Steve McIntyre, whose previous careers included mineral exploration and policy analysis for the Canadian government, has been one of the foremost critics “of the temperature record of the past 1000 years and the data quality of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies.” His detailed look into the data quality of the so-called Hockey Stick graph (see below) upon which much of the Global Warming thesis has been based, unearthed problems that the National Research Council was tasked by Congress to investigate. They concluded in 2006 that “there were statistical shortcomings in the MBH analysis, but … they were small in effect”.
The "Hockey Stick"
Unsatisfied, McIntyre went looking for the original data and it proved surprisingly hard to get. His requests for access were refused. The journal Nature reported on his efforts to obtain them.
“A leading UK climatologist is being inundated by freedom-of-information-act requests to make raw climate data publicly available, leading to a renewed row over data access. Since 2002, Steve McIntyre, the editor of Climate Audit, a blog that investigates the statistical methods used in climate science, has repeatedly asked Phil Jones, director of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia, UK, for access to monthly global surface temperature data held by the institute.”
The data in question was called the Yamal dataset; it involved the measurements of a number of tree cores which were used as proxy data for temperature. It was alleged that the growth rings from these trees ‘proved’ that “late 20th century warmth is unprecedented for at least roughly the past two millennia for the Northern Hemisphere.” Yet this key data was nowhere in the public domain; it was locked up tighter than a Hawaii birth certificate. When finally it was brought into the open it didn’t show what it was supposed to prove. The Register takes up the story.
At the insistence of editors of the Royal Society’s Philosophical Transactions B the data has leaked into the open – and Yamal’s mystery is no more. From this we know that the Yamal data set uses just 12 trees from a larger set to produce its dramatic recent trend. Yet many more were cored, and a larger data set (of 34) from the vicinity shows no dramatic recent warming, and warmer temperatures in the middle ages. In all there are 252 cores in the CRU Yamal data set, of which ten were alive 1990. All 12 cores selected show strong growth since the mid-19th century. The implication is clear: the dozen were cherry-picked.
Two things had happened: first, due to McIntyre’s efforts, the Yamal data was proved suspect and second, he found a more reliable dataset from right next door to Yamal. Now the stage was set for reproducing the hockey stick. Bishop Hill sets up the narrative, taking us back to the hunt for the data which produced Yamal itself; which turned out to be a replacement for the Polar Urals data which proved unreliable.
We can pick up the narrative again in 2005, when McIntyre discovered that an update to the Polar Urals series had been collected in 1999. Through a contact he was able to obtain a copy of the revised series. Remarkably, in the update the eleventh century appeared to be much warmer than in the original – in fact it was higher even than the twentieth century. This must have been a severe blow to paleoclimatologists, a supposition that is borne out by what happened next, or rather what didn’t: the update to the Polar Urals was not published, it was not archived and it was almost never seen again. With Polar Urals now unusable, paleclimatologists had a pressing need for a hockey stick shaped replacement and a solution appeared in the nick of time in the shape of a series from the nearby location of Yamal.
The Yamal data had been collected by a pair of Russian scientists, Hantemirov and Shiyatov, and was published in 2002. In their version of the data, Yamal had little by way of a twentieth century trend. Strangely though, Briffa’s version, which had made it into print before even the Russians’, was somewhat different. While it was very similar to the Russians’ version for most of the length of the record, Briffa’s verison had a sharp uptick at the end of the twentieth century — another hockey stick, made almost to order to meet the requirements of the paleoclimate community.
Yamal was the fallback and McIntyre wanted to see it. But remarkably Briffa would not release the base data. “McIntyre therefore wrote to the Englishman asking for the original tree ring measurements involved. When Briffa refused, McIntyre wrote to Science, who had published the new paper, pointing out that, since it was now six years since Briffa had originally published his version of the chronology, there could be no reason for withholding the underlying data. After some deliberation, the editors at Science declined the request, deciding that Briffa did not have to publish anything more as he had merely re-used data from an earlier study. McIntyre should, they advised, approach the author of the earlier study, that author being, of course, Briffa himself. Wearily, McIntyre wrote to Briffa again, this time in his capacity as author of the original study in Quaternary Science Reviews and he was, as expected, turned down flat.” In a novel this refusal would have been put down to a deep and deadly conspiracy. What it really concealed was the slipshod data handling, tiny samples, the loss of essential metadata and the careless merging of datasets on which the earlier conclusions were based.
This became evident when Briffa’s data made its way into the light of day unnanounced. McIntyre was alerted to its existence by a reader who spotted it. Bishop continues, “eventually, though, Briffa’s hand was forced, and in late September 2009, a reader pointed out to McIntyre that the remaining data was now available. It had been quietly posted to Briffa’s webpage, without announcement or the courtesy of an email to Mcintyre.” And it was easy to see why the data was more comfortable in the shadow. Only 12 cores had been used as datapoints. This was it? Where were the rest? Attempts to rectify the fatal errors in the Yamal dataset were tried by McIntyre, but it remained a mess. The problem was eventually resolved when the “Schweingruber series called Khadyta River close by to Yamal” was discovered. Here was clean data from right next door.
McIntyre therefore prepared a revised dataset, replacing Briffa’s selected 12 cores with the 34 from Khadyta River. The revised chronology was simply staggering. The sharp uptick in the series at the end of the twentieth century had vanished, leaving a twentieth century apparently without a significant trend. The blade of the Yamal hockey stick, used in so many of those temperature reconstructions that the IPCC said validated Michael Mann’s work, was gone.
The most amazing part of this story from my point of view was the way in which a dogged Canadian mathematician, acting practically alone with the help of his trusty readers, forced the establishment back step by step to explain where the conclusions upon which a trillion dollar public policy came from and insisted on reproducing the results. If ever there was a tale of triumph over dauntless odds — almost to the point of comparing it to breaking the bank — this is it. The story of man’s search for the scientific truth is still ongoing. Research doesn’t end with McIntyre. It may still prove to be the case that the Hockey Stick exists, but it must be shown on the basis of the data, not on the strength of “consensus” and public relations campaigns. What McIntyre showed is that nothing beneath the stars need be taken on authority. Whether the truth will set you free is a proposition not all will accept; but at least the search for it will.
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137 Comments
1. Lifeofthemind:Men are not angels. If they were then the entire apparatus of government, of laws and courts and committees and procedures would be unneeded. The marble could sleep in peace. It is not shocking that Briffa either cheated or was sloppy. It is not a surprise that he attempted to cover up his error. That is especially true given that billions of dollars and thousands of careers were riding on his secret twelve tree sample. As part of the procedures we can try to teach a code of ethics and tell allegorical stories of selfless gentlemen who announce their own failures and errors. We do not expect that level of conduct from politicians, nor from lawyers, nor from clergy, nor from bankers. So why should we from scientists? The more concentrated authority is the easier it is for a falsehood to survive.
Academic training does include some socialization in accepting criticism. Once I participated in an ongoing workshop on International Relations theory. Every week a paper would be presented by a visiting scholar. The paper had been made available to the twenty or so graduate students a week in advance. Some of the visitors were young and these could be considered job talks but others were by well known and senior faculty at other universities who had offered a first look at their latest work. After the guest had been welcomed and introduced by the local professor leading the workshop and an exchange of pleasantries the work would begin. The paper would always be introduced by a graduate student who would summarize the paper’s thesis and then tear it apart. This could be a brutal process to watch. It would often include phrases like, “I see what you are doing here but how does that relate to this other point you make?” or “I can see where you have shown you get these numbers from but can you show where you got these others that you also rely on?” and “This is very interesting, I am surprised that you haven’t commented on the work of XYZ who published on a very similar problem last year (or 5 years ago.) Can you explain why?” Having been thoroughly and publicly eviscerated the only thing that the visitor can do is say the following, “Thank you.” That was a very powerful lesson for young academics to witness and I suspect that it is part of the culture that separates truly elite institutions from the common herd.
When I was in High School I was invited to witness a dissertation defense in a biology department. I had spent a Summer murdering mice at a local college to support the candidates project. It was a horrible thing to watch as one faculty member asked the candidate “Why?” and the candidate was destroyed.
Oct 1, 2009 - 5:15 am 2. 907ie:But the “consensus” says global warming is real! I heard this directly from the president! Multiple times!
Considering the “red” movement turned into the “green” movement, I wouldn’t trust any Russian data!
Anytime I hear “consensus”, I’m suspect.
Oct 1, 2009 - 5:20 am 3. glenn:It’s like how you can tell a politician is lying, when his lips are moving.
Wretchard;
Oct 1, 2009 - 5:36 am 4. Brock:The mendaciousness of the AGW crowd is breathtaking, but we are missing the point. We need a reason for this foulness. I do not think it lies in the data, because as we have seen, the AGW hypothesis is supported by some of the data. What causes otherwise rational people to pick one data set over another? Their basic philosophy; in this case it is the utter hatred of the West and Capitalism. It’s hard to dignify hatred as a philosophy, but there it is. We have all seen it and experienced it in listening to Greens. What the root core of that is I leave to those (see Ayn Rand) who have made a lifetime fighting it. Hopefully it looks like this particular battle is won, but we will never be rid of these haters until we have dug up and destroyed their philosophy, root and branch
Global warming is the “fat is bad for you” of our times. Ancel Keys simply invented the hypothesis that saturated fat is bad for you, and that cholesterol causes heart disease, and then fabricated & cherry picked data until he “proved” his case. There’s no case for it, historically, empirically or experimentally, but people continue to believe it.
This is how Dark Ages are created and Enlightenments die.
Oct 1, 2009 - 5:45 am 5. DB:“What causes otherwise rational people to pick one data set over another? Their basic philosophy; in this case it is the utter hatred of the West and Capitalism.”
There are also those who feel the future is threatened and the magnitude of the perceived risk justifies the choices made.
Oct 1, 2009 - 5:46 am 6. Doug:Interactive Timeline from core sample of a Redwood from the time of Ghenghis Kahn to the arrival of the Black Messiah.
…and a fantastic article about these living giants.
At least 1,500 years old, a 300-foot titan in California’s Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park has the most complex crown scientists have mapped. This photo, taken by Michael Nichols, is a mosaic composed of 84 images.
God’s Magnificient Creations
Oct 1, 2009 - 5:47 am 7. Fred:What Steve has done is remarkable. He receives no public funds – this is his retirement hobby. he has exposed Academic Fraud on a massive and pervasive scale, fraud that has resulted in massive amounts of scarce public resources being spent in pursuit of nothing.
If you want to help, go over to his website at
http://www.climateaudit.org/
and hit his tip jar – top left corner
Unlike Mann and Hansen, Steve doesn’t have a lip lock on the public teat and does this work for free.
Oct 1, 2009 - 5:48 am 8. Jamie Irons:Fred wrote:
If you want to help, go over to his website at…and hit his tip jar – top left corner…
Done!
I have been following Steve MacIntyre for several years, and he was one of the first to convince me that “global warming” (or its other incarnation, “climate change”) is a crock.
Jamie Irons
Oct 1, 2009 - 6:29 am 9. programmer:Looking for patterns.
From the above link:
The aesthetic appeal of certain patterns is entrancing; attention gravitates to them. But sometimes they are secondary—mere byproducts of a primary, generative pattern. Attractive though trivial, they can blind us to truly significant patterns. Descriptions of secondary patterns, however accurate, don’t explain the underlying process that produced them
Oct 1, 2009 - 6:32 am 10. The Hockey Stick is more like a Puck:[...] Via Belmont Club. [...]
Oct 1, 2009 - 6:36 am 11. Jamie Irons:Doug,
Thanks for the fascinating redwoods references.
As it happens, I live on the edge of a canyon (Sarco Creek canyon, on the east side of the Napa Valley)) which contains the easternmost grove of naturally occurring redwoods in the world. I look at those beauties with profound reverence every day.
Jamie Irons
Oct 1, 2009 - 6:44 am 12. RWE:A similar story exists relative to the Ozone Holes. Someone posed the question as to the effect of the Antarctic ozone holes – did more UV reach the surface? It turned out that data existed on that subject and it was obtained. And they carefully cherry-picked the data to show a UV increase.
The researcher who actually took the data then objected to the conclusions and pointed out that the data showed just as many points with a UV decrease as it did with an increase, with the majority of the UV data points showing no change.
The reaction to this revelation was swift and certain. They cancelled his funding.
I have seen the interaction of science and politics in DC up close. And it is all but assured that anything that goes through that process is bound to be invalid.
Oct 1, 2009 - 6:49 am 13. Agoraphobic Plumber:The sad part of the climate change/global warming hysteria is that while the hockey stick and other doomsday screaming (see: Al Gore) is a load of horse droppings, there probably IS some effect of our presence on the climate.
I mean, it WOULD be counterintuitive if we were able to dump billions of tons per year of previously sequestered CO2 into the atmosphere and not have ANY effect. And it is probably worth some study to see whether we should at some point change things.
But now that the thing has been hyped to the heavens people have become desensitized, and so when things like this come out (as they eventually must), people are very likely to just look at it and say “well, then, the whole thing is a crock and nothing else needs to be done”.
The boy who cried wolf, and all that. Hope it doesn’t bite us someday.
Oct 1, 2009 - 7:04 am 14. aaron:Regarding ozone: It has an ionized resonance structure. What happens to ions in a magnetic field? They move.
The ozone hole is real and unfortunately for the scaremongers it is natural. This is grade school physics – but if you ignore the obvious it’s good for some grant money.
Oct 1, 2009 - 7:14 am 15. aaron:13 a.plumber: The atmosphere has in the past been much higher in CO2 concentrations. These were the geologic ages of plant life.
The anthropogenic sources of CO2 pale in significance to geologic sources – and have for millenia.
If the “greens” really wanna bring back the rain forest we should emit as much CO2 as possible.
As a biochemist, I do have some perspective on this topic that is not shared by our policy makers. CO2 is the stuff of life.
Oct 1, 2009 - 7:20 am 16. Annoy Mouse:Funny how some in the scientific community have followed the same arc of mediocrity as the media;
1) Serious reporting and pursuit of the truth
2) Gotcha exposés and the cynical attacks on common order
3) Polarization and insularity
4) Formation of a cliché that supports itself and bends everything to conform to its views.
“Does that sound like Colonel Killian? Is that the way he felt?” Knox, sitting in a chair facing Rather, affirmed: “That’s absolutely the way he felt about that.” Rather emphasized that in the case of another memo, “she doesn’t believe the memo is authentic, but she says the facts behind it are very real.””
Oct 1, 2009 - 7:26 am 17. Das:The science for global warming may be settled but the evidence is not.
Oct 1, 2009 - 7:33 am 18. jerryofva:Ever since Al Gore and the Government got involved Global warming/Climate change “science” has always been a fund driven hoax. In today’s academic world grant money is king and respectable scientists have been reduced to whores providing services to ambitious politicians with an agenda. Whether it is a changing climate or the next black death scientists are following the cash. This is a perfect recipe for Lysenko-ism and a great generator of the Piltdown Man like frauds.
Oct 1, 2009 - 7:37 am 19. Bob Hawkins:aaron> “Regarding ozone: It has an ionized resonance structure. What happens to ions in a magnetic field? They move.”
You just made that up. Ozone, O3, is no more or less an ion than oxygen, O2. The “resonance structure” is better known as the spectrum. I published the most comprehensive atlas of the vibration-rotation spectrum of ozone back in grad school, as a NASA tech report. If you could tell me how to ionize a “resonance structure” we could co-author a paper for, say, Journal of Molecular Spectroscopy. But keep in mind, J. Mol. Spec. requires more than some “scientific” words slapped together randomly. At least it did when K.N. Rao edited it and I post-doc’ed for him.
If you want to make the ozone hole alarmists look as bad as they deserve, point out that the crucial rate constant that controls how fast ozone is depleted was finally measured within the last couiple of years, and it turns out to be 30 times smaller than the models assumed.
But don’t be bringing that weak stuff in here.
P.S.: an ion has an electric charge. A motionless electric charge is unaffected by a magnetic field. You flunk grade-school physics.
I mean it. Don’t bring that weak stuff in here.
Oct 1, 2009 - 7:41 am 20. Richard of Oregon:This whole global warming thing has been violating basic scientific proceedures for a very long time. Some twenty years ago my jaw dropped when I read an article on global warming in Scientific American magazine. I could form no decent opinion of the conclusions it made because it made many assertions off of virtually no data. I forgave my beloved magazine then, thinking that they just had a senior moment. Alas, it was an early symptom of a chronic disease that spread throughout the publication. I dropped Scientific American a few years back after subscribing for about twenty-five years. A wonderful magazine became useless propaganda.
Oct 1, 2009 - 7:50 am 21. RWE:Richard of Oregon:
Back in the mid-80’s one of the fresh-out-of-college engineers who worked for me mentioned that he subscribed to Scientific American.
I asked him “You surely have seen articles in that magazine that oppose certain weapons systems. But have you ever seen one that was in favor of a specific weapons system?”
About a month later he said “Holy crap! You are right! There never has been such an article for as far back as I can look. Well, that does it for me for that mazazine!”
I don’t know whether the Left has penetrated the scientific establishment that deeply, or if it is just that some scientists figure that less money spent on defense means more money available for studying the sex life of snail darters. But uou are right, Scientfic Amercian has gone over that viewpoint, and has been there for close to 40 years.
Oct 1, 2009 - 8:07 am 22. Whacked with a hockey stick « Intrusion Alert:[...] read the whole thing, as well as the original article he is responding to. ▶ Comment /* 0) { [...]
Oct 1, 2009 - 8:08 am 23. aaron:Well Bob, maybe I do flunk grade school physics. I’d be willing to read your IR spectroscopy paper. Give me a reference and I’ll track it down.
Who says ozone is motionless in the atmosphere by the way?
Oct 1, 2009 - 8:09 am 24. always right:You know how many private companies wasting how much money and resources for how many years pursuing the product/environment stewardship and sustainability and green technology, all because of the ‘consensus’ on global warming/climate change? After this round of wastefulness, even if companies survived, they will be severely stunted.
The business landscape is going to be forever changed, no more evil company vampires sucking from you and me for profits, but consumers will not have benefited from it. Of course that is what the greenies wanted all along, going back to the standard of living similar to the stone age.
Oct 1, 2009 - 8:11 am 25. maz2:DB said:
“There are also those who feel the future is threatened and the magnitude of the perceived risk justifies the choices made.”
Whittaker Chambers made his choice: Communism, the Communist Party.
Chambers wrote in his Witness*:
“But it [Communism] had one ultimate appeal. In place of desperation, it set the word: hope.
If it was the outrage, it was also the hope of the world.
In the 20th century, it seemed impossible to have hope on any other terms.”
*Witness: Whittaker Chambers.
Oct 1, 2009 - 8:22 am 26. always right:Chapter 3: The Outrage and the Hope of the World.
Random House, 1952.
7. Fred
Done!
Oct 1, 2009 - 8:25 am 27. Morton Doodslag:First World Messianism run amok. A true quirk in the history of mankind, the altruism of the West, and particularly the altruism of America and Britain is causing serious blow-back for us now. Somewhere in the late 19th/early 20th century, the the impulse to ‘do good works’ which had previously been limited to individual/church based acts of charity began to be institutionalized. ‘Do-goodism’ leaked imperceptably into many academic, government, and media institutions.
In the hard sciences, we developed and then distributed medical, agricultural and engineering technologies far and wide in order to improve living conditions for those less fortunate… Result?
Unprecedented global population explosion.
Today our borders are stormed by desperate third world throngs who lack the cultural software to survive, thrive, or fix their defective civilizations. Today inimical civilizations including more than a billion Muslim have the wealth, wherewithal and intent to annihilate us.
For our salvation our Western governments have adopted the Messianic socialistic model, the cradle to grave ‘nanny state’. No need here to expound on the perils of that nightmare …
Our media stopped being a check on government power and abuse and has morphed into an evangelical army of Left wing propagandists for the cause.
Today the primacy of these Messianic causes is destroying the very world they purport to save. It is not a coincidence that the science community now seeks to rectify global warming with new a new improved Messianism. If global warming exists, it is due mainly because solid science was utterly coöpted by former crackpot schemes to save the world and do good.
Rather than confronting, analyzing, and rectifying the earlier bad social and hard science which led to the current predicament, more (and far far worse) science is applied in false remedy. The nexus which exists now between the First World Messianism of media, government, and academia assures that we will continue to flounder and thrash in a spiral of increasingly horrible self inflicted predicaments with exacerbating non-solutions until we return to our senses, or are destroyed. I’m not at all convinced that returning to our senses is an option any longer.
Oct 1, 2009 - 8:33 am 28. Doug:Jamie,
Oct 1, 2009 - 8:34 am 29. New Paltz Journal » Blog Archive » On the strange case of the cooked global warming data:You’ll probably end up reading all the articles referenced there.
Be sure not to miss this one from the archives:
The Redwood Forest of the Pacific Coast
This story was originally published in the May 1899 issue of the magazine. It was National Geographic’s first coverage of redwoods.
In another article, the history of Pacific Lumber is fascinating.
—
You live on the eastern limits, we lived on the southern limits!
I planted about 100 from seedlings from the state nursery.
Most awe inspiring for me though, is in the heart of the Redwood range, in the Humbolt Cathedrals.
Can’t imagine what that might have been like prior to the Gold Rush!
[...] Fernandez, with great clarity, on Steve McIntyre’s pursuit of the truth about the “hockey stick” of global warming: The most amazing part of this story from my point of view was the way in which a dogged Canadian mathematician, acting practically alone with the help of his trusty readers, forced the establishment back step by step to explain where the conclusions upon which a trillion dollar public policy came from and insisted on reproducing the results. If ever there was a tale of triumph over dauntless odds — almost to the point of comparing it to breaking the bank — this is it. It’s more about breaking the back of this incredible hoax by thrusting a sword right through it to the cooked data. [...]
Oct 1, 2009 - 8:43 am 30. Doug:That’s a pretty comprehensive, concise, and elegant description of the web that we have weaved, Morton Doodslag.
Oct 1, 2009 - 8:48 am 31. Agoraphobic Plumber:Too ugly for many to admit.
aaron@15:
“The atmosphere has in the past been much higher in CO2 concentrations. These were the geologic ages of plant life.”
Point taken. However, in geologic ages past, the piece of ground I’m sitting on right now was the bottom of the sea that used to run through the heart of North America.
Though I agree with your position that the stuff we’re spewing is probably relatively insignificant when compared to the incredible amount of stronger greenhouse gasses being spewed by volcanoes worldwide and the gasses released by the oceans.
Overall, my gut tells me that we’d be FAR better served just adapting to whatever comes than trying to control what comes. Although…it WOULD be nice if somebody could figure out what’s coming (whether it’s caused by us or nature) so we could get a jump on adapting to it.
Oct 1, 2009 - 9:04 am 32. Agoraphobic Plumber:Bob Hawkins@19:
“You just made that up. Ozone, O3, is no more or less an ion than oxygen, O2. The “resonance structure” is better known as the spectrum. I published the most comprehensive atlas of the vibration-rotation spectrum of ozone back in grad school, as a NASA tech report. If you could tell me how to ionize a “resonance structure” we could co-author a paper for, say, Journal of Molecular Spectroscopy. But keep in mind, J. Mol. Spec. requires more than some “scientific” words slapped together randomly. At least it did when K.N. Rao edited it and I post-doc’ed for him.”
Holy mother of God. Note to self: remember NEVER to attempt to bullshit my way through a technical subject in The Club.
Oct 1, 2009 - 9:10 am 33. luddy barsen:There’s so much about the Pacific coast that is spectacular. Nice to regard it in a non-political frame for a change!
Politics! a first thought: no conclusion can be drawn re the UN IPCC Report’s genesis and propagation, until we have data on its “spontaneity” or lack thereof.
Oct 1, 2009 - 9:11 am 34. joe buzz:Steve is the man. The tech geeks commenting at his site are somewhat funny in a tech geek sort of way.
Oct 1, 2009 - 9:11 am 35. Bret:All it takes is money to make a hockey stick. “1 million jobs created or saved”. I recall the “coming ice age” scare of the 70’s.
Oh and BTW, my anti polar shift refrigerator magnet sales are really starting to attract attention. Still time to get in on the action. You will know it when its too late.
I wonder if and when the major news organizations will ever publish anything about this.
In some fairness, Briffa probably ought to be given a chance to respond. Perhaps there’s a good reason he picked those 12 trees (other than to skew the data).
Oct 1, 2009 - 9:14 am 36. joe buzz:yeah those twelve tress probably surrounded someone’s vodka still. I was wondering do dendroclimatologists back fill their bore holes? I sure hope so.
Oct 1, 2009 - 9:25 am 37. Roderick Reilly:#7. Fred:
“”"”" What Steve has done is remarkable. He receives no public funds – this is his retirement hobby. he has exposed Academic Fraud on a massive and pervasive scale, fraud that has resulted in massive amounts of scarce public resources being spent in pursuit of nothing. “”"”"”
And he did it all without posing as a cartoon-version pimp with a young ‘hooker’ colleague tagging along.
Oct 1, 2009 - 9:28 am 38. always right:In some fairness, Briffa probably ought to be given a chance to respond.
Briffa had a short first response (promising more in future), link could be found in the comment section on Climateaudit.org site. Apparently Briffa was suffering from some illness.
As someone commented, why it took Briffa all these years to not releasing his raw data and the methodology used for selection after repeated requests is unusual to say the least.
Oct 1, 2009 - 9:40 am 39. JMH:I mean, it WOULD be counterintuitive if we were able to dump billions of tons per year of previously sequestered CO2 into the atmosphere and not have ANY effect. And it is probably worth some study to see whether we should at some point change things.
Would it be counterintuitive if you could dump gallons of water into a bathtub with a functional overflow drain and not have the water ever reach the top of the tub?
Mother Nature has a lot of self-regulating systems. That’s the only way that an ecosphere could survive for eons.
The article on the Redwoods was great. I grew up on Humbold Bay and hiked through Redwood forests many times. They are spectacular trees and make spectacular groves. We did indeed find ways to replant and grow new stands. The wood from the second and third growth forests isn’t quite as valuable – faster growth means wider growth rings making the trees softer and less easy to machine (oddly enough, for the dense wood tears out less and holds better detail). A dose of Global Warming would probably be very, very good for the trees, since they need moisture in the air to thrive.
The canopy of a Redwood forest is an interesting place, a world of it’s own hundreds of feet off the ground:
Oct 1, 2009 - 9:41 am 40. Roderick Reilly:“”"”" 27. Morton Doodslag:
First World Messianism run amok. A true quirk in the history of mankind, the altruism of the West, and particularly the altruism of America and Britain is causing serious blow-back for us now. Somewhere in the late 19th/early 20th century, the the impulse to ‘do good works’ which had previously been limited to individual/church based acts of charity began to be institutionalized. ‘Do-goodism’ leaked imperceptably into many academic, government, and media institutions. “”"”"
Excellent observation. In the case of America in particular, it’s history can be divided literally in half, with the demarcation being the shift in worldview and governing philosophy by much of the elite shifting from constitutional republicanism and self-interest to progressivism and statism. Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson were almost dismissive of the Constitution and the philosophical underpinnings of the Founders. We were to be ‘new’ and ‘modern’ from here on out. Herbert Hoover was no ‘laissez faire’ conservative either, but a member of the ‘enlightened’ elite. It was Hoover who first proposed that owning a home be considered an American birthright (1920).
Oct 1, 2009 - 9:47 am 41. luddy barsen:doug/6; the photo in the middle link is mind-blowing –where on earth did they find those tiny people?
i’m trying to figure out a sentence –a question –about the IPCC Report –the fantastic amount of global energy spent in its care and feeding –versus — well –here’s where i go speechless –i can’t find the words
Oct 1, 2009 - 9:48 am 42. Roderick Reilly:“”"” 35. Bret:
I wonder if and when the major news organizations will ever publish anything about this. “”"”"
John Stossel would be a good start.
Oct 1, 2009 - 9:50 am 43. Eggplant:For many people, “green politics” is simply another way of advancing the socialist agenda. Socialists tend to be liars so it’s no surprise that science promoting a socialist agenda is going to have issues.
I’m very sceptical about Global Warming as a political agenda. The information concerning past global temperatures is all over the place and can be explained by various theories. IMHO, there is nothing politically actionable based upon that information. However the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide is unusual and that data comes from many different reliable sources. In particular, the data from Antarctic ice cores is of some concern showing a significant rise in carbon dioxide over many thousands of years.
Is this a sound basis for a radical change in the world’s economy? I don’t think so. Some awkward questions:
1) Are the socialists lying to us about otherwise sound scientific data to pursue a political agenda?
2) Are the causes behind the changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels due to processes that are not susceptible to economic change?
These questions are not being adequately addressed.
Finally there is an economic argument that should be examined, i.e. It is argued that global warming could cause a run away greenhouse effect that could end all life on the Earth. Since this represents the destruction of “everything”, any economic expense can be justified to prevent this from happening. We can criticise this reasoning by looking at it the same way as an insurance actuary. An insurance actuary calculates the value of your home and the probability of your home experiencing a fire that destroys everything. That probability times the value of your home yields an “expectation value”. To make a profit, the insurance underwriter will charge a premium greater than the expectation value (it’s the opposite logic behind a gambling casino). Now we have the situation of the Earth going into a run away green house effect. The cost of that calamity would be almost “infinity”. However what’s the probability of that actually happening? Almost zero. The expectation value of infinity times zero is undefined. It can be any number that you pull out of a hat. Since it can be any number, let’s set it to zero and not worry about it.
Oct 1, 2009 - 10:07 am 44. Doug:Luddy,
I think you were searching for
“Follow the Money ”
btw,
Oct 1, 2009 - 10:32 am 45. Lifeofthemind:I taught Bob Hawkins @19 everything he ever knew about the vibration-rotation spectrum of ozone.
Bob Hawkins and agoraphobic plumber ,
Oct 1, 2009 - 11:10 am 46. luddy barsen:This reminds me of how The Belmont Club recaptures for me of the exhilaration of being at University. The knowledge that you are swimming with sharks and might at any moment notice or gulp participate in an Annie Hall moment, as when Woody Allen pulled Marshall McLuhan out from behind a sign to smack down a windbag. Whatever his other sins, including his incredibly tone deaf defense of Roman Polanski, Woody got that right.
d/44; yes clearly, hawkins has always been in the doug orbit scientific stuff-wise.
‘follow the money’ tho wouldn’t work the same way for any other group such as the writers of the UN report. it’s credentialism gone amok –a hundred guys captured twenty western governments.
LotM –woody’s defense suffers from the ‘poisoned well’ –like Goering in the dock at Nuremberg waxing philosophic re the popular acceptability of the world made by the great conquerers of history.
Oct 1, 2009 - 11:12 am 47. maz2:Call the white coats.
Mad Men Lunatic Moonbats from AGW on the loose. Approach with caution.
…-
“Olympics-2016 Games could be the last, says Tokyo governor
Tokyo governor Shintaro Ishihara warned on Wednesday the 2016 Olympics could be the last Games, with global warming an immediate threat to mankind.
Tokyo is bidding to host the 2016 summer Olympics with Chicago, Rio de Janeiro and Madrid also in the running. The International Olympic Committee will elect the winning candidate during its session on Oct. 2 in the Danish capital.
“It could be that the 2016 Games are the last Olympics in the history of mankind,” Ishihara told reporters at a Tokyo 2016 press event ahead of the vote.
“Global warming is getting worse. We have to come up with measures without which Olympic Games could not last long.
“Scientists have said we have passed the point of no return,” said Ishihara.”
http://www.reuters.com/article/olympicsNews/idUSLU38985020090930
Oct 1, 2009 - 11:17 am 48. Marcus Aurelius:When analyzing data sets one usually does toss out some data. Back in the days I was sitting through a course entitled “Engineer Methods” and I can not recall the object, but all 90 or so of us had to use a vernier caliper to measure and record some dimension of that object.
Now, not all readings were identical but most were close and a few were way far from the others. The prof then introduced the concept of fliers (or outliers) and then said those “whacky” numbers would be excluded from further analysis. Quite clearly the outliers were caused by one student or another not properly reading the vernier caliper (or maybe the prof introduced the data points into the data set for instructional purposes). All other lab courses I took emphasized this as well.
However, I never recall any prof telling us it was okay to exclude the results from our papers and in fact my distinct recollection is a good paper does discuss their outlying data points and defend decisions to exclude them. Again my recollection is our papers had to include a section presenting the raw data in entirety.
Every now and then I’ll see a news story talking about how the data collected by NOAA is suspect due to them not always placing them in standard locations.
Oct 1, 2009 - 11:22 am 49. j willie:Been a while since I took statistics, but a core take away form my academic and professional exposure to the subject is that the sample size must be valid, and for a population as large as “trees” or even “Siberian Yamal trees”, it would be hard to imagine a sample size of 12 to be statistically valid. Especially when attempting to establish inferences that form the basis for making decisions with trillion dollar consequences? I must have missed something…
Oct 1, 2009 - 11:27 am 50. anton:I have been suspicious of the whole “weather catastrophe” line ever since the threat of the Impending Ice Age (I think I still have that Time Magazine somewhere) somehow morphed into “We Are All Gonna Fry!!!!”. It appeared to me that there was a flaw in the underlying assumptions. I was even more wary when the AGW crowd were unable to explain in coherent terms how the Ice Ages began and ended. The I found “Still Waiting For Warming” and discovered that I wasn’t the only heretic out here.
Kudos to Mr. McIntyre for his dogged work.
I am sending the link to all of my friends and aquaintances that suffer from AGW brainwashing.
As for Briffa, he claims innocence, but man, does he ever look guilty. I have never heard of a serious researcher that deliberately excludes data from his work and then hides the fact. I was always led to believe that you would make a point of acknowledging the data and then state the reasons for it’s exclusion. Further one would even present the results with, and without, the data so that others could see your work. This is what happens to “open and honest inquiry” when it is placed in the hands of the political class.
What I fear most is that the matter is now so clouded with lies and the hyper-emotional “true believers” that no worthwhile progress can be made in others critical metters of environmental protection. Pollution from toxic chemicals has always worried me more than AGW but all the money has been siphoned off into bad research that parrotted the party-line.
Would that sanity be allowed to prevail!
Oct 1, 2009 - 11:29 am 51. aaron:I have to say Bob certainly got me to check my references.
Though my credentials and associations are nowhere near as significant, I still wonder about the effects of a polar molecule with a dipole (Dipole moment = 0.53 debye) that is surrounded by a large magnetic field, such as the earths?
Could this explain why the hole is over the pole?
Oct 1, 2009 - 11:32 am 52. bob:A Dogged American Lawyer, Acting Practically Alone With Only The Help Of His Trusty Readers
Oct 1, 2009 - 11:33 am 53. Whitehall:I think we need to remember in our AGW consideration why many scientists are motivated to embrace AGW: they’re nerds.
Scientists should be observers, not actors. To be a hero, one must act on and in the world. AGW has presented many an opportunity to safe the world from the safety of their labs and offices and conferences while getting buckets of money to do so. Being a hero is great work with many resultant benefits attendent but getting recgnized as a hero usually has some risk involved – see Iraq and Afghanstan for real hero work.
So I think what we’re seeing is nerds trying to be heros.
As a life-long nerd, I understand the appeal.
Oct 1, 2009 - 12:01 pm 54. Marcus Aurelius:Aaron,
In the absence of motion of the magnetic field across the ion or the ion through the field — there is no affect on charged particles. Once, we have motion then things begin to happen (e.g. the auroras and particle accelerators).
However, electric fields would definitely have an affect on ions and set them in motion with or without motion. I would think if the ozone hole were related to the magnetic properties of the earth and all that we’ld see a similar hole over the Actic, which is something I’ve not heard of.
As far as possible causes of the ozone hole, I’ve heard of none other than the usual suspect (us).
Oct 1, 2009 - 12:17 pm 55. luddy barsen:If you are sane you will respond to the weather via adapting your personal location and/or outerwear. If you are criminally insane, or are in the employ of the criminally insane, you will respond by holding other people at gunpoint and forcing them to bark at the heavens while you loot their earthly belongings.
Oct 1, 2009 - 12:29 pm 56. Josh:Science is hard, even without hurricanes of politics blowing it around.
Sturgeon’s Law says 80% of everything is crap, and that includes refereed journals. And I’ve refereed journals, and you should see what *doesn’t* make it thru! And 80% of the conclusions drawn from good studies, and 80% of the action proposals based on conclusions, ditto.
Any anyone using the term “Climate Denier” as an ad hominem (?) against scientific questions, should be disbelieved from the start.
Oct 1, 2009 - 12:34 pm 57. Marty:No conspiracy? Really?
Maybe not a bunch of people getting together, but the idea that all these errors, misrepresentations, lost datas, etc all pull in the same direction means it isn’t just chance.
Now, am I to believe that a well-qualified scientist who, confronted with a large dataset that did not conform to his assumptions, would look to a sample of N=12 for a better answer? And that’s all????
No.
This whole thing is built on scientists who want to be important and increase their grants and publicity, lying to politicians who see an excuse to make themselves more important, and to a media that prizes crisis because it sells (rather than truth, which doesn’t), all of which plays on the fears of a populace with no knowledge of science or logic.
I suppose you can say that’s not a conspiracy, but only in the most elgalistic of terms.
Oct 1, 2009 - 12:37 pm 58. Jeff:A challenge to McIntyre can be found here:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/09/hey-ya-mal/#more-1184
What say you?
Oct 1, 2009 - 12:41 pm 59. Marty:Richard of Oregon and others–
Re Scientific American
back in high schoola nd college I used to haunt teh libraries and would look up old cpies of SA, just out of antiquarian interest.
They have ALWAYS reflected the cultural and political obsessions of the day. Go back to 1910 and they were obsessed about all aspects of designing Dreadnought battleships and automobiles. The 1880s about new applications for electricity.
Sometimes the stuff was technically OK, sometimes not, but they’ve always been front-runners with what is topical rather than what is going on in real research. Not that they miss everything, but the slant and emphasis has always been there.
I gave up on ‘em about a 15 yrs ago, the PC response to The Bell Curve coming on top of some insane articles about nuclear weapons policy in the Reagan years were just too much.
Oct 1, 2009 - 12:47 pm 60. Lifeofthemind:aaron,
Oct 1, 2009 - 12:49 pm 61. Whitehall:No offense intended by my waxing nostalgic in a riff of your encounter. Please keep swinging.
I used to read SA but gave it up with my increased worldliness.
I will give them credit for uncovering a Pentagon faked photo of a cruise missile exploding over a bunkered warplane with the warplane bursting in flame. Turns out that somebody had poured gasoline on the warplane’s wings to make the shot look better.
Oct 1, 2009 - 1:04 pm 62. truepeers:luddy@55
I take great pride in my collection of rainwear!
Oct 1, 2009 - 1:09 pm 63. Annoy Mouse:Eggplant – “It is argued that global warming could cause a run away greenhouse effect that could end all life on the Earth.”
There are growing cadres of environmentalists, animal rights, vegetarians, anarchists, and nihilists that believe that the human population must devolve to less than 1% of its present size. Popular science television programs have revolved around the environments ability to heal itself and erase the presence of man in a matter of decades.
It seems to me that these self-organizing monkeywrenchers have something else up their sleeve because if we were to believe their rhetoric, this problem would very soon solve itself. What’s a few decades or a few hundred years when the fate of Gaia is at stake? They are chest-beating self acclaimed good-doers and heroes against mankind as far as I am concerned. These dirt bags are just masquerading behind the cause of mother and earth.
Oct 1, 2009 - 1:18 pm 64. Das:Anyone notice how AGW is taken as hard cold, so to speak, fact over at NPR? Drives me crazy that these nerdy-tax-dependent journalism majors arrogate “global warming” to themselves – as if they understood all the science involved. They don’t!
Global Warming is one of those urban legend memes that circulates through the newspaper world to be yanked out on slow news days along with:
1. UFO stories
Oct 1, 2009 - 1:26 pm 65. Dave:2. Killer Bee stories
3. Siamese Twin features
4. Uri Geller features
5. Stupid American high school student stories
6. Genius Japanese high school student stories
7. Long-lived Ukrainian stories
8. Coffee causes cancer stories
9. American divorce rate has climbed to 90% stories
10. There are no fish left in the ocean stories
…you know the rest…
Buddy #41: Roswell.
Doug stocks up on beer at the Little Ale Inn.
Oct 1, 2009 - 1:54 pm 66. Eggplant:Annoy Mouse said:
“They are chest-beating self acclaimed good-doers and heroes against mankind as far as I am concerned. These dirt bags are just masquerading behind the cause of mother and earth.”
The usual snappy come back: If these guys think the human race should go into extinction then they should do the right thing and commit suicide (do the rest of us a big favor).
However this is a facile reply.
The people making these noises are either brain-dead moonbats (their opinions are some nonsense that the MSM told them) or they’re socialists (watermelon greens) pursuing a hidden agenda. Telling them that they should suicide for the good of the human race implies that one actually believes they are sincere, i.e. by implication this is an admission of stupidity/gullibility. The best response is to demand that they stop speaking in code words and insist that they justify why they think they can bring about the “worker’s revolution” through faux environmentalism.
Oct 1, 2009 - 1:58 pm 67. Roderick Reilly:“”"”" 58. Jeff:
A challenge to McIntyre can be found here:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/09/hey-ya-mal/#more-1184
What say you? “”"”"”
That blog does make compelling reading. Not being a scientist, I can’t discern if I’m reading the comments of genuine practitioners in the field of climatology or not, but they do seem knowledgeable. I think it is indeed worth it for knowledgeable skeptics to take a look and respond. I’m not one of those.
Oct 1, 2009 - 2:05 pm 68. Ozyripus:During a recent, short discussion of AGW with an old “scientific” academic friend, I asked him if he remembered the name Lysenko. Being a biologist, I thought he should, but intellectually he belongs to a later generation. Somehow Lysenko and Hansen go together in my mind, and this article suggests a few more potential modern Lysenkos. Lysenko was after that day’s version of grant money and power, and got both, as long as Stalin lasted.
Oct 1, 2009 - 2:09 pm 69. aaron:Life O’: none taken, this is generally a congenial crowd, and if I stray I have no problems with being set straight, or laughed at along the way.
Marcus: Gasses have lots of kinetic energy. They move about quite vigorously, as compared to solids or liquids. A molecule in the gas phase is pretty much defined as moving. Those in the atmosphere move quite a bit.
And as to the resonance structure of ozone:
http://www.thecatalyst.org/experiments/Bush/Bush.html
I guess the problem really just comes down to the existance of a zwitterion vs singley charged ion. No “net” charge, but charge seperation (+ and -) with a resulting dipole.
Sorry if my feeble physics has offended. I admit I am but a humble student of the natural world around me and my perspective of molecules is heavily skewed (or screwed) by a few to many organic chemistry classes and a deficit of appropriate affiliations.
Oct 1, 2009 - 2:09 pm 70. LarryD:Re previous CO2 levels. Even just taking the lowest edge of the uncertainty area, Co2 has been higher than Henson’s tipping point for a lot of the last 600 million years. Including a period during Cretaceous, by which time IIRC the American Inland Sea was long gone.
Oct 1, 2009 - 2:37 pm 71. Eggplant:LarryD said:
“Even just taking the lowest edge of the uncertainty area, Co2 has been higher than Henson’s tipping point for a lot of the last 600 million years.”
There’s a lot about the ancient Earth’s atmosphere that we don’t understand. Some of the pterosaurs and dragonflies were incredibly big and probably could not get airborne in our current atmosphere. This of course, implies that the ancient atmosphere was significantly denser. A denser atmosphere would imply a stronger greenhouse effect and the world back then was indeed hotter. However the Sun was also less intense (stars like the Sun grow brighter as the age). Add to the mix that the Earth’s day and month were shorter (the Moon was closer in its orbit about the Earth). This in turn would have impacted plate tectonics and volcanism which in turn would have belched out more green house gases like SO2. For all intents and purposes, it was different world back then. However one thing is clear: The Earth’s climate is a lot more robust than the watermelon greens would like people to believe.
Oct 1, 2009 - 2:51 pm 72. Annoy Mouse:The hockey stick looks like BS from the face of it. It show a huge excursion around 1900 presumably the middle of the industrial revolution and the beginning of the use of electricity, as well as the advent of the automobile. The world population in 1800 was less than a billion and had not even doubled by 1900. Imagine all of those people cooking over an open flame and burning their refuse. It is hard to imagine that the advent of modernity did not bring some efficiencies to be compared to a world burning wood and coal every day for personal use. No I think the graph is trying to say that the real problem is either people in general or the automobile in particular. The plot shows a tumultuous reduction in temperatures in around World War II. Is this supposed to be a lag from the Great Depression?
Oct 1, 2009 - 2:55 pm 73. Whitehall:If we’re talking 1 billion years ago, the earth self-heating from the decay of uranium, thorium, and potassium-40 was significantly higher, maybe 25% but depends on the ratios within the mantle. U-238 has a 4.5 billion year half life for example. That would have caused more crustal movement and volcanos.
Even today, the Earth emits 4% more energy than it absorbs from the Sun. That too could have been higher a billion years ago.
Oct 1, 2009 - 2:58 pm 74. luddy barsen:Canada Free Press in 2007 offered some background on the issue.
Oct 1, 2009 - 3:19 pm 75. Walt:Hockey sticks are made of graphite
Oct 1, 2009 - 3:37 pm 76. PA Cat:And if you want to get the graph right
Ya gotta cherry pick your data set
So that you get the end point rise
That points the blade up to the skies
And global warming is the thing you get
We know it’s all a great big fraud
We smiled at Al when he hee-hawed
At Kyoto that soon the earth will steam
As temps rose quickly due to our
Enormous love for fossil power
We just assumed another Big Al scheme
And now we find the data’s wrong
They put in stuff that don’t belong
And got us all into a swivet stew
I wonder who’s the master here
Who’s pushing this the faster here
And I believe it’s only you know who
A movie set, a Nobel Prize
A noble brow and otherwise
Yes he’s the guy who’s running for the score
I think we know the answer now
With cap and trade the big cash cow
The gold will flow to our friend Big Al Gore
We do not expect that level of conduct from politicians, nor from lawyers, nor from clergy, nor from bankers. So why should we from scientists? The more concentrated authority is the easier it is for a falsehood to survive.
Other recent examples of jiggery-pokery for the sake of money and ideology within the hallowed halls of science are the fraudulent papers of Hendrik Schoen in nanotechnology, exposed in 2002, and the infamous 2004 Lancet study of Iraq war casualties. And of course the Lancet controversy ended up drawing in the UK ministry of defense as well as a number of statisticians.
Oct 1, 2009 - 3:52 pm 77. steveH:marcus aurelius @ 54:
“As far as possible causes of the ozone hole, I’ve heard of none other than the usual suspect (us).”
For starters, chlorine dumped in the atmosphere by vulcanism, among other potential gaseous candidates.
Oct 1, 2009 - 4:00 pm 78. luddy barsen:PAC/76; That 2004 Lancet Report has quite a pedigree –including your new Census guru, Prof. Robert M. Groves, statistical ”cluster” sampler extraordinaire, whose methods only missed the truth by about ten times in the Lancet study, a fact which took a little time to come out, time which unfortunately was very short indeed in 2004, when the report was released just prior to the election. Science!
Oct 1, 2009 - 4:25 pm 79. Tcobb:I will believe the Global Warming people when they can give me a computer model that can, if given the data for a given year in the past, provide output that corresponds with actual reality as to what the weather was in the years that followed. So far as I know, not one such model exists. Anywhere.
And what is a model, after all, other than a small imitation of a real thing? The little boys and girls who play with their models of Godzilla can triumph against them, and they can pretend that the models are the real thing, but they are just little children playing with models. The real thing would eat them alive. It is way over their head.
The hucksters who chase the grant money don’t even have that excuse, but we should see them for what they are:
Oct 1, 2009 - 4:44 pm 80. Marcus Aurelius:frauds.
Aaron,
Yeah, I understand gas is a collection molecules in motion but if one molecule zigs there will be another zagging and so the net effect would approach nothing.
Also, as noted before ozone is not an ion just an odd molecule. Yes, it may form a dipole but it seems to me those poles would cancel each other out (i.e. one zigs the other zags). Yeah my physics is rusty too and I never got beyond undergrad work — but got an A in my E&M class and that E&M class (and other physics classes) allowed me to be a smart@$$ in my PDE class.
In the end, the problem is of the so-called “reality based community” doing bad science and their enablers using that “science” to justify policies with very serious consequences. As Wretchard notes, just because the complete dataset does not produce the hockey stick does not mean necessarily disprove a dramatic rise in global temperatures. They have a goal in mind and dress it up in science and present it to the public. Most of the public (despite the “elite’s” opinion of them) will pretty much go along with science.
The whole structure of science is to quest for the truth — isn’t it funny — how those who deny the existence of truth are so dang certain of AGW?
Oct 1, 2009 - 5:00 pm 81. xwraith:I know others have mentioned this, but twelve trees! Taken from one spot on the globe! I thought there was something about multiple reproducible observations in the scientific method? Ugh.
Oct 1, 2009 - 5:14 pm 82. Eggplant:Tcobb said:
“I will believe the Global Warming people when they can give me a computer model that can, if given the data for a given year in the past, provide output that corresponds with actual reality as to what the weather was in the years that followed. So far as I know, not one such model exists.”
It’s more subtle than that. Global warming models are essentially climate models. Climate models are long term weather models. Weather models are based upon Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). In a previous life, I did CFD for a living. Fluid mechanics is described by the Navier-Stokes equations. The Navier-Stokes equations are nonlinear and sometimes permit many different solutions for a single set of boundary conditions. The different solutions, all of which are mathematically correct can sometimes be quite different. Often times a CFD solution is dictated by the computational grid, the assumed numerical method and the turbulence model. The CFD method tries to converge to a specific solution but there can sometimes be many different mathematically correct solutions that it might randomly converge to. What does all of this imply?
Once upon a time I was asked to calculate the heating on the surface of a spacecraft entering a planet’s atmosphere. I generated a number and was then told that an experimentalist also had a number. Unfortunately, the two numbers were different. I replied: “No problem, I’ll just refine my grid.” I tweeked the grid appropriately, reran the problem and the two numbers matched. Then the experimentalist discovered that he had made a mistake and had a new number that he thought was correct. Again, it was no problem for me. I just tweeked the grid again and could match the new number as well. It became clear that this was not actual science. After I had my nose rubbed in this fact, I got out of CFD.
Oct 1, 2009 - 5:29 pm 83. Jamie Irons:Eggplant.
You wrote:
The Navier-Stokes equations are nonlinear and sometimes permit many different solutions for a single set of boundary conditions…
And isn’t it also the case that in nonlinear systems like this, very, very slight differences in the initial conditions can lead to wildly divergent outcomes? Isn’t that what Lorentz found with his early, very primitive computer models way back in the sixties, a finding that led to the whole field of nonlinear (chaotic) dynamics?
And that’s what makes this whole notion of meaningfully “modeling” climate seem so preposterous to me.
Jamie Irons
Oct 1, 2009 - 5:38 pm 84. Jeff:Once again, this web site rather sarcastically and snarkily seeks to debunk McIntyre “slayer of hockey sticks” – does anyone with a science background have a response?
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/09/hey-ya-mal/#more-1184
If the statements on this web site are right, it undercuts the whole idea that McIntyre “broke the bank.”
Oct 1, 2009 - 6:01 pm 85. Eggplant:Jamie Irons said:
“And isn’t it also the case that in nonlinear systems like this, very, very slight differences in the initial conditions can lead to wildly divergent outcomes? Isn’t that what Lorentz found with his early, very primitive computer models way back in the sixties, a finding that led to the whole field of nonlinear (chaotic) dynamics?”
Jamie is thinking of the “Lorentz attractor”, sometimes called a “strange attractor”. The “slight differences in the initial conditions” are equivalent to my “tweeking the grid” in a CFD solution. Relatively simple dynamical problems are almost impossible to model exactly because they are mathematically chaotic, e.g. a compound pendulum. Aeronautical engineers are taught about this in graduate school. The rational response to this is to abandon trying to find a unique exact solution and instead calculate a probability distribution (do a Monte-Carlo analysis).
I should emphasize that there are classes of dynamical and equilibrium problems where extreme precision is possible. For example, atomic hydrogen can be mathematically modeled with quantum theory to ridiculous accuracy and the results will precisely match experimental data. Classical orbital mechanics is also extremely accurate. Nature is incredibly beautiful, elegant and for the most part, runs like a Swiss watch. However there are classes of problems where getting an exact answer is hopeless because Ma Nature won’t allow it.
Oct 1, 2009 - 6:03 pm 86. Marcus Aurelius:83 JI — Yeap, that is what often is termed the butterfly affect. However, a lot of people will try to tell you that is the difference between weather & climate — that weather is hard to predict and climate is not.
Well in a general sense that is true. January (here in the North) is cold because of the tilt of the earth wrt the sun — that is predictable but there lots of factors that drive the exact temperatures they claim are rising and those factors are dependent on those chaotic fluid dynamics.
Oct 1, 2009 - 6:04 pm 87. JPS:Aaron:
“my perspective of molecules is heavily skewed (or screwed) by a few to many organic chemistry classes.”
Well, that’ll do it! Just remember, it’s easy to make too much of resonance structures. They often tell us more about the limitations of Lewis structures than about the real charge distribution in a molecule. Don’t get me wrong, Lewis structures have their place, but learn to take those formal charges with a big grain of NaCl.
Cordially,
An inorganic chemist on hiatus
Oct 1, 2009 - 6:24 pm 88. Whitehall:My problem with AGW and climate modeling is where one draws the boundaries of the problem.
I like the astronomers’ work in tidal forces within the Sun matching better the long historical and pre-historical records for climate.
Oct 1, 2009 - 6:34 pm 89. Tcobb:#82 EggPlant
With all due respect, I don’t understand what you’re trying to say. The value of a “model” is whether it works or not. If it doesn’t work, I don’t care about the theoretical beauty or elegance behind the theory. All I care about is whether it works. If it doesn’t, it has no utility.
And if you’re trying to say that the model is such that it cannot predict short term effects but is good for a long term analysis, I tend to be dubious when we’re talking about the climate. Once again, do we have a model that, if plugged in with the climate data of a thousand years ago, even semi-accurately describes what came after? If so, where is it? And if the model produces data that is contrary to the historical record, the model is worthless.
That is the problem with many people who call themselves scientists–they no longer serve the truth, for they have fallen into model worship, and cannot and will not accept any evidence, theory, or conjecture that might offend the Holy model, or Idol if you will.
In my opinion the High Priests of man made global warming aren’t any better that the shamans of old who foretold the future from studying the entrails of sacrificed animals. Show me the science I say–save your conclusions to the end.
Oct 1, 2009 - 6:44 pm 90. peterike:—and no EggPlant, I was speaking in general–this was not meant as a personal attack on you.
I’ve always wondered how a gas, CO2, that comprises only 0.03 percent of the atmosphere was going to kill us all. Well whatever.
I have nothing to say on the science, but while it makes me happy to see an apparent steak jammed through the heart of the Global Warming Vampire, I don’t see it making much difference. Who is even going to know this? The story will be spiked.
School children will continue to be shown Al Gore’s criminal movie. Celebrities and other nitwits will continue to berate us for our climate-destroying way of life. Politicians will still hunger for cap-and-trade-(and-power-grab). Pretentious rich phonies will still drive their Priuses. I don’t see this information helping one bit when it comes to stopping the CULTURE of climate alarmism, because no one involved in driving that culture will hear of this, and if they did they will dismiss it by saying “oh that must be some fake study funded by Exxon,” and that will be that.
Climate change isn’t what’s going to kill us. It’s the culture of climate alarmism that will.
Oct 1, 2009 - 6:44 pm 91. wretchard:If the statements on this web site are right, it undercuts the whole idea that McIntyre “broke the bank.”
Briffa has responded and his response is analyzed at McIntyre’s site. Interestingly Briffa could do no more than say that McIntyre could no more justify the use of the newly discovered data in preference to his old data. Briffa said: “We have not yet had a chance to explore the details of McIntyre’s analysis or its implication for temperature reconstruction at Yamal but we have done considerably more analyses exploring chronology production and temperature calibration that have relevance to this issue but they are not yet published.”
If this means what I think it does, then Briffa and his team have “moved on” — in McIntyre’s words; in other words Yamal is no longer central to their case. And while one may or may not entertain dark suspicions about why Yamal was so relied upon in the first place, I think Briffa is right to move on. From one point of view, this is the normal operation of the scientific method. A hypothesis is put forward and if it doesn’t hold water, then it is abandoned and the search goes on.
So it may in fact be the case that the Hockey Stick exists, but the chances are that it won’t feature Yamal. I think Briffa has as much as conceded that it’s teetery leg to stand on and is out in search of more crutches, which is fine. The real news here is how resistent the Establishment was to the ordinary operation of the scientific method. They’ve turned what should have been an empirical question into a dogmatic controversy.
I think that if there are enough McIntyres in the world then we will get to the bottom of things, not because the McIntyres are right — remember he was only trying to reproduce the result and found he could not — but because they compel replicability. ‘Show me the money!’ and ‘Handsome is as handsome does’ may be a crude way of putting it, but it’s good way to think about scientific problems.
Oct 1, 2009 - 6:47 pm 92. Annoy Mouse:Ha ha, I use CFD too for thermal computations. Solid-state heat transfer is deterministic enough that very accurate calculations can be made for particular problems. The problem is supplying the convection coefficient of gas-solid boundaries. Nominal calculations can be made by determining the coefficients at vertical and horizontal gas boundaries, but when you throw in compressibility, non-linear airflows, thermally dependant conductivities, etc., things become less certain.
The problem is sometimes in the mesh refinement and continuity but just as often initial assumptions and boundary conditions are insufficient or just plain wrong. Any model that you create must necessarily be a simplification and modeling the earth’s ecosystem in its entirety is, needless to say, impractical. The difficulty is always balancing both sides of the equation so that there is equilibrium of energy, or as they say energy is conserved. So imagine all energy, from wave action, internal friction, cosmic radiation, internal ionizing energy, rain, radiation back into space… fuget abo dit. The best you can do is measure something you have, extrapolate where you want to be, then dither the model until your results converge. But even this is perilous because it is not a validation that your model will yield accurate results when the conditions change, just that you managed to balance the equation to yield the right answer for an instance.
Anyhow, there is this gag that says if you ask a scientist what a particular quantity is he’d be likely to say the number is about this “~X”. An engineer would answer the it is “X plus or minus Y”, but when asked an accountant would answer, “what do you want the answer to be?” A little geek humor.
The final axiom is – Garbage In, Garbage Out.
Oct 1, 2009 - 6:54 pm 93. colderwater:1. Lifeofthemind:
When I was a young grad student we were required to give seminars where we were ritually ripped to pieces, and so, were expected to learn not to B.S. Then the thesis defense, was also, a ruthless exercise. At about the time cold-”fusion” made its debut, the Baltimore affair was on, and Maddox stirred a controversy allowing a homeopath to publish in Nature. So I was exposed to proper training, and examples of fraud and self-deception at an early intellectual age.
Later, in government and later in industry, I learned that yes, there are scientists who will lie to you for money. One can argue their particular education was lacking (my school good your school bad). But I came to learn it is because human nature is immutable, and frequently disappointing. Active measures must taken to keep us from our… excesses.
Aaron’s comments bring me to another point. How can you tell when an “expert” in a field not your own is loading you with BS? The answer we can take from Popper’s methods; if your expert makes testable predictions that come true, he may be telling the truth. Then test him again. If he keeps coming up roses you may have a credible expert. Also, use your street smarts. Where is he getting his money? From you? Beware self deception.
McIntyre and co. are doing us all a service knocking down the anthropogenic cause of global warming. Where is the predictive power of the anthropogenic global warming theories? McIntyre and co. show there is none. I wait with bated breath for the affair to end.
–
That said, Aaron at posts 14, 15, 23 etc. Yes, by all means please don’t bring the weak stuff anywhere. With some effort, you can learn what resonance structures really are, what vibrational spectroscopy is all about (and exactly what it is and how much energy at what frequency a CO2 or ozone molecule can absorb, how it reacts to magnetic fields etc. etc.). Here is some suggested reading to get you started thinking quantum, not classical:
The classic: http://www.amazon.com/Molecular-Vibrations-Infrared-Vibrational-Spectra/dp/048663941X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1254447293&sr=8-1
Rewarding: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_1_14?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=levine+quantum+chemistry+6th+edition&sprefix=levine+quantum
regards,
C.W.
Oct 1, 2009 - 6:57 pm 94. Annoy Mouse:“it makes me happy to see an apparent steak jammed through the heart of the Global Warming Vampire” Are you saying that steaks are artery clogging and causes cholesterol that kills vampires? sorry… goofy mood.
While Al Gore’s buddy George Soros was busy trying to crash the dollar, Al was busy trying to make his own currency in the form of carbon credit. Wowee! Money really does grow on trees.
Oct 1, 2009 - 7:09 pm 95. Jamie Irons:Eggplant (#85),
Thanks!
Jamie Irons
Oct 1, 2009 - 7:24 pm 96. jWarrior:I write modeling software for a living and I can tell you that most models are designed to be ‘fiddled’ to get the ‘right’ answer. Our model is not very popular because it is hard to fiddle without leaving fingerprints.
Oct 1, 2009 - 7:58 pm 97. Marcus Aurelius:The most obvious problem with the GW models is that although they claim they can tell you what the temperature will be in 100 years, they can’t tell you if it will rain this weekend. Buncha Watermelons.
TCobb,
Eggplant is noting that models of the type the AGW models are based on can be tweaked by one means or another so that any result one wants can be arrived at — it comes down to initial conditions, precision of calculations, and other such factors. This doesn’t mean they are useless it means you don’t setup such a model and make life or death decisions on them if you have other options.
I introduce the notion that some will try to dodge his arguments by asserting weather prediction and climate prediction are different with the climate predictions being more reliable. Something none here believe.
The other argument frequently used is they are not trying to predict climate or weather in a specific place or even globally but overall global temperature. Which of course brings us back to the start of all of this — the data the AGW worshipers use to support their claims really refutes their claims.
One thing I hear on a regular basis but never much in relation to this is how temperatures on other planets have been noted to also be rising — I guess that just shows how bad we are messing things up.
Oct 1, 2009 - 8:07 pm 98. luddy barsen:AM/94; –i never knew until today –thanks Bing! (Bing gives ya Hope!) –that Gore and Maurice Strong worked together in the early 90s –partners in a company called Molten Metals Technology, which has a rather dark cloud around it (urge you search). Anyhoo, right after their dealings began, Gore published his platform to the VP-ship, “Earth in the Balance” and Strong began his UN and Davos and sundry other activities that gave him the sobriquet the ‘father of the green movement’.
Oct 1, 2009 - 8:19 pm 99. Kayak2U Blog » Blog Archive » Bull Hockey:[...] Vandam points to the check and cross check of climate change fraudulence as recounted at The Belmont Club. [...]
Oct 1, 2009 - 8:35 pm 100. Annoy Mouse:Luddy, I followed your link and am somewhat familiar with Strong. Strong is a shadowy figure and used to be the right hand man of Kofi Annan. He has had a life long “fascination” with China and North Korea. Strong’s background in oil and his affiliation with the UN put him in the perfect position to be of assistance to one Saddam Hussein who betrothed Strong with oil scrip a la the Oil for Food controversy.
Interestingly, his Wiki doesn’t mention once this controversy or Strong’s role in it.
Courtesy of the Canada Free Press –
“The “money from Iraq,” that traveled from Baghdad to Canada, “$1 million in a cardboard box” was given to Tongsun Park’s by Saddam Hussein’s former deputy prime minister, Tariq Aziz, … “
I suspect there is a lot of nuggets to mine right there.
Oct 1, 2009 - 8:48 pm 101. buckets:People like McIntyre remind us to hold fast – hard work, intelligence, and determination prove the Left’s foundations are edifices built on sand. While they can do incredible damage to the U.S. short term, they cannot hold on to power indefinitely.
Look upon the Left’s works, ye mighty, and despair!
Oct 1, 2009 - 9:02 pm 102. Beverly:TWELVE TREES?!?
TWELVE TREES?!?
My God, they’re even worse than I thought. Hijacking the entire First World economy based on data from twelve trees.
This is insane.
Oct 1, 2009 - 9:26 pm 103. luddy barsen:B/102; yes’m –insane is the word. somehow we have to find a way to understand how it happens. i’m thinking, broadly, it’s overspecialization –it killed the dinosaurs in a hurry, but they had had 200 million years to get overspecialized. maybe we’re just too close to the jungle to handle the wire, not to mention the wireless.
AM/100; here’s Claudia Rosett’s work on the guy. Another worthwhile here. There’s tons more. These people have been hard at it a long time but a lot started happening in 1998 –from DC to Wall Street to the UN to the NGO universe. it must’ve been a ten-year plan or something. Florida 2000 threw them a big curve but they adapted –and used the interregnum to solidify control over the media (recall the mega mergers of the mid 90s –if we survive, Rupert Murdoch will be canonized) and demonstrate it with BDS and the ‘leak’ program to keep GWB standing on one leg at all times.
Anyhoo, Maurice Strong is reportedly indefinitely headquartered in Beijing (and Pyongyang) these days (ACORN founder Wade Rathke is in Sicily indefinitely –overthrow-the-USA heavyweights on long sojurns off of the north American continent, hmmm).
Instapundit today link to the new Peter Schweizer book, Architects of Ruin: How big government liberals wrecked the global economy—and how they will do it again if no one stops them goes to the Amazon site, where the blurb reads:
(begin quote)
Was the financial collapse caused by free-market capitalism and deregulation run amok, as liberals claim?
Not on your life, says Peter Schweizer. What we are really witnessing is a massive failure of social engineering by liberals.
Architects of Ruin, bestselling author Peter Schweizer describes in riveting detail how a coalition of left-wing activists, liberal politicians, and “do-good capitalists” on Wall Street leveraged government power to achieve their goal of broadening homeownership among minorities and the poor. The results were not only devastating to the economy, but hurt the very people they were supposedly trying to help.
The story begins in the 1960s with Saul Alinsky, the legendary Chicago rabble-rouser who trained his acolytes in highly aggressive techniques of community activism. Alinsky’s disciples—along with race-baiting activists like Jesse Jackson—seized on the “redlining” controversy of those years to argue that banks were guilty of racial discrimination. In the 1970s, with the help of liberal senators like Ted Kennedy and William Proxmire, legislation was passed that put bankers under the thumb of local activists.
In the Clinton years, a new generation of liberal technocrats came to power in Washington and on Wall Street. Schweizer describes how a powerful phalanx of elite liberals, including Bill Clinton, Robert Rubin, Andrew Cuomo, Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, Janet Reno, Deval Patrick, Henry Cisneros, Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Ted Kennedy, Charles Schumer, and many others, aggressively pushed banks to make trillions of dollars in loans to individuals who should never have received them.
Meanwhile, Clinton forged a new form of state capitalism in which the big Wall Street financial companies were repeatedly bailed out—with their profits intact—from a series of costly errors, leading them to take ever larger risks. Both financial policies had profoundly distorting effects. The result was the bursting of twin bubbles in mortgages and mortgage-backed derivatives, in turn leading to a global economic collapse.
This tale of liberal “Robin Hood capitalism run wild” has never been told. But more than just a story about the past, it is also an urgent warning about the future. For today, the very same people who planted the seeds of the collapse are back in Washington, tasked with cleaning up the mess and determined to use the crisis they caused as cover for a massive overhaul of the American economic system.
These people have learned nothing from their past mistakes and are busy applying the same methods to other sectors of the economy—health care, the auto industry, real estate (again!), and above all the promotion of “green” technologies—inflating bubbles that are sure to bring about another crisis. Ordinary Americans who foot the bill for the last state-capitalist bubble have reason to be afraid—very afraid—of the inevitable result.
(end quote)
Oct 1, 2009 - 10:13 pm 104. Annoy Mouse:Crikey! I hear Obama is extending new lending to the subprime market. Funny, nobody in my family has ever been offered a loan. This really is a racist policy. Shame on them, rich people stealing from the middle class and giving it to the poor. Funny how they always get their support by promising to steal from the rich.
Oct 1, 2009 - 10:44 pm 105. Doug:Walt:
Could a lost mole over the pole result in a hole as a result of ozone’s electrical dipole?
—
Gilbert the genius, had his problems, like the rest of us:
In 1913, he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. He resigned in 1934, refusing to state the cause for his resignation; it has been speculated that it was due to a dispute over the internal politics of that institution or to the failure of those he had nominated to be elected. His decision to resign may have been sparked by resentment over the award of the 1934 Nobel Prize for chemistry to his student, Harold Urey, for the discovery of deuterium, a prize Lewis almost certainly felt he should have shared for his work on purification and characterization of heavy water.[6]
In 1916, he published his classic paper on chemical bonding,[7] in which he formulated the idea of what would become known as the covalent bond, consisting of a shared pair of electrons, and he defined the term odd molecule (the modern term is free radical) when an electron is not shared. He included what became known as Lewis dot structures as well as the cubical atom model. These ideas on chemical bonding were expanded upon by Irving Langmuir and became the inspiration for the studies on the nature of the chemical bond by Linus Pauling.
—
Over the course of his career, Lewis published on many other subjects besides those mentioned in this entry, ranging from the nature of light quanta to the economics of price stabilization.
In the last years of his life, Lewis and graduate student Michael Kasha, his last research associate, established that phosphorescence of organic molecules involves an excited triplet state (a state in which electrons that would normally be paired with opposite spins are instead excited to have their spin vectors in the same direction) and measured the magnetic properties of this triplet state.
In 1946, a graduate student found Lewis’s lifeless body under a laboratory workbench at Berkeley. Lewis had been working on an experiment with liquid hydrogen cyanide, and deadly fumes from a broken line had leaked into the laboratory. The coroner ruled that the cause of death was coronary artery disease, but some believe that it may have been a suicide. Berkeley Emeritus Professor William Jolly, who reported the various views on Lewis’s death in his 1987 history of UC Berkeley’s College of Chemistry, From Retorts to Lasers, wrote that a higher-up in the department believed that Lewis had committed suicide.
If Lewis’s death was indeed a suicide, a possible explanation was depression brought on by a lunch with Irving Langmuir. Langmuir and Lewis had a long rivalry, dating back to Langmuir’s extensions of Lewis’s theory of the chemical bond. Langmuir had been awarded the 1932 Nobel Prize in chemistry for his work on surface chemistry, while Lewis had not received the Prize despite having been nominated 35 times. On the day of Lewis’s death, Langmuir and Lewis had met for lunch at Berkeley, a meeting that Michael Kasha recalled only years later.[10] Associates reported that Lewis came back from lunch in a dark mood, played a morose game of bridge with some colleagues, then went back to work in his lab. An hour later, he was found dead. Langmuir’s papers at the Library of Congress confirm that he had been on the Berkeley campus that day to receive an honorary degree.
Oct 1, 2009 - 11:08 pm 106. luddy barsen:http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9B2DSR80&show_article=1
Deputy National Security Advisor Mark Lippert, who was also chief of staff for the National Security Council and Obama’s national security adviser during the presidential campaign, resigns. he will return to active duty in the USN. In a statement Thursday Obama said that he was not surprised because Lippert is “passionate about the Navy”.
Fasten your seat belts, folks. This is no doubt related to the new rumor that Chuck Hagel is set to replace Gates as SecDef. No wonder the markets took a two percent hit today. think i’ll sell out and move to Smolensk.
Oct 1, 2009 - 11:17 pm 107. Doug:…and the Empire State Building is bathed in Red and Yellow light, celebrating the 60th anniversary of Red China.
Oct 1, 2009 - 11:28 pm 108. Charles:All is well in Obama’s America.
Take a look at this National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) graphic of mean temperatures in the USA. Notice the sudden drop off at the end?
Here’s also a NASA graph of the sunspot cycle along with NASA’s prediction for when the sunspot cycle will turn up again.. It shows we’re at a solar minimum. Here’s something more interesting. Here’s an animated graphic that shows how NASA’s prediction of the next upturn in the solar cycle has changed since 2004. It keeps being pushed further out into the future.
Oct 1, 2009 - 11:30 pm 109. Fortune telling by reading tree entrails « Way Too Opinionated:[...] [...]
Oct 2, 2009 - 5:36 am 110. Friday Highlights | Pseudo-Polymath:[...] Nuts and bolts on the climate debate … more here. [...]
Oct 2, 2009 - 6:43 am 111. Neil Craig:The selection of tree rings here simply cannot, on a statistical, basis, be random. Therefore we are not dealing with some possible honest accident but deliberate fraud. Deliberate fraud on which the whole catastrophic Global warming swindle is based. We also see at total refusal to mention this, indeed censorship of any comments that ask, on Realclimate & related sites. If there were any defence to this accusation realclimate should be shouting it now.
I think this is the death knell for CAGW.
It may also be the moment the blogsphere became the primary news source. This has been growing geometrically over the last few days online yet has been virtually non-existent in the dead tree press & TV. The UK’s Guardian (a nominally liberal, certainly PC publication) has been deleting any comments put up on its online site. Unless disproved it is the story of the decade, since it is at least as important as all the CAGW stories over that time put together. That the MSM have allowed themselve, presumably out of fear, to be so thoroughly scooped by the blogsphere completely discredits them.
What its effects on politics will be I hesitate to guess – certainly all those politicians who have spent so long saying “debate is over”, “scientific debate has now closed” & “science is beyond dispute” & poured billions into “research” & advertising of this scam. The only thing that may keep them in power is that there are so many of them. The entire western world run by Vaclav Klaus, Senator Inhofe, Sarah Palin, Ron Paul & 1 minister in the Northern Irish government is stretching things thin.
Oct 2, 2009 - 7:15 am 112. Annoy Mouse:“… the administration accepts that fact that that debate [AGW] is over” Al Gore (the man who wo’d be king)
So the science is settled. Move along. Oh, and get to work, this is going to be costly to the wage-slave class. Your betters have spoken.
Oct 2, 2009 - 7:34 am 113. always right:luddy barsen/103
Isn’t this some form of Cloward&Piven in action in the ‘real world’? And we finally see it bearing fruit, Or this is different?
Oct 2, 2009 - 7:54 am 114. Roderick Reilly:#91. wretchard:
Wretchard: your post above at #91 sums up that the ’science is NOT settled,’ and therein lies the crux of the whole AGW contentiousness. I have a perception that there are a couple of degrees of separation between the general public and the actual climatologists, and that it is the non-scientist AGW activists and politicians who are keeping us and the scientific community at arms length from each other. AGW has been hijacked for other purposes, and a truly honest dialogue has never been allowed by the powers-that-be.
It may well be that there is some kind of long-term warming going on, but three things are almost certainly true:
1) The warming is not catastrophic, which is the premise upon which ‘cap & trade’ and other schemes and policies are based, 2) Any ‘warming’ may have as much, or more, to do with the climate climbing out of the so-called ‘Little Ice Age’ over two centuries ago, and little if anything to do with man-made phenomena. 3) Any incremental warming does not require draconian measures to deal with it, and the best approach is not to try to reverse the warming, but to adapt to it, as people in historically-recorded times have done in the past.
Oct 2, 2009 - 8:53 am 115. Engineer:The big take away from this, in my opinion, is that the global warming edifice and attendant regulatory morass, infringement on individual liberty, and multi-trillion dollar costs is built on data from twelve (12 – count ‘em) trees in some obscure location in Siberia. This is it? Astounding! Think of the money that has been spent on this, the public angst that has been created, the scientific careers that have been devoted to this, the numbers of graduate students trained in these arts, the whole waste of resources.
Couple of side notes – as I recall from taking a course in heat transfer many years ago [early '70s] that J.P. Holman’s book had a section on build up of CO2, global warming, and so forth. The book is in my basement somewhere and I am too lazy to undertake the major effort required to find is. The point being that this stuff has been percolating around for a while.
As to computational fluid dynamics – the problems are highly non-linear as has been noted above. Mesh refinement and solution techniques are important considerations. Boundary conditions are very important. Where do you start? Just in terms of the fluid dynamics, the N-S equations are not closed for turbulent flow and some type of accommodation must be made to get a closed form solution.
In terms of global warming you have coupled non-linear transport equations that would include water vapor, CO2, heat, and the associated sources and sinks. While this is not my area and I am now somewhat removed from flow and transport modeling, it is not plausible to me that any kind of accuracy can be achieved. The most that might be hoped for is the sensitivity to variations in parameters might be discerned.
In effect what the modelers are trying to do is predict the earth’s weather years into the future. Tell me what the weather in Denver will be next Wednesday at 2pm and I might have a little more confidence.
Oct 2, 2009 - 9:23 am 116. peterike:First person to register the domain 12trees.com wins!
Oct 2, 2009 - 9:35 am 117. luddy barsen:RR/114; exactly –there’ll be good effects too, of any changes –the wine-grapes-in-Britannia effect. Kinda humorous that the olde fable used a king commanding the seas not to rise (or fall) to warn against this very sort of nuttiness.
Somebody should ask the ‘pro’ scientists to find a time when the seas and the temperatures were not either rising or falling.
AR/113; i think a person could say that, for sure. The loony left is ascendant and showing its fangs –and since it is rising by lowering the other side (where is civilization making classic progress in the Enlightenment sense?) one could see the C-P hypothesis proving. In a way, tho, the two professors were just energizing Murphy’s Law –at its most basic “If it can, it will” ( or maybe even “if it can, it must” ).
i read somewhere a quote from Alinsky, that he was ‘amazed at how much power is just laying around unused in America, just waiting for someone to pick it up and use it’. That is, if ever there was, a statement of pure ‘applied’ Marxism infiltrating the god-fearing villagers to mock of the old lifeways and take power by saying “See? No lightning bolts from heaven!”
and they’re right about that, in the perverse way, in that there ARE lightning bolts from heaven but the clever Marxist makes them temporarily immaterial behind such big screens as gulag archipelagos.
Oct 2, 2009 - 10:12 am 118. Engineer:I read this stuff, thought about it, and, being a little slow, I want to be sure that I understand this. So you’re telling me that:
- that the global warming edifice and attendant regulatory morass, infringement on individual liberty, and multi-trillion dollar costs is built on data from twelve (12 – count ‘em) trees? – in some obscure location in Siberia? Out of all the trees in Siberia, or, at least that part of Siberia?
- that the 12 trees were cherry picked from data from what – 30 trees?
- that this data was developed by one guy? In his basement?
- that this one guy refused for several years to release this data? He kept the data sealed in a mayonnaise jar in said basement and would not let anyone even peek at the data?
- that the refusal to release this data was aided and abetted by the scientific journal that published his results? Until finally said scientific journal changed its mind?
- that the results are not replicable using other data from the same area?
- that the guy that developed the 12 tree data set is now backing away from this?
- that everyone seems to be cool with this?
You’ve got to be kidding me! This looks like the biggest hoax since the Piltdown Man or at least the Korean dude with the stem cells or maybe Miss Cleo or Obama. This makes pro-wrestling look real. Somebody help me here.
Oct 2, 2009 - 10:25 am 119. luddy barsen:117/PS; …and depressions, and wars, domestic & international.
***
E/118; well, it wasn’t quite that easy.
Oct 2, 2009 - 10:25 am 120. Roderick Reilly:“”"”" 117. luddy barsen:
RR/114; exactly –there’ll be good effects too, of any changes –the wine-grapes-in-Britannia effect. “”"”"
Must be careful with using anecdotal accounts like that, since grapes grow in New England and Canada now (‘ice wine’ is a sweetish, port-like product of Canadian grapes). Also, while it sounds good, Greenland may not have been called ‘green’ because it was appreciably iced over. I believe, unless proof arrives saying otherwise, that the Medieval Warming Period could most accurately be described as ‘milder’ than what we today have classified as ‘temperate’ based on our Northern Hemisphere experience of the last 150-200 years. But therein lies the argument for not panicking about ‘climate change.’
Another period that gets almost no mention in the wider debate about the history of climate change in recorded history is the Bronze Age. Bronze Age Europe, according to accounts and data that’s been around for decades, was also milder than now. I remember an item about a Swiss glacier expert lamenting the fact that his beloved Alpine glaciers had receded a significant amount, and then, in the same breath, he mentions that 3200 years ago they were receded at least another 1000 meters more. I mean, ‘what the hell?’ How clueless is it on his part to have no historic perspective if he can’t appreciate the fact that Bronze Age Swiss inhabitants, flora and fauna managed just fine despite what he considered a ‘calamity?’
Oct 2, 2009 - 10:32 am 121. Neil Craig:As hoax I think it is a lot bigger than the Piltdown Man. Bigger even than Lysenkoism which was just 1 country. The medieval witch burnings might be comparable if you bear in mind the world is bigger now. Depending on what you count not as big as the campaign against DDT which has probably killed about 70 million through malaria.
Oct 2, 2009 - 10:57 am 122. Lifeofthemind:Engineer,
Whaddya mean, pro wrestling ain’t real? Can’t a man believe in anything? Next someone will tell me you can’t trust women!
Roderick Reilly,
Oct 2, 2009 - 11:02 am 123. luddy barsen:My take was that the name Greenland was cooked up as a cutting edge real estate swindle. Erik the Red saw that trying to sell the pointy helmet crowd in Danemark acreage in Iceland was hard work so he came up with something more inviting. When you see an advertisement for a place called “Verdant Shores” expect it to be either a desert or a swamp.
RR/120; –that would make a good question for the schoolkids to ask the AGW teacher: “If I am on the beach standing at the water’s edge during a warming period, and i was wearing new Nikes and didn’t want them to get wet, how often would i have to take a back step?”
The answer will be, maybe one of your great great great grandchildren might have to take a step back. But meanwhile the entire rest of everything will have changed too –and so long as there are humans to observe changes, those changes will be observed by humans.
To which the AGW teacher will say, “No no NO! Our politically correct response must be ‘Oh fooey! I like everything juuust the way it is! I demand that somebody FIX this!’”
After all, a good patriot is ALWAYS actively improving that mess the superstitious old clingers left behind! Tomorrow belongs to us!
Oct 2, 2009 - 11:24 am 124. peterike:One of the saddest things is how major corporations are lining up IN FAVOR of screwball climate change legislation. Witness:
http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_13447658
I don’t know if it’s the inevitable Leftward tilt that comes with being rich affecting the CEOs brains, or if they are just positioning themselves for a government windfall (or not having the government shut them down).
In any case, to my mind American CEOs have, for the past twenty years or so, become increasingly traitors to their nation.
Oct 2, 2009 - 11:42 am 125. Roderick Reilly:“”"”" My take was that the name Greenland was cooked up as a cutting edge real estate swindle. Erik the Red saw that trying to sell the pointy helmet crowd in Danemark acreage in Iceland was hard work so he came up with something more inviting. When you see an advertisement for a place called “Verdant Shores” expect it to be either a desert or a swamp. “”"”"”
History is replete with examples roughly like that, actually. Until the concept of ‘dry farming’ was pushed, the Great Plains were ignored by settlers in favor of the Oregon Territory. ‘Dry farming’ was sold as the panacea to get people to settle in what many had considered to be virtual desert.
Buddy:
I’m always perplexed by the reluctance of the powers-that-be to either look at the historical context of climate changes, or when they sorta/kinda do, they draw the wrong inferences. Ironically, the Bronze Age/Iron Age boundary in Europe wsa also a climate change boundary: the Iron Age in Europe — from literature that dates back to at least the 60’s — was ushered in with a ‘cold front’ that also caused a profound change in migration patterns. Celtic peoples were supplanted/subsumed by Nordic people because the now-cooler northern latitudes couldn’t sustain as large a population. So, you see, even non-cataclysmic climate change can cause profound changes. One ‘expert’ a couple of years ago suggested that AGW would cause mass migrations. One big problem with extrapolating too simply from past historical experience: human technological adaptation to changing climate can take the ‘hostile’ out of the local climate. Bronze/Iron Age humans had relatively primitive agricultural technology. The invention of wheeled, metal-tipped plows and even something as basic as ‘inventing’ hay made enduring longer, colder winters more feasible, and made food supplies more abundant and more reliable. Even if there really is a significant warming trend going on, most people in most places can stay put and adapt to the change, which is likely to amount to no more than a return to the milder weather of the High Middle Ages, the so-called Roman warming period, and the height of the Bronze Age. All those periods seemed to have been quite pleasant and advantageous overall climate-wise for the temperate latitudes.
Incidentally, I don’t recall in any historical data that these warmer periods lacked snow or cold weather, but were merely milder versions of temperate climates. I also don’t recall — with some likely exceptions — that the flora and fauna of the ‘warmer’ periods were so profoundly altered from those of the cooler periods as to be unrecognizable to those experiencing the ‘warming’ as compared to their ancestors from a colder time who: grew the same crops and husbanded and hunted the same animals. I think it would be invaluable if more research was done on the effects and adaptations of past climate shifts in these historical periods.
Oct 2, 2009 - 12:00 pm 126. presbypoet:The reason there is a hole only at the South Pole. Antarctica is surrounded by ocean. This means the wind blows around the globe at the same latitude. It tends to prevent mixing of the air over the continent with the rest of the worlds air. In the Northern Hemisphere, at the same latitude, Asia and North America prevent such a flow. Since sunlight produces ozone, during winter, which in Antarctica is June to September, no new ozone is produced, so the theory is chlorine atoms from freon tend to produce a net reduction in ozone.
I wonder if there has been a “hole” the past 10,000,000 years. There are always processes going on to reduce ozone, since it is a fairly reactive molecule. Once Antarctica split from Australia, and wandered over the pole, and the atmosphere started to blow at the roaring 40’s, every winter, the sun would not shine. No new ozone. The level drops from natural causes. No replenishment from the rest of the world. Then in summer, sun shines, ozone builds up. So some of our worries may just be about a natural process, but we blame it on Freon.
Sound familiar?
Oct 2, 2009 - 12:39 pm 127. Eggplant:Marcus Aurelius said:
“Eggplant is noting that models of the type the AGW models are based on can be tweaked by one means or another so that any result one wants can be arrived at — it comes down to initial conditions, precision of calculations, and other such factors. This doesn’t mean they are useless it means you don’t setup such a model and make life or death decisions on them if you have other options.”
I agree with Marcus Aurelius’ comment.
I remember that years ago, climate models were in disrepute because the models kept indicating that the Sahara Desert should be a rain forest. The guys doing the models kept tweeking their software until they could get the Sahara Desert to actually be a desert. The funny thing is their original solutions might have been mathematically correct. It’s quite possible that there is a stable solution for the Earth’s climate where the Sahara Desert is a rain forest.
Engineer said:
“Where do you start? Just in terms of the fluid dynamics, the N-S equations are not closed for turbulent flow and some type of accommodation must be made to get a closed form solution.”
There are very few closed form solutions of the Navier-Stokes equations. Most of them are useless toys. Writing a Direct Navier Stokes (DNS) numerical solution (rather than something based upon a turbulence model) has for decades been the Holy Grail for CFD. We’re no where near having the computer capability that could do DNS for something practical like an automobile engine intake manifold.
On the subject of closed form solutions of the Navier-Stokes equation, I have a funny story: When I was in graduate school, I derived some generalized closed form solutions of the Stokes equation (the Navier-Stokes equation with the nonlinear convective term set to zero). While I was fiddling with those solutions, it occurred to me that if one of my Stokes solutions would also cause the convective term to go to zero then I would also have a closed form solution of the Navier-Stokes equation. I plugged in the generalized Stokes solution into the convective term and to my considerable surprise, a single solution actually popped out. I couldn’t believe my eyes and triple checked the result. My solution was in fact correct. This was on a Sunday but I could not wait so I called my thesis supervisor and read the solution to him over the phone. He independently checked the solution, and called back to congratulate me that I had indeed discovered a closed form solution of the Navier-Stokes equation. For 12 beautiful hours, I was over the moon. The discovery of a new solution to the Navier-Stokes equations would put my career into hyper-drive. Top named universities would beg me to work for them as a tenured academic. Anyway, Monday came, I went to the office and my supervisor asked me to produce some streamline plots of my new discovery. I proceeded to do so and showed them to my supervisor. Then he said:
“These look familiar”.
As my heart sank, he pulled a copy of “An Introduction to Fluid Dynamics” by G.K. Bachelor and on page 526 found a duplicate of my streamline plot. I had successfully rediscovered Hill’s Spherical Vortex that M.J.M. Hill had first published in 1894.
Oct 2, 2009 - 12:48 pm 128. luddy barsen:LOL –but you can still be a Gutenberg, eggplant –just make Bachelor the William Caxton!
Oct 2, 2009 - 2:05 pm 129. Donald:With respect to the notion that there must be some adverse effect of the co2 we are adding to the atmosphere, it seems to me that the significance of McIntyre’s work if it holds up is this: The hockey stick was combined with graphs showing increased co2 to make the point that co2 was making the temperature go up. If co2 is going up and temperature is not, then the atmosphere’s sensitivity to carbon is not what it is made out to be.
In fact it appears that more c02, to the extent we have seen it, may not lead to significantly higher temperatures. It just points out how little is known about all the factors, like the absorption spectra of co2, the role of mitigating factors like sunlight and clouds.
It amazes me when people say that the way top prevent climate change is to engineer a response. Engineering requires empirical knowledge of how materials behave.
Oct 2, 2009 - 4:47 pm 130. GerryP:#111 & #118:
Your high hopes that the “hockey stick” fraud will bring down AGW is understandable, but maybe a stretch. Over just the last 3 years, there have been one after another such AGW frauds exposed, with nary a ripple, and without slowing down the global march of AGW madness for a second.
Find data at http://www.gerrycharlottephelps.com/environment/.
Scroll down to June 12, 2008, which is a post about debunking of AGW by an AGW “Denier” who is tops in his field. Keep scrolling down for other Deniers, each tops in his field, each debunking AGW. Resulting injury to AGW? Zero.
Keep scrolling down to 5-11-07 to see the series of AGW-debunking videos produced by a group of top UK scientist-”Deniers”. The videos were called “Doomsday Called Off.” and even shown on the BBC. Net results in stopping – or even slowing – AGW? Zero.
Keep scrolling down. Enough such AGW-debunking links to keep you busy for weeks.
Finally, scroll down to the Stratfor article on 2-3-07, describing AGW as simply a massive power-grab by the EU.
Stop the AGW by debunking it? In their dreams! If only…
Oct 2, 2009 - 9:33 pm 131. M. Simon:Academic training does include some socialization in accepting criticism.
Engineering 100X more so. Design reviews are all about no quarter asked – none given. I LOVE them. Giving or receiving.
If climate science was held to engineering standard it might actually be worthy.
Oct 3, 2009 - 1:02 am 132. M. Simon:Lorenz was the chaos guy. Lorentz was the relativity guy.
Oct 3, 2009 - 1:14 am 133. M. Simon:39. JMH,
I lived in and near Briceland for a few years and was a regular visitor to Whitethorn and of course Redway.
Oct 3, 2009 - 1:36 am 134. M. Simon:So I think what we’re seeing is nerds trying to be heros.
I have (had?) code flying on the F-16 and SR-71. Also designed a couple of electronic gadgets for the B-52.
That is how a real nerd does it.
I visited the SAC Museum at Offutt this past summer and the tour guide was impressed. Good enough for me.
Oct 3, 2009 - 1:48 am 135. Eggplant:M. Simon said:
“Lorenz was the chaos guy. Lorentz was the relativity guy.”
I stand corrected.
M. Simon also said:
“I have (had?) code flying on the F-16 and SR-71. Also designed a couple of electronic gadgets for the B-52.”
My claim to fame is some wrecked junk on the surface of Mars:
http://mer.rlproject.com/o335_hs.jpg
I should emphasize that most aerospace projects represent the combined efforts of thousands of people (I’m only a face in a big crowd). The guy I envy was the Lockheed-Martin engineer who did the separation springs. At least his work was distinctive. Also that rock in the back was found to be an iron-nickel meteorite (it’s not Martian).
Oct 3, 2009 - 10:24 am 136. Bob Murphy:11. Jamie Irons:
“As it happens, I live on the edge of a canyon (Sarco Creek canyon, on the east side of the Napa Valley)) which contains the easternmost grove of naturally occurring redwoods in the world. I look at those beauties with profound reverence every day.”
That may be true for sequoia sempivirens (sp?) but it is certainly not true for sequoia gigantea which grows mostly between the 5,000 and 9,000′ levels in the Sierra Nevadas.
BTW many of both types of redwoods that did well in Australia for almost a century are dying due to the prolonged drought in SE Oz. Redwoods have no tap root.
Oct 3, 2009 - 10:28 am 137. Eggplant:Bob Murphy said:
“BTW many of both types of redwoods that did well in Australia for almost a century are dying due to the prolonged drought in SE Oz. Redwoods have no tap root.”
That’s a funny thing I noticed when I was touring New Zealand a few years ago. Every once in a while, I’d see some California redwood trees growing there. In California, we have many different species of Australian gum trees (Eucalyptus) growing just about everywhere as weeds (I’ve got a Bunya Pine in the back yard). The redwood trees that I saw in Queenstown, New Zealand looked weird. They were unusually fat and not particularly tall. I suspect the climate there as in SE Oz didn’t agree with them.
Oct 3, 2009 - 10:59 am