Climategate: McIntyre and the ‘Divergence Problem’
With the Climategate data, however, McIntyre was able to reconstruct the complete Briffa series, which turns out to look like this:
The green line is the version we saw above as part of the IPCC report, and the red line is the full series — which goes down rather dramatically, instead of up as the story suggested. If the full Briffa series had been included, the figure would look rather different. The hook upward, the blade of the hockey stick, would have been much less dramatic, the implied global warming much less significant. By truncating the data as they did, the global warming looks much worse.
And as the Climategate emails show, this was the result of a long discussion of how to best deal with “pressure to present a nice tidy story.” A story that fit the IPCC’s political goals, whether it suited the science or not.
great report Charlie. keep the heat on the crooks.
bc, I’m sure you’re ‘gonna show up here, so I just wanted to get an answer from you about that last exchange between us. It follows:
bc, you evidently didn’t read the atlasshrugs post. The character assasination piece you supplied the link for didn’t address the topic, which is no surprise. “Kill the messenger!”, right? She didn’t wtite the piece, bc. You’d know that if you read the article! Nor would you have supplied the link for MPI.
MPI is a well-renowned and prestigious institution, yes. But, since you evidently didn’t look too closely at that one either, please do so. You’ll find that the information they used (and they actually linked to wikipedia, the home page, not the relevant data sets which I found after five minutes!) for the 1000 yr temps were supplied by folks like Mann and other group-thinkers mentioned in the CRU e-mails. Further, the data for the last part of the graph (in black) was supplied directly by the CRU @ East Anglia!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Referring back to the wattsupwiththat post (where she found it!),
you probably shouldn’t have used MPI as your evidence. Not only was it based on data that’s proven to be falsified, but it’s one (yeah, one) guy! try these German scientists, all 130+ of ‘em!
http://www.climatedepot.com/a/2282/Consensus-Takes-Another-Hit-More-than-60-German-Scientists-Dissent-Over-Global-Warming-Claims-Call-Climate-Fears-Pseudo-Religion-Urge-Chancellor-to-reconsider-views
C’Mon, bc! If you’re interested in real answers, stop parroting the party line! Have you, in all seriousness, actually read the disections of the CRU e-mails? If you’re truly that hard-left, then you should do a better job of researching your arguments as you must know by now that most here are reading them and shooting them down. It took me about thirty minutes. The time stamp reflects the time I took to feed and bathe my kids. Point being, your stuff’s weak! I know others here bad-mouth you pretty regularly and have no hope for you, but I would like to know what you (YOU) think of the CRU e-mails, not the party line.
Try this link. I just found it. Frankly, it made my head hurt, but it’s another explanation of the falsification of the data.
http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2009/12/fables-of-the-reconstruction.html
over
al gorebop-kennedy just got caught in another one about arctic ice. the scientist he quoted said no al not really.
“By truncating the data as they did, the global warming looks much worse.”
Sure, but that’s not really the point. Include Briffa’s data going past 1960 and compare that with the plot of the instrumental record. It is the divergence from observed temperatures that is the problem, not the fact that it declines. You can’t trust any of the data going all the way back to the 1400s because Briffa’s ‘world average temperature proxy’ is obviously garbage. And in a very dishonest way they use his reconstruction anyway as though it were proof that there has been little change in temperature over the past 600 years (which is the essential result for the AGW cause).
Another important motivation for retaining the Briffa reconstruction is that it stands as justification for retaining Mann’s reconstruction that had already been thoroughly discredited by McIntyre. In other words, we can disregard clear flaws in Mann’s reconstruction, because obviously he arrived at the correct result since it has been ‘verified’ by others.
McIntyre tore the science of climatology apart when he discredited Mann’s hockey stick because it became the primary proof that man is creating unprecedented warming and because it is the basis for the science that followed (including all the modeling programs, and Earth’s apparent sensitivity to natural forcings (like solar and natural events)). Mann’s hockey stick had to be defended at all cost, and Briffa’s reconstruction is the kind of thing that they have come up with.
No.
(In case you’re wondering, that link is to that actual “trick” and what it really is.)
That’s O.K. BC,
Looks like things are going to get very interesting indeed…
DOE sends a “litigation hold notice” regarding CRU to employees – asking to “preserve documents”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/14/doe-sends-a-litigation-hold-notice-regarding-cru-to-employees-asking-to-preserve-documents/#more-14177
Let the law suits begin…
Still don’t understand why the AGW crowd doesn’t get this is not going to simply disapear..
Other than this, we live in a scientific age…
No, BC, that’s the link to the apologia Briffa put up later. Check instead the running notes I linked, or the Daily Mail’s piece.
Then contemplate that DOE has put a litigation hold on all data involved, and apparently transmitted it to every DOE site.
Mike, all of these are excellent points. Of course, Steven Schneider tells us the “hockey stick” was never important anyway.
Unfortunately for Schneider, others have longer memories than that.
BC, you must be joking. This is from your link.
“note that the tree-ring density records become de-coupled from temperature after 1950, possibly due to some large-scale human influence that caused wood densities to decline. Thus, the reconstructed temperature record after 1960 is considered unreliable.”
So let me see if I’ve got this straight. To figure something out about what happened before I was born, I can cut and measure and study tree rings. Except that in the years for which I have actually been alive, the tree rings aren’t matching what my nifty mercury thermometer is telling me. So instead of this calling into question what the tree rings say about before I was born, I should speculate about why the data that I’m actually observing is somehow unreliable. That’s the scientific method, there, partner? You sure about that?
mike blackadder #4 — You can’t trust any of the data going all the way back to the 1400s because Briffa’s ‘world average temperature proxy’ is obviously garbage.
Yes, you _can_ trust proxy data. For one thing, this is how we know about (e.g.) the MWP, Roman Optimum, Ice ages, and the LIA (and others.) Modern era (last 2500 years) data are corroborated by written records of various sorts. We know Leif Erikson settled in Greenland. And so on. Earlier than that, there’s a lot of other evidence (e.g. geology.) Proxy data is almost like evolution in that there’s a massive pile of diverse circumstantial evidence that says one thing, and it’s really tough to claim it’s all a plot when said evidence comes in from mutiple diverse sources and unrelated scientific fields of endeavour. Geological evidence agrees with ice cores which agree with coral fossils which agree with… and so on. This is how we know that CO2 rise comes avg 800 years *after* warming among other fun things.
What you _can’t_ trust is *cherrypicked* proxy data, which is how the hockeystick was created. As in all things, it wasn’t the blade that was significant, but the shaft (insert inappropriate joke here.) The flat shaft did away with the pesky MWP thus exaggerating the blade. Look at Craig Loehle’s data (I’m sure Charlie Martin can provide you a pointer) where the MWP is clearly displayed. For much of the 90′s and the early 00′s the MWP was pooh-pooh’d as a “local phenomenon” and the flat shaft remained prominent due merely to the lack of enough published data to flatten Mann and his work. Skeptics pointed to CO2science.org and others with increasing volumes of data on the MWP and The Team simply ignored it. I always found this amusing in that CO2science founder Idso was co-author with Graybill on the use of bristlecone pines as proxies… but I, umm… diverge. (In any other venue, I’d simply digress…)
It’s the cherrypicking that’s ultimately at issue here and why McIntyre was repeatedly rebuffed by The Team with FOIA requests. Science isn’t done with secret data, hidden methods, one time only computer algorithms, and newly conjured inapproriate statistical tricks (e.g. see Wegman on Mann’s incorrectly applied version of PCA.) This refusal to supply data/methods is what climategate is all about.
And finally, the decline is in fact of paramount importance because it speaks to the basic problem of opacity in climate “science” as it was being done by The Team. In science, one doesn’t throw away data that isn’t convenient. So yeah, count me on the side that thinks the divergence hiding is important.
Charlie / All
I see that Schneider is still hauling about the canard re oil interests funding denialists.
This has got to be the silliest claim ever made. Oil is used for a lot of stuff; in fact, it’s too valuable to simply burn. Oil companies wouldn’t be affected by this nonsense due to the magic of supply and demand. A short term (10 yr) dip in immediate revenues would be erased in the long term. Moreover, unless there’s a magical technology (e.g. cars powered by unobtanium) awaiting, there’s no real threat of any sort of abrupt short term demand decrease.
I imagine that people who make these claims have reservations regarding (and rather serious misunderstanding of) capitalism. Or maybe they’re simply stupid.
Then there’s the argument about sending money to countries that don’t much like us and being dependent. Maybe that’s what drives Schneider’s silliness. So let’s go with his implied assertion that Exxon is evil… as it happens the only magnet materials that are affordable and actually work for hybrids and electric cars for all are neodynium and cobalt. Almost all the world’s neodynium is in China. Yeah, they’ll just hand it over. Cobalt? Bolivia (leftist government that wouldn’t mind raping us repeatedly) and Africa (lots of genocidal countries that hate everyone, especially us.) Oh. So rather than avoiding strategic entanglements, he’s merely swapping countries and areas that can/will hold us in sticker shock embargo like 1973. Great idea. The brilliance is simply breathtaking.
Oh dear. So much for electric cars for all of us which will save us all from dreaded Lord Carbon and defeat the minions of Evil Exxon.
So is this Schneider guy for real? Good heavens.
I’d be curious to know the global temperature fluctions for the periods 1914 – 1918, and 1939 – 1945.
Mr. Alston, your story reminds me of the joke i hear years ago about a geologist who came up with a brilliant theory about the history of the earth – probably received a Nobel prize! He felt so good he went for a walk up a big hill to revel in his glory. When he reached the top, he noticed at his feet a rock that shouldn’t be there if his theory was correct so he kicked it down the other side of the hill . . .
bc, you’ve got to be jokin’! That data you provided is worse than not providing any data, like in the rebuttal in mt first post!
Answer my first post.
over
Can someone here find or have the info/findings on all those ice drill sample holes that they have been doing for years at both the poles and other areas.I am sure that we have been paying for all that and we have the right to know what the findings are up to present day from way back when.
Since I’ve got a degree in Mathematics, one would think I could understand your graphics. But I can’t. So, as usual, arguments against the big AGW lie fall flat because they’re incomprehensible.
Al Gore saying “We’re all going to DIE!” is understood by every boob that votes.
Please do better.
pelaut – if you really can’t understand the graphics, you need to go demand your money back from whatever night school granted you a degree in Mathematics.
This article presents only part of the story, omitting the most crucial point. The Briffa series diverges from the true temperature after 1960. This raises the question of whether tree rings are a valid temperature proxy.
If tree rings don’t track today’s temperatures, why should we believe they track temperatures going back 1000 years?
And if they don’t track temperatures going back 1000 years, this explodes the claim that current warming is “unprecedented”.
And if current warming is within the range of natural fluctuations, this challenges the claim that CO2 is largely to blame and that the apocalypse is nigh.
>Since I’ve got a degree in Mathematics, one would think I could understand your graphics. But I can’t. So, as usual, arguments against the big AGW lie fall flat because they’re incomprehensible.
Go back to math school. A simple line graph is beyond your scope? You can’t see where a line is suddenly cut off? As Dr. McCoy would say, a blind man could see it with a cane.
So, when Al Gore says “We’re all going to DIE!” you can understand that, and thus, you believe it.
You actually believe anything as long as it’s in single-syllable words (including ‘going’ if you rhyme it with ‘boing’)? Great. Then here’s a biography just for you:
“It’s a Boy!”
“Slow kids are Gods’ gift.”
“Dad, I got an F.”
“I have no son!”
“Get out!”
“You sure you can do this math stuff?”
“My god, that does not add up.”
“You’re fired!”
“Mom, can I move in with you?”
“No.”
“I guess I can go back to school with cash from the Feds.”
“If you are a true Green, I will give you a good grade.”
“We will all be killed by some kind of heat thing.”
“You pass! I give you a B plus!”
“Gee, just like the One!”
pelaut, it’s Mann’s graphic.
No wonder you can’t understand it.
GL, I think the point was you can’t trust this proxy data. I’ve got my suspicions about tree-ring proxy studies in general, but especially in this case, the divergence really does call the Briffa series, as it comes out of the statistical mill, into question.
Tree rings do not measure temperature, they measure growth. Growth is determined by several factors including: sunlight, temperature, rain/water, nutritents, etc. In order to convert a tree ring to a temperature you have to make assumptions or adjustments for the other factors and then “calibrate” the tree rings from recent years against a good local temperature record. This gives you a variable or factor to convert a tree ring measurement into a temperature. The tree ring data from 1960 onward that diverged would have been part of the calibration data. After calibration, if the tree ring data still divergered as it did then it calls into question the accuracy of all tree ring proxies. Without tree ring proxies the Hockey Team would have had to rely of other temperature records that show the Medevil Warm Period and that they needed to kill.
pelaut @ #17: So you got a degree in Mathematics and you can’t understand the graphics? Would you rather have it explained to you as a Borel set? (But I jest.)
In any even, pelaut, let me go through the steps that have to be taken to conclude whether or not algore (of algorithm fame – after all he invented the internet) is indeed correct:
1. Is there global warming?
2. If there is global warming, is the deviation within expected ranges (that statistics, not mathematics)?
3. If there is global warming that exceeds normal deviations, what is causing it: natural things (e.g., sun) or unnatural things (forest fires, trees, people)?
4. If there is global warming that exceeds normal deviations and unnatural things are causing it, then what is the unnatural thing causing it? Let’s stipulate it is some anthropogenic activity that is causing it?
5. If there is global warming that exceeds normal deviations and unnatural man-made things are causing it, are the unnatural man-made things causing it marginal or substantive?
6. If there is global warming that exceeds normal deviations and unnatural man-made things are causing it, and the unnatural man-made things are substantive, can they be identified?
7. If there is global warming that exceeds normal deviations and unnatural man-made things are causing, and the unnatural man-made things are substantive and can be identified, what are the cost and benefits of attempting to reduce the man-made things? (That’s economics, not mathematics.)
Unfortunately, right now we cannot get past step 1, and that’s because all the main data sets are contaminated. Until we get uncontaminated data sets, climate science is dead in the water. Once we get past step 1, we then can take up the next step.
I note with regard to step 7, that had individual in the 19th century been prevented from burning coal and oil, we would never have gotten to the point of comfort we are now, and we would have had no forests to speak of. Moreover, we would still have horses on unpaved streets and all the excrement they emit, breeding all kinds of diseases. For most, life would have indeed been mean, nasty and brutish. Impeding progress now – say by imposing draconian taxes on carbon, even if everything getting us to step 7 above is correct — may be so costly that we will not develop the rights kinds of alternatives to move away from hydrocarbon fuels.
GL: The “Big Oil” thing is particularly amusing since in fact it’s the climate change folks who are funded by Big Oil, see, eg, here and here.
This is all very interesting. It’s great that some of this is coming out but I wonder why scientists haven’t already filed Freedom of Information requests…years ago! We’re all cowards now. Federal money corrupts totally and more of it is coming our way. Pretty soon we’ll have our neighbors calling the cops because we were breathing too hard after a jog. You can talk about it all nice and everything but we’re waking up in the Global Government where the Bill of Rights, given by God, can be attacked by some governmnet funded hack masquerading as a so-called scientist. Where did I leave that stake?
The worst of all of this is the pressure the hacked email chain shows on Briffa to make his results conform to expectations. That yellow line in the first chart isn’t data, it’s his peer reviewed results. Yet some how over a couple of months those results, without any additional review, are massaged and changed so that they can be used to confirm what the AGW alarmists want to be the truth.
None of which is disclosed in the final report, btw.
If your answers change as a result of peer pressure, not peer review, it’s not science.
pelault:
Lack of understanding on your part does not imply lack of clarity on the author’s part. Perhaps you need to re-visit the institution that granted you a degree in math. Maybe ask for a refund. I, too, have a math degree. Hey, it ain’t rocket psychiatry!
The link below shows atmospheric CO2 levels over geologic time. What is interesting is that they are not correlated with tmeperature. During the Cretaceous Period global temperatures remianed constat as CO2 levels rapidly declined. In recent geologic times 5 out of 6 ice age periods coincided with higher CO2 levels then we observe today.
This data really throws the BS flag on AGW psuedo-science. How could a CO2 level of 1000ppm throw the planet into a run away warning scenario if CO2 levels 2 or 3 times that value didn’t?
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/Carboniferous_climate.html
The AGWs got nuthin’. I never cease to be amazed at the informed and articulate arguments of the “Deniers”. At some point climate science needs be on the side of the good argument. Fools like Gore must embarrass these guys every time he speaks. Phony arguments, fake graphs and emotional logic are not the tools of science, which is why they have failed. We are going to win this one.
Remember, it took 38 years before Piltdown Man was officially a hoax. Rome wasn’t built in a day.
Charlie Martin is right — when looked at in FULL context, the “hide the decline” is even more damning than people think. Charlie, however, has actually missed a part of the story that makes it even more damning.
The full context is this: When preparing for the IPCC’s Third Assessment Report in 1999, IPCC Chapter Author Folland of the U.K. Hadley Center told Michael Mann (creator of the original hockey stick graph) and Phil Jones and Keith Briffa of CRU that a combined diagram of their various proxy series — a combination that would include the instrument data — was a “clear favorite” to be shown in the IPCC report.
However, Folland noted that Briffa’s proxy series disagreed with Mann’s famous proxy series; Briffa’s series showed warmer past temperatures. Folland told them this would “dilute” the message and that what they wanted was a “nice, tidy, concensus” message of warming.
So, under this pressure, Briffa hastily recalculated his proxy reconstruction, adjusting its past temperatures down to match Michael Mann‘s famous hockey stick reconstruction. NOTE: This change by Briffa was done without peer review, and without any explanation of the rationale for the change or even any description of exactly what the change was.
AFTER Briffa changed his data to make it closer to Mann’s in the past, it was then noted that Briffa’s data declined dramatically in the second half of the 20th century — this is the “divergence problem” that had been noted in a number of tree ring studies. To deal with THIS decline, the group decided to simply truncate the data at 1960 — and that’s what the IPCC Third Assessment Report deceptively showed when it came out.
If you look VERY closely at the IPCC graph, you can see that Briffa’s series simply stops in 1960 and that the data past that point is simply the instrument record — but it is not something the average, casual viewer would be likely to notice — and in any event, it is deceptive to only show the portion of Briffa’s data that supports the warming claim while suppressing the portion that contradicts it.
Now, the infamous “hide the decline” e-mail from Phil Jones refers to something still worse. It refers to what Phil Jones did for a World Meteorological Organization report on the climate also issued in 1999. The WMO wanted to include a graph like the one in the IPCC report and so they asked Phil Jones to produce one.
Jones used the same Mann proxy data and the “adjusted” and “truncated” Briffa data that had been used in the IPCC report. But Jones added his own deception. Rather than simply showing the truncated proxy data along with the instrument data on the same graph, Jones spliced the instrument data onto the end of the truncated proxy data to make it look like one continuous series.
So Jones didn’t merely fail to show the truncated, downwardly-diverging proxy data as the IPCC had done — that would be deceptive enough — Jones actually made it appear that the proxy data goes up just like the instrument record in the second half of the 20th century.
So we have not merely one case of “hiding the decline”. We have Briffa’s willingness to fudge his data to make it match Mann’s — we have the IPCC’s willingness to truncate the diverging data to make the science look more settled than it really is — and we have Phil Jones willingness to completely fake the proxy data so the WMO can issue a report whose cover image completely misrepresents the status of the data.
All of this, of course, comes after Michael Mann’s dishonest “cherry-picking” of proxy data to create his hockey stick graph in 1998.
Go here for the full story: http://climateaudit.org/2009/12/10/ipcc-and-the-trick/ Be sure to read all the way to the update at the end.
For a good, statistical analysis on why the “hockey stick” curve is bunk, see also Willis Eschenbach’s article Can’t See the Signal For the Trees at Climate Audit. He did an analysis of the proxy tree-ring/ice core data and determined that the entire “hockey stick” effect was due to one set of tree rings from one location.
You’ve got the wrong “final” figure. That’s the Zero-Order Draft Figure.
#26 Senator: It’s great that some of this is coming out but I wonder why scientists haven’t already filed Freedom of Information requests…years ago!
Ah, but they did. One of the ongoing threads in theCH emails is the efforts being made to avoid releasing data under FOIA requests.
#33 Steve: Ah crap. I’ll get it changed.
Thanks Steve, good catch. Correct figure is posted now.
to: G.L. Alston
You forgot to mention the Environmental Disaster that is to come with all of those “Heavy Metal” Batteries that will be in all those Hybrid / Electric cars both already on the road, and soon to be on the road if these yo yos get their way.
How are we going to be disposing of those?
What is the Carbon impact of Re-Furbishing the Heavy Metals (oh and the other impacts as well) into new batteries?
That’s a whole new world of “Environmental Impact” that will once again have them saying, Oooops, never mind, we have to do something else. They have no concept of Investment when they suggest alternatives. Nope, they say, “Let’s build windmills” and they are all enthusiastic right up until the California Condor flies into one of the windmills and gets itself killed and suddenly it’s, “Hey, windmills are not Environmentally sound, stop building them there.”
I’ve said this before, Christians should hang thier heads in shame in the presense of Environmentalists.
Jesus admonished Christians to have “The Faith of a Mustard Seed”, something they regularly fail to do.
Environmentalists continually Demonstrate that they have, “The Faith of an Avacodo Pit.”
jd
Oops, I just broke a compact fluorescent bulb. I have to go call the EPA to quarantine my house for mercury contamination. Be back in a bit.
For those who have not yet seen the video, here’s the link to a video that places the hockey stick in a much larger historical context:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFbUVBYIPlI
Seeing the magnitude of the purported man-made climate change against temperature records drawn from Greenland and Antarctic ice core data, illustrates just how silly this whole thing is. The hockey stick is a minor blip in the historic temperature variation plot. Moreover, that tiny blip occurs near the upper end of the range of an anomolously warm 10,000 year period.
Draw your own conclusions about the likely significance of man’s 200 years of CO2 emissions in the overall scheme of things.
I am curious, why aren’t the ice core temperature records discussed more, since I assume these involve trapped gas samples and isotopic ratios which should be a better proxy (with less “adjustment” needed)than tree rings. Is it that these data are difficult to accurately date, since there are no (or few) markers to set the dates accurately? Kinda like the chronology of Egyptian Pharoahs where we have relative dates, but few absolute values. I suppose there are only ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica which is a limited sample spatially, but the ice core temperature data seem to illustrate the MWP and LIA pretty well, if I can trust the graphs I’ve seen. Any thoughts that would help here? Thanks.
The really scary side of all of this is that despite these revelations, our politicians and self anointed “saviors” will march inexorably toward imposition of new taxes, regulations, subsidies and other coercions that will screw up everything for all of us – “believers” and “deniers”. If we didn’t allow ourselves to be governed like this in general than we wouldn’t have to fight to protect ourselves from every one of these crazy schemes. We long ago surrendered our freedom for a little more safety and a few handouts here and there. Now the chickens have come home to roost in a big way with.
Recently a New Zealand “researcher” has determined that owning a dog is worse than having a large SUV. It was implied that you would be a more responsible global citizen if you ate your dog. Hell, they can claim that almost everything you have and everything you do offends the planet in some way. Are we really this crazy to let something like this happen?
#38 Donutwarrior: I think a big part of the reason is that the most effective skeptics, like Steve McIntyre, have been most interested in the historical data. Also, there are some questions about the ice cores as a proxy analogous to the ones about tree-ring series.
Here’s a nice video using images from Watts Up With That.
But let’s be clear about what exactly this means. It doesn’t mean that the temperature actually did what the Briffa series said it did. That’s the whole point – the Briffa series zigged and the real temperature zagged. The reason why this is a problem for the hockey team isn’t that the blade of the hockey stick is wrong; the reason why this is a problem, rather, is that it calls into question the validity of treemometers, and thus the handle of the hockey stick.
The big deal is this pees all over Mann’s assertion that the Medieval Warm Period only happened in Europe.
1. can climate models replicate the historical climate?
2. How can climate models purport to predict the climate 100 years hence, but – amazingly – are unable to predict the weather 3 months hence?
3. From where did all the CO2 come that brought on global warming after each and every ice age?
4. What caused ice ages to end?
5. What caused all the many previous periods of global warming to end and to be followed by ice ages?
6. If one cannot explain the historical climate – and much less model it – how can one presume to PREDICT future climate.
I rest my case.
Calvin:
The real problem with the Briffa data is not the shape of the stick but that it comes form cherry-picked data. If you use the entire stand of trees that were available to him there is no hockey stick at all. It is just random fluctuations.
24. Jack in Silver Spring:
pelaut @ #17: So you got a degree in Mathematics and you can’t understand the graphics? Would you rather have it explained to you as a Borel set? (But I jest.)
In any even, pelaut, let me go through the steps that have to be taken to conclude whether or not algore (of algorithm fame – after all he invented the internet) is indeed correct:
1. Is there global warming?
… snip….
7. If there is global warming that exceeds normal deviations and unnatural man-made things are causing, and the unnatural man-made things are substantive and can be identified, what are the cost and benefits of attempting to reduce the man-made things? (That’s economics, not mathematics.)
Unfortunately, right now we cannot get past step 1, and that’s because all the main data sets are contaminated. ….
…Another snip…
Dec 15, 2009 – 6:46 am
Jack in Silverspring, you could have added a #8.
#8. IFF all that stuff, would we be better off economically and climate-wise to ADAPT to the change in temperature?
Oh, and
#9: Can we do anything about it anyway?
I think some people have more hubris than brains about what man can accomplish in changing natural occurrences.
tom
I have the same question as #39 donutwarrior about the Greenland and Antarctica ice core records. I have read the post at http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/09/hockey-stick-observed-in-noaa-ice-core-data/ and viewed the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mxmo9DskYE
At first glance these seem to be independent data sets which are very long term and were gathered in a consistent way. From other sources like http://www.csa.com/discoveryguides/icecore/review.php the documented data torturing (proxy calculation) using relative proportions of oxygen isotopes is easy to understand and appears to be free of additional massaging. In this CSA article they list three problems with ice cores: summer melting of ice fields causing water flow to screw up the ice cores they extract; cores only represent data for conditions during snowfall; core samples can be altered by ice flow and underlying geological basal rock formations.
Charlie – I would like to see you discuss the strengths and weaknesses of these ice core data.
jd #36 — You forgot to mention the Environmental Disaster that is to come with all of those “Heavy Metal” Batteries that will be in all those Hybrid / Electric cars both already on the road, and soon to be on the road if these yo yos get their way.
And of course the end to end energy budget for hybrids/electrics/etc is also astonishing. You have to factor in the amount of energy required to extract, ship, process, refine, assemble, recycle, etc etc etc to compare this to standard automobiles. The end to end energy budget for “green” vehicles outstrips standard vehicles by a great deal. We’re not talking about operating costs here, just the number KwH needed at each step to make and dispose of the vehicles.
Greens like to promote hybrids/electrics using just the end-user operational cost as if this was the complete picture. It’s not, and not by a long shot.
For the longest time I assumed greens were malicious but it’s becoming increasingly apparent that this factor is significantly outweighed by incompetence — they’re simply too stupid and/or ignorant to grasp the concept of energy budget. Greens are luddites informed by arrogance and a tendency to Malthusian belief, yet they point to the ability to operate their iPods as proof of their technical expertise as if being able to operate iTunes is equivalent to the ability to invent modern electronics. These sad, deluded specimens must not be allowed to continue their madness.
The ice core data is extremely problematic and often just plain bad science. Just witness the almost complete lack of protection for the integrity of a core when it is both drilled and when it’s brought up. Ice core data is “adjusted” to correct for leaching and the effects of gold and pressure on various gases except this adjustment is based on very poorly understood effects and quite often appears to be just a made up number that causes the data to support whatever conclusion the scientists chooses to present. (This is a big problem with correcting thermometer data as well; among other things how do we know the person making the measurements didn’t already do the correction?)
A big problem is that we actually DO have atmospheric CO2 measurements from about 1820 on and they show slightly HIGHER CO2 concentration than today. Even if those measurements were off by say 10%, they don’t at all agree with the claims concerning ice cores.
I don’t have a link, but someone a while back pointed out that many of the conclusions of ice core scientists don’t match the geological, flora and fauna record.
#43 — 1. can climate models replicate the historical climate?
No, but this isn’t what they do. What you’re conflating here is the concepts of model and simulation.
Essentially these models are designed to look at the effect of greenhouse gas emissions on the climate. (That they report that greenhouse gases have an effect is simply amazing. Who knew?)
Bear in mind George Box’s admonition: “all models are wrong, but some are useful.” Climate models _are_ useful, but you have to put them in their proper context.
I can’t speak to the accuracy of this but, here is a blog showing that one of the researchers (Malcom Hughes) has, as they say, thrown Mr. Mann and Mr. Briffa under the bus.
http://www.espressopundit.com/
#46 Steve: Charlie – I would like to see you discuss the strengths and weaknesses of these ice core data.
Your wish is my, um, suggestion. I’ll dig into it.
SenatorMark4 @ #26: FOIAs have been filed and those guys at CRU have stonewalled everybody.
tomw @# 45: I think each of the points you added actually appears in one of the points I made. Your #8 is actually subsumed in my #7, and your #9 has to do with whether human contribution is substantive or marginal (my #5). Obviously, I was not perfectly clear in what I outlined, so I thank you for adding clarity to that outline.
G. L. Alston @ #49: I know as an economist that the best of test of a model in economics is out of sample prediction. In my experience I have found that models can word wonderfully in sample, but try and use them out of sample, and they are worthless. So I find it intriguing that you say the climate models are not predictive. Are there climate models that are, or would be if the data were not contaminated?
Jack #52 — So I find it intriguing that you say the climate models are not predictive. Are there climate models that are, or would be if the data were not contaminated?
What I said was that the models are not simulations in that you don’t plug in the data for year X and then let the model simulate to year Y. Vulcanism alone has huge effects, etc. and one cannot randomly toss in a Krakatoa.
Rather, what these things do is model the physical characteristics as best they can at present and then they muck about with the variables to see what happens. Essentially they’re predictive in that all things being equal, then if you increase factor A by n units then how is this different than if A was not increased at all or perhaps a different factor was increased instead?
Referring back to George Box the trick here is to determine how realistic the answer is (if you increase A then B happens) based on a number of different runs and assuming your input variables are understood as well as you thinbk they are (e.g. oceanic uptake of CO2 when cooling and output of CO2 when warmed.)
Assuming the modelers have nailed the physics correctly then the models ought to be at least somewhat accurate. This is the rub, though, isn’t it? Svensmark says we get cooling or warming via cosmic rays affecting cloud formation (thus affecting albedo) and yet no model to date I’m aware of has this as an input factor.
As far as I know what the models proves is that CO2 is a greenhouse gas as predicted, but how much is unknown. Arrhenius in what, 1895 or so predicted a 2 degree warming based on a doubling of CO2, and as near as can be determined 2 degrees or so is about what the accuracy of temp measurement appears to be. The upshot is that models seem to confirm his assessment/prediction +/- accuracy. Where we all part ways here is that some of the AGW tards invent “forcings” that act as multipliers and frankly we don’t seem to know enough about these to get the sign right (i.e. are clouds positive or negative enforcement?)
Does this help?
Two points. One – scientists must reconstruct the raw data, and this can be done quite accurately by relying on the newspaper records.
http://hyphenatedamericans.blogspot.com/2009/12/how-to-quickly-collect-raw-temperature.html
Secondly, skeptics should start putting more stress on non-scientific reasons too, since majority of people are ignorant of science. While Mckintire surely disproved Mann, how many average people understand the arguments?
http://hyphenatedamericans.blogspot.com/2009/12/why-i-dont-believe-in-global-warming.html
#51Charlie Martin. Yes, my “suggestion” at #46 didn’t come out right, did it. Sorry about that.
#53 GL: The new Lindzen and Choi paper suggests the net response is much less, based on ERBE measurements.
#55 Steve: No huhu, Steve, it is an interesting question.
G.L. Aston @ #53: I understand better now what you are getting out. What you appear to be describing is the difference between a fully specified model and a partially specified model. In the former, you could hypothetically simulate from the present to some time in the future, give no random events (in your case, a volcano blowing up). In the latter, the partial model, you have to try different values of the independent variables and see what comes out, and how well what comes out lines up with reality.
One way economists do that is to estimate a relationship for part of a sample period, and see how well the relationship holds up for the part not included in the estimation procedure.
Anyway – thanks for the clarification.
Does anyone else see the resemblance between the climate change alarmists and the Ceausescu’s?
Messing with models and trying to recreate temperatures in the past are all well and good, but isn’t AGW easier to debunk with simple common sense?
According to an article I read by W. R. Pratt who wrote that “it is agreed that the atmosphere contains an average of about 750 gigatons of CO2 which is roughly 385 ppm. (parts per million)”
He also wrote that it is accepted that mankind, with all its activities is responsible for about 8 gigatons of CO2 in the air.
So man’s contribution of CO2 is: 8 gigatons into 750 gigatons = 93.75 => 385 ppm ÷ 93.75 = 4.11 ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere.
If you accept these numbers for arguments sake, actually measuring this is probably impossible, the anthropologic portion of CO2 in our atmosphere is around 4.11 parts per million.
If so, 4.11 ppm, in a liquid volume perspective, translates to 1 tablespoon in 243,309 tablespoons or, 1 tablespoon in 950 gallons. To put it in perspective, one Intex 10’ by 30” above ground pool holds about 1000 gallons.
That tablespoon of fluid would have put out 7,600 BTUs of energy to heat the pool 1 degree F. I’m not even sure a tablespoon of molten metal could have any measurable effect on the pool’s temperature.
How can man induced CO2 cause a climate catastrophe?
The satellite measurements from the 80′s and 90′s also diverged from the CRU “line” and showed a slight decline in temps over the period. It would be interesting to compare the Satellite readings with the suppressed tree ring data.
#60 FS: The problem is that assuming the temperature reacts linearly to CO2 concentration may not be valid. The CO2-driven warming folks, some of them at least, claim the climate’s response to additional CO2 is faster than linear,
You might also check those figures, as I’ve seen 40ppm from several sources. I wonder if the Pratt article might not have had a typo?
G.L. I agree with your points and like you my critique is with the particular work and practices of these climatologists, not science in general. I was only commenting on Briffa’s reconstruction suggesting it was ‘garbage’ since it gives no indication that it even correlates with the instrumental record (let alone passing other scrutiny).
I would say that the possibility of cherry-picked proxy data is one good reason to audit the work. There’s also introduction of new statistical methods and tests (on-the-fly) and overall arbitrariness in their methodologies. Lastly we have to consider their extraordinary claims about the certainty of their conclusions which justifies the closest scrutiny from an auditor.
I’d check out McIntyre’s presentation to the NAS Panel which summarizes his rationale for challenging the hockey-stick.
Charles Martin @ #62: The hypothesis that a 1 percent change in CO2 leads to more than a one percent change in temperature (i.e., there is a non-linear relationship between CO2 and temperature) should be easily testable, if we had accurate temperature and CO2 measurements. Right now we don’t, so we can’t reject or accept the hypothesis. Kind of reminds of something Milton Friedman mentioned in class about how some economists hypothesis: If I had ham, I would have ham and eggs if I had eggs.
44. tdiinva,
Indeed. But even after the cherry-picking expedition, they still can’t make the whole hockey stick fit.
#64 Jack: Have a look at the recent Lindzen and Choi paper, where they consider CO2 sensitivity using ERBE measurements. They find it is considerably less sensitive than the models have suggested..
tree growth is determined by several factors. Temperature, sunlight, water and nutrients being major ones. Given that it would be very difficult to adjust for sunlight, water and nutrients 1000 years ago how can anyone in their right mind think that a tree ring can tell us anything about temperatures as a proxy. Since many of these tree ring studies are at colder locations those trees only grow during a small portion of the year so the ring data would be useless for wintertime temperatures. It would be like only taking thermometer reading during the spring and summer and trying to come up with an annual average.
The appeal of tree rings is the need to adjust them, that is not a bug but a feature to the Hockey Team.
Ice cores don’t necessarily measure years, but changes in temperature. Have two weeks of cold weather followed by a warm week, and you might find a new layer, and that three weeks is now a ‘year’.
Someone found something like fifteen layers on a car in Knoxville in eight hours or so. Now, thats obviously an extreme case.
There is also the case of some German planes that got buried much deeper than theory says they should.
So I’d take what an ice core said with a pile of salt about the size of the ice core.
There is a parallel between evos and AGW people. Both are financed by government cheese, and both are heavily into fraud. Science based skeptics fight against gov’t funded propaganda.
Charlie et all: Thanks for responding. It was no type-o that is what the Pratt article based those simple calculation ppm calculations on. That is obviously the crux of the problem; it is hard to get reliable information. Warmists say this decade was likely the hottest. Skeptics say the earth has cooled this decade. Both can’t be right.
In the absence of irrefutable data, one must start applying common sense. The most obvious is the change from “global warming” to “climate change.” Anybody with half a brain would view this as a red flag. Second, even if Anthropologic CO2 is 40ppm that is still only .004% of the total atmosphere. Common sense would dictate that 99.996% of a fluid, gas or solid would not be influenced by the other .004% temperature wise. If CO2 absorbs radiation and emits heat, the ambient air around it would quickly dissipate that heat. Linear or not, 99.996% of a cool thing will immediately cool off .004% of a warmer thing. This is very testable. Throw a tablespoon of boiling water into that Intex pool (from my above example) and watch the thermometer to see what happens. Know what happens, nothing you can measure.
Add to that the revelation that EPA is in the process of (or has already) declaring CO2 a pollutant. Do we not exhale CO2? Do plants not need this to survive? To me this is the height of idiocy.
Now with the insertion of Climategate, anybody paying attention would have to conclude that the temperature data used to argue global warming has been altered in support of their argument. This is really a credibility killer for the warmist religion.
Lastly the government agenda of taxing everybody to death is a major driver of the AGW religion. Never forget that most scientists work for universities, are 99% liberal/socialists living off tax revenue to a large extent if not outright government employees, in the case of state schools etc.
has anybody noted that the climate-gaters are doing the same thing to their data that Enron did to its books and accounts? Massaging this, hiding that, discounting the other until the figures tell a pre-selected story? Or, if necessary, just plain making it up and making sure the truth doesn’t get out?
Remember too, that
1) RICO makes it a crime to commit fraud in relation to enterprises which affect interstate commerce
2) imposing all the global-warming limits will certainly affect that commerce
It’s beginning to look like the East Anglia gang is a guilty as Gotti…
“Steve McIntyre:
You’ve got the wrong “final” figure. That’s the Zero-Order Draft Figure.”
“David Steinberg:
Thanks Steve, good catch. Correct figure is posted now.”
Now THAT is what is called peer review.
#71: Now THAT is what is called peer review.
Exactly. just wanted to see it again.
In the IPCC Third and Fourth Assessment Reports, IPCC “hid the decline” by simply deleting the post-1960 values of the troublesome Briffa reconstruction – an artifice that Gavin Schmidt characterizes as an “a good way to deal with a problem” and tells us that there is “nothing problematic” about such an artifice