Rick Perry, Peter Wood and the blogosphere: Guest post from John Mashey

This is a guest post from John Mashey.

An amusing coincidence surfaced a few days ago, relating the US Presidential
campaign of Texas Governor Rick Perry to the Peter Wood kerfuffle at Chronicle
of Higher Education (CHE), including the stir in some parts of the
blogosphere.
I explain that, followed by the weird background.

0) Rick Perry and Peter Wood

1) Chronology at CHE and NAS

2) Deltoid and elsewhere

3) Climate thuggery discovered by blogosphere

4) Chronology of the thuggery wave

5) Conclusion

0) Rick Perry and Peter Wood

See Washington Post, 08/18/11 Fact-Checker: href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/rick-perrys-made
-up-facts-about-climate-change/2011/08/17/gIQApVF5LJ_blog.html"
rel="nofollow">Rick Perry’s made-up ‘facts’ about climate change:

“Another Perry spokesman, Ray Sullivan, provided links to a number of
recent articles that he said demonstrated skepticism in the scientific
community. We reviewed the articles, and they are anecdotal in nature, not
evidence of the groundswell of opposition suggested by Perry.”

The “to” link there is to Wood’s 2nd article:
rel="nofollow">Climate Thuggery.
They gave 4 other links: one on Charles Monnett on polar bears, and 3
separate stories about Spencer/Braswell, of which the most credible (Seth
Borenstein is good), explains why people don’t think much of this.

Do Perry staffers follow CHE? Or was this a quick Google to back their
leader?

We thus have a (well-funded) Presidential candidate (or his staff) relying
on Peter Wood for credible opinion regarding climate science.

1) Chronology at CHE and NAS

#c = total comments

#w = Wood comments

Status = S (slowed/stopped) or A (still active)

Date Src #c #w Status URL

06/30 CHE 101 6 S href="http://chronicle.com/blogs/innovations/bottling-up-global-warming-skep
ticism" rel="nofollow">Bottling Up Global Warming Skepticism Wood

07/07 NAS 003 0 S href="http://www.nas.org/polArticles.cfm?Doc_Id=2080"
rel="nofollow">Bottling Up… + Barnum picture

07/29 CHE 225 3 S href="http://chronicle.com/blogs/innovations/climate-thuggery"
rel="nofollow">Climate Thuggery Wood

08/04 NAS 024 0 S href="http://nasblog.org/2011/08/04/climate-thugs-get-thuggish/"
rel="nofollow">Climate Thugs Get Thuggish Ricketts

08/04 CHE 204 0 A href="http://chronicle.com/blogs/innovations/guest-post-bottling-nonsense-mi
s-using-a-civil-platform" rel="nofollow">Bottling Nonsense, Mis-using a
Civil Platform Mashey & Coleman.

08/05 NAS 001 0 S href="http://www.nas.org/polArticles.cfm?Doc_Id=2121" rel="nofollow">Climate
Thuggery plus thug picture.

08/05 NAS 002 0 S href="http://nasblog.org/2011/08/05/post-partisan-university/"
rel="nofollow">Post Partisan University? Ricketts

..”Although the responses so far aren’t quite up to the level of
screeching directed at NAS president Peter Wood for his recent piece on
Climate Thuggery …”

08/08 NAS 031 0 S href="http://nasblog.org/2011/08/08/thuggish-climate-thugs-contd/"
rel="nofollow">Thuggish Climate Thugs, Cont’d Ricketts

Wood seems to have quit responding a while back, with zero comments on our
08/04 article, although he has managed 3 more articles (08/05. 08/17, 08/18)
since then.

Since 06/30, the ~40 other articles in the CHE Innovations average ~14
comments apiece.
The 3 CHE articles above (101, 225, and 255) account for more than 50% of
all comments since 06/30. The 255 seems a record high in last 4-5 months,
and it is still going, thanks especially to href="http://reclaimreality.blogspot.com/" rel="nofollow">JonasN and
marionjay, among others. EricAdler has more endurance than I, or as
suggested elsewhere, a bigger head-vise.

(And please, be polite if for some reason you comment there, … but
actually, I think the expected point of all this has been amply made
already. Unsurprisingly, I got called a “disgusting thug” and similar
things, often … good for my collection like Andrew Weaver’s “Wall of Hate”
bulletin board at U VIC, BC, and mild compared to comments elsewhere.)

It was amusing to see more Dunning-Kruger (D-K) sufferers commenting on the
non-plagiarism of Wegman, or its non-importance, or repeating Steve
McIntyre’s fantasies of Ray Bradley plagiarizing Hal Fritts.

Some people may be unaware of The Google. After watching the fun a
while, I finally posted that my coauthor Rob Coleman (an award-winning
Professor of Chemistry at Ohio State) also Chaired OSU’s Academic Misconduct
committee, and of course, was one of the experts quoted by Dan Vergano href="http://www.usatoday.com/weather/climate/globalwarming/2010-11-21-clima
te-report-questioned_N.htm" rel="nofollow">last Fall. But of course, to
D-K afflictees, that means nothing.

2) Deltoid and elsewhere

There were a few mentions elsewhere (a few email lists and comments),
and 2 posts by Tim:

07/06 DEL 072 – S href="http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/07/peter_wood.php"
rel="nofollow">Peter Wood’s double standard on plagiarism

08/04 DEL 032 – A href="http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/08/john_mashey_replies_to_peter_w
.php" rel="nofollow">John Mashey replies to Peter Wood’s hit piece

(Much of the first was trying to understand who Peter Wood was and what NAS
was, and this led people to visit CHE, mostly to be ignored and/or answered
less than politely by Wood. I was mostly researching.)

But this caused some to point at Deltoid as an echo-chamber… amusing
in the light of the next section.

3) Climate thuggery discovered by blogosphere

The big wave came from the 07/29 “Climate Thuggery” piece.

This is now my favorite illustration of propagation via tightly-related
blogs, bounded enough in time and count that one can track them. It
resulted in a wave of people:

By people whose connections with academe are less than evident. Of
course, I’m no academic, but I have long involvement with academe and got
connected to CHE last fall, as they’ve covered the Wegman story.]
into a domain whose implicit rules are very different from many blogs.
Academics can argue intensely, but there are rules. People can say
anything, but are expected to back their opinions with credible evidence and
citations. [Even in my 11th-grade high school AP American history class,
those were the rules.] Many institutions are simply unused to anti-science
incursions, and I think that includes CHE.
The main wave sources included WUWT (with a H/T to Roger Pielke, who
first mentioned it) and Bishop Hill … but the main one seems to have been
Dr Judith Curry @ Climate, Etc … who advertised her post at WUWT and BH,
and got 497 comments, although many of them had nothing to do with this.

4) Chronology of the thuggery wave

Date Src #c #w Status URL

08/01 BH 035 – S href="http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2011/8/1/a-conspiracy-of-warmis
ts.html" rel="nofollow">A conspiracy of warmists (1)

08/01 RPS 001 – S href="http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2011/07/simple-math-and-logic-underp
inning.html?showComment=1312216706564#c5188435537559269720"
rel="nofollow">Comment by Roger Pielke, Jr

“An interesting perspective here:” and links to Thuggery.

08/01 WUWT 058 – S href="http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/08/01/new-term-from-the-chronicle-clim
ate-thuggery" rel="nofollow">New term from the Chronicle: “Climate
Thuggery” (2) Watts writes: “h/t Dr. Roger Pielke Jr.”

08/02 JC 497 1 S href="http://judithcurry.com/2011/08/02/trying-to-put-the-climategate-genie-
back-in-the-bottle" rel="nofollow">Trying to put the Climategate genie back
in the bottle (3) Judith Curry

tallbloke | August 2, 2011 at 7:42 am

I agree. The public is long weary of sham ‘investigations’ which fail to
live up to their billing, and the resulting whitewash endlessly repainted as
it flakes off by the mouthpieces such as John Mashey, Gavin Schmidt,
Deepclimate Dave et al.”

Mike Mangan | August 2, 2011 at 9:15 pm
Desmog blog has launched a hilarious, over-the-top attack on Peter Wood

How dare anyone who is not an accepted climate scientist say anything
against the great Michael Mann?”

curryja | August 2, 2011 at 9:18 pm

Hilarious . . . they certainly made Wood’s case for him.”

08/02 Curry also advertises her post at threads (1) and (2) above,
apparently regarding BH and WUWT as valuable sites.

08/03 SPPI …. rel="nofollow">Climate Thuggery Robert Ferguson, features picture of
Mike Mann. SPPI is a ~1-man website, heavily involved with Christopher
Monckton and with attack on Naomi Oreskes in 2007. Most debunk was here at
Deltoid.

08/03 JC ….. href="http://judithcurry.com/2011/08/02/trying-to-put-the-climategate-genie-
back-in-the-bottle#comment-93573" rel="nofollow">Long comment by Wood

He is very well-received by Curry and others.

08/04 BH 253 – A Mashive attack
Andrew Montford #2.

The discourse is lively, such as:

“John Mashey is a repugnant individual. He is one of the most repulsive
compulsively dishonest people around chronically posting at various sites.
… . I can’t even bear to read his name. Aug 6, 2011 at 6:48 AM | NICO”

I had not realized I had a Name of Great Power, like something out of
fantasy stories. Actually, the same thread did include Shub (or Shub
Niggurath sometimes), who is unfond of me also. I can understand href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shub-Niggurath" rel="nofollow">why he
might have a bad mood.

5) Conclusion

I have no idea what possessed Peter Wood to write the first piece. Few
cared until the “Thuggery” article, and then the blogospheric echo chambers
took off. There might be as many as 3 independent chains (BH,
Pielke-to-WUWT, JC), where each separately noticed the CHE piece or were
told of it. But clearly, by 08/02, with Curry’s cross-posts, the chains
were linked, if not before. (One never knows about emails).

This reached the presidential campaign as a credible source.

More analysis is needed to track who came from where, but it is a fine,
bounded example, and anyone who wants to may calibrate the level of
discourse in the various blogs.

As Rob Coleman and I ended our article:

“Some climate scientists have faced this politically based assault for
years. Anti-science echo-chamber blogs amplify anger, yielding nothing like
legitimate scientific discussion, and as a likely result scientists get
death threats and dead rats left on doorsteps.”

Comments

#1 Wow
August 31, 2011

> Regarding the lag:

> No it is definitively and very relevant if you want to establish cause and effect (an absolutely central part of real science).

So where is the 2-3C temperature rise 800 years ago for this previous causation of CO2 rises?

We have CO2 rising and THEN temperatures rising. This is the correct lag for the causation.

> But regarding it as the ultimate explanation and metric ruling how climate reacts to different inputs will inevitably lead to erroneous conclusions.

Really? How? Or is this another thing you don’t understand, but feel the need to pontificate on?

> Regarding cherrypicking:

> No, I was talking about temperatures. Not ‘a climate’.

Then you’re Off Topic and irrelevant. This is about climate, idiot.

> Temperatures are measure daily and reported monthly. They have not been playing along.

Really? So you’ve taken into consideration ALL the factors and found that the climate science is wrong?

WHICH effects did you take into account to produce this assertion?

Or did you, as we all suspect, take the CO2 as the only factor, like so many denialists do?

> And possibly note that there actually has been (quite little) climate change. Possibly due to humans, that’s the hypothesis.

And the hypothesis works better than any other.

Which hypothesis do YOU propose, and how does it stack up to the record?

> And it would be worthwhile comparing ‘climate change’ between those three data points where we actually have reasonably good observations.

1950′s to 1940′s is ten or twenty years at most. You’ve already stated that you need 30 years. Already you’re making shit up you know is wrong.

> And see how (possibly) anthropogenic climate change compares to what most likely was natural.

This has been done.

Natural effects are not the cause of the majority of the temperature change, 78% of which is explained by CO2′s effect.

> The 23 years from 1975 to 1998 (when CO2 and T actually correlated) are a little bit more. But then again, that is some 12 years ago now.

The 23 years extends another 13 years and CO2 and T actually still correlate.
#2 Wow
August 31, 2011

PS two more points for barnpot here:

1) 12 years isn’t enough to proclaim CO2 and T don’t correlate

2) 1998 temperature doesn’t correlate with CO2, so including it is incorrect. Try again without 1998. If you dare.
#3 Marco
August 31, 2011

Jonas N, you read like an open book. You proclaim loudly that there are unknown unknowns, and thus that the certainty proclaimed cannot be such, because of these unknown unknowns.

And yet, I am certain you do not apply this same thinking to most of the many, many other aspects of your life. My sarcastic examples I do not doubt you have not even considered. You consider them “unimaginable” in terms of likelihood. And yet (yet again), there are so many unknown unknowns! So, how can you ever put a high confidence in these matters? If you follow through with your thinking, you either have to admit you apply your likelhood-principles very skewed, or just admit this has nothing to do with likelihood, and everything with your ideology not allowing for greenhouse gases to be the main responsible for warming in the last 50 years.

Of course, the fun thing is that people who argue the latter, essentially admit that if it *were* true, something *has* to be done. Why else the desire to not want to blame CO2 emissions for the recent warming?
#4 Jonas N
August 31, 2011

Wow – Yes, I make a faslifiable claim:

The calcuations do not exist. My claims have not been falsified in the four+ years since AR4.

If they do exist (did exist in 2007) one simply has to show them to me. And my claim is falsified.

The rest of you post is very confused .. about ‘vidication’ about ‘not possibly knowing’, ‘my entire ego’, ‘religious methods’ why I showed you that paper, about ‘guns, deaths and gunpowder’ etc .. It’s nonsens and I’ll leave it at that.

But I’ll make a more pointed claim:

You (and others) tell me repeatedly, that those calculations exist, that they are available in the journals, that the levels of confidence indeed are based on proper science. You (plural) make that claim!

How do you know? Have you seen them, read them, understood them? Do you actually know which ones they (supposedly) are?

Because if you don’t, you are just guesssing! Well, ‘Lying!’ some people would say here. But definitely making things up on pure faith. And thats what I am actually accusing you of: Of not knowing! Of merely guessing’

You could prove me wrong (falsify at least part of this) in one instant! But instead everybody is beating around the bush .. complaing about other things!

Because you are completely (and stupidly) wrong:

I am the on wanting to look at the science. That’s why I’m asking about where it is!

Got it?
#5 Wow
August 31, 2011

> The calcuations do not exist. My claims have not been falsified in the four+ years since AR4.

The calculations exist in the IPCC papers. Your inadequacy in reading the report is not my problem.

> If they do exist (did exist in 2007) one simply has to show them to me.

One simply did. It’s in the IPCC report. There are many places that make statements about the confidence limits so there is no single place to point you to. The answers you insist you want are in the IPCC.

The plain fact is you don’t want to look.

> How do you know? Have you seen them, read them, understood them?

Yes. Since I, unlike YOU, have read the IPCC reports.

> And thats what I am actually accusing you of: Of not knowing! Of merely guessing’

Yet you guess (and provably incorrectly) about many things.

All of which you ignored as if they were unimportant.

Except they’re not.

When you’re complaining that we can’t know X, your assertions that YOU know X are proven lies.

> I am the on wanting to look at the science.

If you had, you would have not made claims you cannot support. Like, for example, the lack of concordance between CO2 and T.

> That’s why I’m asking about where it is!

Except you aren’t just doing that, are you. You’re making claims, and ignoring any request to back up your claims by the “Look! Flying Monkeys!” gambit.
#6 Bernard J.
August 31, 2011

>No it is definitively and very relevant if you want to establish cause and effect (an absolutely central part of real science).

Real science? This is what real science shows:

[Cause](http://www.greenpeace.org/international/ReSizes/ImageGalleryLarge/Global/international/planet-2/image/2006/3/hazelwood-coal-power-station-i.jpg).

[Effect](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeYfl45X1wo&feature=player_embedded).

[Result](http://www.scar.org/images/news/Global_Temp_2007.png).
#7 Bernard J.
August 31, 2011

>I could go on and be more detailed here, about why I am not convinced, but will wait for the moment.

You don’t need to wait – I’ll tell you now.

You are scientifically illiterate, and ideologically blinkered.

Oo, and you’re a bandwidth-consuming troll. To make this at least partially relevant to the thread, I dare you to select what you think is the most significant weakness in John Mashey’s work, and expand in detail on it. Then we’ll see what you’re really made of – as if we didn’t already know.
#8 Jonas N
August 31, 2011

Marco – You claimed that AR4 contained the calculations. Please show me! (And #205 is about you too!)

Bernard J – You were and are complaining about me not taking you seriously. But you got that one right, I aint’t! Your esteem of how “extremely pertinent” your questions are, is somewhat misguided. Your fantasies are generally and totally wrong.

Wow – In your case, stick to one issue #205 (and start behaving as if you were grown up, please) Apart from being rude, you stack up so many logical fallacies making it very hard to take you seriously.
#9 Michael
August 31, 2011

If we are realy lucky Jonas will tell us all about “errorbars”.
#10 Michael
August 31, 2011

That’s possible too obscure.

Here’s our friend Jonas over at Bishop Dill;

“Michael, and you are still unaware of what can be said with any certainties about previous temperatures … you seem to believe that because there is a curve somwhere within those errorbars, …
It is quite obvious that you don’t have the slightest clue about statistics …As if you had no clue about what an errorbar is”
#11 Wow
August 31, 2011

> If we are realy lucky Jonas will tell us all about “errorbars”.

It’s where Jonas picks up errorwomens.

> Marco – You claimed that AR4 contained the calculations. Please show me!

I gave you the links. The calculations are in the IPCC report. Try reading it.

> Wow – In your case, stick to one issue #205

So everyone must obey YOUR commandments, yet you are free of any restriction?

You made proclamations about things you have never yet substantiated.

E.g. your assertion that CO2 and temperature rises no longer accord.
#12 chek
August 31, 2011

I can’t believe anyone honest can be as thick as ol’ two planks here, but is Jonas really saying he hasn’t noticed the meticulous referencing to the actual scientific papers in the IPCC reports?

That same lack of real inquisitiveness would explain the reliance on rubbishy blogs for his information on climate that Peter Wood is channeling to Rick Perry, the Texan moron. No wonder Wood bleats about thuggery when he parades as primary information tired, second hand, tainted, made up think tank talking points instead of real science.

National Association of Scholars?

I don’t think so.

National Distributors of Corporate Supplied Rubbish, I would believe.
#13 Marco
August 31, 2011

Jonas N, I already pointed you to the section which points out the papers in which attribution studies are reported.

You are looking for the science, you say. Well, it’s right there.
#14 Wow
August 31, 2011

Jonas, you whine:

> And if you had looked, you would have seen that the proxies are truncated sharply at ~1845 (end of the handle) from whereon the blade is only instrumental.

But looking at the paper you claim to have read and understood:

+++
2. Data and methods
2.1. Instrumental and proxy data
Motivated by the recent discussion of uncertainty in the MBH99
reconstruction (North et al., 2006), we illustrate our statistical
procedures for the purpose of this article by restricting our network of proxy records to the 14 series originally used in MBH99
for the period back to the year 1000
+++

So you picked out a paper that said it was purely looking at proxy data, not instrumental, and then complain that it’s purely looking at proxy data, not instrumental…

Moreover, you pick a paper that isn’t looking at or for any hockey stick, but is looking to see how well proxies measure temperature and how wide your uncertainties have to be to reflect the data correctly, and complain that it doesn’t include the blade of the hockey stick which it isn’t looking at…
#15 Bernard J.
August 31, 2011

Tim, “Karl” at 216 is a spamming fraud.
#16 Jonas N
August 31, 2011

Marco – No, there are no calculations, there is no science carried out in the AR4. The A stands for assessment.

If you claim that the 90% figure comes from one or two specific papers, do tell me! But make sure that you have read and checked it before. Your initial claim was false.

Wow – No, there are no calculations, there is no science carried out in the AR4. The A stands for assessment.

Wow – I wasn’t complaining. I was showing you guys a paper totally on your side, ‘confirming’ what you believe to be true.

I bet (many, if any at all of) you hadn’t seen it before . It’s true, my recommendation was slightly tounge-in-cheek, and maybe you missed that or why. So why don’t you read it so you can tell for yourself.

Your last paragraph is priceless: You say about that paper creating pseudo proxies everywhere but for the instrumental record period that it is “a paper that .. is looking to see how well proxies measure temperature”.

Wow again!
#17 Marco
August 31, 2011

And as expected, Jonas N refuses to read the relevant papers. We need to show him. But when we do, Jonas N starts complaining about the next thing. The Gish Gallop exemplified in all its gory idiocy.
#18 Wow
August 31, 2011

> No, there are no calculations, there is no science carried out in the AR4. The A stands for assessment.

There is science IN the AR4.

It’s an Assessment of the Science.

And any papers in WG1 that were used in the assessment, they are referred to in the reference section of WG1.

> Wow – I wasn’t complaining.

Yes you were:

> And if you had looked, you would have seen that the proxies are truncated sharply at ~1845 (end of the handle) from whereon the blade is only instrumental.

Is a complaint.

You’re complaining that the proxies end in 1845.

> I bet (many, if any at all of) you hadn’t seen it before .

And?

> It’s true, my recommendation was slightly tounge-in-cheek, and maybe you missed that or why.

Nope, your recommendation is ridiculous.

> You say about that paper creating pseudo proxies everywhere

No I don’t.

> but for the instrumental record period that it is “a paper that .. is looking to see how well proxies measure temperature”.

No I don’t.
#19 Jonas N
August 31, 2011

Marco – No! On the contrary! I am asking which one(s) are the relevant papers! But it seems you have no clue! I liked ‘Gory idiocy’, though!

Wow – I take it you don’t have a clue either. You are just guessing desperately, and hoping that it is in some of them. And you sound like you are only reflexively talking back .. It is getting a bit tiresome.

I have been asking the same question about a dozen times, for several days now. I’ve asked others at other sites for years.

So, it seems quite obvious that none of you here knows where to that 90% confidence (of the main AR4 claim) supposedly is calculated properly.

Because, as I said, if you had known, you would have torn me to pieces .. and had a good laugh too!

Well, I think you really need a good laugh, some of you desperatly judging from the comments … Only not this time.
#20 Wow
August 31, 2011

> On the contrary! I am asking which one(s) are the relevant papers

You’re stating that you know they don’t exist, but you haven’t read Chapter 9. The papers are in there.

> And you sound like you are only reflexively talking back .. It is getting a bit tiresome.

Yes, we know you are, but what are we?

> I have been asking the same question about a dozen times, for several days now.

And you’ve still not read chapter 9.

This proves you don’t want an answer, you want to proclaim that the answer doesn’t exist.
#21 Michael
August 31, 2011

Marco,

Didn’t you know that it is your responsibility to spoon-feed Jonas?
#22 Hank Roberts
August 31, 2011

> Better, KILLFILE him and actually discuss the original topic.
> At this point, I’m entering 2nd-stage KILLFILE mode.
> Posted by: John Mashey | August 30

That would be killfiling all the people hooked by the trolling, as well as the original troller?

Yeah! Then those who’ve done that can continue to talk about the topic. Pity it works on a blog-wide basis. But it’s temporary. (Hoping Tim gives the irresistable attraction his own topic)
#23 Marco
August 31, 2011

Michael, I know. But I won’t. But I do have a challenge for Jonas N:

Calculate it yourself. There. Can’t? Then you would not even be capable of evaluating whether it WAS calculated correctly, and hence no use pointing you to the relevant papers.

Can? Well, show your calculation! Relevant data is provided in the IPCC chapter, with additional data in the references if needed.

It is extremely like (>95% probability) that Jonas N will not be able to rise to this challenge.
#24 Andy S
August 31, 2011

Figure 9.9 in WGI, AR4: Estimated contribution from greenhouse gas (red), other anthropogenic (green) and natural (blue) components to observed global mean surface temperature changes, based on ‘optimal’ detection analyses (Appendix 9.A).
#25 John Mashey
August 31, 2011

re: 222
Yes.
#26 Andy S
August 31, 2011

Ok, held up in moderation. Let’s give it another shot.

Fig 9.9 c in WGI, as already pointed out by Marco a long time ago.

“Estimated contribution from greenhouse gas (red), other anthropogenic green) and natural (blue) components to observed global mean surface temperature changes, based on ‘optimal’ detection analyses (Appendix 9.A).”

http://www.ipcc.ch/publications\_and\_data/ar4/wg1/en/figure-9-9.html
#27 Martin Vermeer
August 31, 2011

Andy S, yep, Figure 9.9, the rightmost column marked ‘EIV’.

The same story told in a different way (which I like more) is Figure 9.10, the column for the decade starting in 1990, where the confidence interval lower bound of 5% lies well above half the observed anomaly, for all models save one and for the AR4 ensemble… but, as it says in the caption to Table 9.4:

“Note that our likelihood assessments are reduced compared to individual detection studies in order to take into account remaining uncertainties (see Section 9.1.2), such as forcing and model uncertainty not directly accounted for in the studies”

…which is why they only say 90%.

Figure 9.10 is from Lee et al. 2006. So, there are multiple sources for the claim, but you have to understand them and how they back the claim. I’m sure there’s a moral lesson in there somewhere, but I’ll leave the guilty to draw their own conclusions
#28 John Mashey
August 31, 2011

Back to the original topic:
for some reason, peter Wood has yet to reply @ CHE regarding Bottling Nonsense, although he is still holding forth at:

http://www.nas.org/polArticles.cfm?doc_id=2121#Comments
#29 MapleLeaf
August 31, 2011

John Mashey,

Again thanks for all you do– for shining the bright light of truth on lies and misinformation put forth by charlatans like Wood et al..

Sad to see that so many have been taken in here by the trolling of a troll, who IMO has some similarities with Nigel Persaud.

Is it true that GMU’s accreditation renewal is currently under review by SACS (H/T to TaylorB at DC’s place)? If not, it should be after this fiasco.
#30 Jeffrey Davis
August 31, 2011

re:228

Wood’s response seems designed to drive reasonable people into a frenzy. He says things like “I have made a determined effort not to rise to the often silly provocations that Mashey and his coterie of like-minded champions of Professor Michael Mann have posted.” Which is, if you’re completely misanthropic, comic in its contradiction.

I am, btw, almost completely misanthropic. One reads Wood and thinks, “What is Man that Thou art mindful of him?” That I can still get angry, I hope, indicates that I haven’t completely lost it.

Wood’s method remains proof by assertion. And, trying to sound as prissy as William F. Buckley.
#31 Andy S
September 1, 2011

Re 288:

So Wood’s source for one of his “thuggery” stories was Rush Limbaugh? Holy cow!
#32 John Mashey
September 1, 2011

re: 229
Thanks.
re: accreditation:
Read Nature, carefully.

“Perhaps it should fall to accreditation agencies to push for speedy investigations. Tom Benberg, vice-president of the Commission on Colleges of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools — the agency that accredits George Mason University — says that his agency might investigate if the university repeatedly ignored its own policies on the timing of misconduct inquiries. To get the ball rolling, he says, someone would have to file a well-documented complaint.”

In general, when people file academic misconduct complaints, neither the complainants nor the receivers generally talk about them, at least for a good while. Had one or more people filed complaint(s) on this one, it would not be public.

This suggests that a decision will occur December 2011.
#33 Andy S
September 1, 2011

OK, Wood claims that his source wasn’t Rush Limbaugh.
#34 Lotharsson
September 1, 2011

Andy, Woods has appeared in comments claiming his source was not Limbaugh – but declining to name one.

He also charges ad hom on the part of the critics of his claims, for example asserting:

> Note that Adler’s attack on Carlin is also ad hominem.

That seems blatantly dishonest, at least if it is meant to refer to Adler’s comments on the same post because Adler says:

> He claims falsely, that Greenland ice melt is not accelerating, that global temperatures have been decreasing for the last 11 years, and that changes in solar radiation are the dominant effect causing global warming. All of these ideas are untrue; and the EPA correctly refused to propagate them by publishing them as part of the report.

These are clearly NOT ad hom, even if other comments might be considered so.

This seems to be part of a pattern of Wood preferring to ignore or deny of all of the legitimate non-ad hom criticism. It doesn’t help his credibility that he approvingly cites “The Hockey Stick Illusion” in support of some of his claims.

He also asserts that it is an “extraordinary claim requiring extraordinary proof” to claim that:

> … the well-attested Medieval Warming Period didn’t exist (or was merely local to northern Euope); that the warming in the 20th century is historically unprecedented; and that the current warming is rising at a precipitous rate.

That’s a rather interesting set of claims for someone who says he doesn’t know whether science supports … well, mainstream climate science on AGW – especially the MWP assertion, which indicates that he’s bought into MWP denialism in opposition to his own stated principles.

And he dodges the issue of scientific support (or otherwise) for these claims, instead preferring to go for:

> In the case of Michael Mann’s assertions, however, many of his supporters seem to think his extraordinary claims require only extraordinary non-disclosure and a whole lot of vehemence.

So he seems to have basically bought into almost the entire standard “The hockey stick is broken” denialism position too – and completely disregarding any research that has taken place in the dozen+ years since.

And of course his schtick is predicated on a “my word, what an uncivilised tone they use” tactic – which seems to me to be basically used by him as a form of ad hom fallacy.

In fact, he sounds a heck of a lot like Joanne Nova to me in her use of ad hom and promotion of unsupported scientific claims, whilst loudly proclaiming that ad hom is only used by those with no support for their argument and that we should only respect the quality science.
#35 Andy S
September 1, 2011

The Cullen “thuggery” story originates from Marc Morano.

http://rabett.blogspot.com/2007/01/mighty-wurlitzer.html
#36 Chris O'Neill
September 1, 2011

Jonas N:

require that I should have read all RC posts the for six years before I post here

Where did I say “all RC posts for six years”? You’re just a shameless liar.
#37 Jonas N
September 1, 2011

Chris O’Neill – Quit whining!

You didn’t write “all RC posts for six years” but I told you what your demand would have required:

You told me not to ‘waste people’ time’, even not to post any more(*), before I had read what you thought to be relevant, linking to some leightweight RC-explanation/analogy directed at laymen.

(*) “Obviously you didn’t bother carefully reading what realclimate had to say on the subject. Stop wasting everyone’s time and don’t post anything more until after you’ve read what they have to say”
#38 Jonas N
September 1, 2011

Martin Vermeer is the first one to actually point to a reference. Good! It deserves and answer, and I have read it once. Will again. I’d say it doesn’t attempt to justify the IPCC-claim, but as Martin V puts it: It gives support to .. As does of course every model-simulation run (which is not the issue).

But the beef still is: How can one (the IPCC) acertain that the models actually do capture everything relevant, and thereby explain what is observed with such high certainty?
#39 Wow
September 1, 2011

> You didn’t write “all RC posts for six years” but I told you what your demand would have required

Only because you’re an idiot

AND STOP WHINING.
#40 Wow
September 1, 2011

> But the beef still is: How can one (the IPCC) acertain that the models actually do capture everything relevant, and thereby explain what is observed with such high certainty?

[By being accurate](http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/05/hansens-1988-projections/)
#41 Jonas N
September 1, 2011

Wow – Usually I asume that people use the best arguments they have (left)
#42 Wow
September 1, 2011

Seems like you can’t read, then.

The Hansen model predicted correctly.

Therefore the model is reliable.
#43 Wow
September 1, 2011

Or *was* that your best argument, Jonas?
#44 Jeff Harvey
September 1, 2011

Jonas,

As a senior scientist watching from the sideline, your ducking and weaving strategy is clearly obvious, as is your singular obsession with the Nature article by Mann et al. (1998). Given that AGW was recognized as a serious potential future threat to the environment for at least 10 yeare before that paper came out, what aspect of climate change science were you obsessing on during that time frame?

More importantly, Bernard posed a straight question to you that you have repeatedly ducked. That is, what exactly are your qualifications in the field of climate science, or, if that is lacking, in any field of science? This is an important question. I am very cautious when venturing well outside of my own field of research (population and evolutionary ecology of plant-insect interactions) and if you are indeed doing so in this discussion, then it is little wonder that your screeds are ignored. I am not saying that you cannot, or should not have an opinion in the field, but instead that your views should be ignored completely, as they clearly are outside of web logs. Most importantly, if you think that you have something of value to say in debunking papers like Mann’s or those by others, put up or shut up and try to get something published in a peer-reviewed journal. I have had several to-and-fro’s with denialists over the years (one good example was the Thomas et al. Nature paper projecting extinction rates caused by climate change) and they typically make a lot of big noise about papers they hate but when I suggest that they write rebuttals, they are never heard from again.

This is hardly new – it’s the standard denialist refrain. My guess is that most of the ‘rebutters’ don’t even try and write up their rebuttals for scientific journals, but instead use the argument that ‘peer-review is biased’ as an excuse not to do so. So, Jonas, have you written up your arguments as an article and submitted them to a journal yet? If not, why not?
#45 Jonas N
September 1, 2011

Jeff H

If you want to point me to any real science supporting the IPCC AR4 claim (90% confidence), feel free to join in.

And regarding MBH98, you must have been missing what is being discussed here. Singlar obsession? Is this a copy-pasted comment (you’ve used earlier)?

I already stated what the issue is/was with Mann in #85. And as Mashey et consortes so clearly demonstrate, the obsession with defending, or covering for, or diverting, or attacking critics is quite noticable on the CAGW-side. That’s what Wood noted, and that’s why I asked what they hoped to accomplish by that.

I am not taking Bernad J angry emotional rantings seriously one second. If you are a level headed guy, I’m sure you understand. But even you seem to bolster a narrative with the d-word. Why is this so central to many of you?

But if you forgive me for changing the subject, and since you talk about the extinction rates (due to global warming?). I could ask you a few questions out of pure curiosity:

1) What is the assumed rate of species extinction at present?
2) What would be the natural ((w/o humans) extionction rate, to be compared with?
3) What is the natural rate of new species evovling, and
4) What is that rate in the presence of humans?
5) And if known, what combination(s) of the above would be
good metric(s) to compare different scenarios by?
6) How does one establish any of these numbers confidently (especially the onse for the ‘pure natural alternative world’)?
7) How many documented species have gone extinct since man started categorizing and keeping track of species.

I have no answerto almost any of those questions, very much a sideline bystander. And if you have no interest in talking about climate, the politics and activism around it, checking up on the science and purported scientific claims ..

.. maybe you want to talk about something closer to your field?
#46 Wow
September 1, 2011

> If you want to point me to any real science supporting the IPCC AR4 claim (90% confidence), feel free to join in.

Model accuracy.

> I already stated what the issue is/was with Mann in #85.

Which was:

> I don’t care that much about MBH98, I think it was a crappy paper, widely overstating several things, flawed wrt methodology and proxyselection (and some more issues).

However, you’ve not managed to actually explain what it overstated, what the flaws were and what the “some more issues” were.

This is because you’re clueless.

> is quite noticable on the CAGW-side.

Since you’re the only one rabbiting on about CAGW, that would be your side.

> 1) What is the assumed rate of species extinction at present

Gish

It’s irrelevant.

It’s warming. We’re the cause. There are consequences of warming. E.g. melting icepack. That causes extinction of animals who use the ice pack to breed or feed.

> I have no answerto almost any of those questions

This is because you have no clue, as I’ve pointed out earlier.

They also don’t need questions.

If someone is murdered, we don’t ask what the average age of the caucasian male is when we see someone with the murder weapon in their hand.
#47 MapleLeaf
September 1, 2011

Folks,

Re the latest troll here at deltoid. You are mud wrestling with a pig and the pig is absolutely loving it. S/he is clearly here to provoke, antagonize and it probably doing so to solicit comments so that they can claim “look how mean and nasty those warmistas are”– well yes we too are human and get annoyed with trolls, especially when provoked. There is no point arguing science with someone who repeatedly fails to back up their assertions and opinions with science, someone who is bogged down in ideology, someone who is clearly stuck in 1998, and someone who seems to think that they are omniscient.

Please focus on Perry and Wood. So, please try and ignore the troll and have a rational, informed and factual discussion about Wood and Perry. Anyhow, my two cents worth.
#48 Jeff Harvey
September 1, 2011

Jonas,

Before I address your queries re: extinction rates, I would like to say your response to my simple query (earlier posted by Bernard) is instructive. We asked what your qualifications are in (1) climate science, or, (2) any field of science. Your inability to answer these questions reveals that you clearly possess no scientific qualifications whatsoever. Many thanks for this information. To the rest of the readers here this supports MapleLeaf’s latest post: JonasN has to wade into blogs with his utter drivel because he clearly has made not even the slightest dent into the scientific community with his zero publications. Now to answer your vacuous questions, with an afterthought:

What is the assumed rate of species extinction at present? BETWEEN ONE HUNDRED AND ONE THOUSAND TIMES THE NORMAL ‘BACKGROUND’ RATE OF EXTINCTIONS, WHICH WOULD BE ONE SPECIES/MILLION SPECIES/YEAR. INDEED THIS IS CONSERVATIVE: AREA-EXTINCTION MODELS OF EXPONENTIAL DECAY (E.G. SEE STUDIES BY McCARTHUR & WILSON, SOULE, TERBORGH ET AL) ARE BASED ON HABITAT LOSS ALONE AND THUS IGNORE OTHER ANTHROPOGENIC STRESSES (E.G. INVASIVE SPECIES, VARIOUS FORMS OF POLLUTION AND CLIMATE CHANGE) THAT CERTAINLY HAVE A NEGATIVE IMPACT ON BIODIVERSITY

2) What would be the natural ((w/o humans) extionction rate, to be compared with? THE NATURAL RATE IS BASED ON THE AVERAGE ‘SHELF LIFE’ OF A SPECIES. IN INSECTS THIS MIGHT BE SEVERAL MILLION YEARS, IN MAMMALS GENERALLY LESS, ALTHOUGH IT VARIES FROM TAXON TO TAXON. NATURAL RATES WOULD CLEARLY BE LOWER IN THE ABSENCE OF HUMAN SIMPLIFICATION OF ECOSYSTEMS ACROSS THE BIOSPHERE.

3) What is the natural rate of new species evovling, and 4) What is that rate in the presence of humans? 5) THE NATURAL RATE IS HARD TO CALCULATE BUT WOULD PROBABLY BE ON THE ORDER OF SEVERAL TO SEVERAL HUNDREDS OF SPECIES A YEAR, DEPENDING ON A WIDE ARRAY OF FACTORS INCLUDING THE GENETIC CONSTITUTION OF POPULATIONS WITHIN A SPECIES, THE SPATIAL STRUCTURE OF HABITATS/ECOSYSTEMS IN WHICH THEY OCCUR, COMPETITION (BOTH INTRA-AND INTER-SPECIFIC), A SUITE OF ABIOTIC FACTORS, AND OTHER LANDSCAPE-LEVEL PROCESSES COVERING DIFFERENT SCALES OF SPACE AND TIME.

And if known, what combination(s) of the above would be good metric(s) to compare different scenarios by? FACTORS AFFECTING LEVELS OF SPECIATION ARE STILL THE SUBJECT OF INTENSE DEBATE. STABILITY APPEARS TO BE IMPORTANT IN TROPICAL BIOMES, WHEREAS CHANGE IS IMPORTANT IN HIGHER LATITUDES. NO DOUBT THERE ARE MANY FACTORS INVOLVED. HOWEVER, AN IMPORTANT METRIC IS GENETIC DIVERSITY WHICH IS CERTAINLY BEING ERODED AS A RESULT OF COMBINED HUMAN-INDUCED STRESSES. IN OTHER WORDS, AS POPULATIONS DWINDLE, THEIR ABILITY TO RESPOND TO CHANGE IS ERODED BECAUSE THEY LOSE GENETIC VARIABILITY THAT IS A PRE-REQUSITE TO ADAPTATION. SMALL POPULATIONS ARE LESS WELL-ADAPTED TO A CHANGING WORLD THAN LARGER POPULATIONS.

6) How does one establish any of these numbers confidently (especially the onse for the ‘pure natural alternative world’)? NO ONE I KNOW OF IS CALLING FOR A ‘PURE NATURAL ALTERNATIVE WORLD’. THE STATEMENT IS UTTERLY FATUOUS; WHAT CONCERNS SCIENTISTS SUCH AS MYSELF IS THAT THE HUMAN ASSAULT ACROSS THE BIOSPHERE IS REDUCING THE CAPACITY OF NATURE TO SUSTAIN ITSELF IN A MANNER THAT WE HAVE HABITUALLY TAKEN FOR GRANTED, AND, ULTIMATELY TO SUSTAIN HUMAN CIVILIZATION. WE ALREADY KNBOIW THAT HUMAN EXISTENCE HINGES ON A RANGE OF FREELY-PROVIDED ECOLOGICAL SERVICES THAT EMERGE OVER VARIOUS SCALES OF SPACE AND TIME AND FUNCTION ON THE BASIS OF A STUPENDOUS ARRAY OF BIOTIC INTERACTIONS IN NATURE. THESE SERVICES – WATER PURIFICATION, NUTRIENT CYCLING, POLLINATION, SEED DISPERSAL, PEST CONTROL, CLIMATE REGULATION, MAINTENANCE OF SOIL FERTILITY AND MANY OTHERS – WOULD BE WORTH TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS IF THEY WERE CAPTURED IN MARKETS. BUT SO FAR THEY HAVE BEEN EXTERNALIZED IN ECONOMIC PRICING. WE HAVE DATA AVAILABLE FOR SEVERAL SERVICES SHOWING THAT THERE ARE NO TECHNOLOGICAL SUBSTITUTES FOR THEM OR ELSE THEY ARE PROHIBITIVELY EXPENSIVE OR MUCH LESS EFFECTIVE THAN THOSE EMERGING FROM THE INTERPLAY OF BILLIONS OF ORGANISMS IN NATURE. WE ALSO HAVE LOTS OF EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE SHOWING THAT THE FUNCTIONALITY OF CRITICAL SERVICES – FOR EXAMPLE POLLINATION AND WATER PURIFICATION – IS BEING RAPIDLY REDUCED DUE TO HUMAN ACTIONS.

7) How many documented species have gone extinct since man started categorizing and keeping track of species. THIS QUESTION IS POSED IN A FEEBLE ATTEMPT TO SUGGEST THAT EXTINCTION RATES ARE LOW. THE ACTUAL NUMBER IS SVERAL HUNDRED, ALTHOUGH IF WE FACTOR IN CERTAIN EXTINCTIONS OF ISLAND BIOTA – SUCH AS ISLAND ENDEMIC RAILS IN THE PACIFIC THAT DISAPPEARED AS THE ISLANDS WERE COLONIZED BY POLYNESIANS 500-1000 YEARS AGO – THEN THE NUMBER WOULD GO WAY UP. THEY KEY POINT HERE IS THE VAST NUMBER OF ‘UNKNOWNS’. FOR INSTANCE, THE NUMBER OF WELL-KNOWN SPECIES THREATENED WITH EXTINCTION (E,G, BIRDS, MAMMALS, VASCULAR PLANTS) NUMBERS IN THE MANY THOUSANDS (10-40% OF SPECIES IN THESE GROUPS ARE ENDANGERED OR THREATENED). BUT A SPECIES IS NOT FORMALLY CLASSIFIED AS ‘EXTINCT’ UNTIL IT HAS NOT BEEN RECORDED IN THE WILD FOR AT LEAST 50 YEARS. CERTAINLY MANY SPECIES IN THE MATA ATLANTICA FORESTS OF BRAZIL ARE ALREADY EXTINCT SINCE THE FORESTS WERE LARGELY FELLED IN THE 1950S AND ONWARDS. BUT IN THE LITERATURE THEY ARE STILL TECHNICALLY ‘EXTANT’. THE UNKNOWNS I REFER TO IS BASED ON THE HUGE NUMBER OF SPECIES THAT HAVE DISAPPEARED FROM TROPICAL FORESTS WITHOUT EVER BEING FORMALLY CLASSIFIED. MOST OF THESE ARE ARTHR0PODS FOR SURE, BUT THE POINT IS THAT WHEN HABITAT IS DESTROYED, SPECIES AND GENETICALLY DISTINCT POPULATIONS DISAPPEAR WITH IT. THE AREA-EXTINCTION MODELS I REFER TO ABOVE HAVE GENERALLY UNDER-ESTIMATED EXTINCTION RATES. NOW EXTRAPOLATE THE LOSS OF MORE THAN 50% OF THE WORLD’S WET TROPICAL FORESTS, AND THE CONCLUSIONS ARE OBVIOUS.

JONAS, LIKE MOST CONTRARIANS I HAVED ‘DEBATED’, IS USING THE OLD TRIED-AND-TRUSTED TACTIC OF SUGGESTING WITH HIS QUESTIONS ABOVE THAT WITHOUT 100% UNEQUIVOCAL EVIDENCE, THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN-GENERATED EXTINCTIONS DOES NOT EXIST OR ELSE IS VASTLY EXAGGERATED. AM I CORRECT JONAS? I HAVE SEEN THIS STRATEGY USED TO DOWNPLAY A RANGE OF ENVIRONMENTAL THREATS OVER THE YEARS: ACID RAIN, OTHER FORMS OF POLLUTION, LOSS OF BIODIVERSITY AND CLIMATE CHANGE. DEBATING WITH PEOPLE LIKE THIS IS LIKE TRYING TO WIN A PISSING MATCH WITH A SKUNK.

So Maple Leaf is indeed correct. The debate, as it were, should be about Perry and Wood, and about how the corporate msm and its scientifically illiterate pundits are mangling science in pursuit of a brazenly political agenda.
#49 Jonas N
September 1, 2011

Jeffrey

I would say that my qualifications i climate science rival most of the commenters here. I doubt that more than a very few have actively published anything coming close to climate science. I’d say that I’m more qualified reading the literature than many, and level with those few who actually do (and can keep their temper).

Heck, most of the guys here are incapable of having a polite civil discussion about things were we see them differently.

Most of you are even uncapable of correctly reading a statement, and must project a lot of wishful fantasies about almost anything else (not ever mentioned) instead, to somehow create, or reinforce some narrative about persons you don’t know. You too, appearantly. Although you presented your self as ‘senior’

It is utterly amazing: People who make a lot of loud noise about ‘what the science says’ are incapable of understanding simple statements in a blog comment of a few sentences, and instead must make up all kinds of ‘explanations’ to convince themselves of utter deslusions. I’ll tell you: Such people cannot read a scientific paper and understand what it says. You need to keep your head cool and level for that ..

And yes, I’d agree that there is a lot of mudslinging and piggish behaviour here. Compulsory by quite a few who cannot refrain from insults, profanities and name calling. MapleLeaf syas this need is ‘being only human’ .. Indeed!

But you think that is acceptable, maybe? Well, to me it indicates immaturity and emotional instability.

……………

Thank you though for your answers to my questions. They were measured (apart from CAPITALS) until the end, when again some ‘evil motives’ needed to be implied, and the restraint of holding back all the insults once again became overwhelming and couldn’t be kept in check …

Unnecessary I’d say.

And I’d say one more thing, Jeffrey: Your way of interpreting the facts and statements you have in front of you, to try to construct a description of reality and how the world really is, how persons are or what they think, is not very scientific. Rather the contrary ..

I hope you do better in your professional life.
#50 Andy S
September 1, 2011

The pig is oinking arrogantly to tempt you to come and continue the wrestle. Please don’t fall for it.
#51 Jeff Harvey
September 1, 2011

Jonas,

As any trained scientist, I tend to be very cautious when straying outside of my own field of expertise. In other words I defer to the opinions of the vast majority of my peers in climate science, who agree that humans are a major force in driving the current changes in global and regional temperature regimes that have been observed since the early 1980s.

Like many layman with an opinion, you apparently do not hold such reservations and instead write as if you were a sage of wisdom in fields in which, it is clear to me and others here, that you have little actual pedigree. If that gives you a ‘buzz’, so be it. But I have to admit I am always bemused when layman like yourself feel as if they have the necessary acumen to criticize the work of others with many years of experience in their fields. Hence the (correct) reference of you to the Dunning-Kruger study. Or, as Charles Darwin once said, “Ignorance begets confidence more often than knowledge”. That sums you up to a tee.

You’ve shown that time and time again here with respect to Michael Mann and his co-authors (MBH, 98) in their article that was published in perhaps the top science journal, Nature. As a former Associate Editor there, I can say with assurance that the paper was almost certainly sent out to at least 4 referees and went through several rounds of external and internal peer-review before it was accepted. Yet you wade in here with your basic understanding of the field, ignore many other proxies that support their findings, and try to give the impression that you possess the wisdom that has somehow escaped many others with actual expertise and training. As I said in my last posting, if you are so convinced as to the authenticity of your arguments put up or shut up and send your enlightened comments to a rigidly peer-reviewed journal where it will be sent to actual experts in the field. Only then will we see if your ideas stand up to professional scrutiny. My guess is that your article will be rejected. Prove me wrong.

Until then you can huff and puff and pontificate all you want, but your ideas will only appeal to those who stick their fingers to the wind, or else those who see action to mitigate climate warming as a perceived threat to their way of life (in other words, they care little about the science and only about the effects of policy mitigation in terms of their own political beliefs – generally to the far right end of the spectrum). You claim to want a civil discussion in your first post here was anything but civil. What goes around comes around, pal.

Essentially, my advice to you is to go away. You aren’t scoring any points by persisting here with your nonsense, and you are diverting the topic away from the thread’s topic (Peter Wood’s silly article in CHE).
#52 Jonas N
September 1, 2011

Jeffrey H

You are most likely very aware of that ‘climate science’ relies on a very large number of various disciplines and skills, and general physics and understanding of statistics are central in many of those.

If you claim that ‘climate scientists’ play in a completely different league when it comes to such, or the scientific methodology in general, you would be wrong.

And then you once more make the same mistake: I am not impressed by MBH98, but that is not the central issue here, nor is it what I have discussed. And I am not ignoring anything. Instead I am doing what any real scientist should do: Check what the claims and the data add up to!

And in case you still haven’t noticed: It is the IPCCs claim of certainty that I am challenging.

Quite a few have claimed that my challange is baseless. But none of them could provide any substance. One commenter (Martin V) actually provided a reference. Unfortunately, that one neither provides that certainty. (It deals with other things)

But maybe you’ve completely missed what I’ve been asking for the last week (or so)!? Definitely nothing about MBH98. Instead, I provided ‘support’ for it none of you had seen before!

Let me just make one more (quite pertinent) point: Here you come, present yourself as a senior scientist, former associate editor of Nature, and you need in the three first posts here to a colleauge you’ve never met:

1) Label him as ‘denialists’ and condone the worst kind of insults (Bernard J)

2) Constructing ‘conclusions’ from lack of evidence (no-reply to Bernard J), branding him as a ‘pissing skunk’ and ‘drivel from a mudslinging pig’ (by condoning MapleLeaf)

3) Again fantasizing what he actually claims, and try the Dunning-Kruger-afflicted meme to get him on the defensive. And throw in a lite ‘right-wing-nut’ too!?

Is that what you can come up with? Some people’d say that ‘Nature’ no longer is what it used to be. And if you indeed were indicative of what goes on there, I most certainly would agree. You couldn’t even answer questions about your own field without throwing a fit (at the end).

Sorry Jeffrey, but impressed I am not. And you do condone the climate scare, didn’t you!?

One final point: All those people who keep on posturing about rather wanting to talk about about Wood and Perry. They seem awefully eager to want to describe me instead. And hardly have a word to spare about Perry and Wood. Not even among themselves.
#53 Michael
September 1, 2011

Maple Leaf has it about right.

I had a long interaction with Jonas over at his spiritual home – Bishop Dill. He’d much rather waffle on about Mann, than discuss why Wood is critical of people who expose plagiarism, but not the plagiarist.

Not that you should expect much sense on that score either. His take on plagiarism is that it’s just “missing quotation marks”.
#54 Shub
September 1, 2011

Dear Jeff,
How are you doing? I hope all that all-capitals stretches of text did not do their bit to raise your blood pressure!

Many of your assertions are wrong. Your assertion that the Mann 98 paper is good because you worked there as an assistant editor (and therefore have knowledge of its process quality) is feeble. Mistakes can occur anywhere.

Where is the non-bristlecone, non-contaminated sediment influenced, global proxy network that shows no significant medieval warming and shows no ‘divergence’ in the modern period?

*None* of the IPCC sphagetti graph curves have the same characteristics as the Mann stick. The IPCC either hides the decline, thereby invalidating the said proxy’s ability to capture and reflect higher temperatures, or, the curve clearly shows a warm MWP – i.e., a non- hockey stick shape.

What is more, there is no clarity as to whether all the different reconstructions in the IPCC 6.10 graph – go hand in hand with each other, in terms of tracking temperature. Is one going up while the other is going down?

Look at Burger 2010.

From the discussion.,

By avoiding the (calibrating) instrumental period, and by using a fairly robust spectral measure for low-frequency performance, the above coherence analysis has uncovered several inconsistencies among the group of millennial reconstructions that figured prominently in the latest IPCC report and elsewhere. An immediate lesson from this is that simple visual inspection of smoothed time series, grouped and overlaid into a single graph, can be very misleading. For example, the two reconstructions Ma99 and Ma08L, which have previously been described to be in striking agreement (cf. Mann et al., 2008), turned out to be the most incoherent of all in our analysis.

Then, further down,

Using inconsistent reconstructions to approximate the temperature curve has one particular visual consequence. Whether overlaying them in one figure or forming an average, the result tends to be a cancellation of larger amplitudes, because inconsistency here means to be indistinguishable from random covariations. Together with the mentioned synchronization through the instrumental calibration period, such synthesis figures automatically resemble a hockeystick.

The kappa values from the paper make it abundantly clear, as does the hierarchical clustering analysis (which I hope, given your background, you are able to read) – the Mann, Bradley and Hughes’ 1998 hockey stick curve is the least-related, and least-coherent graph compared to the others in the IPCC 2007 fig 6.10 set. Look at Fig 1 from the paper – Mann’s curves are off to one side, all by themselves. MBH-98 has kappa scores of 0.37, 0.34, 0.38, 0.38, 0.31, 0.34, 0.44, 0.26, and 0.3, when compared to its fellow curves in the IPCC sphagetti graph.

Put in quantative terms, the Mann graph shows, not a single significantly coherent agreement, with any of its fellow curves. It is the least-related to its brethren.

Again,for your benefit, the kappa used, is not the same as the somewhat conceptually related k used in the medical, psychology and social sciences literature, usually to measure interobserver agreement.

It is not very difficult to find what is wrong with the sphagetti approach, even if you use your own judgement. Instead of a clear presentation of the various reconstructions, the IPCC plasters all of the curves on top of each other, virtually making it impossible to visually inter-compare the differences between the curves and instead creates a false impression of “agreement” – as pointed out skillfully by Burger above. The whole point of doing a high-resolution reconstruction is defeated by pasting over other reconstructions, that may vary in both magnitude of change, and direction of change, on top of each other.

Which reconstruction is the ‘truest’ representation of past climate – one can always argue about that.

But do the various reconstructions agree with each other with the Mann hockey stick? No.
#55 Michael
September 1, 2011

Shub are you talking about MBH(98) or this paper??

At any rate, there is an Open Thread for this.

Back on topic – tell us about how plagiarism doesn’t matter, or that the real issue is the exposure of plagiarism rather than its commission.
#56 Chris O'Neill
September 1, 2011

Jonas N:

You didn’t write “all RC posts for six years”

I’m glad you admitted you lied. And take your own advice about whining.
#57 Jonas N
September 2, 2011

Chris O’Neill

No, I didn’t lie, and more than only a few have a real problem with using that word properly. And quite a few more words. Michael, for instance, with almost every one …

Shub – Talking of reconstructions: Have you seen the one in #178, it is the best hockey stick handle (from MWP-denialism perspective) I’ve ever seen. I think it is so ‘good’ that even the AGW-crowd is not made aware of it.
#58 Jeff Harvey
September 2, 2011

*the AGW-crowd*

..meaning >95% of the scientific community…

Note how the non-scientific brigade (e.g. bloggers like Jonas) leave out this salient little fact.

Jonas: For the millionth time, why do you and other climate change *contrarians* (feel better?) rely on blogs to spread your gospel of doubt? Why is the peer-reviewed literature not filled with articles supporting your point of view? And I could care less what you think of rigid scientific journals like Nature et al. because of what they have published. Given that you are not a scientist (you have more-or-less made that little point abundantly clear) I can tell you that Nature has immense respect amongst the scientific community consisting of my peers. I am sure that many climate change contrarians (e.g. few of whom are actual scientists) don’t like the large number of journals that publish articles supporting the already huge and growing evidence that the current warming event has a human fingerprint all over it. But, to reiterate, publishing articles in Nature or Science is regarded as a major achievement for any scientist. Your problem is clearly that you don’t know many scientists, except those (like myself) you occasionally ‘bump’ into on blogs. Bernard is also a scientist as are several other posters on Deltoid. Methinks if you want to learn the ‘state-of-the-art’ in science you ought to go to a few conferences and workshops where these issues are debated and discussed. You’ve been hanging around the wrong crowd, Jonas.,

Shub: As I said to Jonas, where the heck is your published rebuttal to Mann et al. (1998)? Why is it that the denial brigade makes a lot of noise over the blogosphere but when push comes to shove there’s a big, vast empty space in the empirical and theoretical literature?
To be honest, in hindsight its almost a shame that Mann and the others whose work supports his proxies ever published their work… like the creation/intelligent design lobby, its given the climate change denial brigade a huge handle to use as a metaphorical beating stick. The fact is that the tactics of the creation and climate change denial lobbies are alarmingly similar: Both publish little, if anything, in the peer-reviewed literature; both rely on finding holes in the published work of scientists as ‘evidence’ in support of their own views.
#59 Jonas N
September 2, 2011

Jeffrey

Again, you are being quite careless with with the truth, with describing facts as they are, and also again you are trying to create statements about reality from thin air (ie with no factual base at all = Guessing blindly).

The figures circulating 97% (or 95%) usually refer to so called ‘climate scientits’ after having being asked som quite benign (=not very discriminating) questions about if its getting warmer and if mankind has anything to do with that.

You are creating a false dichotomy.

And no, definitiely not 95% of ‘the scientific comunity’ behave or sound like people here, instantly needing to switch to shouting down, ad homs and worse!

Among the ‘hard sciences’ I would be very surprised if even 5% take that stance. Also, among those the percentage thinking that climate change (or a possible anthropogenic part there of) thinking this is a real problem, requiring massive policy changes to be adressed is far lower.

Further, you asked Shub where the published rebuttals are? Well, as he said: The IPCC RA4 presents a spahetti-graph, wherein each of the presented curves constitutes a ‘rebuttal’.

Because the thing is: They all purport to respresent the same metric, a global (or NH) mean temperature. And they don’t coincide. Not even their error bars overlap.

There is one scientific conclusion to be made here: The methods used cannot establish true(!) historic temperatures with any confidence or relevance. Not yet, maybe never.
That at best, they should be seen as attempts to obtain such, but from far too insufficient data points, and relying on quite a few post hoc assumptions about proxy response and resulting signals, their ability to correctly pick up and represent spatial patterns etc.

You frequent referals to deniers, D-K, denial lobbies, creation/intelligent design lobby etc, indicate to me that:

1) You are not talking about the science, and

2) It is not the facts, reality, the science to establish knowledge about those, that is your primary motiviation. Definitely not here, and possibly it taints you even professionally (You do represent yourself as ‘professional’ here, and even Bernard J – just amazing!)
#60 Jonas N
September 2, 2011

Jeff Harvey (not Jeffrey, sorry)

RE Reconstructions (contd)

Paleoclimatology and the methodologies used are nowhere near to beceoming established and reliable acertions of historical temperatures. Not globally, and not even locally.

And once more: Things having being puplished, words, sentences having appeard on paper, tentative ‘conclusions’ and words like ‘unprecedented’ or ‘skill’ having been found in the Discussion-section (or Abstract) don’t thereby make them established facts. At best (if the underlying science) is sound and rigorous, and if it indeeds supports them) they should be interpreted as hypotheses, arguments put -forward to a wider audience. And evaluated on their own merits

The ‘but it is published’-meme is one more false dichotomy. This is as true for prestigeous journals like Nature and Science as for all other science proffered …
#61 Wow
September 2, 2011

And what makes you the authority to make that proclamation, Jonas? Overwhelming arrogance? DK-effects? Brain defect?
#62 Jeff Harvey
September 2, 2011

Jonas,

You are finally making some reasonable points. But until you get off of your butt and attend some of the meetings I alluded to where these issues are the centerpiece of the discussion, you are way, way out to sea.

As a matter of fact, as part of my job, I do attend workshops, symposiums, conferences and the like, and frequently go to global change sessions where climate change and its effects on the environment are discussed. And one thing I can assure you as an ‘insider’ is that an infintisimally small percentage of the people with expertise in the Earth sciences are climate change sceptics. Certainly many of them have various quibbles with the way the data are interpreted and in predicting the outcome of this one-off ‘experiment’, but very, very few of them doubt the bmajor human influence on the current warming. These scientists are the silent majority; you would not know any of them, even though I do. By contrast, the very fact that the same names crop up over and over and over again in the contrarian circles should speak volumes, given the huge amounts of money and support given to this ‘lobby’ by the fossil-fuel, autmobile and other ‘business-as-usual’ corporate lobbies. A leaked memo from the American Petroleum Institute in 1997 (before Mann et al. was published, I may add) had argued that the climate-change denial lobby (for that is what we are dealing with here) was concerned that they had to rely on the same few scientists – meaning people like Lindzen, Soon, Baliunas, Michaels, Balling, the Idso’s etc – the promulgate their ‘point of view’ in the climate change debate. Yet here we are, a decade and a half later, and the same band of sceptics are still the most prominent in the climate change ‘debate’, with a few new names for good measure. Note that their ‘point of view’- referring to the API – was clearly not based on scientific ‘truth’, as hard as that is to find in such a complex field as climate science, but clearly on the concern that any measures to deal with climate change would affect the way that they do business.

And for some reason, although its well over 10 years old, here we have the sceptical punditocracy still harping on about Mann and the ‘proxies’ he used to estimate climatic patterns over the past 1,000+ years. Whatever the outcome of this debate, the bottom line is that the climate-change denial lobby are using this as a beating stick for the simple reason that if it is somehow proven to be ‘flawed’, then the other immense evidence in support of AGW will also crumble. This, IMHO, explains the singular obsession with Mann and the proxies. Why are the sceptics always an ‘after the fact’ brigade who do little of their own research but instead are constantly nit-picking over published studies in support of AGW?

Finally, the MWP has little relevance over what is happening today. The planet is the year 1400 was not nearly so dominated by a rapacious bipedal tribal primate that had slashed and burned its way across much of the biopshere. Many of the planet’s natural systems had not been so profoundly simplified by humanity at that time; the per capita impact on nature by humans was a tiny fraction of what it is today. So the current warming is occurring against a suite of other human-mediated changes that are reducing the ability of natural systems to sustain themselves and, ultimately, us.

This is why I hold the climate change procrastinators in such contempt: they are willing to gamble on the future by trying to creat doubt over what we know or don’t know about the current warming, and, more importantly, the rate of warming. Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide are higher now than in millions of years; carbon dioxide is a potent greenhouse gas; largely deterministic processes are changing far faster than they shouold be without some kind of external forcing. Jonas and his acolytes may ne content to wait until ‘all the data are in’ before suggesting that we ought to do something, but given the lags in such large scale processes, by then it will be far too late to do anything about it. I prfer to take the stance that, even if there is only a 10-20% chance that the current warming is primarily due to human forcing, then we ought to do everything we can to mitigate it, given the profoundly serious consequences of inaction. I am well aware of the effects that collapsing ecosystems will have on humanity, even if people like Jonas are not.
#63 chek
September 2, 2011

“And what makes you the authority to make that proclamation, Jonas”?

A degree in cake decoration and membership of the junior debating society, perhaps?
All bald assertion and no actual data, that much is perfectly plain.
#64 Wow
September 2, 2011

“A degree in cake decoration … . All bald assertion and no actual data, that much is perfectly plain.”

But with delicious butter icing!
#65 Jonas N
September 2, 2011

Jeff H

I have been making sense the entire time. (I don’t think you have been reading

And I believe you that there may be a 95% ‘consensus’ at certain meetings. But you said something very differently: “95% of the scientific community…” That’s somethong very different.

I’m also quite convinced that among certains disciplines (outside atmospheric physics) the belief in the consensus is overwhelming, yours for instance. And in other relevant disciplines it is the reverse ..

However, that ‘support’ (by numbers) does not constitute any stronger argument the academics signing the Oregon petition. Belief is not an argument, not even when often echoed by the many.

Fossil funding, a leaked memo, huge amounts of money, corporate bussines, automobile, denial lobby etc .. ar all non arguments (but indicate where your ‘conviction’ comes from)

It is amazing how much (large fraction) of your posts read like CAGW-punditry. Maybe you truly don’t understand why the the terms MWP (as warm as today) and ‘unprecedented’ have some difficulty coexisting intellectually.

And as I said, the MWP (and Mann’s attempt to get rid of it) are far more problemativ for the alarmist side, than for the realists.

But thank you for expressing your ‘contempt for the procrastinators’ and their ‘gambling with our future’.

I had already touched upon that implication in #97:

“The question:

‘If politicians just were given sufficiently much money and power, could they then control the climate?’ (In any measurable way)

.. is really a no-brainer!

But much of the debate sounds like people profoundly believe that the answer is ‘Yes, yes!’ ”

Your last paragraph is a good example, and again it is only about utopic politics. And to conclude: Of the possible threats to biodiversity, climate change due to human CO2 emissions is almost last on that list ..
#66 Shub
September 2, 2011

Jeff,
How is presenting the same weak arguments going to help your case? Going by your logic, nobody in the world can say anything about anything and everybody should be ‘publishing’ in a peer-reviewed journal as soon as they have something to say.

I don’t have to publish a rebuttal to MBH 98. Others have. MM2005 directly addressed flaws in the paper. So did McShane and Wyner 2010. So does Burger 2010 (which I helpfully quoted). In fact, as Jonas points out, the entire set of published IPCC AR4 curves disagree with MBH 98. Moberg et al 2005 disagrees with MBH98 w.r.t extent of the medieval warmth. Ljunqvist 2010 shows a substantial medieval warm period, unlike MBH98.

I could indulge in rhetoric as well. I look at the climate consensus with contempt because they are willing to throw away everything based on the flimsiest of evidence.
#67 Michael
September 2, 2011

See Jonas the quibbler – ‘you said community not concensus’. The game anti-science fools love to play….all day.

But doesn’t like to talk about Woods’ whining that some people expose plagiarism…and even appear to think it’s not a good thing!
#68 Jonas N
September 2, 2011

Michael,

I was talking about the 95% figure, and comparing

1) Attendants at a meeting, a conference, and
2) The scientific community

Pointing out that these two are different, and that 95% of one set does not translate to 95% of the other. I’ sorry that wasn’t clear enough
#69 Wow
September 2, 2011

> I don’t have to publish a rebuttal to MBH 98.

SOMEONE does.

> Others have.

And have been shown wrong. Or is your argument that only the first rebuttal is allowed?

> MM2005 directly addressed flaws in the paper.

Sorry, it got it completely wrong. They used EVEN FEWER proxies and a method that reduced the accuracy even more. MM2005 has been rebutted as being EVEN WORSE than MBH98.

> So did McShane and Wyner 2010.

Who also got it wrong.

> So does Burger 2010 (which I helpfully quoted).

But they got it wrong too (though the rebuttal for that is only on blogs, since it takes time for a paper to go through acceptance).

Your quote was repetition of their paper. Not confirmation of the conclusions.

> In fact, as Jonas points out, the entire set of published IPCC AR4 curves disagree with MBH 98.

But didn’t disagree with the CONCLUSIONS. Just got a slightly different issue.

You see, over here in science, we change according to evidence. Over there with you in denial, you don’t. When once you have a paper that “debunks” a science paper, it is forever DEBUNKED.

No progression at all.

> Moberg et al 2005 disagrees with MBH98 w.r.t extent of the medieval warmth.

But agrees that the conclusions were correct: the recent (at that time) period was warmer than the MWP. And it’s only gotten warmer.

> I could indulge in rhetoric as well.

You just did.
#70 Wow
September 2, 2011

> Ljunqvist 2010 shows a substantial medieval warm period, unlike MBH98.

And Lundquist is right whilst ALL THE OTHER PAPERS are wrong for what reason?

Wishful thinking?
#71 chek
September 2, 2011

“MM2005 directly addressed flaws in the paper. So did McShane and Wyner 2010″.

Well MM2005 only succeeded in getting published in E&E and basically pleased McIntyres fans. It made zero impact in scientific circles. And M&S2010 showed how out of their depth statisticians were who hadn’t a clue about the science. Again, zero impact on the science. Life must be one long disappointment after another for your ilk.

I admit I’ve never heard of Burger2010, I presume that’s the latest great white hope of the denialist cause. In which case I’m not holding my breath.

As for yout not understanding what the ‘spaghetti graph’ as you call it depicts, words fail me.
#72 Wow
September 2, 2011

> 1) Attendants at a meeting, a conference, and

> 2) The scientific community

Yup, they’re different all right.

95 (actually 97%) of scientists who could be expected to know agree AGW is correct and the IPCC conclusions broadly in accord with reality.

YOU want to be in the 1% that disagree.

Apparently, in your world, you ask your plumber about the computer on the fritz and the hairdresser about surgery on your heart…
#73 JMurphy
September 2, 2011

I get the impression that the lives of some people would be very much emptier and less fulfilling if they had to let go of MBH98 AND move into the 21st Century…
#74 Jonas N
September 2, 2011

This is not a global reconstruction, but ice core from centra Greenland (Grrenland Ice Core roject GRIP) and shows temperatures (there) for 50.000 years. Look especially at Figure 3.

These are actual temperatures measured down through a 3000 m borehole, to determine historic temperatures. Other similar recontructions exist. And the MWP-skeptics have somewhat feebly argued that Greenland is very local. And that the warm spells there most likely only heated an additional group of trees in England (H.Lamb) and som more local Eurpean and NH places/proxies.

Well, that’s a hypothesis isn’t it? And it is consistent with MBH98. Applying som Bayesian statistics, callibrating it whith TAR-data, it can probably be elevated to science (even nature?)

PS There was some irony in the above, but not all of it, I shoud add in case that was too subtle.
#75 Wow
September 2, 2011

> This is not a global reconstruction, but ice core from centra Greenland

1) It’s “central”. Please try to show SOME level of actual intelligence.

2) It has nothing to do with Rick Perry or Peter Wood.

Thank you for your time, but take it to someone who cares.
#76 Jonas N
September 2, 2011

Wow – I would expect that about 100% of those by the climate-orthodoxy acceptad as climate scientists agree, especially with their softball defintion of AGW. That some actually did not was a bit surprising.

Now, there are more scientific disciplines around climate science than defined by that narrow selection mentioned above.

But appeals to authority or consensus are still not science. And only a small fraction of the ‘approved’ climate scientist actually work with understanding the physics of how or climate works, and what controls and infuences it.
#77 Wow
September 2, 2011

Still nothing about Rick Perry and Peter Wood?

Take it to somewhere that cares.
#78 Wow
September 2, 2011

As to the:

> consensus are still not science.

The experiments people took of, for example, the photoelectric effect CAUSED A CONSENSUS that light was of particulate nature.

As with so much bollocks you’re spouting, it’s pointless dribble from an incontinent imbecile. Take it to some place that cares.
#79 Eli Rabett
September 2, 2011

JMurphy, perhaps you would enjoy this comment
#80 Chris O'Neill
September 2, 2011

The IPCC RA4 presents a spahetti-graph, wherein each of the presented curves constitutes a ‘rebuttal’.
Because the thing is: They all purport to respresent the same metric, a global (or NH) mean temperature. And they don’t coincide. Not even their error bars overlap.

This is just garbage. The error bars in MBH99 at 1000 AD are nearly ±0.5 deg C. I don’t know off-hand but I wouldn’t expect the other reconstructions to be much better. So as long as the reconstructions are all within a 1 deg C band (and they are) then their error bands overlap. But what would we expect from a liar other than garbage.
#81 Jonas N
September 2, 2011

Chris O’Neill All error bars do not overlap everywhere.

Further, those errorbars do not pertain to the real temperatures back then, mor tho the data noise and the method treating them. Otherwise, one could take all these reconstructions and see where they (and their error bars) actually overlap and create a much narrower reconstructs, that would be (!) more certain in its accuacy (that is, if each one of them truly were a solid, and correctly constructed attempt at the GMT.

PS You sound like you’re losing it, a bit like Wow, Bernard, chek and the others.
#82 chek
September 2, 2011

Jonas: “You sound like you’re losing it”

What is it with deniers and projection?
#83 Shub
September 2, 2011

chek

MM2005 is published in Geophysical Review Letters. It is a publication of the American Geophysical Union.
#84 Wow
September 2, 2011

> Further, those errorbars do not pertain to the real temperatures back then

Still nothing to do with Rick Perry and Peter Wood.

Try asking someone that cares.
#85 Wow
September 2, 2011

> MM2005 is published in Geophysical Review Letters

And MBH was printed in Nature.

If where a paper is published is proof of veracity, you lose.
#86 Shub
September 2, 2011

Wow,

Usually, when I post quoting someone’s name, I am trying to respond to that person.

chek, above, claimed that MM2005 is published in Energy and Environment. That was, obviously, wrong.
#87 Jeff Harvey
September 2, 2011

*And only a small fraction of the ‘approved’ climate scientist [sic] actually work with understanding the physics of how or climate works, and what controls and infuences [sic] it*

So what Jonas is saying is that humans should keep messing with the atmosphere, clear-cutting forests, draining wetlands, polluting waterways et al. until “all the data are in”.

By then our species will be virtually extinct. Only an accredited moron could make such a fatuous remark as our resident troll.

Re: Mann et al. (1998): 747 citations. Mann et al. (1999): 708 citations. McMcK 2005: 35 citations (WoS). This should explain to all and sundry whose study is more respected in the peer-reviewed literature. Heck, I have a paper on parasitoid development in 2005 with 47 citations on WoS; in such an important field as climate science it shows that the proxies of the denialists are being largely ignored. Why is this? Its because the vast majority of the scientific community support the work of Mann and disparage that of the right wing think tank twins. It is that simple.

I have repeatedly asked Jonas how many conferences and workshops he’s attended where he could meet scientists and discuss climate change. There are lots of them held every year in academic institutions all over the world. I ditto the question for Shub. Hmm, now lemme guess the answer to this for the both of them… Nil? Nix? Zilch? Am I correct? So how the hell does Jonas have any idea what the ratio is of scientists in relevant fields who support the broad consensus of AGW against those who don’t? A: he doesn’t. He’s guessing on the basis of comments on blogs where he gleans most of his ‘ideas’.

Shub can scrape up three studies that question the proxies of Mann et al and many others. Three dammit! Oh my. Against the vast support for Mann and his work we have three studies! And I’ll bet, aside from the think tank twins that the others do not necessarily dispute the human fingerprint over the current warming. You see, the denialati are experts at cherry picking quotes and results to suit their agenda, whilst, as John Abraham showed quite elegantly in his devastating rebutal of Monckton last year, they rarely ask the scientists doing the research *what they actually think*.

And to repeat, why all the attention on Mann’s proxies? They constitute a small fraction of the evidence in favor of human-mediated warming.
#88 chek
September 2, 2011

Shub: “MM2005 is published in Geophysical Review Letters. It is a publication of the American Geophysical Union”.

Indeed it was, my mistake.
Though the point still stands that it made zero scientific impact.

Perhaps one day in the far, far distant future, Steve’n'Ross might realise that science is done by conceiving and achieving, not carping from the sidelines, handicapped by misconceptions about a science that’s misunderstood because it wasn’t studied, and thinking that clueless number crunching makes up for it.

You are however edging ever so slightly closer to being on topic about Peter Wood and his elastic opinion, unencumbered by trifles like academic or personal integrity, regarding the Wegman scandal.
#89 Wow
September 2, 2011

> Usually, when I post quoting someone’s name, I am trying to respond to that person.

And?

So what?

Now, as to your “evidence”, the MBH98 paper is more accurate than your MM2005 paper.

Neither of which have anything to do with the topic.

You can post over at the open thread 31.

You know, obeying YOUR “principle” of only responding to the topic. In your case, the person you were addressing, in this case, the topic of Perry and Wood.

If you cannot find yourself able to stay on topic, please refrain from the hypocritical stance you have put yourself in for dogmatic reasons of self-deception and denial.
#90 Shub
September 2, 2011

Jeff,
Did you even read the passages I quoted from Burger 2010?

You cannot say that you don’t have to deal with the critique that is presented in that paper, by stating that Mann’s 1998 paper has been cited many times.

Don’t you think that weakens your argument further?
#91 Wow
September 2, 2011

Shrub, take it to where we care.

There’s an Open Thread where you can wibble your insanities as long as anyone can be bothered to read them.

Go use the facilities provided and stop throwing your trash in the public spaces set aside for other purposes.
#92 Michael
September 2, 2011

Shub,

Did you? Burger isn’t an analyis of MBH 98.

More to the point – Why does Wood attack the exposurer of plagiarism and not those who commit it?
#93 Chris O'Neill
September 2, 2011

All error bars do not overlap everywhere.

I don’t take a liar’s word for it.
#94 Bernard J.
September 2, 2011

There’s a lot of chatter already on WTFUWT. They can’t accept that their beloved ‘paper’ is actually fit only to wipe an arse.

I’m curious to see if I will be permitted past moderation:

>
Bernard J. says:

>
Your comment is awaiting moderation.

>[September 2, 2011 at 10:08 am](http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/09/02/breaking-editor-in-chief-of-remote-sensing-resigns-over-spencer-braswell-paper/#comment-734825)

>Here’s an idea – Spencer & Braswell 2011 was and remains crap, and Wagner is calling it.

>Ockahms razor gentleman. It just happens to cut you the wrong way.
#95 Bernard J.
September 2, 2011

[Oops](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/08/rick_perry_peter_wood_and_the.php#comment-5032477), [wrong thread](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/09/editor_of_remote_sensing_agree.php#comment-5032494).
#96 Jonas N
September 2, 2011

Jeff H

More name calling? Making up more nonsense-projections? Citation counting? And how exactly do citations eradicate the MWP? And that your consensus-yelling crowd is ignoring M&M or non-dendro reconstructions? What exactly is that supposed to prove?

And once more you try to equate ‘the scientific comunity’ to an IPCC-adhering self-defined subset of folks, many of which with poor background in physics and other hard sciences. Unfamiliar with how the scientific method works.

Sorry, Jeff H, you presented yourself as senior, and Bernard J as a scientis. But you sound more and more just like Chek and the other shouters.

And I see very little arguments on the topic here, but a lot of armwaiving about that everyone should accept the same things your appointed experts tell. Or more precisely what you think they are telling.
#97 Martin Vermeer
September 2, 2011

But the beef still is: How can one (the IPCC) acertain that the models actually do capture everything relevant, and thereby explain what is observed with such high certainty?

Moving the goal posts, Jonas? You asked how that figure of 90% was obtained in the IPCC report Ch.9 and its references. We (Marco and I) pointed you to information that answers that question. Even if you refuse to believe what we pointed you to, you should acknowledge that it exists, and that your original question was answered.
#98 Jonas N
September 2, 2011

Martin V

I am definitely not moving any goalposts. You are right that the paper mentions 90%, but not in respect to what I have been looking for. As I said, I’ve read it once. As far as I can see it adresses a different question: If the models can reproduce the record. But it uses the very models it tries to evaluate for that purpose, and additionaly needs Bayesian statistics to arrive at the high levels of 90% (wrt to the hindsights).

Both are departures from the proper way to acertain that the modeled hypothesis indeed also has captured the true explanation, the actual mechanisms that control climate and its fluctuations.

Because I don’t have a problem with what they are actually stating: That running the models in hindcast and adding your own a priori estimate what the answers should really be, that they this way can formally present a calculation that recreates the history, and maybe asigne those confidence levels if one adds one’s own conviction (Bayesian bolstering) to it.

But the IPCC AR4 certainly is much bolder than that.

No, the beef is that it not even addresses the possibilty that other factors than the modeled ones may have significance.

Because if the models really had got it right, they could redo that affirmation for every period, not only the presented few decades in the 1900:s.

I’ll say this, Martin V, if that reference were all that IPCC based their promonent claim on, I feel pretty safe in my original assessment. And no, Marco didn’t point anything out. He had never seen that or read it (there I am quite ‘confident’

I will get back with a better, more thorough answer, as I said. And it might take a few days, since this is not funded by fossil mega bucks But I’ll expect a little more mature behavior than from Chris O’Neill, who also had to wait a few days, but then only could retort with ‘liar, liar’ (Which makes him one, if one would take his definition seriously)
#99 Michael
September 2, 2011

Oh yeah, we have goal posts moving.

It was that there was no overlap in error bars, now it’s just they don’t overlap everywhere.

FFS.
#100 Andy S
September 3, 2011

As has been pointed out repeatedly and each time been meticulously avoided by Jonas N: Figure 9.9.
“Estimated contribution from greenhouse gas (red), other anthropogenic green) and natural (blue) components to observed global mean surface temperature changes, based on ‘optimal’ detection analyses (Appendix 9.A).”

PS! Michael: the error bars don’t even have to overlap all the time, as they don’t represent a 100% confidence.

But Jonas N is just playing games and wasting your time.