumptions and seek empirical evidence to support or refute the circumstancial evidence. For instance: Spencers latest work on (low level) clouds, which suggests that less cloud cover may be the cause of the warming rather than the result of it (ie, forcing not feedback). Such results, if shown to be an accurate representation of reality, would mean a major shift in our understanding of climate and would place a serious question mark over the model results, which feed back into re-analysis data and so on, so dismissing this as “unproven” is, at this point, extremely “risky” all by itself. It’s also worth remembering that such basic and “obvious” assumptions have often been overturned by the insight of a single scientist and a single paper – eg, the assumption that time is constant and the same for all observers everywhere was widespread (it was the “consensus”), “obviously true” and remained uninvestigated until a little known patent clerk published a paper that proposed it could vary and showed that by allowing such, we could explain anomolies that previous, very successful, theories could not. That particular theory (relativity, in case you didn’t guess) is now vital to the operation of such (now) everyday items as sat nav and is well accepted, despite being incomplete and at odds with another, extremely successful, theory that also is vital for the operation of, among other things, sat nav – quantum mechanics. Indeed, the “holy grail” of theoretical physics is a “theory of everything” that somehow unites these seemingly disparate and incompatible theories – something that has, to date, eluded some of the greatest minds in science (eg Einstein and Hawking).
So the claim of “settled” science is bogus and the refuge of scoundrels in the case of climate science – not only is this particular discipline quite young, but the evidence is equivicable and the assumptions unproven; some would even say uninvestigated. Despite that, we have calls for major public policy shifts based on it. This seems to me, as I’ve said before, extremely risky. As I’ve also said before, if there are other reasons – good reasons – to make such changes (and this has certainly been proposed to be the case), and the science remains equivicable and speculative, then it seems to me that it would be prudent to drop the science from the arguement and simply base the need for change on these other arguements. Yet every time I suggest this, or suggest that we need more data (but only because what we currently have really is equivicable in a lot of cases) I find I am the pilloried for it, just as Spencer et al are, and further that I am described as somehow “anti-science”. Frankly, it beggars belief that people are so viciously attacked for asking for proof – proof that the data is valid and proof that the assumptions are realistic and accurate. These people dare to suggest that asking for dispassionate, evidence based science is somehow anti-science. Hey, you may be right, but asking for evidence to back up your claim is not, and never was, anti-science – it’s the exact opposite; the very basis of science!
The style is simply unscholarly. McIntyre drip feeds a stream of R stats code consciousness into the blogosphere which is picked up – amplified and distorted by vested interests. He knows well what he’s doing. In this case it has been a fizzer.
Some of us maybe be Galileos or Einsteins – but alas most of us are not – you’re having yourself on.
Macca should write some journal papers with some alternative analyses. Get some serious peer review. Why “audit” – simply fuelling bogus fears of conspiracy?
The science isn’t settled 100% but IMO there’s far enough evidence now to have an increased level of alert and making some plans.
In fact I think the sceptics have very little chance of altering the science programs simply by their nature of operation.
Luke, mate, Steve Mc and Ross Mc do have peer reviewed papers, and even a “Letter” in PNAS, not to mention Ross’ excellent book debunking the whole concept of GMT. If the average temp. between Siberia and Victoria is 14 oC in January, does that mean you should be out sowing wheat in the former? That jerk Bernard J. at Deltoid evidently thinks so, why not join him in buying an allotment up there? I look forward to seeing your yield data from such sowing.
You added: “the sceptics (sic) have very little chance of altering the science programs simply by their nature of operation”. Well my method of opration is to test the “facts”, and I am sending you now a proof copy of my upcoming paper on Food and CO2 which is due out later this month. I look forward to your point by point demolition, just as my paper takes Stern and Garnaut apart on this issue. Go for it!
Is it wrong to point out the errors? If it’s not (and I think it is not), then why the denigration of those such as McIntyre who find such errors, however small? Why the denigration of those such as Spencer who challange the assumptions? Why the denigration of those such as Pielke who claim – not without evidence either – that there are significant human climate forcings other than CO2 and that we ignore them at our peril?
I can guarantee you that in a body of work the size of that that has gone into AGW research, there will be errors. It goes without saying. What’s so sad about McIntyre is that he has to work so hard to even find any, and even when he thinks he has hit gold, it’s only fools gold. What surprises me is that he has found so little to be critical of.
He also does not ‘audit’ the denialists. He simply stops any discussion of what he knows to be bad science.
SJT. The real issue for ordinary people is that the bad science of the IPCC is leading us all into drastically reduced living standards, but especially for Fanon’s wretched of the earth. The main conclusions of the paper I have sent to Luke are:
1. If the Stern (2007), Garnaut (2008) and Hansen 2008 recommendations for anthropogenic emission reduction targets are adopted at Copenhagen (December 2009) and globally implemented, they will reduce emissions below the growing level of photosynthetic uptakes, and are then likely to lead to the large reductions in agricultural, forestry, and fishery productivity indicated both by my regression results above and by Cline (2007). This will certainly cause more immediate hardship to more people than the as yet non-evident “dangerous” climate change asserted in the advocacy of the IPCC WG1 (Solomon et al. 2007).
2. It follows that emission reduction targets should take into account terrestrial and oceanic uptakes of CO2, which have for 50 years absorbed more than half of global CO2 emissions. That means such targets should never reduce emissions to below either the current or the ongoing level of such global absorption of CO2.
3. Given that the average level of annual net new global biospheric absorption of anthropogenic emissions has been 57% since 1958, which means that net emissions have been only 43% on average, that in turn means the likely Copenhagen target of a 60% reduction by 2050 in total emissions from the 2000 level is already being over-fulfilled. The dangerous fallacy in the Copenhagen targeting is the false belief that reducing total emissions by 60% from the 2000 level will have NO impact on the annual new biospheric absorption, which embodies incremental global NPP, i.e. yields and output of all food crops, livestock, forestry, and fisheries (Lloyd and Farquhar 1996, 2008).
4. The IPCC’s reliance on models (notably Wigley’s MAGICC) based on the Michaelis-Menten function, forces its projections of the atmospheric concentration of CO2 (i.e. [CO2]) to produce a continuous increase to nearly 500 ppm by 2050, and 780 ppm or 1000 ppm by 2100 if not before (Solomon et al. 2007:Fig.10.20). My observationally based parameter yields much more plausible levels that might just reach 450 ppm by 2050 and 562 ppm by 2100 (projecting from end-2008 at the observed growth rate of 0.41% p.a. from 1958 to 2008). The behaviour of the CO2 emissions absorption function will be of the form (1-e-ax), an inverse exponential asymptote, rather than the logarithmic (growth slows down) as used by the Bern models, and the hyperbolic (growth ceases) of the MAGICC models; neither of the latter is supported by observations of the growth of absorption of the total global CO2 sink since 1958.
5. The crucial implication of this paper’s findings for the negotiators who will assemble at Copenhagen in December 2009 is that they should grasp the moral imperative of NOT trying to get the world to abandon cheap fossil fuel energy in favour of uneconomic renewable and other sources, and instead devoting all our resources to raising natural absorption of CO2, for example by helping African and SE Asian countries to raise their cereal yields to North American and European norms. That will not only be cheaper than seeking such will o’ the wisps as Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS), it will have tangible financial benefits, unlike CCS and the like.
I will not respond to any comments by you SJT that do not address each of these points substantively and seriously, unlike your normal style.
Pull-lease – their contribution is so small in the scheme of things. Again this stream of consciousness style of science is simply misleading. A trail of semi-investigated issues.
And Tim – given peer reviewed and published gets more points. I look forward to your point for point refutation of the 8-10 papers I have just sent you. No hand waving now.
Tim says – “and instead devoting all our resources to raising natural absorption of CO2, for example by helping African and SE Asian countries to raise their cereal yields to North American and European norms”
gee Tim – given it’s one planet and same CO2 levels – how come African yields aren’t North American yields ALREADY.
HOLEY COW TIM – perhaps you’ve found …. gee … this is a headline breakthrough – agro-nom-ic diff-er-ences.
Better tell the agricultrural community real quick. They don’t know ! They thought it was CO2 all along.
Utter bunk alert – sound klaxhorn horn !
Comment from: Luke October 9th, 2009 at 6:32 am
…gee Tim – given it’s one planet and same CO2 levels…
Not true.
Luke wrote:
The style is simply unscholarly. McIntyre drip feeds a stream of R stats code consciousness into the blogosphere which is picked up – amplified and distorted by vested interests. He knows well what he’s doing. In this case it has been a fizzer.
So let me see if I have this right – your complaint is that the style is distasteful, not that the facts are wrong? Your complaint is that other people distort what he says? Yet you have no complaint when IPCC publicly issues statements that go against the advise of their own experts! And you have no complaint when people like Gore et al distort the science for their own vested interests! If this particular issue turns out to be “anti” AGW (ie SM is correct, and it “matters”) then do you have any idea how much this hits the AGW “evidence”? How many reconstructions rely on this sort of data? Don’t forget, without such reconstructions the whole “unprecedented warmth” arguement falls flat.
It was not my intention to even suggest that I – or anyone else – is in the same league as those people. Rather, the point is that the data is the data, and that investigating assumptions – no mater how well “accepted” those assumptions may be – is not a bad thing, and is, in fact, a pretty good idea.
Because, as I keep telling you, we are talking about public policy that affects every person on the planet and that is the process that has been developed in order to protect people from all sorts of things – from fraudsters, from honest mistakes, and from the ill-informed. The issue has gone beyond mere science, and has entered the realm of policy and politics – where different rules apply. If you don’t play by those rules, you threaten our entire system of rule of law! Extreme? Sure! But that’s where it may lead, and I for one would prefer to see that we keep in place the checks and balances we have developed over centuries and that have protected us well in that time.
Then how about those plans, then? Don’t give vague “targets” and suggest that “the market” can work it out, lay out a path – spend x dollars, get y gain etc. Do you know, and will you shout from the rooftops, the amount of temperature increase we will “save” ourselves from if we manage to reduce our GHG emissions by 80% by 2050? Do you know what that will cost us? Because from what I can tell, the answers are “about 0.5C at most, or a delay of about 3 years” and “around 1% of GDP or about 1,000 trillion dollars over 50 years”. I’m sorry, but I honestly don’t think that’s good value for money.
Science sometimes “goes off the rails” – over the long term it is self-correcting, but sometimes it takes generational change for it to “fix” itself. In my view, AGW has been seized on by politicians and rent seekers to gain power and money. They have distorted the facts in order to create public fear and a demand to “do something”.
SJT wrote:
Indeed.
What’s so sad is that:
1) it takes nearly a decade for the data to become available – doesn’t look good, regardless of whether there are good reasons or not, especially when it gets “shared” with others (not SM) during that time. It sure looks like only those who agree can get the data in a timely manner. Science? I think not.
2) instead of any criticisms of the research methods being taken on board so they are not repeated, they are ignored with arm-waving arguements of “it doesn’t matter”. Remember that SM has much more stats knowledge than, say, Schmidt or Hansen, so why would they ignore him especially when he as Wegman on his side?
3) RC – who claim to be interested in the science and getting it right – continue to censor reasonable questions on this matter. See Jeff Id’s blog for details, but suffice it to say that it sure looks like RC does not have any arguement based on the data, they just don’t like that someone found a mistake and want to ignore it and hope it goes away.
None of this would matter if it was “just” science, but as I keep saying to you, it’s not – it’s a political and public policy issue now, and the bar needs must be set higher. In such a case, an audit of the basis of the AGW arguement as summarised by IPCC is hardly unusual. That it takes a private individual to do it, and that he has so many problems obtaining the data is what is unusual. It looks bad – and of course, in politics – unlike science – perception is reality. If the case is strong, then an audit of the case should be of no concern. Oh – and auditers look at what you are doing, not what your competition is doing (well, they might look there too, but it would be a different audit, wouldn’t it?)
It’s certainly clear to me that you are unaware just how pervasive the data set at the core of this current issue is in paleoclimate reconstructions. If it’s badly wrong, then they will all be under a question mark. Not just one paper – at least half a dozen, if not more. Plus whatever has been built on these papers (eg Stern and Garnaut perhaps). Don’t try and tell me that’s insignificant!
What’s so sad is that:
1) it takes nearly a decade for the data to become available – doesn’t look good, regardless of whether there are good reasons or not, especially when it gets “shared” with others (not SM) during that time. It sure looks like only those who agree can get the data in a timely manner. Science? I think not.
Not at all, McIntyre has had the data for years.
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/10/mcintyre_had_the_data_all_alon.php
SJT wrote:
He asked Briffa for it directly – both as the author of the paper in question, and the author of the paper cited as the source of the data. Through multiple sources, including Science and Nature. All were refused. It’s only that the Royal Scoiety is a stickler for making the data available that SM got it – and even then, only after nearly another further year of delays. Yes, SM had acquired a copy of the data, but he has been down this road before – in that case, he was told that he had the “wrong” data, or that is was “out-dated”. Therefore, he has asked directly from the source so there can be no arguement on that front. If you like, I can probably troll through both CA and RC to find the relevent quotes for you, or you can check for yourself. Given that the journals that Briffa published in require public archival of the data as a condition of publication, it’s an outrageous situation that he was allowed to continue refusing to comply.
And I notice that there is still no arguement of any substance from RC, Tamino, Eli Rabett et al on the actual data and analysis that SM has provided, merely ad-hom and arm-waving “it doesn’t matter” arguements. Meanwhile, Pielke Jnr and Lucia both seem to think SM has a point – check their blogs yourself. The only technical style arguement I have seen involves removing even more data to test for robustness – hardly a convincing arguement when the subsample used is argueably already too small for proper statistical analysis, and even more absurd when one considers that at least part of the arguement is that the subset used was post-hoc selected in the first place (not by Briffa perhaps, but post-hoc selected none-the-less).
FYI, there are a few statistics gurus who regularly read and post at CA – “Bender”, RyanO and RomanM to name a few. These people are not stupid. They know stats – one is a retired professor and taught stats classes! They have more than a passing interest in climate. One guest posted at RC. They seem to me cautiously optimistic that the issue SM raises is valid. There may be valid reasons why Briffa did what he did, but he hasn’t made them public as yet. Unless and until he does, there is ample reason to suggest that this work is questionable – not wrong, not a fraud, not anything else. Not yet and maybe never. But questionable, certainly. And the refusal to provide the data is suggestive, if only because most scientists go in the complete opposite direction, saying things like “well, here’s the data – if you want to find a mistake, go for it!”. Sure, it’d be embarasing if you “forgot to carry the one” or something, but it would be considerably more embarassing if years of work had to be thrown away because no-one noticed your small mistake. And that certainly could be the case here. That this may be the result of willful arrogance is inexcusable, inexplicable and deeply disturbing. I would go so far as to say that the refusal to supply data on request is a much more serious issue than any mistakes in the actual science.
I quote
Neil – you don’t drip feed your latest vague idea into blogosphere as mature science. You research it thoroughly, get it peer reviewed and published. This business of blurting out your latest hypothesis which may be totally wrong just creates unnecessary denialist tsunamis about issues which may or may not be correct.
In fact doing an independent analysis would be more valuable than trying to tediously repeat specific historical variants.
In the end – are you better informed the issue or what?
Luke – sorry, but that doesn’t wash. What we’ve had occasion to observe over the past several years is that many so-called ‘peer-reviewed’ publications have very weak standards, in some cases outright bias.
We are not talking about ‘vague ideas’. We are talking about small, but critical, details that deal with the core failing in the AGW argument – garbage in, garbage out.
It’s possible to wave one’s hands in the air and argue the insignificance of one data source, or one analysis technique, but we’re no longer talking about lone errors – we’re talking about results based on unsupportable data all over the place.
Steve these data were produced by Swedish and Russian colleagues – will pass on your message to them] cheers, Keith
shouldn’t that read:
Steve, I used Russian and Swedish Data – here is the data I used in my paper.
What a disgraceful episode this whole Yamal business is. McIntyre has truly stuffed himself.
http://deepclimate.org/2009/10/07/let-the-backpedalling-begin/
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/10/mcintyre_had_the_data_all_alon.php
Which is why “stream of blog consciousness” is highly problematic. How many myths has this tawdry episode generated.
Disgusting.
How many myths has this tawdry episode generated.
only the ones people like you have generated……unsuccessfully.
SJT wrote:
http://www.climateaudit.org/?cat=37
shows all the articles SM has blogged on in this saga. As you can see if you bother to look (although I suspect you won’t bother to sully your mind with such a site), there has been on ongoing struggle to get the raw data that the study is based on. I suggest you start at the last page and work forward – don’t bother with the comments at first, just read the articles (hell, skim them) and tell me, hand on heart, that there isn’t something odd going on with this stuff. First they provide processed data only – as if 40 year averaged data is any use in trying to determine if they have been calculated correctly in the first place by ACTUALLY REPLICATING THE WORK. It is supposed to be a requirement of Science papers that raw data be archived or supplied to ANY INTERESTED READER sufficient to REPLICATE THE WORK. When Briffa stonewalled, Science just gave up, despite their stated policy. That an interested reader (SM) asked for data required to replicate the work and was refused makes a mockery of the policy. That Science ignored this obvious breach is unforgivable. That Science even suggested that SM should contact the author of the original study cited as the source of the data when they knew, or should have known, that the author of that paper was the very same Briffa is simply preposterous!
The whole process is farcical – it would be hilarious if we weren’t about to spend trillions of dollars based in part on this data. Data that, just like HADCRU data and methods, have been hidden where those who might “mis-interpret” it can’t get hold of it; or perhaps more accurately, so that the true extent of the confidence intervals on such a reconstruction are not apparent up-front. If that’s not deliberately misleading, then it’s getting pretty damned close. And even if by some remarkable coincidence, it’s just bad luck, a one-off never-happen-again stuff up, at the very least Briffa should apologise for such shoddy and unprofessional behaviour – both to Science and to SM. I won’t be holding my breath waiting for that, BTW.
Luke wrote:
It’s not proposed as “mature science”. It’s a blog – a daily log of what the man is doing, for those who may be interested. As others have pointed out, science is not all done in published papers – much is carried on in informal discussions at conferences, in labs and so on. A blog is simply a more visible extension of this process. When you are trying to reproduce work and reverse engineer it so you can do sensitivity studies on it and so on – in other words, determine if there are caveats or gotchas that the original auther may not be aware of – it’s helpful to have many eyes on the task. CA provides a venue for such assistance. Yet this obviously extensive resource is ignored by mainstream climate science. If you think CA does not provide what I suggest, then ask Craig Leohle what he thinks – he used CA in this context and quite successfuly too. Several regulars pointed out mistakes and/or improvements in the draft of one of his papers which he later published with those mistakes corrected and the improvements included.
CA is climate audit. Do you even know what an audit is? You don’t seem to grasp that this is not some piece of science that will only ever be read by egg heads in white coats and talked about in University bars by crotchety old men with pipes, it’s something that affects everyone on the planet! If someone finds a mistake that makes things “worse than we thought”, there’s a press conference and you are tut-tutting away in here at the first hint of it, yet when it turns the other way it “doesn’t matter” and the author “shouldn’t have bothered”. Are you mad? Down that path lies dogma and fantasy, not science.
Watching it unfold is fascinating – in the same way as watching a terrorist attack in slow motion is fascinating; you know you shouldn’t watch, but you just can’t turn away. This sort of thing happens all the time in science; it’s only the advent of the web and blogs in particular that is exposing it to public scrutiny like never before. So yes, I do think I’m better informed on the issue because of it.
Neil,
One of the things the Luke ensemble fears most is a really thorough audit if their own department, I will bet.
Now the whole debacle of proxy abuse is being blamed on the ones who discovered the abuse.
This is the sort of rationalization that leads people to protest the arrest of an admitted child rapist like Polanski.
Of course the AGW true believers and profiteers and promoters want to just move on to their next piece of planned hype. Facing the idea that proxy abuse has been behind nearly every claim made by the AGW movement is very inconvenient for the faithful and cynics gathered around the altar of global warming.
Bullshit – audit – some self-styled denialist agitator. hahahahahahaha
Commissioned by whom – himself !!!
McIntyre is now getting audited himself by his own stuff-ups and try-ons. What a disgrace.
Luckily the real science effort is a million miles away from this distracting crap.
Hunter – morons like you would be unaware reviews are continuous. Y And like McIntyre who doesn’t actually publish science – peer review gives some ongoing review – unlike Maccas blog stream of consciousness style. He can say ANYTHING – twits you spray it around even if its untested rat dirt. Pull-lease !
Macca has had ZERO point ZERO impact on AGW science. Thank heavens.
Tim Curtin, succumbing to ad hominem attack, blathered:
Tell me Curtin, where did I ever say, or even imply, that “[i]f the average temp. between Siberia and Victoria is 14 oC in January, … you should be out sowing wheat in the former”?
You’re not playing nicely Timmy. In fact, you are misrepresenting me in a rather nasty way. Wipe off your spittle with your blanky, and consider going back to kindergarten so that you might learn some basic science and statistics.
And with respect to the latter, I think that you should write on the back of your hand “regression’ is not synonymous with “statistics”. Look at it at least ten times each day and think about what it means…
CA is climate audit. Do you even know what an audit is? You don’t seem to grasp that this is not some piece of science that will only ever be read by egg heads in white coats and talked about in University bars by crotchety old men with pipes, it’s something that affects everyone on the planet! If someone finds a mistake that makes things “worse than we thought”, there’s a press conference and you are tut-tutting away in here at the first hint of it, yet when it turns the other way it “doesn’t matter” and the author “shouldn’t have bothered”. Are you mad? Down that path lies dogma and fantasy, not science.
The scientific method is self auditing, without going into the grandstanding and histrionics of people such as McIntyre.
How it works is that if you think someone’s paper is wrong, you publish your own research. This has worked successfully for many years now.
One of the cornerstones of the scientific method is the use of objective and non personal language. This allows scientists to perform research and publish it without fear of humiliation of vindictive personal attacks. It means that the progress of science is not hindered by a descent into personal and desctructive fighting.
McIntyre has debased all that. He goes on witch hunts and singles out individuals. He publishes almost nothing himself. Scientific research that has been tainted by him has descended into something resembling the Phil Donahue show.
Luke wrote:
Oddly enough, SM – unlike Briffa, Mann et al – actually publishes his methods and data complete as turn-key. Anyone who want to check his calculations can do so. Anyone who wants to try variants of his methods may do so. He even publishes his “lab notes” – before he’s even finished, in many cases. He asks for data – if he gets it, he always notes that this is the case and praises the person for supplying data on request. If he doesn’t get it, he notes that and tries other methods to get it – like asking the journal that says it’s policy is free access to the data as a condition of publication to supply it; like making FOI applications for data that is supposed to be public as a condition of the research funding. When he makes mistakes, he corrects them as soon as they are brought to his attention. He doesn’t acuse people of fraud and discourages blog comments along that line – deleteing them if they manage to slip through (and sometimes they do). He doesn’t discuss motives and discourages such discussion at his blog. He points out errors and suggests that readers contemplate the scale of the issues involved. He warns readers not to over-blow his analysis – clearly and succinctly and many, many times. All this is obvious to anyone who reads his blog. Yet despite all that, you question his ethics; despite all that, you question his motives; despite all that, you accuse him of the very doing the very things he’s fighting against.
Ah – that would be why Judith Curry invited him to present a talk at one of her conferences; that would be why RC is loathe to even mention his name; that would be why Gavin @ RC stole his intellectual property and passed it off as his own in violation of the ethical code he agreed to as a condition of his employment at NASA. But all of that pails into insignificance because he won’t tow the party line on AGW; because he’s curious; because he likes sloving puzzles. Yep, if he’s not “with us”, then he’s “against us”, right? And because “we” have the superior moral position, and because this issue is so important, “we” can ignore the normal rules and make it all his fault that someone else fucked up and it took this non-professional climate nobody to notice. Sure, if you say so…
SJT wrote:
The reason CA even exists is because RC slagged him off and didn’t allow him to defend himself at their blog. Despite that, and despite the fact that such slagging off continues to this day, and despite the fact that in every case to date he has been shown to be correct and his detractors have nothing of substance but must rely on appeals to authority instead of attacking his methods and logic, he continues to attempt to keep it impersonal. So he’s human – he eventually lets the odd snarky comment slip through. Given the way they’ve treated him, I’m surprised he’s not the slavering monster you appear to believe he is – because I would be!
Neil,
Thanks for your dissemination of a small part of SM’s work at CA. His detailed auditing has always been a huge thorn in the side of the hysterical AGWers.
Lukes’ and SJT’s defence of the indefencible along with all the other incestuous AGW blogs and advocates makes for sad reading particularly when their absolute denier mentality will never admit to the dubious foundations of the AGW hypothesis.
Judging by the sniping and crass remarks made by the Lukians and the simpletons from Deltoid here it is clear they sense the argument has been lost. But that doesn’t matter because despite the science being wrong, the burgeoning bureaucracy implementing the NGER that underpins the yet to be passed ETS is in full swing next month in Australia.
It much seems like that AGW is the smokescreen the socialists set up to transform society into their utopia. And what galls is the fact that it was the Coalition who enacted the NGER in the first place, not the Rudd Fabians.
And is it even more likely that it wasn’t the politicians who created this monster but politically active public servants like Luke and his mates?
I think we have been had.
Quite right Louis. But as I type I am listening to the Archbishop Madoff of the First Church of Christ Climate Change on the BBC via ABC’s News radio, none other than Sir John Houghton, IPCC’s chief author up to TAR 2001 (which does not stop him claiming to have won in 2007 the same cheap Nobel just chucked at Obama).
Moreover just as Bernie Madoff never did any trades on behalf of his investors and just nicked their money, so also with HadleyCRUT/GISS/BoM. Just check the Australian BoM Met stations in Tasmania as supplied to NOAA/GISS. Hardly any have continuous data from 1959 (when Mauna Loa CO2 began).
Sir John just said “CC is a moral issue” – yet he anticipated Madoff by telling the biggest whoppers ever told.
To RC he is just another blogger on the internet, and outside those practicing the scientific method. Let him publish papers. He tried it once, and when he had to put it into the formal format, without the histrionics, it was revealed for what it was, a big, irrelevant yawn. He’s been wrong plenty of times, he’s just never admitted it.
Tim Curtin,
One of the more interesting aspects of this concerns Sir John Houghton – and the former UK PM Tony Blair – both are devout Christians, and while I don’t have an issue with their sincerity, I do wonder whether their beliefs affect their thinking processes.
Both Sir John and MR Blair have to believe in Creation of the biblical kind, and if so, derive their science from that assumption.
Therein is the problem and might explain why sceptics find it so difficult to counter their arguments.
SJT wrote:
Hardly – until quite recently, even SM’s name was sufficient to get a comment deleted on RC.
Of course he’s been wrong plenty of times – duh!
But the claims he makes are very specific, usually technical, and very well researched. I’m NOT talking about where he writes things like “It looks like…” or “Without access to the full data, it’s impossible to be sure, but…”, but rather about times when he writes things like “When corrected for… the story is very different” etc. These claims are true – when he makes such claims, he now posts turn-key R scripts that even download the data sets automatically. You can check this yourself, if you like and give me an example where a specific, technical claim he makes is incorrect.
SJT wrote:
Here is an apropos comment from SM posted at CA:
Comment from: SJT October 9th, 2009 at 4:23 pm
I quote
But now McIntyre has admitted that he had the data all along. The data wasn’t Briffa’s and back in 2006, Briffa referred McIntyre to the original source:
Steve these data were produced by Swedish and Russian colleagues – will pass on your message to them] cheers, Keith
Your quote comes from the next antiscientific blog:
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/10/mcintyre_had_the_data_all_alon.php
The same words…
Another known for the GCMs? Learning all the time.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-10/drnl-kni100909.php
“But now McIntyre has admitted that he had the data all along. The data wasn’t Briffa’s and back in 2006, Briffa referred McIntyre to the original source:
Steve these data were produced by Swedish and Russian colleagues – will pass on your message to them] cheers, Keith”
Ha ha ha ha. Is this guy really stupid enough to claim that describing the source of data equals actually providing the data? Only idiots like SJT would bite off on something so stupid.
No opprobrium for Briffa who had failed to report core counts or provide the data when requested, not just by me but by the authors of D’Arrigo et al 2006. Instead, the criticism was leveled at the first person to actually figure out the poor replication of the Briffa data set because, in their opinion, I should have been able to figure it out earlier.
There is an email from Briffa, telling McIntyre to contact the Russians, and to follow up if there was any problem. McIntyre seems to have forgotten about that, and started up his public pillory on the internet.
Another known for the GCMs? Learning all the time.
Why do you think they keep working on them? It’s called research.
“Why do you think they keep working on them? It’s called research.”
Wrong SJT,
it’s called “practice makes perfect” but doctors “practice” all their lives……
With this latest bit of “science”, do you think it’s all “in” now?
All settled yet?
Do ya reckon ol’ “One Tree Keith” can get it sorted now?
And waddabout “Bristlecone Mick” and “Adjuster Jim”?
With this latest bit of “science”, do you think it’s all “in” now?
All settled yet?
You are confusing what was said. Science is never ‘settled’, it’s never all “in”. The issue is, how do you speak to the public? Most people can’t understand the in depth technicalities of the issue, including my self, and you. How do you convey to the general public that the scientific evidence, on the balance, is clear that AGW will be a problem, without confusing them by also saying that science is never complete?
” How do you convey to the general public that the scientific evidence, on the balance, is clear that AGW will be a problem, without confusing them by also saying that science is never complete?”
It is not “clear” SJT, it is only a possibility that needs to be measurably demonstrated before we all, as intelligent, free citizens, surrender our freedom and accept this mad global control of our future that will be the new Copenhagen Agreement.
We are no warmer now than we were 130 years ago. We are possibly a couple of degrees cooler than we were 1000 years ago. Sea levels are what they were 2000 years ago.
Climate will always change but it is always a very gradual process.
Six billion people are always going to have some additional effect no matter what CO2e they emit.
SJT wrote:
Had the data been archived as per the conditions of publication in Science, or had Science enforced it’s policy when SM asked them to in (IIRC) 2006, then the whole “issue” wouldn’t have arisen. Neither happened. This should never be “blamed” on someone who wants to replicate published research as SM does. And neither does suggesting that SM has better things to spend his time on “cut it” – it’s his time, he can spend it however he likes, and the whole point of such journals as Science is that such data is available so that others can both replicate and expand upon the work already done. It’s never sufficient to suggest that anyone “should have known” which data sets were used – the paper and the SI are supposed to describe everything required to replicate the research. They didn’t. How is this SM’s fault? Clearly it is not. How does pointing out this deficiency make SM the “bad guy”? Clearly, it does not. Why, if the research is as described, is this situation not corrected as soon as possible after it is discovered and the journal and the author of the paper informed? That such mistakes – or deliberate obfuscation, as some may see it – can happen in the first place is concerning. That when they are reported to the journal and NOTHING HAPPENS TO CORRECT IT is well beyond concerning, regardless of the motivations of the person who discovers it. The implication of allowing such things to happen unchecked and to remain uncorrected is that the science may be distorted – that others, all unaware of the situation, have relied on something that is incorrect or incorrectly specified in terms of confidence. This is completely unacceptable and should be deplored by anyone who has respect for the scientific method. Yet the RC crowd circle the wagons and suggest that SM is incompetant, lazy, stupid etc ad nauseum while singularly failing to address the issue itself – which is unconsciencable at best and willfuly deceptive at worst. And you and your ilk, SJT, are cheering them on! You’re defending them and denigrating the people who are asking for clarification of what was done and to what. And calling it science.
SJT says
…oops.
SJT, you believed the meme. Briffa did not tell McIntyre to contact the Russians. Briffa told McIntyre that HE (Briffa) would contact them. He never got back to McIntyre.
The fact that Steve had some Russian data doesn’t in any way exonerate Briffa. You probably have a house key in your pocket. If you bought it at Home Depot, you might even have MY house key in your pocket. But how do you know unless I tell you?
I guarantee that on your computer you have the data that’s in my file DATA.TXT . So, please analyze the data and tell the world about it! What? You don’t know what data that is? Why not?
See… it is not enought to be told you have some data. What matters is to know the provenance: to have confirmation that what you have matches what I have.
Steve’s been burned by this before. Briffa has no defense.