More misinformation from junkscience.com

Just in case you thought Milloy was some harmless gadfly, here's a history of most of his ties back to tobacco before he became an outsourced employee of Exxon.

http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/journals/esthag-w/2005/may/business/pt_ju…

One question:

Does anyone have a source for the temperature development from 2000-2004? It seems that all of the graphs that are out and about only go up to year 2000. Does it take more than 4 years to compile data? If not, where's the graphs showing the temperatures for the years 2001-2004?

Would appreciate if anyone has a link to something that shows this.

[Instrumental Temperature Record](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Instrumental_Temperature_Record.png)

will eventually lead you to

http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/ftpdata/tavegl2v.dat

One has to give it to the junkscience crew. It is physically impossible to reproduce a GCM run, unless you use:
identical compilers;
identical number truncations (numerical accuracy);
identical computers;
identical disks.

Of course, the differences are noise, but this won't stop an attempted lynching of anyone naive enough to cooperate.

David

David Jones,
You only need the same precision in the data set to replicate the model. Differing compilers, disks, and computers may require adjustments (ensuring same number of bytes to parameters, perhaps endians?), but is not "physically impossible".

But I'm not sure how this pertains because I thought that Man et al 2001 had been peer reviewed which I assume would means repeating the experiment by someone else. Thus the JunkScience challenge is met by the TAR 2001 link.

1. I thought that Mann et al 2001 had been peer reviewed which I assume would mean repeating the experiment by someone else.

No one has time for that. There's not enough time in the day or funding to repeat every experiment. In any field.

This is why the constructed narrative about Mann being badbadbad is so appealing: folks think that there are people sitting around, twiddling their thumbs waiting for an experiment to come across their desk to duplicate, see, and no one duplicated his experiment, so it must be faulty...why, he's being uncooperative to someone trying to besmirch his name, so all of climate science is corrupt!

2. David is correct - a GCM runs on a huge computer, usu. a supercomputer or maybe a series. Precision in dataset is important, but it is far more complicated than 'just' needing precision in dataset and a few tweaks. It's a big deal, which is why there's an entire website dedicated to GCM runs.

Best,

D

Using the data that I was linked to, I recreated the global mean temperature graph in Excel. I used only the annual means. The resultant graph shows a steady increase from 1915-1945, followed by stasis from 1945-1979, then a steady increase from 1979-2005.

Now with Mann et al 2001, is there a possibility that they got their numbers wrong? That they toyed with the data? Or is that simply impossible to fathom? When did Mann et al start compiling this project? Why didn't they care to figure this stuff out, oh, I don't know, in 1990 for instance?

Well, it seems that anthropogenic global warming came to be an IPCC-driven issue beginning in 1995. Kyoto was in what, 1997? 1999? Mann et al come up with the cornerstone in the Kyoto/IPCC agenda a couple years later and prompt the pushers to announce that they have "proof" of what they are saying. Marvelous set of events, indeed.

Now is Mann et al's project so timeconsuming to recreate? If so, what about those two Canadians who did so? Why weren't they willing to give up the data right away? Isn't science about consistency and being able to retest things?

You'd think that if there's anything climatologists should be doing, it would be to retest and make sure that Mann et al got it right. So why aren't they?

With that said, I have been charting up the temperature development here in the city I live since 1957. The max and min temperatures are not even close to resembling the global mean temperature graphs I recreated with the data from the link on this page.

If it is global warming, shouldn't it be happening... globally? Or are there just certain places getting warmer? The poles?

I heard some guy at NASA today say that the amount of ice on the North Pole is now as low as it was 400 years ago. What caused it to be so low 400 years ago? Anthropogenic global warming?

I have a lot of questions, but seemingly few answers to show for them.

Go read the papers Seixon. The instrumental record is taken as a given in Mann, Brandley and Hughes and used to calibrate the proxy records. It is an input, not an output.

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/recons.html

BTW the original paper was published in 1998 not 2001. There was a follow-up in 1999. Mann, with other collaborators has continued to push the proxy recreations back in time. The last one goes to the year dot (with Jones).

Seixon:

You could try to post some concise questions and I (and I am sure others) would be willing to review them and make some comments. But most of what you ask in your post has been gone over on Deltoid before.

I will just pick up on one point you have made: that of the temperatures on your home city. This can be put in terms of the Lancet study. What you did was survey the household where you happen to be at the time and then claim that this doesn't look like the average of Iraq.

Now with Mann et al 2001, is there a possibility that they got their numbers wrong? That they toyed with the data? Or is that simply impossible to fathom? When did Mann et al start compiling this project? Why didn't they care to figure this stuff out, oh, I don't know, in 1990 for instance?

sigh...

I'm beginning to see now.

If so, what about those two Canadians who did so? Why weren't they willing to give up the data right away?

It was there, the Canadians (sorry, John) didn't know what to do with it. When they acted like a-holes, they got shut out. Now one of them has a character assassination site and a cottage industry of playing the aggreived questioner.

You'd think that if there's anything climatologists should be doing, it would be to retest and make sure that Mann et al got it right. So why aren't they?

Because they are busy doing their own work, moving the science forward, not looking at old papers. The retest comes from looking at it from different angles, like any discipline. You don't see someone going back and making a cottage industry of Einstein's calcs. You see folks using gravitational lensing to see if he's right.

Why do you fall for these constructed narratives anyway?

If it is global warming, shouldn't it be happening globally? Or are there just certain places getting warmer? The poles?

Ahhh...now we see.

No, yes, yes north.

What caused it to be so low 400 years ago? Anthropogenic global warming?

Nooooo. See how easy it is to be a septic? Ask a few questions and away you go. You don't have to provide answers, just make doubt look reasonable.

I don't know the answer (see, it's hard), but it could be measurement span, a cycle such as NAO or AO, but the answer is at your library. Or John might know if he's around.

HTH,

D

Ummmm, how did MBH get dragged into a post on GCMs? Was it Crichton's testimony yesterday? M&M and models were the only thing he talked about.

Seixon,
This is the state of the CGR/GCR theory competing with anthropogenic warming.

My personal take is that the only unkown left about global warming is the sun's direct impact beyond insolation. If the recent increase in solar output has gone on for longer than we've been able to measure, and the increase is multiplied by changes in cloud cover, this could account for as much or more of observed warming than antropogenic gases. This beats around the idea pretty well and leaves it up in the air.

I meant "this could account for as much or more of HALF observed warming from antropogenic gases."

Seixon,

A partial answer to your question about the variability of global warming can be found here:

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn8071

>Climate models predict that global warming will be amplified in the Arctic. This is because as white ice is replaced by dark ocean, the sea surface will absorb more of the sun's radiation and reflect less back into space.

But of course this is just more damnable lies from the dirty liberals populating the science press. You should obviously wait until its confirmed by more reliable and impartial sources such as Exxon and the Bush White House.

All: MM have statistically shown beyond a shadow of a doubt that dendroclimatic indicators cannot be relied on as such. (as of the present time/wrt ring widths/ring density/) This should not be news to anybody that has looked through their papers, and comments.

There seems to be only 2 reliable arguments about to be expressed wrt to their GRL 2005 paper. WA is not among them.

One, the Huybers comment (that Eli directed me to from the belated QS blog, thanks again) recognized a bias in one scaling issue, yet produced a graph in the same paper with admitted scaling problem! ( I'm sure climateaudit.com has pointed this out, so I'm probably copycat'ing that argument )

CC are you sure:

> MM have statistically shown beyond a shadow of a doubt that dendroclimatic indicators cannot be relied on as such.

goes for all dendroclimatic indicators? (let alone for the sets that MM claim problems with)

Eli: I was *very* sure when I was smashed up drunk and posted that. :) I'll probably have to retract that, but I will try to elaborate a bit in a few hours.

Eli: Please allow me to retract that for now, (it was a pretty dumb statement) and try to get back to elaborating on what I think I *should* have posted a bit later. I imagine it will take quite some time.

jet: "Seixon, This is the state of the CGR/GCR theory competing with anthropogenic warming" This commentary is on a very small sample of the actual research in the area. A lot of it is only theoretical/modelling however. It's a shame the CLOUD project proposal to CERN never received funding (as far as I'm aware of), as there could have been actual experimental evidence to verify or cast doubt on the ideas. IMO the hypothetical physical arguments seem reasonable, but properly done experiments would really be the only way to tell.

If I may suggest, cs, that you visit a library to do your background, rather than someone's character assassination website. That site's author is not up to speed on the issue. Better yet would be to read the original work by the guys he talks with to get up to speed.

Best,

D

Seixon,

as a response to your first comment in this thread :

http://www.astr.ucl.ac.be/index.php?page=lefebvre%23Climate

Bananus

Dano: Certainly. But which character assassination website are you referring to, and why would you want to limit free inquiry?

If somebody is not 'up to speed' on an issue, why not inform them of it? They will probably thank you.

John Cross,

Ehm, isn't the basis of global warming that it is... GLOBAL? How does that compare to measuring something in a household in Iraq? So mortality in a single household in Iraq vs. the mortality rate in Iraq is the same as the relationship between the temperature in my city and the idea of global warming?

How in the world do you get off making such a ridiculous comparison?

Ian,

What you quoted says that the effect will be amplified in the Arctic, not that the rest of the world will not see the effect at all. Then your typical "you must be a Bush-humping oil-monger" smear. Classy.

The evil liberal media here in Norway had a panel about extreme weather and global warming a few weeks ago. The main pushers of global warming, and I kid you not, two biologists. There were no climatologists on the panel. One of those biologists is the director of a climatology center here in Norway called Cicero.

The host of the show said they had tried getting climatologists to come on the program, but none of the ones sought wanted to do it. They feared going on the program because they might lose their job or get their funding cut off. The director of the climatology center said that was unheard of (of course) and that he never would do such a thing.

Now I hear that CERN turned down a project to study the effect of cloud cover on global warming. Gee.

This director of Cicero, by the way, was on NRK, Norway's largest and state-owned TV station, for the news on August 29. Of course, this coincided with the day Katrina hit New Orleans. The news anchor and him had what I will say was a quite comical exchange that almost seemed scripted. For my take on that, read here.

Summary: he claimed that hurricanes were happening more frequently and were getting more intense, and to boot, that almost all scientists believed that global warming was the cause of this.

Or as the news anchor so aptly set up for him, "and what is the cause of this again?"

This was the big cue for "well, it's global warming silly".

Needless to say that all research shows no clear trend in the frequency of hurricanes, and whether their strength is increasing is debatable. That didn't stop mr. biology though, from claiming otherwise.

And then being on TV2, Norway's 2nd largest channel, for that panel on extreme weather and global warming a few weeks later to repeat the same claims.

And then being cited on the news to support the vision that global warming is behind everything, again just a week ago.

He is the go-to guy for this here in Norway by the media, even though he isn't even a climatologist.

Do you wonder why I'm skeptical?

1. cs:

But which character assassination website are you referring to, and why would you want to limit free inquiry?

There's more than one? Boy, I've got to get my desk cleared. And I said, wrote, implied, stated, inferred nothing about limiting inquiry - I merely suggested.

2. Seixon:

Ehm, isn't the basis of global warming that it is GLOBAL?

No.

Best,

D

Seixon:

If you truly believe that global warming means that all places in the globe will warm equally then I am not surprised that you didn't understand my Iraq analogy.

Regards,

John Cross

Mr. Cross,

Where did I say I assumed they would warm equally? I'm just surprised the "global" warming doesn't seem to have affected the city I live in at all. The temperatures are on par with what they were back in 1955. So if only some parts of the world are warming, should it be called global warming?

Dano,

So global warming isn't global? Wow, I learn new things each day.

Seixon:

Well, perhaps I can use my Iraq analogy again. I am not sure of your stand, but say you accept that there were 8,000 excess deaths (the lower number from the survey). Also, assume that there are 5,000,000 households in Iraq, does this mean that every household will have 0.0016 excess deaths?

Or is it more likely that some have 1 excess death, some have 2, some have 0 and some may even have fewer deaths than before (i.e. a negative excess deaths number).

By the way, where in Norway do you live (if you don't want to give me the city name, you can give me a lat and long within 100 km of your location). I am interested in seeing what the GHCN data shows for your location.

Regards,
John

So global warming isn't global? Wow, I learn new things each day.

Yes you do, Seixon.

Best,

D

Dano, thanks much for that link. Any idea what's going on with the area immediately to the east of the Caspian?

Too bad there's not one chart on stats to illustrate Seixon's lack of knowledge on that subject...

Don't know what's going on, Steve. I'd say it's related to the ecological destruction going on with the salinization of the soil, but that would change the albedo and cool the environs...if I get some time this week I'll check ISI and see what I find.

Best,

D

This is essentially a guess on my part but here goes: the Caspian - and even more the Aral - have been drying up for the past several decades.

As well as changes in albedo, there's a loss of thermal inertia. It takes a lot of energy to raise the temperature of water and a large body of water typically moderates the temperature of the surrounding land.

The loss of water is probably making the climate more variable.