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Tim Lambert (deltoidblog AT gmail.com) is a computer scientist at the University of New South Wales.

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New Scientist on climate myths

Category: Global Warming
Posted on: May 17, 2007 12:51 PM, by Tim Lambert

The New Scientist has published a handy guide, rounding up 26 of the most common myths and misperceptions in climate science.

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Comments

Clearly the liberal, commie, socialist powers that be, having long since infiltrated the editorial staff of Scientific American, have managed to spread their influence to the New Scientist.

Honestly Tim, why don't you just admit that this is all a scare story invented to keep the liberal elites in power?!

Posted by: Meyrick Kirby | May 17, 2007 1:23 PM

We'vwe controlled New scientist for years

Posted by: guthrie | May 17, 2007 1:54 PM

I looked through it this morning, and thought it to be an excellent resource. We've all been hit by one of these myths, and missed a good response -because we just didn't know enough to properly debunk. But I guess that just shows that I'm a true-red commie.

Posted by: bigTom | May 17, 2007 2:21 PM

Features editor Michael Le Page also wrote a blog post setting out the history of climate change research which is worth looking at. Now the climate change "sceptics" are busy posting all the myths NS has just debunked in the comments on his blog post.

Posted by: Andy | May 17, 2007 2:27 PM

Agreed Andy. I decided to waste some time and actually read the comments. I thought I was in the Michael Crichton fan club section or something.

Posted by: LogicallySpeaking | May 17, 2007 2:30 PM

It is amazing how these people surf around the internet looking for places to vent their spleen at greenies. Thres even my old pal Eduardo Fereyra, whom I tangled with 5 years ago, before I knew much about the science. Now I know enough to demonstrate hes a moron, but oddly enough he never hangs around anywhere to let me do that.

Posted by: guthrie | May 17, 2007 4:06 PM

Yes....To borrow a phrase from Steven McIntyre, it looks like New Scientist has joined the hockey team.

Posted by: Thom | May 17, 2007 6:07 PM

Look at the waviness of the handle, and the curve of the blade. It's never been a hockey stick. http://www.motus.mb.ca/images/scythe.gif

Posted by: Mr. Bones | May 17, 2007 9:07 PM

over at that other site, McIntyre has a post describing how he was using a bot over several hours to scrape publicly-available data from the GISS site, and got blocked for violating their robots policy. He waxes indignant, several of his readers point out that getting blocked the way he did was standard IT practice, Steve continues whining. Steve writes to Hansen's group, they first ask him what data he wants and offer to get it for him, and then offer him free access to the data with the condition that he make his retrieval process I bit nicer to their servers - and Steve exults that the power of the blog forced them to open their data. I'm not sure this kind of whining constitutes a myth or misperception, but it sure is amusing.

Posted by: Lee | May 17, 2007 10:59 PM

Lee, now amateur engineers can claim they know everything while the folks doing the work know nothing. It's the way of the nutters. Don't worry: everyone knows they're nutters.

Best,

Posted by: Dano | May 17, 2007 11:49 PM

Hi all

it is all a crock. Item 3 is false, the HS has been proven to be wrong. Debunked by statastians while so called scientists did not know how to use statistics.

Yours Adolf

Posted by: Adolf Powell | May 18, 2007 4:22 AM

Hey Adolf, did your handlers ever let you see a graph of what happens to the hockey stick when the statisticians desired corrections were performed?

Probably not. That's because it makes almost no difference at all to the result, so that the hockey stick is almost unchanged. If your interested I can dig a graph up.

Posted by: guthrie | May 18, 2007 4:44 AM

Guthrie,

I'd be interested. I've never seen that graph.

Posted by: Paul | May 18, 2007 4:49 AM

IIRC it was the WEgman farrago that adolf is refering to.

For appropriate graphs, see realclimate here: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/07/the-missing-piece-at-the-wegman-hearing/

For other claims relating to proxies: http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/ccr/ammann/millennium/refs/WahlAmmann_ClimChange2006.html

Posted by: guthrie | May 18, 2007 5:58 AM

Eli Rabett showed a graph of the overlapping re-constructions from the AR4 that pretty much says it all. As Eli put it, "It writes itself".

Indeed it does.

That McIntyre and Climate-Audit cheerleaders are still touting the "broken hockey stick" just shows what a bunch of clueless idiots they are.

Posted by: JB | May 18, 2007 10:48 AM

"Debunked by statastians while so called scientists did not know how to use statistics."

Well at least most of tehm can spel statistician.

Posted by: Munin | May 18, 2007 1:39 PM

So what does it mean that the various reconstructions in the IPCC use truncated versions of available data? How about that tree proxies don't appear to accurately reflect current temperature in a display of divergence?

I don't find it particularly amazing that RealClimate doesn't find McIntyre's or Wegman's critiques convincing; Michael Mann is, I think, second on their list of contributors. Regarding Wahl and Ammann, I believe Mann is one of Ammann's advisors.

Wegman on Wahl/Ammann:

"Even granting the unbiasedness of the Wahl and Ammann study in favor of his advisor's methodology and the fact that it is not a published refereed paper, the reconstructions mentioned by Dr. Gulledge, and illustrated in his testimony, fail to account for the effects of the bristlecone/foxtail pines. Wahl and Ammann reject this criticism of MM based on the fact that if one adds enough principal components back into the proxy, one obtains the hockey stick shape again. This is precisely the point of contention. It is a point we made in our testimony and that Wahl and Ammann make as well. A cardinal rule of statistical inference is that the method of analysis must be decided before looking at the data. The rules and strategy of analysis cannot be changed in order to obtain the desired result. Such a strategy carries no statistical integrity and cannot be used as a basis for drawing sound inferential conclusions."

In other words, the "Team" is cherrypicking a method to derive their conclusion.

Posted by: Kevin | May 18, 2007 11:14 PM

McIntyre and friends have "hockey stick on the brain" -- but it makes no difference. No one cares (except them, of course.)

Even Wegman said as much in his Congressional testimony

"We do agree with Dr. Mann on one key point: that MBH98/99 were not the only evidence of global warming. As we said in our report, "In a real sense the paleoclimate results of MBH98/99 are essentially irrelevant to the consensus on climate change. The instrumented temperature record since 1850 clearly indicates an increase in temperature." We certainly agree that modern global warming is real. We have never disputed this point. We think it is time to put the 'hockey stick' controversy behind us and move on."

Wegman thought it was time to move on, but there are STILL some holdouts who think otherwise. They are caught in a time warp and keep rehashing the same tired arguments about a ten-year-old paper -- over and over and over (repeatedly). They believe (incorrectly) that the hockey stick is all important. It's just silly. Foolish, really.

Posted by: JB | May 19, 2007 10:16 PM