It’s a parody. It must be. A normal hurricane, not huge as these things go and the first to hit the USA in three years, takes an unusual–but certainly not unprecedented–path up the East Coast’s most populated areas, and the hysterics start screaming about global warming. From hysteria central, aka, the New York Times:
The scale of Hurricane Irene, which could cause more extensive damage along the Eastern Seaboard than any storm in decades, is reviving an old question: are hurricanes getting worse because of human-induced climate change? The short answer from scientists is that they are still trying to figure it out. But many of them do believe that hurricanes will get more intense as the planet warms, and they see large hurricanes like Irene as a harbinger.
Harbinger? Ludicrous. The gist of the story is that there is disagreement among the climate modelers, who don’t have a good record of accuracy in any event. And no one can say Irene was “caused” by global warming. But why let a good storm go to waste?
Please. The reason I even exist, or better stated, the event that set the wheels in motion for my eventual birth, was the big hurricane of 1938–much larger than Irene at a Category 3– that did far more damage than this Category 1. My mother and her family lived in Rhode Island. The storm so freaked them, they decided to see what California was like. So, they visited, liked what they saw, and moved. That’s when my mother met my father, after he took a temporary job where she worked while on leave from the army. And the rest, as they say, eventually became my history.
Back to Irene and global warming, is it any wonder people increasingly roll their eyes as every weather event is turned into GWH?
August 28th, 2011 | 12:46 pm
[...] as a Top ConcernMarketWatch (press release)Betting the farm against climate changeLos Angeles TimesFirst Things (blog) -Politico -Weekly Blitzall 73 news [...]
August 28th, 2011 | 12:59 pm
But in 1930-s global weather patters have already been shifted from three centuries of use of fossil fuels. Extreme weather conditions are known from all ages, however these sort of things are now getting much more frequent.
August 28th, 2011 | 6:05 pm
Climate change will not concern the American public, because accepting it would challenge peoples long held philosophy of making a fast buck or two, no matter the social or enviromental costs.
The situation reminds me of books on World War I. Prior to this conflict peace conferences have been a laughing stock to the public, war between great nations was considered normal and healthy. Only now, A century later, after the atrocities of the 20th century, we try diplomacy first.
Today conferences on climate change are a laughing stock of no concern to the ill-informed public, no matter the obvious consequences. Lakes disapear, like in Darfur, and people start killing each other over water.
Have you lately googled pictures of the arctic ice shield from the 70s and today…. 30% of the ice is already gone.
But hey people who spend their time in physics and math class checking out the blond next to them suddenly turn into experts on topics well beyond their academic reach…
August 28th, 2011 | 6:44 pm
“But in 1930-s global weather patters have already been shifted from three centuries of use of fossil fuels.”
Who knew? We were using fossil fuels during the 30-years’ war in the 1630′s. Amazing.
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
August 28th, 2011 at 6:58 pm
All that sperm whale oil. Probably the reason Atlantis sank.
padraig Reply:
August 29th, 2011 at 10:53 am
@Wesley J. Smith and Lydia, Um, yeah, we were burning coal 300+ years ago. Plus peat if you were Irish and the Brits had cut down all your trees. Here’s a brief and even moderately entertaining history of fossil fuels:
http://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DcJ-J91SwP8w&sa=U&ei=I7RbTpfIFKnK0AHV3tWTCQ&ved=0CB0QtwIwAw&usg=AFQjCNEHpGwi3XlxsH9_ULAZJgQXmdswzg
Sorry Wes, no mention of sperm whale oil.
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
August 29th, 2011 at 10:59 am
Sorry. P, the idea that the destitute Irish changed weather is patentlly ludicrous. Ditto cave men burning wood.
padraig Reply:
August 29th, 2011 at 2:25 pm
@Wesley J. Smith, I’m sorry, who said either of those things? Somebody pointed out that we’d been using fossil fuels for over 300 years and you and Lydia ridiculed them.
Ever see pictures or descriptions of London from the time when everyone heated with coal and the Thames was the city sewer? The Thames’ contents are still barely considered to be “water.”
Oh darn, there I go getting hysterical again. Sorry.
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
August 29th, 2011 at 3:19 pm
No, we were clearly ridiculing that all of that fossil fuel in the 1600s changed the climate.
padraig Reply:
August 29th, 2011 at 4:01 pm
@Wesley J. Smith, NOBODY SAID THAT. Mike said, and I quote, “But in 1930-s (sic) global weather patters have already been shifted from three centuries of use of fossil fuels. ”
Not from a peat fire in Dublin in 1725. Not from a whale fart in 1866. From THREE HUNDRED YEARS of fossil fuel burning.
Harryhammer Reply:
August 29th, 2011 at 12:25 pm
@Wesley J. Smith,
Mr. Smith,
We are currently burning more than 40,000 U.S. gallons of oil per second.
A tank car can carry a maximum of 34,500 U.S. gallons of oil.
We are burning the equivalent of an oil tank car every 1.6 seconds:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:TILX290344.JPG
Imagine the heat coming off of an exploding tank car.
We are currently burning more than 8 billion short tons of coal per year.
A coal rail car holds about 100 short tons of coal.
We are burning the equivalent of 2.5 rail cars of coal every second.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Penmanshiel_Tunnel_(coal_train_on_new_alignment)..jpg
Imagine the heat coming off a burning coal car.
To insist that it isn’t a problem is irrational.
August 28th, 2011 | 7:09 pm
[...] A Glimpse of the Future?New Yorker (blog)Betting the farm against climate changeLos Angeles TimesFirst Things (blog) -Politico -Weekly Blitzall 110 news [...]
August 28th, 2011 | 8:16 pm
Wesley, I found this film very interesting and of course “IT” is a true event of human times gone by and the closing of this film with the spiritual angels walking and ready to help U>S (usual sinners) if “IT” should ever happen again warmed my heart to think that God might really exist.
If God our Heavenly Father and His Angels do really exist and I can almost hear some Atheist thinking that for god’s sake science better not say that “IT” does because we evolving human BEING will certainly need to do a LOT of soul spiritual cleaning UP of all that is obviously destroying our humanity.
We could start off by cleaning UP all killing of so called lifeless unborn baby Angels and I’m going to stop here because I’m probably way off topic as far as knowing what killing of the innocence has to do with Climate change?
For what “IT” is worth, that’s what I think my Canadian two cents worth can buy nowadays in the real world!? :)
SHALOM
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
August 28th, 2011 at 8:54 pm
More than my US two cents. : (
Harryhammer Reply:
August 29th, 2011 at 10:40 am
@Victor,
Victor,
Did you know that the first study ever done of physicians’ religious beliefs found that 76 percent of doctors believe in God?
The results were published in the July 2005 issue of the Journal of General Internal Medicine.
The study found that 90 percent of doctors in the United States attend religious services at least occasionally, compared to only 81 percent of all adults.
These results were not anticipated because earlier studies suggested that religious belief tends to decrease as education and income levels increase.
Yet, doctors are highly educated and, on average, well compensated.
One of the smartest people on the planet is currently working on what he calls “a true ‘Theory of Everything’, a cross between John Archibald Wheeler’s ‘Participatory Universe’ and Stephen Hawking’s ‘Imaginary Time’ theory of cosmology.”
His name is Chris Langan and he claims that “you can prove the existence of God, the soul and an afterlife, using mathematics.”
He’s working on it as we speak.
Doesn’t that make you happy?
Back to those God-fearing doctors:
In 2007, the American Academy of Pediatrics issued the policy statement Global Climate Change and Children’s Health:
“There is broad scientific consensus that Earth’s climate is warming rapidly and at an accelerating rate.”
“Human activities, primarily the burning of fossil fuels, are very likely (>90% probability) to be the main cause of this warming.”
“Climate-sensitive changes in ecosystems are already being observed, and fundamental, potentially irreversible, ecological changes may occur in the coming decades.”
“Conservative environmental estimates of the impact of climate changes that are already in process indicate that they will result in numerous health effects to children.”
“Anticipated direct health consequences of climate change include injury and death from extreme weather events and natural disasters, increases in climate-sensitive infectious diseases, increases in air pollution–related illness, and more heat-related, potentially fatal, illness.”
“Within all of these categories, children have increased vulnerability compared with other groups.”
In 2006, the American College of Preventive Medicine issued a policy statement on “Abrupt Climate Change and Public Health Implications”:
“The American College of Preventive Medicine (ACPM) accept the position that global warming and climate change is occurring, that there is potential for abrupt climate change, and that human practices that increase greenhouse gases exacerbate the problem, and that the public health consequences may be severe.”
In 2007, the American Public Health Association issued a policy statement titled ‘’Addressing the Urgent Threat of Global Climate Change to Public Health and the Environment:’’
“The long-term threat of global climate change to global health is extremely serious and the fourth IPCC report and other scientific literature demonstrate convincingly that anthropogenic GHG emissions are primarily responsible for this threat….U.S. policy makers should immediately take necessary steps to reduce US emissions of GHGs, including carbon dioxide, to avert dangerous climate change.”
In 2008, the American Medical Association issued a similar policy statement on global climate change.
The list goes on and on.
Every scientific organization on the planet is in agreement with the conclusions of the IPCC.
Atheism has nothing to do with it.
August 28th, 2011 | 11:19 pm
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August 29th, 2011 | 12:57 am
Mr. Smith,
It may be imprudent to blame every weather event on climate change, but, it’s idiotic to be in denial of climate change and only slightly less idiotic to be lukewarm about it, given that every scientific organization on the planet is in agreement and concerned.
The folks who actually have the analytical skills necessary to evaluate the quality and bias of research methods are also in agreement.
I’m not talking about the Heartland Institute.
I’m talking about insurance actuaries and experts in risk management.
http://www.theactuary.com/actuary/feature/2090573/environment-why-actuaries-care-climate-science
August 29th, 2011 | 7:48 am
It’s rather like eugenics; the hysteria of degrading the human species in the early 20th century is rightly laughed at now, but it was a real “scientific” crisis back then. That was the same pseudo-science with the same politicized studies as Global Warming. Eugenics was a crock, and AGW is turning out to be just as much of a crock.
It took a world war and the murder of millions to end the stupidity of eugenics. Hopefully Global Warming won’t claim as many casualties.
Harryhammer Reply:
August 29th, 2011 at 9:33 am
@Timothy Birdnow,
Timothy,
Based on two recent independent studies, each employing different methodologies, 97% of climate experts think humans are causing global warming.
No scientific body of national or international standing thinks otherwise.
The last scientific group to think otherwise was the American Association of Petroleum Geologists.
They changed their tune in 2007.
If you want a really good example of politicized pseudo-science, look no further than the so-called Climategate scandal:
Every denier in America jumped on that bandwagon and was wrongly accusing the 4 climate scientists who had their emails hacked.
The denial camp was accusing them of manipulating climate data and suppressing their critics.
None of it was true.
Six separate independent committees investigated the allegations and published reports of their findings.
Each separate independent investigation found no evidence of fraud or scientific misconduct.
Wrongly accusing someone is a serious mistake.
Check out the 9th Commandment.
pauld Reply:
September 3rd, 2011 at 5:12 am
@Harryhammer, Here is a current summary of judt one aspect of the misconduct disclosed in the climategate emails: the deletion of emails that had been requested in a freedom of informaion request. http://climateaudit.org/2011/09/02/nsf-on-jones-email-destruction-enterprise/
This summary the inadeqacy of the so-called investigattipns
August 29th, 2011 | 3:37 pm
Harryhammer
The old argument about concensus; the last stand for you global warming alarmists.
First, the theory does not fit with reality. There has been no statistical warming since 1995; even Phil Jones acknowledges that. Where is the heat going? It’s not in the oceans, either. There is no warming in the tropical troposphere, as theory suggests. This isn’t science; it’s pseudo-science. Of course, climatology was a backwater before AGW theory; naturally most professional organizations want to keep the gravy train rolling.
Which brings up the cagey way you argued for concensus; you cleverly ignored the PEOPLE who I could present to you as skeptics, because you knew you could no longer credibly make that case, and substituted organizations. f You ignore the Leipzig, Heidleberg, Oregon, and other petitions. You ignore the NIPCC. You ignore anyone who does not parrot the party line. Your side like to make dark accusations of money from Exxon-Mobil, but ignore money from Soros, from Gates, Buffet, the Ford Foundation, the Sierra club, etc. But in the end nature is the final determinant of the theory, and your theory has been exploded.
We really don’t even know the planetary temperatures; we have taken to using temperature readings from hundreds of miles away (at times) to smooth the curves, and the temperature stations that are still manned are often subject to the urban heat island effect. We know (thanks to the CRU leaks) that there were scientists actively subverting the data.
I have read the e-mails, Harryhammer; have you? The commissions were hastily convened with the express purpose of absolving Mann, Jones, Briffa, et. al. If you believe them, I have a bridge to sell you. Oh, wait, you already purchased one, I see. You put Russell Muir in charge of an investigation of misconduct and what would you expect? http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/07/the-muir-cru-apologia-is-out/
In November 2009 Phil Jones told Mann “not to leave stuff lying around that would point out his many climate errors.”
Now there’s a man dedicated to truth. He also spoke of using Mann’s “nature trick to hide the decline”; what do you think that means? CRU is one of the principle processors of raw data, and when asked for the unprocessed data they said they THREW IT AWAY. Pardon my French, but that is pure bat crap.
Steve McIntyre rebuts it quite well. http://climateaudit.org/2009/12/10/ipcc-and-the-trick/
In the end, it doesn’t matter what scientists think but what actually happens. Nature isn’t cooperating with you guys.
Oh, and your answer to victor about the global warming healthscare; perhaps you should read this.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/03/the_global_warming_health_scar.html
Sorry, but your side has lost this argument. Continuing to fight is starting to appear ridiculous.
Harryhammer Reply:
August 29th, 2011 at 8:57 pm
@Timothy Birdnow,
Timothy,
The most recent study of climate scientists’ opinions came to the following two conclusions:
1.) 97–98% of the climate researchers most actively publishing in the field support the tenets of Anthropogenic Climate Change outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
2.) The relative climate expertise and scientific prominence of the researchers unconvinced of ACC are substantially below that of the convinced researchers.
Let me put it to you in plain English:
Let’s say that your kid is really sick and you take him to see 100 specialists.
97 of the top guys in the field say your kid needs an operation right away or he might die.
Whereas, three of the bottom guys in the field say “go home, relax, don’t worry about it.”
Only an idiot would go home and relax.
You’re being equally idiotic.
Harryhammer Reply:
August 29th, 2011 at 8:59 pm
@Timothy Birdnow,
Mr. Smith,
Can you check your spam box please?
Harryhammer Reply:
August 30th, 2011 at 10:33 am
@Timothy Birdnow,
Timothy,
There were 6 separate independent inquiries, not one, and they all found no wrongdoing.
After the July 2010 reports, the New York Times referred to Climategate as a “manufactured controversy,” and expressed the hope that reports clearing the scientists “will receive as much circulation as the original, diversionary controversies,”
The Columbia Journalism Review criticized newspapers and magazines for failing to give prominent coverage to the findings of the review panels, and said that “readers need to understand that while there is plenty of room to improve the research and communications process, its fundamental tenets remain as solid as ever.”
CNN media critic Howard Kurtz expressed similar sentiments.
In June 2010 Newsweek called the controversy a “highly orchestrated, manufactured scandal.”
Incidentally, I don’t believe you when you say that you read all of the emails.
The theft involved about 160 MB of data containing more than 1,000 emails and 3,000 other documents.
That’s the equivalent of about 7 feet of encyclopaedia sized books on a shelf.
I seriously doubt that you’ve read that much in your life time.
At best, you skimmed a few cherry-picked phrases, pulled them completely out of context, and then proceeded to twist them into a worldwide Al Gore led conspiracy like every other conservative hack.
No significant warming since 1995:
When it suits your purpose, you want to go back to the medieval period and now you want to stop at 1995.
Climate change is a multi-decadal phenomenon.
Short-term temperatures are strongly affected by natural variability.
To best assess if the warming over the past 40 years has continued into the most recent decade, analysts do a simple test.
They calculate the trend in temperatures for the period from 1970 to 2000, and use it to predict what temperatures over the last decade would be expected to have been prior to actually knowing them.
By the way, I didn’t ignore the Leipzig, Heidleberg, Oregon, and other petitions.
I looked at them all in depth.
Name your best source out of the bunch and I’ll explain to you what conflict of interest and below par research means:
• Fred Singer?
• Patrick Michaels?
• Frederick Seitz?
• Robert Stevenson?
• Chauncy Starr?
• Robert Balling?
August 29th, 2011 | 5:11 pm
I have one question: is your complaint with the content or the tone? The content to me seems solid—scientists differ as to what degree climate change has impacted hurricane intensity and how much of an increase will happen in the future. Irene has made the debate more timely.
Tone, on the other hand, is more subjective. For instance, “harbinger” might well be too strong.
The line that, to me, makes your argument ambiguous is “And no one can say Irene was “caused” by global warming.” On the one hand, it would seem to criticize the article for saying that. On the other hand, the article doesn’t say that, so perhaps you mean that the tone is inappropriate given that Irene cannot definitively be called an effect of climate change?
August 29th, 2011 | 5:18 pm
Folks, the last time, I can recall having so much fun was when I had a golf membership at a club. I use to golf regularly and many got to know me and one day I got lucky and was teamed UP with a new golf pro and I was indirectly asked to show him the ropes of the course cause “IT” was his first competition.
I got a chance to educate him when he asked what iron he should use and at the supper that night, everyone was really impressed with what I had done.
Long story short, this golf pro had asked what club he should use on a particular hole and I told him that I used a four iron and they even let me go first to show him how it was done so I fired my four iron and hit a guy in the back who was on the next green and even though I yelled “Four” he paid no attention to my shot. Go Figure!
Anyway, at the supper that night, this New Golf Pro stole the spotlight even though he used the wrong iron and placed his ball over the green into a creek. The master of ceremony did give me a little recognition cause he said that he over shot the green even after getting instruction from Victor.
I still don’t know why his mistake was so funny!?
Peace :)
August 30th, 2011 | 6:42 pm
Harryhammer, you are a font of dubious information that is not sourced.
First, tell me about the six “independent” inquiries. You do not give any details. Why is that? Likely because you only know the talking points. Again, I ask you HAVE YOU READ THE ACTUAL E-MAILS? Is that really hard to answer the question? Not all of them, but enough of the pertinent parts. I do not need panels of inquiry to tell me that my eyes are lying to me. It’s plain what was happening when you bother to actually look to the source.
O.k. I suppose the Oxburgh investigation was better? Oxburgh was heavily invested in “green” technology and had a clear conflict of interest. http://climateaudit.org/2010/03/23/another-tainted-inquiry/
See more about “hide the decline and the Oxburgh commission here. http://climateaudit.org/2011/03/31/disinformation-from-kerry-emanuel/
Both Russell and Oxburgh’s reviews were slammed by MP’s on the Science and Technology Committee for their ineptitude. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/8279368/Official-inquiries-into-the-Climategate-scandal-unsatisfactory.html
Do you REALLY believe that Penn State would find evidence of wrongdoing, or the U.K. Royal Society, which is notoriously alarmist about AGW? None of these investigations could be called independent; they were a series of whitewashes. CRU has refused to cooperate with any serious investigators. They have deleted e-mails. They have deleted raw data. Now, why do you suppose that is?
Even if your correct and they aren’t guilty of fraud, they ARE guilty of scientific malpractice on a titanic scale. They are either liars or incompetent bunglers.
Amazing how you take the word of a mainstream journalism community as Gospel on this issue; were I to present such evidence you would scoff at the lack of scientific credibility they possess. I always take my que from the New York Times when they pronounce something a “manufactured controversy”.
Again, perhaps we should use our own eyes and brains and not simply accept what Simon Says.
You say;
“No significant warming since 1995:
When it suits your purpose, you want to go back to the medieval period and now you want to stop at 1995.”
I want to go back to what Phil Jones himself said, which is that there has been no statistical warming since 1995. It demolishes your theory. Climate changes all of the time. Yes we talk about the Medieval Warming period because it was there, and warmer than the present day. Michael Mann has labored to eliminate it, because it shows that this is not an abnormal period.
Also, you argue that:
1.) 97–98% of the climate researchers most actively publishing in the field support the tenets of Anthropogenic Climate Change outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
2.) The relative climate expertise and scientific prominence of the researchers unconvinced of ACC are substantially below that of the convinced researchers.
Really? Again, you fail to cite sources. But this is no surprise because everyone agrees planetary temperatures rose in the 20t century (the Little Ice Age ended in the 19th) and human activity has definitely contributed to it. Land use change, for instance. Roger Pielke Sr. would be placed in the camp of that 97% although he doesn’t see CO2 rise as all that significant. Even people like Patrick Michaels would fall into your 97%. This is a clever fraud, Hammer.
Do you know what happened at CERN? Svensmark’s theory about cosmic rays has been validated by experimentation. This explains the difference between solar output and temperature rise. Did you know that sea levels actually dropped last year? Did you know that a recent study shows that the Earth lost more heat than any of the models predicted, shattering the IPCC predictions. http://www.iceagenow.com/New_NASA_Data_Blow_Gaping_Hole_In_Global_Warming_Alarmism.htm
Sorry, but the Earth is not really sick, and does not need a doctor. Not even a geologist, climatologist, or meteorologist. There is no reason to fundamentally reorder human civilization, killing millions in the process through starvation and deprivation as the industrialized nations throw away their wealth to make guilt-ridden liberals such as yourself feel good.
And you have some gall disparaging men like John Christy, Roger Pielke Sr. even Roger Revelle (who thought global warming would end at 2* and was more of a curiosity than a crisis). This while IPCC reports were being written by men from Greenpeace and the Sierra Club!
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/06/16/a-blunder-of-staggering-proportions-by-the-ipcc/
But then it’s easier to smear people than to actually debate the facts. I notice you stopped debating the facts a while ago. That’s an old lawyer trick.
In the end, it’s the facts that matter, and they are seriously against you AGW hysterics.
Harryhammer Reply:
August 30th, 2011 at 10:00 pm
@Timothy Birdnow,
Timothy,
Six committees investigated the allegations and published reports, finding no evidence of fraud or scientific misconduct.
Soon you’ll be adding your mama to the list of Al Gore conspirators.
The scientific consensus that global warming is occurring is as strong as ever and remained unchanged at the end of the investigations.
Believe me, if there was any dirt whatsoever, James “Mountain Jim” Inhofe would have found it.
He has been one of the most vocal global warming deniers that exist and he headed the last inquiry.
He was recently cornered in the hall:
http://planetsave.com/2011/02/17/hertsgaard-nails-inhofe-oil-lobbyists-amazing-video-interviews/
Incidentally, one of the smartest women in the world is a 41-year-old Australian named Laura N. Kochen; a Olympiq Society member.
Her membership is quite the impressive achievement given that since January 1, 2001, the Olympiq Society has only accepted 14 members (12 full and 2 prospective), of which only 2 are women, and Laura Kochen is one of them.
The most cited living author has been teaching at M.I.T. for 55 years.
He recently spoke on this:
http://www.thenation.com/video/158093/noam-chomsky-how-climate-change-became-liberal-hoax
Harryhammer Reply:
August 30th, 2011 at 10:19 pm
@Timothy Birdnow,
Timothy,
You can label me all you want.
Labels don’t change facts.
You mentioned Patrick Michaels.
Dr. Patrick Michaels is actually the best expert that global warming deniers currently have because he’s one of the few deniers with any relevant scientific credentials.
Michaels was a professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia from 1980 to 2007.
Did you know that the overall median 9 month salary for all professors in the United States is about $73,000.
Dr. Michaels has never had it so good as he has as a global warming denier:
http://www.desmogblog.com/climate-skeptic-pat-michaels-admits-cnn-forty-percent-his-funding-comes-oil-industry
Incidentally, he said that 3% of the more than $4,200,000 he received came from oil and gas interests when in fact it was closer to 40%.
Why would he lie about that?
http://democrats.energycommerce.house.gov/index.php?q=news/waxman-asks-upton-to-examine-dr-patrick-michaels-s-testimony
Harryhammer Reply:
August 31st, 2011 at 5:39 am
@Timothy Birdnow,
Timothy,
You managed to squeeze quite a bit of nonsense into a single comment.
It’s going to take more than just a few paragraphs on my part to address your multiple lines of baloney.
Your words:
“Harryhammer, you are a font of dubious information that is not sourced.
First, tell me about the six “independent” inquiries. You do not give any details. Why is that? Likely because you only know the talking points.”
The six major investigations include:
• House of Commons Science and Technology Committee (UK).
• Independent Climate Change Review (UK).
• International Science Assessment Panel (UK).
• Pennsylvania State University (US).
• United States Environmental Protection Agency (US).
• Department of Commerce (US).
In response to the Climategate controversy, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the American Meteorological Society (AMS) and the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) released statements supporting the scientific consensus, with the AAAS concluding “based on multiple lines of scientific evidence that global climate change caused by human activities is now underway…it is a growing threat to society.”
More of your baloney:
“Even if your correct and they aren’t guilty of fraud, they ARE guilty of scientific malpractice on a titanic scale. They are either liars or incompetent bunglers.”
The American Geophysical Union issued a statement that they found “it offensive that these emails were obtained by illegal cyber attacks and they are being exploited to distort the scientific debate about the urgent issue of climate change.”
They reaffirmed their position statement on climate change “based on the large body of scientific evidence that Earth’s climate is warming and that human activity is a contributing factor.
Nothing in the University of East Anglia hacked e-mails represents a significant challenge to that body of scientific evidence.”
Your words:
“Also, you argue that:
1.) 97–98% of the climate researchers most actively publishing in the field support the tenets of Anthropogenic Climate Change outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
2.) The relative climate expertise and scientific prominence of the researchers unconvinced of ACC are substantially below that of the convinced researchers.
Really? Again, you fail to cite sources. But this is no surprise because everyone agrees planetary temperatures rose in the 20t century (the Little Ice Age ended in the 19th) and human activity has definitely contributed to it.”
Various surveys have been conducted to evaluate scientific opinion on global warming:
• Anderegg, Prall, Harold, and Schneider, 2010
A 2010 paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States (PNAS) reviewed publication and citation data for 1,372 climate researchers and drew the following two conclusions:
(i) 97–98% of the climate researchers most actively publishing in the field support the tenets of ACC (Anthropogenic Climate Change) outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and (ii) the relative climate expertise and scientific prominence of the researchers unconvinced of ACC are substantially below that of the convinced researchers.
• Doran and Kendall Zimmerman, 2009
• Bray and von Storch, 2008
• STATS, 2007
• Oreskes, 2004
• Bray and von Storch, 2003
On hide the decline:
The Office of Inspector General of the National Science Foundation closed an investigation about 2 weeks ago that exonerated Michael Mann of charges of scientific misconduct.
The report found that Mann had not falsified data, destroyed emails, misused privileged information, or seriously deviated from accepted scientific practices.
pauld Reply:
August 31st, 2011 at 11:13 am
@Harryhammer, I am surprised that you are defending “the hide the decline”. For starters, let’s make sure we understand what the issue is. Keith Briffa created a proxy reconstruction of temperatures prior to the existence of instrumental temperature record. . In a proxy reconstruction, quantities such as tree ring growth are thought to be correlated with temperature over time. By calibrating such proxies with actual temperatures during the period when we have an instrumental record, it is possible to estimate with the proxies the temperatures that occurred back in time before the instrumental record.
With Briffa’s temperature reconstruction, the proxies he used were reasonably correlated with the actual temperatures measured by thermometers up until about 1960. After 1960, however, that was an obvious divergence between the proxies, which went down, and the actual temperatures, which went up.
This is called “the divergence problem.” The divergence problem is acknowledged, but not resolved, in the professional literature. For most analysts, the seemingly unavoidable question would be –if tree rings didn’t respond to late 20th century warmth, how one would know whether they failed to respond to possible medieval warmth. In short, the divergence problem raises a basic question whether the quantities used as proxies for temperatures are valid proxies.
The issue discussed in the climate gate emails was how to deal with the divergence problem in the IPCC report for policy makers, who were relying upon the IPCC to summarize the scholarly literature. The solution discussed in the climate gate emails and adopted in the final IPCC report was truly “ingenious”. The IPCC report simply truncated Briffa’s proxy data at 1960 so as to “hide the decline” in the proxies. In other words, the IPCC report simply does not show the adverse data.
I really don’t care what all of your commissions think about this issue. One does not need to be a scientist to understand why what the IPCC did was misleading. The climategate emails make clear that the truncation of adverse data was intentional and designed to obscure the divergence problem.
Hammer: Do you defend this?
Harryhammer Reply:
August 31st, 2011 at 7:43 pm
@pauld,
PaulD,
It wasn’t misleading at all.
I can see that it might seem misleading to someone who knows little or nothing about science.
For starters, the word “decline” refers to tree ring density, not global temperatures.
Senator James “Mountain Jim” Inhofe and former Governor of Alaska Sarah Palin were acting as if the word “decline” was in reference to a decline in measured global temperatures even though they were written when temperatures were at a record high.
(That wasn’t a cheap shot Mr. Smith)
Much of the uproar was over the use of the word “trick,” such as when Phil Jones wrote:
“I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.”
Deniers see this as some sort of conspiracy when in fact it is really is just a mathematical way of dealing with a problem (a mathematical “trick”) and reflects scientists interacting with each other.
You can Google it.
It’s used in science all the time.
The final analyses from various subsequent inquiries concluded that in this context “trick” was normal scientific or mathematical jargon for a neat way of handling data, in this case a statistical method used to bring two or more different kinds of data sets together in a legitimate fashion.
You should have watched the odd episode of Bill Nye the Science Guy when you were a kid instead of just the Flintstones.
He went head to head with one of your heroes.
Bill Nye and Patrick Michaels go head to head on CNN:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffgj6Deni_Y
The most significant revelation to come from all those hacked emails is that we now know for sure that the most published and peer-reviewed climate change experts that exist think that Patrick Michaels is clueless.
pauld Reply:
August 31st, 2011 at 9:42 pm
@Harryhammer, Is that the best you can do? It is not clear to me whether you honestly do not understand the issue or whether you are beong intentionally obtuse.
What Palin et al say about the issue is a red herring. They do not properly describe it. The word “trick” is also a red herring. It was usedin the climategate emails in connection with a misleading graph of Michael Mann. It invol es an entirely different issue than Briffa’s “hide the decline” climateaudit.org describes carefully Mann’s “Nature trick” and Briffa’s “hide the decline.” The only similarity they share is that both were intended to mislead.
The essence of “hide the decline is a failure to disclose adverse data that woild cause a reasonable observer to question the validity of Briffa’s temperature proxies. Now to avoid talking past each other if you think hide the decline involved a different issue, please describe it.
pauld Reply:
September 1st, 2011 at 4:31 am
http://climateaudit.org/2011/03/29/keiths-science-trick-mikes-nature-trick-and-phils-combo/
Pauld Reply:
September 1st, 2011 at 2:35 pm
@Harryhammer, So I out of curiousity watched the You Tube video. I should know better. It didn’t discuss the issue of “hide the decline” at all. It was a very cursory discussion of a few issues raised by the climategate emails.
Patrick Michael pointed out that the emails discussed pressuring the editors of scientific journals to not publish skeptical articles and discussed deleting emails rather than making them available pursuant to a freedom of information request. Bill Nye did not deny these accusations, but responded, more or less, “so what.” It is not clear to me why you think Bill Nye came out ahead on this exchange.
Harryhammer Reply:
September 3rd, 2011 at 11:47 am
@Pauld,
PaulD,
December 8th 2009 was when that interview took place.
More than a month later, the first of six separate independent investigations published a report.
It found no evidence of fraud or scientific misconduct.
The five subsequent investigations found no evidence of fraud or scientific misconduct.
During the interview, Patrick Michaels was asked the following question:
“In your mind, do you have any question that there was a deliberate attempt to manipulate and skew the data to a particular conclusion?
His response was, “Absolutely!”
Bill Nye’s counter response:
“When these things are carefully reviewed you will see that people are chasing ghosts or phantoms…”
He was right.
Michaels was wrong.
If the two had made a bet on whether or not there was a deliberate attempt to manipulate and skew the data, who do you think would be paying up right now.
If you think it’s Bill Nye then you’ve lost obviously your way.
How many separate independent inquiries is it going to take for you to stop chasing ghosts and phantoms?
10?
20?
Incidentally, James “Mountain Jim” Inhofe was actively involved in the sixth inquiry.
Harryhammer Reply:
August 31st, 2011 at 6:49 am
@Timothy Birdnow,
Timothy,
More of your twisted words:
“Do you know what happened at CERN? Svensmark’s theory about cosmic rays has been validated by experimentation. This explains the difference between solar output and temperature rise.”
No it doesn’t.
From the actual press briefing:
“We have found that natural rates of atmospheric ionisation caused by cosmic rays can substantially enhance nucleation under the conditions we studied – by up to a factor of 10.”
“Ion‐enhancement is particularly pronounced in the cool temperatures of the mid‐troposphere and above, where CLOUD has found that sulphuric acid and water vapour can nucleate without the need for additional vapours.”
“This result leaves open the possibility that cosmic rays could also influence climate.”
“However, it is premature to conclude that cosmic rays have a significant influence on climate until the additional nucleating vapours have been identified, their ion enhancement measured, and the ultimate effects on clouds have been confirmed.”
More of your hysterics:
“Sorry, but the Earth is not really sick, and does not need a doctor. Not even a geologist, climatologist, or meteorologist. There is no reason to fundamentally reorder human civilization, killing millions in the process through starvation and deprivation as the industrialized nations throw away their wealth to make guilt-ridden liberals such as yourself feel good.”
A more accurate version:
Wars for oil fundamentally reorder human civilization, killing millions in the process through starvation and deprivation as the industrialized nations throw away their wealth to make a handful of giant corporations rich at the expense of all others.
Apparently, it makes anxiety-ridden conservatives such as you feel good?
August 31st, 2011 | 7:07 am
Harryhammer, you are again arguing the messengers when you should be arguing the message. As I pointed out, that is an old lawyer trick; when the facts are against you smear the opposition. These smears get really old. But since you want to bring this up…
In the last year alone the U.S. has funded global warming studies to the tune of $8.7 Billion dollars. That’s direct funding, I might add. There is other ancillary funding, like green energy, that is not accounted for in this figure. Who has the greater motivation? If Patrick Michaels is receiving 40% of his funding from oil, why shouldn’t he? He’s certainly not going to get any help from the “mainstream” sources. AND his work is peer reviewed. Science is science, Hammer; if he’s wrong it’s up to the scientific community to refute his work.
How about Joanne Simpson? Ever heard of her? She was the first woman meteorologist who pioneered studies of cloud models and hurricanes. A big name at Nasa. When she retired (and only when she retired) she came out blazing against the climate of oppression by the AGW crowd. http://climatesci.org/2008/02/27/trmm-tropical-rainfall-measuring-mission-data-set-potential-in-climate-controversy-by-joanne-simpson-private-citizen/ Seems she was intimidated to speak against global warming, intimidated by the same people (Hansen and company) who have tried to claim this is about science over politics. It should come as no surprise; the CRU e-mails show that the hockey team was actively working to suppress “deniar” papers in science journals and to peer review their own.
Ah, but then Dr. Simpson probably owned a car; proof positive she’s in the pocket of Big Oil.
Why do you refuse to see the money coming from Think Progress, from the Sierra Club, from the Tides Foundation, from governments throughout the world and instead focus on the opposition’s funding, an opposition that really has no other choice if it wants to continue it’s research?
Why do you ignore the vast fortunes made by carbon traders on Wall Street (such as J.P. Morgan http://money.cnn.com/2008/08/11/technology/jpmorgan_carbon.fortune/) or Al Gore? You worry about oil money, but what of investor’s money? What of fat-cat Wall Street tycoons. What do they expect for THEIR money?
But facts are stubborn things, and the facts are that we aren’t seeing the principle predictions made by the climate models bearing out. Did you know that attempts to use the IPCC models to predict current conditions from past data have failed miserably? Why trust models that cannot be made to predict current conditions?
And there is considerable evidence for fraud. James Hansen’s GISS once published September data in October for the Arctic and claimed it was the hottest October on record. They quietly pulled back, but the press releases had already gone to the public. They also trumpeted that 1998 was the hottest year on record in the U.S. but quietly corrected that. How about the National Snow and Ice Data Center losing 93000 miles of ice? http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/8966 These may be simple errors, but it’s surprising how these errors always go in favor of AGW. They are generally corrected quietly AFTER the results have been trumpeted to the public.
I would like to direct your attention to the Endangered Atmospheres Conference. Chaired by Margaret Mead, this was a get-together of some of the most famous (or infamous) activist scientists (guys like James Lovelock, John Holdren, William Kellogg etc.) with the purpose of coming up with some atmosphere-related issue to draw in the general public. They chose global cooling, but had global warming on their short list. It was part of an effort to make the Earth’s atmosphere a matter of international law, to ultimately fundamentally change the relations of nations and the world economic system. And it was the same people who first demogogued global cooling then, without skipping a beat, switched to global warming. Why? Because nature wasn’t cooperating with GC. I remember watching it happen. Here is a good overview of it http://pumasunleashed.wordpress.com/2010/09/05/1975-%E2%80%98endangered-atmosphere%E2%80%99-conference-where-the-global-warming-hoax-was-born/. (Most of the links for the conference notes are pay sites, although I have read Kellogg’s piece in the past. http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/898089 )
Again, Roger Revelle himself (the granddaddy of AGW theory) thought this more a curiosity than anything else; he understood the logarithmic nature of CO2 to heat. Remember, CO2 is a minor trace gas, with less then four molecules in every ten thousand molecules of air. What is argued about are feedbacks; are they positive or negative? The IPCC and other alarmists insist they are positive, that CO2 will warm the planet, triggering more water vapor, triggering a release of methane, leading to a runaway greenhouse effect. This disregards the warmer periods in history where it DIDN’T happen that way. That was why Michael Mann was so determined to eliminate the Medieval Warming Period. It’s why alarmist researchers are trying to downplay the Ordovician period (where CO2 levels were ten times as high as today, but the temperature of the planet was cooler.)
Facts are stubborn things.
Harryhammer Reply:
August 31st, 2011 at 11:09 am
@Timothy Birdnow,
Timothy,
Fact:
Every scientific organization on the planet disagrees with you.
I’m betting on every scientific organization in the world, not James “Mountain Jim” Inhofe and friends.
I’m betting on the scientists who write the books that you’d have to study if you were ever to pursue and satisfactorily complete even a single course of study in geophysics.
I’m betting the scientific organization that publishes several scientific periodicals, including eighteen peer-reviewed research journals, most notably the Journal of Geophysical Research and Geophysical Research Letters.
I’m betting on the 58,287 scientists that belong to the AGU, some of which have I.Q.’s comparable to and even higher than that of an Albert Einstein or an Isaac Newton.
The AGU was established over 90 years ago, and for more than 50 years has operated as an unincorporated affiliate of the National Academy of Sciences.
These aren’t “NOBODIES.”
The National Academy of Sciences is like the Supreme Court of science; they are the best of the best when it comes to science, of an entire nation.
It should also ease your mind that the American Geophysical Union is a non-profit organization and inter-disciplinary.
Disseminating scientific information is what they do.
The subject of geophysics includes the shape of the Earth, its gravitational and magnetic fields, the dynamics of the Earth as a whole and of its component parts, the Earth’s internal structure, composition and tectonics, the generation of magmas, volcanism and rock formation, the hydrological cycle including snow and ice, all aspects of the oceans, the atmosphere, ionosphere, magnetosphere and solar-terrestrial relations, and analogous problems associated with the Moon and other planets.
Geophysics is also applied to societal needs, such as mineral resources, mitigation of natural hazards and environmental protection. Geophysical survey data are used to analyze potential petroleum reservoirs and mineral deposits, to locate groundwater, to locate archaeological finds, to find the thicknesses of glaciers and soils, and for environmental remediation.
As preconditions to becoming a Nominated AGU Fellow, an applicant must be considered exceptional by his peers, and he must also have previously made a brilliant scientific contribution to mankind.
The opinion of the American Geophysical Union is a hell of a lot more important than the opinion of any of your favourite deniers like James “Mountain Jim” Inhofe.
The AGU recently issued a position statement on climate change.
This is how it begins:
The Earth’s climate is now clearly out of balance and is warming. Many components of the climate system–including the temperatures of the atmosphere, land and ocean, the extent of sea ice and mountain glaciers, the sea level, the distribution of precipitation, and the length of seasons–are now changing at rates and in patterns that are not natural and are best explained by the increased atmospheric abundances of greenhouse gases and aerosols generated by human activity during the 20th century.
Honestly, comparing any of the most vocal global warming deniers that exists to a Nominated AGU Fellow is kind of like comparing a kid working part time at Jiffy Lube to Michael Schumacher’s chief mechanic.
August 31st, 2011 | 7:48 am
Oh, and Harry, citing leftists like Noam Chomsky does your case no good. Neither does citing a Greenpeace activist, even if she is in Mensa.
http://hell.iqsociety.org/hellia-members/laura-n-kochen/
Sorry, but a whitewash is a watewash, and I don’t need Mensa-ites to tell me to disregard my own eyes.
And if my mother should become a global warming alarmist I would rightly conclude that her recent stroke has driven her into dementia. At least she would have an excuse!
Harryhammer Reply:
August 31st, 2011 at 11:36 am
@Timothy Birdnow,
Timothy,
You’re doing exactly what you accused me of doing.
I don’t care if Noam Chomsky is left or right or purple.
I care about the fact that he has more awards and honours than you have teeth in your head.
I care about the fact that in 2005 he was voted the leading living intellectual and in 2006 was voted 7th on the list of heroes of our time.
I care about the fact that he has been teaching at M.I.T. for 55 years.
The soul of MIT is research.
For 150 years, the Institute has married teaching with engineering and scientific studies—and produced an unending stream of advancements, many of them world-changing.
On the list of faculty members and staff that are currently or have previously been associated with MIT you will find:
• 76 Nobel Laureates
• 50 National Medal of Science recipients
• 35 MacArthur Fellows.
Glau Reply:
August 31st, 2011 at 7:18 pm
@Harryhammer, for all Dr. Chomsky’s academic credentials as a linguist and his experience as a political commentator, he isn’t an expert on climatology. (Of course, neither is any of us, Mr. Smith included.) So citing him is bordering on off-topic.
On the other hand, Harryhammer’s mention of scientific organizations and climatologists supporting climate change is relevant. Experts are not everything, but they are better than non-experts, all else being equal.
Harryhammer Reply:
September 1st, 2011 at 9:04 am
@Glau,
Glau,
In law, an expert witness must be recognized by argument and authority.
The criteria used in evaluating arguments and their forms of reasoning are studied in logic.
With academic knowledge of an area someone can be an authority on a subject.
So, let me get this straight.
Your words:
“Experts are not everything, but, they are better than non-experts, all else being equal.”
97% of the world’s leading climate experts are in agreement.
Every scientific organization on the planet is in agreement.
Have you ever heard of anyone winning the Nobel Prize for climate science?
It’s almost like a well kept secret.
I would start there.
Glau Reply:
September 5th, 2011 at 7:50 pm
@Harryhammer, To clarify, I only meant that as experts go, Chomsky isn’t the best choice given that his expertise is in politics and linguistics, rather than climatology. I’m not saying he’s wrong. In fact, I would say the balance of evidence is on his side.
I do recognize that climate change is the consensus among climatologists and that it has been accepted by many scientific organizations. That’s why I wrote:
“On the other hand, Harryhammer’s mention of scientific organizations and climatologists supporting climate change is relevant.”
It would seem that because I was pointing out a flaw in one of your argument, you thought I was arguing against your position. Not so, although the mistake is understandable in such a heated debate.
Pauld Reply:
September 1st, 2011 at 12:21 pm
@Harryhammer, Hammer: I glad to see that you are such a fan of MIT where Dr. Richard Lindzen is Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology, Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences
In addition to being a chaired professor in climate science at extra-super prestigious MIT, Dr. Lindzen is a recipient of the AMS’s Meisinger, and Charney Awards, the AGU’s Macelwane Medal, and the Leo Huss Walin Prize. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and the Norwegian Academy of Sciences and Letters, and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences, the American Geophysical Union and the American Meteorological Society. He is a corresponding member of the NAS Committee on Human Rights, and has been a member of the NRC Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate and the Council of the AMS. He has also been a consultant to the Global Modeling and Simulation Group at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, and a Distinguished Visiting Scientist at California Institute of Technology’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. (Ph.D., ’64, S.M., ’61, A.B., ’60, Harvard University)
He disagrees with you and Dr. Chomsky. So there.
Harryhammer Reply:
September 3rd, 2011 at 12:32 pm
@Pauld,
PaulD,
About 7 years ago, MIT climatologist Richard Lindzen was running around saying that he’s willing to take bets that global average temperatures in 20 years will in fact be lower than they are now.
As a result, a fellow named James Annan, from the Data Assimilation group at the Frontier Research Center for Global Change emailed Lindzen about setting up an actual “bet.”
The two men exchanged proposals for bets, but, were unable to agree.
Lindzen wanted 50:1 odds.
Originally, he wanted 100:1 odds.
Then he came down to 50:1 in what he described as a “special favor” for Mr. Annan.
Lindzen’s final proposal for a bet was the following:
• Temperature change of less than 0.2 °C (0.36 °F), he would win.
• Temperature change between 0.2 °C (0.36 °F) and 0.4 °C (0.72 °F) the bet would be off.
• Temperature change of 0.4 °C (0.72 °F) or greater and Annan would win.
By the way, Lindzen would only take 2 to 1 odds on that final proposal.
Does that seem overly confident to you?
Incidentally, Lindzen has been characterized by many of his graduate students as having a deep contrarian streak.
In that sense, he’s much like Freeman Dyson.
August 31st, 2011 | 5:20 pm
Oh, and Harry, PaulD says it quite well. what do you think “hide the decline” meant? Why did it have to
be hidden? You yourself made the point that tree rings show something different than the temperature
record (which, as I have pointed out, is suspect). YOU HAVE ANSWERED YOUR OWN QUESTION; the decline had to
be HIDDEN FROM THE PUBLIC. How was that accomplished? Through Mike’s nature trick.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/20/mikes-nature-trick/
From Anthony Watts;
“But there is an interesting twist here: grafting the thermometer onto a reconstruction is not actually
the original “Mike’s Nature trick”! Mann did not fully graft the thermometer on a reconstruction, but he
stopped the smoothed series in their end years. The trick is more sophisticated, and was uncovered by UC
over here. (Note: Try not to click this link now, CA is overloaded. Can’t even get to it myself to mirror
it. -A)
When smoothing these time series, the Team had a problem: actual reconstructions “diverge” from the
instrumental series in the last part of 20th century. For instance, in the original hockey stick (ending
1980) the last 30-40 years of data points slightly downwards. In order to smooth those time series one
needs to “pad” the series beyond the end time, and no matter what method one uses, this leads to a
smoothed graph pointing downwards in the end whereas the smoothed instrumental series is pointing upwards
— a divergence. So Mann’s solution was to use the instrumental record for padding, which changes the
smoothed series to point upwards as clearly seen in UC’s figure (violet original, green without “Mike’s
Nature trick”).”
End excerpt.
You seem incapable of actually looking at this yourself.
As to your many studies on concensus, please get in touch with reality. Oreskes was full of balogna, and
rebutted by Bennie Peiser (please note that Nature wouldn’t run Peiser’s piece, then rejected it when
parts leaked out, so it never received a real hearing.) Bray did little different, and was rebutted by
Dennis Avery. Here is a rebuttal of Doran and Zimmerman http://www.freerepublic.com/%
5Ehttp://climatequotes.com/2011/02/10/study-claiming-97-of-climate-scientists-agree-is-flawed/
These studies all rely on the same techniques, which I have already outlined for you; ask if the scientist
thinks climate has changed (well, duh!) and if humans have anything to do with it (double duh – a dam
changes the climate in it’s local region.) These studies are acts of climatological onanism.
The fact is, your concensus is a lot of hot air. At least you are presenting some solid facts; I feared
you were incapable of it.
As to your “independent reviews” perhaps you should read Ross McKittrick’s demolishion of five of the six.
http://rossmckitrick.weebly.com/uploads/4/8/0/8/4808045/rmck_climategate.pdf
These groups used the same technique, and naturally got the same results. They were never intended to do
anything but stop the bleeding. I find it less than compelling that you cite the Union of Concerned
Scientists or the notoriously alarmist AAAS and NAS. Nas, for instance, stands to lose a lot of government
money if this generation long War of the Worlds scare is ended.
And Frederick Seitz, past president of the NAS, was a staunch AGW skeptic. Oh, but he once received
coupons for money off on a carton of Pall Malls, so he doesn’t count!
Again, these groups making grand statements do not mean squat; the facts on the ground are what matter.
And those facts are against AGW.
Interesting; you fail to read the quote that you yourself posted;
“We have found that natural rates of atmospheric ionisation caused by cosmic rays can substantially
enhance nucleation under the conditions we studied – by up to a factor of 10.”
“Ion‐enhancement is particularly pronounced in the cool temperatures of the mid‐troposphere and above,
where CLOUD has found that sulphuric acid and water vapour can nucleate without the need for additional
vapours.”
“This result leaves open the possibility that cosmic rays could also influence climate.”
End quote.
What does that mean? It seems pretty clear. Yes, there are weasle words in the end, because they don’t
want to speak too baldly, but it supports Svensmark. This is catastropic to AGW theory. Even if a dearth of cosmic rays only contributes a quarter to the blistering 1* temperature rise, what does that say? How much does the many unknown or poorly understood mechanisms contribute? At what point do we dismiss this notion of 8* temperature rises based solely on computer simulations? This is growing thin indeed.
Despite confident assumptions by the IPCC to the contrary, there is considerable uncertainty as to the amount of contribution that solar variability plays. http://www.fel.duke.edu/~scafetta/pdf/Scafetta-JASP_1_2009.pdf The IPCC would disagree, but then they also falsely reported that Himalayan glaciers would be gone by 2035, so what do they know? http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jan/20/himalayan-glaciers-melt-claims-false-ipcc Meele et. al. showed that small changes in total solar irradience can be amplified by stratospheric and oceanic conditions. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090827141349.htm
The effects of solar magnetic effects are also open for debate. Also, the amount of variation of the solar spectrum is likewise open for debate. What is obvious is that there are significant factors that are not taken into account by the IPCC and other alarmist models.
How far can we subdivide the causes of this warming before CO2 is considered statistically insignificant? Remember; it works logarithmically. A doubling of CO2 only gives us half again as much warming, until it peters out at about 2*. After that, feedbacks are critical. We see no evidence of positive feedbacks.
And about those wars for oil; it really surprises me because since WWII (a war not for oil) we have had Korea, the Berlin Airlift, Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, Afghanistan. Who would have guessed that oil was such a critical reason for going into any of these places! We did Iraq twice; remind me of how much oil we took from there again, please. And Your hero Obama has taken us into Libya; doesn’t seem to be dropping oil prices too much.
The reality is that oil is going to be with us for the forseeable future, and efforts to end drilling will see oil replaced with coal or natural gas. What we aren’t going to see is a reduction in greenhouse gases; electricity to run cars and the like has to be made from fossil fuels. If you think solar and wind will do the job I still have that bridge for you, and it’s cheap! You can always use a second bridge…
But the economic downturn caused by draconian regulations of fossil fuels will certainly cause a worldwide economic slowdown (in fact, it’s part of the current economic mess) and the poor will suffer worldwide as a result. It’s already happening with the spike in food prices as a result of turning corn into the environmentally approved ethanol. And you guys hate nuclear, too.
I am never impressed with academic celebrities who tell me what I should think, Harry. You seem to be quite enamored of them.
Noam Chomsky once observed;
“Walter Lippmann … described what he called “the manufacture of consent” as “a revolution” in “the practice of democracy”… And he said this was useful and necessary because “the common interests” – the general concerns of all people – “elude” the public. The public just isn’t up to dealing with them. And they have to be the domain of what he called a “specialized class” … [Reinhold Niebuhr]‘s view was that rationality belongs to the cool observer. But because of the stupidity of the average man, he follows not reason, but faith. And this naive faith requires necessary illusion, and emotionally potent oversimplifications, which are provided by the myth-maker to keep the ordinary person on course. It’s not the case, as the naive might think, that indoctrination is inconsistent with democracy. Rather, as this whole line of thinkers observes, it is the essence of democracy.”
End quote.
Chomsky is a communist who wants to fundamentally change human civilization. He is not a climatologist. Using Chomsky as a reference would be like using Heinrich Himmler to discourse on biology.
I think that speaks volumes.
Glau Reply:
August 31st, 2011 at 7:37 pm
@Timothy Birdnow, By equating an academic whose views you oppose with someone who oversaw the murder of millions, you trivialize Himmler’s crimes against humanity and inflame the discussion.
Perhaps Chomsky is wrong, even dangerously wrong, but he is not a war criminal.
Harryhammer Reply:
August 31st, 2011 at 10:02 pm
@Timothy Birdnow,
Timothy,
You won’t find too many biologists who agree with you either.
If you think Chomsky doesn’t know anything about sciences, think again.
He’s forgotten more about sciences than you’ll ever know.
He’s a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society.
In addition, he’s a recipient of the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award of the American Psychological Association, the Kyoto Prize in Basic Sciences, the Helmholtz Medal, the Dorothy Eldridge Peacemaker Award, the 1999 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Computer and Cognitive Science, and others.
He’s twice winner of The Orwell Award, granted by The National Council of Teachers of English for “Distinguished Contributions to Honesty and Clarity in Public Language” (in 1987 and 1989).
He’s a member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts in Department of Social Sciences.
He’s is a member of the Faculty Advisory Board of the MIT Harvard Research Journal.
In 2005, Chomsky received an honorary fellowship from the Literary and Historical Society.
In 2007, Chomsky received The Uppsala University (Sweden) Honorary Doctor’s degree in commemoration of Carolus Linnaeus.
In February 2008, he received the President’s Medal from the Literary and Debating Society of the National University of Ireland, Galway.
Since 2009 he is honorary member of IAPTI.
In 2010, Chomsky received the Erich Fromm Prize in Stuttgart, Germany.
In April 2010, Chomsky became the third scholar to receive the University of Wisconsin’s A.E. Havens Center’s Award for Lifetime Contribution to Critical Scholarship.
Chomsky has an Erdős number of four.
Chomsky was voted the leading living public intellectual in The 2005 Global Intellectuals Poll conducted by the British magazine Prospect.
In a list compiled by the magazine New Statesman in 2006, he was voted seventh in the list of “Heroes of our time”.
In June 2011, Chomsky was awarded the Sydney Peace Prize, which cited his “unfailing courage, critical analysis of power and promotion of human rights”.
If you think Chomsky doesn’t know what he’s talking about when it comes to scientific subjects you better give your head a shake.
pentamom Reply:
September 1st, 2011 at 12:11 pm
@Harryhammer, Chomksy (rightly) has all those honors and credentials because he is *a linguist.* He’s a bio-linguist, which means he has expertise in the physical science end of linguistics as well as the social science end, but none of that makes him any more qualified than your family physician (who also has extensive scientific training and uses it daily) *in the area of climatology.*
Here’s an analogy you might like better: Chomsky on climate is no better an authority than Dr. Phil on nuclear physics. He’s scientifically trained, too, but not in an area that has *anything* to do with the one in question. And like Chomsky, he’s prone to speak beyond his expertise on a regular basis.
Harryhammer Reply:
September 3rd, 2011 at 10:21 am
@pentamom,
Pentamom,
The problem is that “everyone” is prone to speaking beyond their expertise, even Freeman Dyson.
What’s happening now is nothing new.
In the 1980′s, scientists were concerned about the ozone layer when most of the world didn’t know what ozone was.
Climate scientists were saying that a compound best known by the DuPont brand name “Freon” was harming the planet.
They said that certain chemicals were destroying part of the atmosphere that is essential for human life because it blocks out harmful ultraviolet radiation that causes cancer.
The first step was The Vienna Conference; the first international conference on ozone layer depletion.
Next came The Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer; a multilateral environmental agreement.
Soon after, came The Montreal Protocol on Substances That Deplete the Ozone Layer; an international treaty designed to protect the ozone layer by phasing out the production of a number of substances believed to be responsible for ozone depletion.
The Montreal Protocol is said to be the single most successful international agreement to date.
All countries in the United Nations have now ratified the original agreement and three of the many noteworthy climate scientists who worked hard to solve the problem were awarded a Nobel Prize in Chemistry for saving us from disaster.
Their names are Mario Molina, Paul Crutzen, and Frank Rowland.
I care about the opinions of climate scientists that have won a Nobel Prize in climate science.
Do you?
Pauld Reply:
September 1st, 2011 at 9:38 am
@Timothy Birdnow, Tim: I think you have somewhat confused “Mike’s Nature trick” with Briffa’s “hide the decline”. Both involve similar issues, but are slightly different methods of obscuring the divergence problem. Your confusion is no big deal as the climategate emails discuss so many different techniques to mislead that it is hard to keep them straight. (In fact, Dr. Mueller was similarly confused in the talk he gave that went viral, and then John Cook at Skeptical Science made his own set of mistakes trying to correct to Mueller:)
In any event, climate audit has a nice summary of the various climategate “tricks”, “deletions” , “bodges” and combinations thereof right here: http://climateaudit.org/2011/03/29/keiths-science-trick-mikes-nature-trick-and-phils-combo/
Harryhammer Reply:
September 3rd, 2011 at 10:55 am
@Pauld,
PaulD,
I already explained to you once why Steve McIntyre isn’t a reliable source.
He doesn’t have an advanced degree and he was also exposed for having unreported ties to CGX Energy, Inc., an oil and gas exploration company.
He is the former President of Northwest Exploration Company Limited, the predecessor company to CGX Energy Inc.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that none of his criticisms have merit.
He did find a few tiny mathematical errors that were immediately corrected.
Did you know that McIntyre was mentioned over a 100 times in those hacked private emails?
One climate researcher dismissed him as a “bozo”.
Others correctly speculated about his funding.
McIntyre is terrific source if you’re looking for someone who distorts facts and believes in conspiracy theories.
His website is stupid.
Once again, it demonstrates how weak the talent is on your side of this debate.
Unless, of course, you can explain to me how a former minerals prospector with no advanced degree can become a prominent global warming denier virtually overnight?
Every scientific organization on the planet disagrees with you!
pauld Reply:
September 3rd, 2011 at 7:04 pm
@Harryhammer,
“McIntyre is terrific source if you’re looking for someone who distorts facts and believes in conspiracy theories.”
It is obvious that you never read McIntyres site and have obtained from someone inaccurate information. Anyone who has ever read the site would know that one of the few ways the get your comment “snipped” is to speculate about conspiracy theories and to speculate about bad motives.
Further, if you believe that all McIntyre has done is identify a few minor mathematical errors that were quickly corrected, you are again wrong. In fact, in my view the most interesting work that McIntyre has done doesn’t even involve mathematics. Of course, you would not know that since you have never read his website.
Finally, just so I can understand what you are talking about, could you give me one example with appropriate links of where McIntyre has distorted facts. My experience reading his website is that nearly all of his posts are meticulously documented.
Harryhammer Reply:
September 4th, 2011 at 10:11 am
@pauld,
PaulD,
Stephen McIntyre has worked in mineral exploration for 30 years and much of that time he was an officer or director of several public mineral exploration companies.
While he was busy doing that, three climate scientists were busy winning the Nobel Prize in atmospheric sciences for saving the planet and solving the ozone hole problem.
McIntyre’s words:
“I’ve spent most of my life in business, mostly on the stock market side of mining exploration deals,” he said in 2009.
The next time you get sick and need an operation you might want go to see your stock broker instead of your doctor?
McIntyre may steer clear of the crackpot conspiracy theories about socialism and communism, etc.; but, he’s constantly accusing NASA and other reputable scientists of corruption.
He constantly accuses them of cooking the books, hiding data and stonewalling deniers.
He repeatedly attacks their method, as if they are all a bunch of bungling incompetent fools.
Furthermore, he’s declared the Climategate investigations (all 6 of them) to be whitewashes.
Soon he’ll be adding his mama to the list of Al Gore conspirators.
Pauld Reply:
September 4th, 2011 at 6:18 pm
@Harryhammer, “McIntyre may steer clear of the crackpot conspiracy theories about socialism and communism, etc.; but, he’s constantly accusing NASA and other reputable scientists of corruption.”
I am glad you have corrected yourself by recognizing that McIntyre steers clear of crackpot conspiracy theories. As to your allegation that he is constantly accusing reputable scientists of corruption, wrong again. McIntyre, in fact, studiously avoid charges of corruption and frequently snips comments that infer corrupt motives. You would have to read his blog to know that.
You say: “He repeatedly attacks their method, as if they are all a bunch of bungling incompetent fools.”
He does repeatedly attack their methods. McIntyre meticulously documents his criticisms. You could try reading his criticisms of: 1) Mann’s improperly centered principle component analysis in his original hockey stick paper; 2) Briffa’s misuse of the Yamal temperature proxies; 3) Mann’s misuse of stripped bark bristlecone pine proxies; 4) Mann’s misue of the Tiljander proxies. I think that any of these McIntrye criticisms would lead a reasonable person to believe the scientists in question made major mistakes.
You say, “He constantly accuses them of cooking the books, hiding data and stonewalling deniers.”
I can’t recall that McIntyre has accused anyone of cooking the books. As to hiding data, take a look at the link I previously posted on Briffa’s “hiding the decline” Michael Mann’s “nature trick” and Phil Jones “combo trick”. All of these, by the way, were identified by Steven McIntre on his blog well before the climategate emails were disclosed. The emails just made clear the motives.
As to stonewalling deniers, the examples are too numerous to list. For just one, how about Phil Jones email to his colleagues to delete emails rather than disclose them in a Freedom of Information request. Why don’t you look up what your investigations had to say about that one. Let me know what you find.
Harryhammer Reply:
September 5th, 2011 at 10:38 am
@Pauld,
PaulD,
You just don’t get it.
Freedom of information laws were being used to harass climate scientists.
Leading up to Copenhagen Accord, climate scientists were being peppered with Freedom of Information Act requests.
According to Sir Paul Nurse, the president of the Royal Society, some climate scientists were being deliberately targeted by organised campaigns of requests for data and other research materials, aimed specifically at intimidating them and slowing down their research.
Incidentally, Sir Paul Nurse isn’t a semi-retired minerals consultant.
He’s a Nobel laureate.
Here’s his take on this:
“I have been told of some researchers who are getting lots of requests for, among other things, all drafts of scientific papers prior to their publication in journals, with annotations, explaining why changes were made between successive versions.”
“If it is true, it will consume a huge amount of time.”
“And it’s intimidating.”
“It was possible some requests were designed simply to stop scientists working rather than as a legitimate attempt to get research data, said Nurse.”
“It is essential that scientists are as open and transparent as possible and, where they are not, they should be held to account.”
“But at times this appears to be being used as a tool to stop scientists doing their work.”
“That’s going to turn us into glue.”
“We are just not going to be able to operate efficiently.”
Incidentally, the plan of the American Petroleum Institute is to stall.
pauld Reply:
September 6th, 2011 at 4:47 am
@Harryhammer, If some people are abising the freedom of information rewiests that is unfortunate. SM is not among those. Most journals have reqiirements that authors archive the data upon which published articles are based. For many of the prominent temperature reconstructions this requirement has not been enforced. SM has made a several FOI requests to obtain data that should already been in the public domain.
Even if some people are abusing FOIs that does not justify deleting emails rather than responding to what was a legitimate Foi request.
Harryhammer Reply:
September 6th, 2011 at 9:51 am
@pauld,
Pauld,
Climate scientists are up against a massive campaign by oil and gas interests that will stop at nothing to carry on burning as much oil and gas as possible.
The American Petroleum Institute, commonly referred to as API, is the main U.S trade association for the oil and natural gas industry.
Think of the API as a union of 400 corporations.
That’s one heck of a union.
Nothing compares in terms money, power and influence.
The main reason you and many others are so challenged to accept the science has to do with the API.
There are no deeper pockets.
Take a look at the list of top companies based on revenue:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_by_revenue
The API is well represented:
• 4 of the top 5
• 7 of the top 9
• 8 of the top 11
• 9 of the top 14
The API has offices in 27 state capitals.
They currently have 16 heavyweight lobbyists supporting it on various Congressional activities.
They don’t need your help.
Pauld Reply:
September 6th, 2011 at 5:20 am
@Harryhammer, Just for the record, here is McIntyre’s lengthy, meticulous and thoroughly documented analysis of the Phil Jone’s deletion of email enterprise. http://climateaudit.org/2011/09/02/nsf-on-jones-email-destruction-enterprise/
The deletion of emails was prompted by a request for correspondence regarding discussion of the hockey stick controversy by the lead authors of the IPCC in preparing the IPCC report. This would certainly seem to be a very legitimate request, especially since such correspondence was supposed to be publicly archived in accordance with IPCC policy.
As to the investigations, here is just a small excerpt:
“In the UK, Muir Russell was commissioned by the University of East Anglia to inquire about the emails, but didn’t even ask Jones whether he deleted the emails. Muir Russell “explained” to the Parliamentary Committee that, if he had done so, he would have been asking Jones to admit misconduct. That a panel commissioned to inquire about misconduct should refuse to grasp the nettle of actually inquiring about misconduct is unfortunately all too typical of these sorry events. Muir Russell’s subsequent report then contained findings on email deletion that were blatantly untrue and known to be untrue to hundreds, if not thousands, of readers who’ve followed these events. In particular, even though Jones’ email initiating the deletion enterprise was marked re “FOIA” and was a direct response to Holland’s FOIA request, Muir Russell obtusely reported that there was no pending FOI request at the time of Jones’ deletion email. This sort of wilful obtuseness and/or incompetence was one of a number of factors that resulted in the Muir Russell “inquiry” exacerbating, rather than diminishing, the polarized attitudes in this field.”
Read the whole thing for a review of the other “enquiries”.
Harryhammer Reply:
September 7th, 2011 at 10:27 am
@Pauld,
Pauld,
It doesn’t change a thing about the science.
You need to get your villains straight.
You are continuing to chase ghosts and phantoms.
In the meantime, the crooks are getting away with murder.
In early 1998, ExxonMobil helped create the Global Climate Science Team (GCST), a task force charged with discrediting the scientific consensus opinion that greenhouse gases are warming the planet.
Members of the task force included ExxonMobil’s senior environmental lobbyist, Randy Randol; the American Petroleum Institute’s public relations representative, Joe Walker; and Steven Milloy, who heads a non-profit organization called the Advancement of Sound Science Coalition.
Milloy’s organization had been secretly formed in 1993 by tobacco giant Philip Morris with the goal of creating uncertainty about the health hazards posed by second-hand smoke.
This is not the first time that API has been at the center of a secretive campaign to derail carbon controls.
In the late 1990s, the institute conspired with Exxon and a cadre of right-wing think tanks to create the “Global Climate Science Communications Action Plan” — an effort to fund any and all climate research that hypes the “weaknesses in scientific understanding” of global warming.
“Victory will be achieved,” the plan explained, when “those promoting the Kyoto treaty on the basis of extant science appear to be out of touch with reality.”
According to a leaked internal memo, the head of API directed nearly 400 member companies to mobilize their employees to attend “Energy Citizen” rallies in 20 states to protest a cap on carbon pollution.
To ensure the success of the fake grass-roots protests, Gerard bragged that he had also enlisted a bevy of polluting allies — including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers.
“Please treat this information as sensitive,” Gerard cautioned in the memo. “We don’t want critics to know our game plan.”
Take your blinkers off.
If you want me study your mole hill then you’re going to have to stop ignoring my mountain.
Six separate independent inquiries found no wrongdoing.
Case closed.
Pauld Reply:
September 7th, 2011 at 12:54 pm
@Harryhammer, “Six separate independent inquiries found no wrongdoing. Case closed.”
I suppose it depends on how one defines wrongdoing. In the ultimate scheme of things, however, what the inquiries say will not matter Here is why.
People who have followed the issue carefully now know the various means discussed in the climate gate emails to mislead policy makers.
As a result, I would be very surprised if in the next IPCC the same authors will try to include in the next IPCC report Briffa’s “hide the decline”, Mike’s “nature trick” or Phil Jones “combo trick” as described in the link I previously posted.
If they do, there are enough people familiar with sorry episode to raise hackles that will tend to descredit the IPCC report. The authors of other sections will not want to see their sections questioned because of the tricks used in the paleo climatology section.
The exposure of the climategate emails has already had its intended effect as I suspect we will see more complete and hoest disclosures in the next report. .
Harryhammer Reply:
September 7th, 2011 at 11:52 pm
@Pauld,
Pauld,
Your grandchildren will have the last word.
Do you have any idea what an Inspector General is and does?
An IG in the U.S. isn’t BS.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_Inspectors_General_-_Logo.jpg
According to the U.S. Department of Commerce Inspector General:
“We did not find any evidence that NOAA inappropriately manipulated data or failed to adhere to appropriate peer review procedures.”
Incidentally, in the U.S., an Inspector General leads an organization charged with examining the actions of a government agency, military organization, or military contractor as a general auditor of their operations to ensure they are operating in compliance with generally established policies of the government, to audit the effectiveness of security procedures, or to discover the possibility of misconduct, waste, fraud, theft, or certain types of criminal activity by individuals or groups related to the agency’s operation, usually involving some misuse of the organization’s funds or credit.
In other words, finding fraud and misconduct is what they do.
They led one of the six separate independent inquiries that you continue to dismiss and or downplay.
You should be apologizing to the 4 scientists who had their emails and their lives stolen.
pauld Reply:
September 3rd, 2011 at 7:16 pm
@Harryhammer,
“Unless, of course, you can explain to me how a former minerals prospector with no advanced degree can become a prominent global warming denier virtually overnight?”
Well for one thing, McIntyre isn’t a denier. He has taken an interest a keen interest in proxy temperature reconstructions and for the most part doesn’t take a position on his website about other issues in climate science. Of course you would not know that because you haven’t taken the time to read his website.
Harryhammer Reply:
September 4th, 2011 at 12:35 pm
@pauld,
PaulD,
I’ll tell you what McIntyre did manage to do:
He managed to find a few tiny little errors in NASA’s source code.
After the revision, 1998 was demoted from the then hottest year on record in the United States.
As a result, 1934 surpassed it by an astounding 0.01 degrees Celsius.
Is 1/100th of a degree statistically significant in your books?
For a while there, every conservative hack in America was trumpeting McIntyre’s minutia as the nail in the coffin of the hockey stick graph and global warming theory as a whole.
In my opinion, A. A. Leiserowitz, Director of the Yale University Project on Climate Change, and his colleagues described the whole Climategate case best:
“Climategate had a significant effect on public beliefs in global warming and trust in scientists.”
“The loss of trust in scientists, however, was primarily among individuals with a strongly individualistic worldview or politically conservative ideology.”
“Nonetheless, Americans overall continue to trust scientists more than other sources of information about global warming.”
Pauld Reply:
September 4th, 2011 at 6:24 pm
@Harryhammer, I had forgotten about that episode until you mentioned it. I thought it was an interesting mistake that SM found, but I would agree with you that it is not particularly important. It certainly pales in comparison to other important problems SM has identified with temperature proxy studies. You apparently are not familiar with those?
Pauld Reply:
September 6th, 2011 at 10:20 am
@Harryhammer,
You say, “For a while there, every conservative hack in America was trumpeting McIntyre’s minutia as the nail in the coffin of the hockey stick graph and global warming theory as a whole.”
You seem to conflate a minor issue that McIntrye found regarding the U.S. temperature record, with his critique of Michael Mann’s original hockey stick paper, which hardly involved mathematical minutia.
When Michael Mann published his original hockey stick paper, it become iconic in the climate science community. It was prominently highlighted in the IPCC and the Al Gore movie.
McIntrye leveled three major criticisms of the Mann’s paper: 1) he claimed that the statistical analysis was deeply flawed in that Mann’s algorithm would generate hockey-stick shaped graphs out of random red-noise data; 2) he claimed that the hockey-stick shape was highly sensitive to inclusion of one set tree rings from stripped-bark bristlecone pines, which in the published literature were not viewed as valid temperature proxies; and 3) he claimed that Mann’s statistical analysis failed standard tests of statistical significance.
To keep this post a reasonable length, I focus on the first criticism. Mann used a form of principle component analysis (PCA) to analyze his data. When McIntyre reviewed Mann’s analysis, he found that Mann did not use standard textbook form of PCA analysis, but instead used his own modification of PCA without disclosing it in his paper. McIntrye charitably described Mann’s algorithim as “non-standard”. A more accurate label would be “incorrect”.
When McIntrye analyzed Mann’s PCA algorithm, he found that it generated hockey-stick shaped graphs out random “red-noise” data. Random “red noise” data is randomly generated numbers that are autocorrellated and have a mean of zero—(i.e. random numbers without a coherent trend).
To demonstrate this feature of Mann’s algorithm, McIntyre generated 10,000 graphs with Mann’s algorithm using random red-noise data tuned to same auto-correlation as Mann’s tree-rings and found that 98% of the resulting graphs had hockey-stick shapes. The reason for this curious outcome is technical, but describe in detail by McIntrye in his published paper and in the NAS report, excerpted below. In any event, if McIntrye’s point stands, then it is clear that the Mann’s iconic hockey-stick was just an artifact of incorrect math. This does not strike me as mathematical minutia.
Congress eventually got into this controversy by commissioning two independent panels to look into McIntyres criticisms. Both agreed with McIntyre. The Wegman report focused entirely on McIntyres criticisms. In concluded:
” We found MBH98 and MBH99 [i.e. Michael Mann's papers] to be somewhat obscure and incomplete and the criticisms of MM03/05a/05b [McIntyre's papers] to be valid and compelling. Overall, our committee believes that Mann’s assessments that the decade of the 1990s was the hottest decade of the millennium and that 1998 was the hottest year of the millennium cannot be supported by his analysis.” http://climateaudit.files.wordpress.com/2007/11/07142006_wegman_report.pdf at page 3
Dr. North’s panel from the National Academy of Science’s focused more generally on the field of temperature reconstructions, but when it addressed Mann’s paper, it agreed with McIntyre. On the issue of Mann’s statistical methods and their propensity to generate hockey-stick graphs, the NAS panel stated:
” McIntyre and McKitrick (2003) demonstrated that under some conditions the leading principal component can exhibit a spurious trendlike appearance, which could then lead to a spurious trend in the proxy-based reconstruction. To see how this can happen, suppose that instead of proxy climate data, one simply used a random sample of autocorrelated time series that did not contain a coherent signal. If these simulated proxies are standardized as anomalies with respect to a calibration period and used to form principal components, the first component tends to exhibit a trend, even though the proxies themselves have no common trend. Essentially, the first component tends to capture those proxies that, by chance, show different values between the calibration period and the remainder of the data. If this component is used by itself or in conjunction with a small number of unaffected components to perform reconstruction, the resulting temperature reconstruction may exhibit a trend, even though the individual proxies do not. Figure 9-2 shows the result of a simple simulation along the lines of McIntyre and McKitrick (2003) (the computer code appears in Appendix B).”
See, http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?isbn=0309102251 at page 90.
So when you wonder why a retired mining executive without any advanced degrees is getting so much attention, I think you can start here with his criticisms of Michael Mann’s hockey stick paper.
That was McIntyre’s initial forray into this field. He has subsequently continued to catalog more major problems with temperature reconstructions. You can find these by reading his website. For entertainment value, it is hard to beat Mann’s misuse of the Tiljander series and the ensuing debate.
Harryhammer Reply:
September 7th, 2011 at 11:30 am
@Pauld,
PaulD,
To a worm in a turnip the world is a turnip.
You need to put away your microscope, climb into a rocket ship and back away about a million miles.
You’re so entranced with the minor details that you are missing the big picture.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Misc_pollen.jpg
There’s a reason that 97% of the world’s leading climate scientists are in agreement.
There’s a reason that every scientific organization on the planet is in agreement.
It’s the same reason that most chess Grandmasters are in agreement as to the correct moves in any given situation.
Incidentally, Grandmaster is the highest title a chess player can attain, much like winning the Nobel Prize in Science is the highest title that a scientist can attain.
The Grandmasters of science disagree with you.
Pauld Reply:
September 7th, 2011 at 1:21 pm
@Harryhammer, Hammer you say: “To a worm in a turnip the world is a turnip. You need to put away your microscope, climb into a rocket ship and back away about a million miles.”
I would agree that temperature reconstructions and the hockey stick debate are not the most important issues in climate science. However, I think you being disingenuous to suggest that they are not important. The IPCC devotes an entire chapter to the topic. Mann’s hockey stick graph was highlighted in earlier IPCC reports. If its not important, then the IPCC should eliminate the chapter devoted to it.
Part of the reason I have discussed climategate and the hockey stick controversy is that I think they say much about quality control issues at the IPCC. Moreover, I thought it important to respond against attacks you made against Steven McIntyre that I thought were inaccurate. I don’t think your claims about him have held up to scrutiny. Just as a reminder, here is what you said:
“McIntyre is terrific source if you’re looking for someone who distorts facts and believes in conspiracy theories.”
“His website is stupid.”
“Once again, it demonstrates how weak the talent is on your side of this debate.”
Harryhammer Reply:
September 8th, 2011 at 12:43 am
@Pauld,
Pauld,
The talent is very weak on your side of this debate.
Here’s what one of the most recent surveys specifically concluded:
“The relative climate expertise and scientific prominence of the researchers unconvinced of ACC are substantially below that of the convinced researchers.”
Furthermore, anyone who says that all six separate independent inquiries were whitewashes is a conspiracy nut.
Pauld Reply:
September 8th, 2011 at 10:39 am
@Harryhammer, I understand that that is your opinion, but I suspect that you are able to maintain it only because you haven’t read any of the responses to the enquiries. Dr. Ross McKitrick, has written a lengthy response to each of the so-called investigations you cite: “Understanding the Climategate Inquiries”, by Ross McKitrick, Ph.D, Professor of Environmental Economics University of Guelph, Canada, September 2010 found here, http://rossmckitrick.weebly.com/uploads/4/8/0/8/4808045/rmck_climategate.pdf
You should really take time to read the other side of a controversy before reaching your conclusions. A brief excerpt from the introduction:
“As I will show, for the most part the inquiries were flawed, but where they actually functioned as proper inquiries, they upheld many criticisms. But a surprising number of issues were sidestepped or handled inadequately. The world still awaits a proper inquiry into climategate: one that is not stacked with global warming advocates, and one that is prepared to cross-examine evidence, interview critics as well as supporters of the CRU and other IPCC players, and follow the evidence where it clearly leads.”
September 1st, 2011 | 7:05 am
Point taken, Glau, although one must remember that it was men who thought much like Chomsky who created the worst mass-murdering states in human history. The U.S.S.R. was responsible for more deaths than ever the Nazis, and they were there with the tacit support of such men.
The Black Book of Communism estimates one million killed by the communist Vietnamese regime, and Chomsky was an ardent supporter of said regime. Perhaps his intentions are not to murder people, but that is the end result. Yet people like Hammer here do not seem to care that a man could be so spectacularly, immorally wrong and still advocate for the same.
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
September 1st, 2011 at 9:01 am
Okay, time to stop the Chomsky bashing. Thanks.
Harryhammer Reply:
September 1st, 2011 at 9:41 am
@Timothy Birdnow,
Mr. Birdbrain,
Stephen Hawking disagrees with you.
He’s worried about climate change.
Hawking is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a lifetime member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, and in 2009 was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the United States.
Hawking has an IQ similar to Einstein.
That said, if you aren’t going to consider the opinion of Stephen Hawking on a scientific subject, then you might as well not consider the opinion of anyone.
This is what Stephen Hawking is worried about right now:
(the part of the interview most relevant to my post begins about 48 minutes in.)
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3016295328827362823#
Harryhammer Reply:
September 1st, 2011 at 9:47 am
@Harryhammer,
They killed the link.
What a shock.
Harryhammer Reply:
September 1st, 2011 at 9:54 am
@Harryhammer,
Apparently, it now costs $1.99 to watch the full-length Hawking interview that I mentioned above.
It was an interview with Charlie Rose.
Anyhow, here’s shorter one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mu1PicT0TMU
Pauld Reply:
September 1st, 2011 at 10:19 am
@Harryhammer, Freeman Dyson disagrees with Hawkins and you. So there.
Do we decide who is correct by comparing I.Q.’s or arguments?
Harryhammer Reply:
September 1st, 2011 at 6:48 pm
@Pauld,
Pauld,
Not true.
Actually, that’s not true.
If you read Heretical Thoughts About Science and Society, Freeman Dyson agrees that anthropogenic global warming exists, and he specifically wrote the following:
“One of the main causes of warming is the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere resulting from our burning of fossil fuels such as oil and coal and natural gas.”
pauld Reply:
September 2nd, 2011 at 4:17 am
@Harryhammer, Actually it is true that he disagees with you and Hawkins. While he agrees that co2 is a greenhouse gas,and has contribited to warming, as do I, he thinks it is over hyped and nothing to to be alarmed about. You should read the article you cite and finf out why the title was chosen.y
Harryhammer Reply:
September 3rd, 2011 at 9:57 am
@pauld,
PaulD,
Much like Chomsky, and unlike you, Freeman Dyson is a liberal.
He’s an Obama-loving/Bush-loathing liberal who spent much of his life opposing American wars and fighting for things like the preservation of living creatures and the protection of natural resources.
In other words, he spent much of his life fighting much of what this website represents.
I’m surprised you aren’t bashing him
Dyson himself acknowledges that he’s not an expert at climate change and that he could be dead wrong.
However, since originally taking interest in climate studies in the 1970s, he has suggested that carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere could be controlled by planting fast-growing trees.
He calculates that it would take a trillion trees to remove all carbon from the atmosphere.
So when do we start planting?
pauld Reply:
September 3rd, 2011 at 7:25 pm
@Harryhammer, So you think that Wesley Smith is pro-war and anti-environment? That is an interesting take.
Why should I bash Dyson because he is a liberal?
I suspect the reason that Dyson acknowledges that he could be dead wrong, is because he is a humble scientist. Based on my reading of his work, I suspect that if you asked, he would acknowledge that the work he has done in theoretical physics could also be dead wrong. And although he is not a climate scientist, he does have a keen scientific mind and a mastery of physics that enables him to intelligently evaluate claims of climate scientists.
If you read more than just snippets of his comments, you will find that he is deeply skeptical of climate alarmism.
Harryhammer Reply:
September 4th, 2011 at 5:17 pm
@pauld,
PaulD,
Incidentally, trees cost as little as 10 cents each to plant.
That means that according to Dyson about $100 billion would do the job.
Did I mention that ExxonMobil made over $10 billion in pure profit in the last quarter?
They could save the world themselves for a mere 2.5 years worth of profit.
Why don’t we ask them nicely and see if they’ll kick in a few pfennigs for the cause?
pauld Reply:
September 5th, 2011 at 6:46 am
@Harryhammer, I am all for planting trees, but I don’t think that the government has the right to confiscate the earnings of a private company.
How about we fund the planting of trees with money diverted from solar energy boondoggles. http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/09/industry_analysts_have_been_questioning_solyndra_business_plan_for_years.html
September 1st, 2011 | 8:45 am
You have gone on and on about Chomsky’s awards and credentials without saying a word about what he says. Should we blindly agree with Chomsky because of his credentials or should we evaluate his arguments and supporting evidence?
I think you would have a better chance of persuading some one if you spent more time on the message rather than the messenger. You posts are like serving buns without the hamburger.
Harryhammer Reply:
September 1st, 2011 at 9:16 am
@Pauld,
PaulD,
I don’t blindly agree with anyone.
On the other hand, if Ronald McDonald was a denier your camp would be quoting him.
Incidentally, your post are like tofu turkey.
In other words, no matter how much you dress it up it’s still bogus.
September 16th, 2011 | 10:51 am
[...] the point: GWHs tried to panic us through various means–such as insisting that the recent hurricane/tropical storm to hit the East Coast was about global wa…–into accepting what many consider to be unacceptable policies, as if their desired [...]
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