Society/Culture Historical temperature record proving climate change a result of fraudulent statistics?

[Ripper]

Seems McIntyre is shredding data as fast as he can in his desperate backtracking. He should be audited before any more is lost!

http://rabett.blogspot.com/2009/10/auditing-auditor-or-dr.html

LOL, you really should read the comments before running off at keyboard like Eli.

Anonymous said... Eli, I (yes, this is "Lorax") am here to set the record straight. I want to be very clear, as things seem to be getting out of hand.
First, I personally requested that McIntyre remove the Lorax thread. Second, there was NO death threat, period. Third,The reason that I requested them to remove the Lorax thread is b/c someone was making posts on that particular thread (who knows my identity) and they were dropping major hints that threatened my anonymity. Fourth, I do not wish to be part of this online blog war between you and CA.

While your intentions may be honorable, I am really OK with how things ended at CA and with the Lorax thread, and it is an experience that I had (until today that is!) put behind me. So please do not try and drag me into your battle with CA or try and use the Lorax thread issue as leverage against CA. You know as well as I do that there are plenty of other issues that you can take issue with them on.

I do not agree with how they audit at CA (especially with regards to the Briffa issue), or with the musings of McKitrick in the Canadian media (those were my original reasons for going there, and my posts on those issues are still available at Unthreaded, as far as I know). That said, I am not going to fault them on this issue because I do appreciate the fact that they were professional and respected my request to remove the Lorax thread. Now I trust that you (Eli Rabett) will choose to behave in the same professional and respectful manner.

Eli, there are no points to be scored on the Lorax issue, there is no conspiracy, no cover up. So I urge you to please move forward and let this go.

Thanks,
Lorax

PS: I will not be posting here or at any other blog (whether it be RC, CA or any other blog)again. I've had it with blogs.

 

[Ripper]

BP, have you seen this? Ouch!!

Did you know you can cherry pick without knowing it? It works like this:

1. You speculate there “some trees” are temperature proxies, but “other trees aren’t. (So far, you’re actually ok.)
2. Then, instead of trying to do a real calibration study to discover what sorts of trees are temperature proxies and which aren’t, you just take a bunch of cores and find which correlate “best” with the recent temperature record. You throw away all the rest of the cores as “not temperature proxies”.

This sort of sounds like it makes sense, right? After all, the trees that did not correlate with the current temperature record can’t be temperature proxies. So, the rest may be a little noise, but they “must” be temperature proxies, right?

 

[bit_pattern]

Thanks BP, They could have saved themselves the trouble by just using all the data by the looks of it.

Discarding the upwind measurements is contradictory as the history points have been calculated from ice cores at the poles which did not care which way the wind blew, so to be consistent apples should be compared to apples.

Although the trend does not change much like everything everything else the absolute measurements have been overstated.

You're just so desperate to cling to everything Plimer says, aren't you?

Let's face it, the book is riddled with errors, and this example - despite your attempts at technical pontification - just highlights how Plimer twists the truth to suit his agenda. Yet you still uncritically eat that shit up. I have to ask - why? Why do you trust Plimer implicitly, whose primary objective is to use controversy to sell more books, yet have some vague, undefined mistrust of a highly respected institute like the NOAA and seem to suggest that they are engaged in a conspiracy to inflate CO2 levels? What do you suppose do the NOAA get out of this outlandish conspiracy? I can see Plimer's motivation to manipulate the truth but what is in it for the NOAA?

 

[bit_pattern]

I think quite a few people could do well to follow Lorax's example, science shouldn't be threshed out on blogs, if people want to attack established research they should be submitting letters to journals and papers for review. Like one of the comments on Lucia's blog said:

What I find bizarre is that people keep complaining here that scientists keep utilising the same methods (or similar methods) to produce climate reconstructions; reconstructions that a lot here find dubious, problematic, cherrypicked etc. People keep claiming that the scientists should know better, that their training is bad or that they don’t understand statistics, and that they should learn how to do it right. BUT no one actually tries to get message to the science community using the most effective tool that’s available. Why don’t you do it? It’s not about appealing to authority, it’s about simply doing the work and presenting it in a readable format that is accessed by the target audience. To expect scientists to lounge around on blogs and read through the waffle (most of the interesting stuff is in the comments), to even find the ‘right’ blogs to read, is way too much. Publishing the work (hopefully) means that it’s not waffling and self-indulgent, but succinct and to the point – and if it’s wrong in the end, at least it is short.

Why do people find it surprising that new reconstructions are done, and keep getting done despite the apparent errors in the logic, when you don’t formally outline the problems you see with them.

And that is the critical issue here. If there are so many alleged problems with the science of AGW then why don't all of the critics step up to the plate and put their work up to the scrutiny of their peers. That will soon sort out whether or not thei criticisms have merit or not.

 

[medusala]

You're just so desperate to cling to everything Plimer says, aren't you?

Let's face it, the book is riddled with errors, and this example - despite your attempts at technical pontification - just highlights how Plimer twists the truth to suit his agenda.

How can you possibly post this given you keep quoting the below?

RealClimate => Hockey Stick strewn with errors
Hansen => numerous errors, models hopeless
Stern => discount rate a joke
IPCC SRES => use of exchange rates inappropriate etc

etc etc etc

Oh and let us not forget your efforts attempting to defend Al Gore.

 

[bit_pattern]

Get some new material, man.

 

[beaver fever]

^^ Nope. Really, month to month variability, or even year to variability, is next to useless for tracking global warming (something that those pushing the 'no warming since 1998' meme could do well to think about) but the deniers just love pointing to monthly data that supposedly supports their contentions, but ignore that same data when it shows something they want to deny. What's good for the goose...

So why then did you post monthly data that supposedly supports your contention. You did not post it in response to any other post, you were suggesting its legitamcy as proof of anthropegic climate change. Do you not see the irony?

I think it is fair to say that the media often correlates monthly data to climate change. Have you ever read a news article that claims record lows as proof of its nonexistance? That being the case, it is reasonable for people from the other side of the debate to show record highs as useless. So when people post monthly data to demonstrate periods of record lows, this is not to disprove climate change, but to show how record highs are just as useless to causation.

It is quite interesting to see your thought processes behind this distinction. If anthropogenic climate change was largely disproven, I wonder how you would cope with that?

 

[bit_pattern]

So why then did you post monthly data that supposedly supports your contention. You did not post it in response to any other post, you were suggesting its legitamcy as proof of anthropegic climate change. Do you not see the irony?

It is layers of irony within layers of irony, a true enigma of irony. If you'd followed this debate (and really, I wouldn' expect you too, it must get excruciatingly boring except for the few obsessive's on this forum) you'd realise that Ripper and Meds just love posting monthly data as though it does disprove GW, but then they ignore monthly instances where it contradicts their belief system.

I think it is fair to say that the media often correlates monthly data to climate change. Have you ever read a news article that claims record lows as proof of its nonexistance? That being the case, it is reasonable for people from the other side of the debate to show record highs as useless. So when people post monthly data to demonstrate periods of record lows, this is not to disprove climate change, but to show how record highs are just as useless.

Yeah, well, such are the pitfalls of getting all of your information from the media. If you read what scientists actually say you will learn that monthly, yearly, even decadal (the bare minimum) tends are worthless in tracking GW because year to year variabilities inevitably cause statistical noise. And, if you look at any chart of global temps over the last hundred years you will see plenty of examples where temps have dipped for as long as a decade but inevitably the inexorable rise of the global warming signal continues unabated.

 

[Ripper]

Crikey! no wonder they are convinced the arctic is warming.

GIStemp – who needs the top of the world anyway?

So what happens when the program is run? I’ll need to test that but I’m pretty darned sure that what happens is we throw away the top of the world. Oh, and we move the warmer southern thermometers a bit more north too…

A good spare time project for any programmers would be to help decipher all this. Who knows , you might get a Nobel prize for helping to save the world.

As Gistemp & CRU match up pretty well it has now become a matter of urgency to get Phil Jones to release his methods even if the raw data has been "lost".

The more you look at these methods the more you realise that it is impossible to get an accurate land based global temperature history particularly before 1958.

 

[bit_pattern]

You fail at posting links

 

[Ripper]

You fail at posting links

Do too , it was there just before.

Try this one and see if you can explain why they dropped from 1022 long lived records to 225 in the last 5 years

2005  1.3  3.6  6.1 12.3 16.0 21.5 24.0 23.2 20.3 13.8  8.1  0.9 12.5 1022
2006  3.9  1.8  6.5 12.9 16.6 20.3 22.4 21.4 18.1 13.5  8.9  5.9 12.6  999
2007  4.8  3.5  9.2 12.7 17.2 20.2 21.7 22.1 18.4 14.2  7.9  4.8 13.0  223
2008  4.0  5.2  8.8 12.8 16.7 20.1 22.2 21.6 17.7 13.5  8.6  4.3 12.9  225

 

[bit_pattern]

Do too , it was there just before.

Try this one and see if you can explain why they dropped from 1022 long lived records to 225 in the last 5 years

2005  1.3  3.6  6.1 12.3 16.0 21.5 24.0 23.2 20.3 13.8  8.1  0.9 12.5 1022
2006  3.9  1.8  6.5 12.9 16.6 20.3 22.4 21.4 18.1 13.5  8.9  5.9 12.6  999
2007  4.8  3.5  9.2 12.7 17.2 20.2 21.7 22.1 18.4 14.2  7.9  4.8 13.0  223
2008  4.0  5.2  8.8 12.8 16.7 20.1 22.2 21.6 17.7 13.5  8.6  4.3 12.9  225

Why don't you try something novel, like emailing GISS and asking them yourself? You might be surprised to find that rather than this being some conspiracy uncovered by a fearless blogger with bachelor of economics under his belt there might actually be some method behind NASA's madness.

I mean, it is all good and well to be sceptical, but if you are going to seek this sort of thing out then you should really seek out the alternative views and actually find out why NASA does what it does, it would be a much more reasonable and balanced approach than the "ZOMG, conspiracies!!" hysteria you seem to have picked up from your blogger friends.

 

[beaver fever]

It is layers of irony within layers of irony, a true enigma of irony. If you'd followed this debate (and really, I wouldn' expect you too, it must get excruciatingly boring except for the few obsessive's on this forum) you'd realise that Ripper and Meds just love posting monthly data as though it does disprove GW, but then they ignore monthly instances where it contradicts their belief system.

I fail to see how you didn't just do the same thing.

Yeah, well, such are the pitfalls of getting all of your information from the media. If you read what scientists actually say you will learn that monthly, yearly, even decadal (the bare minimum) tends are worthless in tracking GW because year to year variabilities inevitably cause statistical noise. And, if you look at any chart of global temps over the last hundred years you will see plenty of examples where temps have dipped for as long as a decade but inevitably the inexorable rise of the global warming signal continues unabated.

Lucky for me I'm not one of those, but the vast majority of people are. The problem has been that the media has largely published many articles regarding many of the doomsday predictions, but whenever anything contradicts that notion little if anything is said. No wonder people love to point out instances of records on the complete opposite side of the spectrum, even if it proves nothing.

In order to form a balanced opinion of this issue you need to delve much further than simply into what the scientists tell you. It's not like they are above politics and are beacons of truth and justice in the world. It is indeed an interesting observation that the two sides of this debate have largely fallen on the opposite sides of politics. Those that believe the hypothesis true being socialist, and those that believe it false being conservative. I wonder what side of the political compass most scientists fall on.......

 

[bit_pattern]

I fail to see how you didn't just do the same thing.

I did

Lucky for me I'm not one of those, but the vast majority of people are. The problem has been that the media has largely published many articles regarding many of the doomsday predictions, but whenever anything contradicts that notion little if anything is said. No wonder people love to point out instances of records on the complete opposite side of the spectrum, even if it proves nothing.

Maybe you are just seeing what you want to see in the media. The Oz regularly published op-ed's casting doubt on GW science, and even the BBC published an article just the other day questioning whether we ar going into a period of "cooling". Indeed, other than the blog-o-sphere, the media is about te only place you see dnialists and contrarians being quoted - and that's only because they don't publish work, generally, so don't get their views aired in scientific journals (because they know how quickly they would get torn apart when they air those views to an audience with the ability to see straight through their obfuscations)

In order to form a balanced opinion of this issue you need to delve much further than simply into what the scientists tell you. It's not like they are above politics and are beacons of truth and justice in the world. It is indeed an interesting observation that the two sides of this debate have largely fallen on the opposite sides of politics. Those that believe the hypothesis true being socialist, and those that believe it false being conservative. I wonder what side of the political compass most scientists fall on.......

Yeah, this is what these sort of arguments always boil down to - that the vast majority of the worlds academic community is engaged in some grand socialist conspiracy. That is just nonsense. Science is about evidence, not politics.

 

[beaver fever]

I did

Yes you said, "back to planet earth", then quoted a bunch of short term nonsense. It wasn't as a counter to someone else posting short term nonsense from the other side. So yes you are guilty of what you proclaim to demonise. In other words you are a hypocrite.

Maybe you are just seeing what you want to see in the media. The Oz regularly published op-ed's casting doubt on GW science, and even the BBC published an article just the other day questioning whether we ar going into a period of "cooling". Indeed, other than the blog-o-sphere, the media is about te only place you see dnialists and contrarians being quoted - and that's only because they don't publish work, generally, so don't get their views aired in scientific journals (because they know how quickly they would get torn apart when they air those views to an audience with the ability to see straight through their obfuscations)

I wasn't suggesting there isn't any media coverage of the other side of the debate.

Yeah, this is what these sort of arguments always boil down to - that the vast majority of the worlds academic community is engaged in some grand socialist conspiracy. That is just nonsense. Science is about evidence, not politics.

That is something that I do not agree with. In a perfect world that would be the case but no, scientists are very much influenced by politics. There is just too much money, power and influence involved. Global Warming/Climate Change/Climate Crisis has become a political debate, it has for several years now.

 

[bit_pattern]

Yes you said, "back to planet earth", then quoted a bunch of short term nonsense. It wasn't as a counter to someone else posting short term nonsense from the other side. So yes you are guilty of what you proclaim to demonise. In other words you are a hypocrite.

No, it makes me a master of irony.

I wasn't suggesting there isn't any media coverage of the other side of the debate.

Then what were you saying?

That is something that I do not agree with. In a perfect world that would be the case but no, scientists are very much influenced by politics. There is just too much money, power and influence involved. Global Warming/Climate Change/Climate Crisis has become a political debate, it has for several years now.

There has been a political debate surrounding climate change, but the science is science. The data is out there for anyone to review and find problems with it, if there are problems they can correct them or disprove the theories underpinning the theory. But that hasn't happened. The critics aren't publishing alternative research, they criticise from the sidelines; from the blogs, the think tanks, the conservative media etc. The actual scientists that dispute the science are so few and far between as to be laughable, and that list gets considerably smaller when you start talking about working scientists involved in fields actually elated to climate science. That's why the "debate" you hear so much about on the internet and the media very rarely makes it into the pages of real journals, because it's not real science, it's PR. That's where your politics lies.

 

[Hawkamania!]

Anyone seen this video yet? It gets interesting from 4:30 onwards when discussing hansen's testimony before congress in June 1988.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/video/share.html?s=frol02n48eq72

TIMOTHY WIRTH (Senator - Colorado 1987-93): We called the Weather Bureau and found out what historically was the hottest day of the summer. Well, it was June 6th or June 9th or whatever it was. So we scheduled the hearing that day, and bingo, it was the hottest day on record in Washington, or close to it.

DEBORAH AMOS: Did you also alter the temperature in the hearing room that day?

TIMOTHY WIRTH: What we did is that we went in the night before and opened all the windows, I will admit, right, so that the air conditioning wasn’t working inside the room. And so when the, when the hearing occurred, there was not only bliss, which is television cameras and double figures, but it was really hot.

 

[cancat]

science is science

Bad science is bad science. It doesn't matter if a blogger, a journalist or a schoolkid finds the holes in it.

 

[bit_pattern]

^^ It matters because if these bloggers are right then they owe it sciecne to publish their work and put it up to the scrutiny of others in the field. If you think researchers have time to be wading through jumbled up blog posts, which - as a comment I quoted earlier in the thread points out - most of th really interesting stuff is fleshed out in the comments. If these people are right they arn't just doing themselves a disservice, they doing the whole world one.

Anyone seen this video yet? It gets interesting from 4:30 onwards when discussing hansen's testimony before congress in June 1988.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/video/share.html?s=frol02n48eq72

Wow. A political hearing using political theatre to push a point? How diabolical!

 

[bit_pattern]

$120 billion more reasons to phase out fossil fuels

Fossil Fuels’ Hidden Cost Is in Billions, Study Says

By MATTHEW L.Published: October 19, 2009

WASHINGTON — Burning fossil fuels costs the United States about $120 billion a year in health costs, mostly because of thousands of premature deaths from air pollution, the National Academy of Sciences reported in a study issued Monday.

 

[cancat]

$120 billion more reasons to phase out fossil fuels

What a crock of shit. Life expectancy in developed nations, ie the heavy users of fossil fuels, is far higher than the third world. The benefits of cheap and plentiful energy far outweighs any detriments.

 

[bit_pattern]

^^ It's the cheap energy, not the fossil fuels per se, that's why we need develop a gren energy economy, so we can have all of the benefits of cheap, plentiful energy sources without it costing us the planet.

 

[bit_pattern]

More on Plimer's fraudulent claims regarding Mauna Loa:

And to end any doubt on this point, Engelbeen (the source of Plimer's plagiarised claims) continues:

Does discarding of "contaminated" data influence the trend over a year or several years? I have asked that question to Pieter Tans, responsible for dataprocessing of the Mauna Loa data. His answer:

The data selection method has been described in Thoning et al., J. Geophys. Research, (1989) vol. 94, 8549-8565. Different data selection methods are compared in that paper, including no selection. The methods give annual means differing by a few tenths of 1 ppm. I assume that you have read the README file [4] when downloading the data. The hourly means are NOT pre-processed, but they are flagged when the st.dev. of the minute averages is large.

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/10/plimer_the_plagiarist.php#more​

That's the same Pieter Tans quoted earlier.

So it seems that the reason why Plimer didn't cite Engelbeen was that Engelbeen conclusively refuted Plimer's claims about data selection at Mauna Loa being used to manufacture a trend. (Engelbeen, by the way, is a global warming skeptic and wrote his page in an attempt to end the Keeling-curve denial of folks like Plimer.)

 

[cancat]

^^ It's the cheap energy, not the fossil fuels per se, that's why we need develop a gren energy economy, so we can have all of the benefits of cheap, plentiful energy sources without it costing us the planet.

The cheap energy came from fossil fuels and rather than 'costing us the planet' it has dramatically improved standards of living across the globe. So far green energy fails, both in terms of power output and cost.

 

[bit_pattern]

No, green energy investment is what has failed. That's why an ETS is theoretically a good mechanism for spurring the required investment. Coal is only cheap if you don't take into account the negative externalities.