Jim Motavalli has an interesting article about Inhofe's attack on the Associated Press:
Borenstein, through his membership in the Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ) and elsewhere, has a long history of arguing passionately for fair and balanced reporting. Perry Beeman, environmental reporter at the Des Moines Register and president of SEJ, comments: "My understanding is that Seth Borenstein gave more than 100 prominent global warming scientists the opportunity to comment on Gore's movie. That sample included at least seven that many would consider contrarian because they have not signed on to the concept that global warming is occurring. None of those seven had seen the movie or read the book, and so didn't comment."
Beeman added, "Seth Borenstein is one of the most respected and meticulous of the reporters covering environmental issues. His work not only has won many awards, but has also served as a model for reporters in this industry. Mr. Borenstein simply does not do stories without file cabinets full of carefully kept notes and recordings of well-thought out interviews, or in this case a well-crafted tool that gave these scientists an opportunity to comment. It's unusual, to say the least, for a Senate committee to comment on the work of an individual reporter. And I'm not sure what to make of that."
(Hat tip: Ross Gelbspan.)
To borrow the words of a (in)famous personality, "They are in their last throes" (where "they" refers to the "AGW deniers" in this case).
Or is it "throws"?, since they seem to be throwing lots of stuff -- temper tantrums and insults at Gore, Borenstein and those who have given the science in his movie a thumbs up.
Just watched the trailer of the movie for now. Used http://www.ghcc.msfc.nasa.gov/temperature/ to look up temperature time series in Patagonia and Kilimanjaro region mentioned in the trailer.
See for yourself.
So of the 19 that commented, none were "skeptics". Am I reading that right?
Why didn't they contact nanny_govt_sucks? I'm outraged.
Ah, Wolfgang, that url is what they call expired. It is based on a faulty analysis of satellite data. Why Marshall keeps it open is another question you will have to put to them. Meanwhile you might try another nasa site http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/ for the surface temps. They have station by station records
Pink Punko asks: "Why didn't they contact nannygovtsucks? I'm outraged."
They tried but could not find a listing in the phone book for "Nanny Govtsucks" or "N. Anny Govtsucks" or even "Nannygov T. Sucks".
Perhaps there is another parsing that they missed?
If you know of one, please notify the people here so that they might succeed in their attempt to notify Mr. (or is it Ms?) Govtsucks (or is it "Sucks"?)
Then again, perhaps Nanny (or is it N. Anny?) does not live in the US.
This task may turn out to be more difficult than finding a piece of hay in needlestack.
Ironic... I wasn't familiar with Motavilli's environmental writings; I know him from his auto enthusiast writings. e.g. http://www.previewct.com/gbase/News/content.html?oid=oid:124539 A kindred spirit, to be sure; in contrast to the "They want us all to drive tinfoil deathtraps that won't go over 10 mph" rightwing maunderings.
@Eli Rabbet
Well my link was pure MSU temperature, yours was meteo station data.
True, there was a slight sat correction last year but that accounted for .13K globally, say .3 in the tropics? Hardly enough to melt down patagonian snow cover like that, given the natural variations.
>http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=298
The reason for NASA still maintaining the tool might indeed be that deviations are not very substantial - it's all about anomalies at last and the anomalies reference period was biased as well as the later data was.
>Just watched the trailer of the movie for now. Used http://www.ghcc.msfc.nasa.gov/temperature/ to look up temperature time series in Patagonia and Kilimanjaro region mentioned in the trailer.
These data are all out of date. The corrected values shown in the paper by Mears and Wentz (2005)show 0.1 to 0.2C of warming/decade over Kilimanjaro and little change of Patagonia. 0.1 to 0.2C/decade will translate into about a 25m increase in equilibrium lines (but this doesn't really matter much now as the glacier at all elevations is in negative mass balance and doomed). It is very probable that ice-altitude feedbacks are a substantial influence on what is now going on in Patagonia where previous melt has so lowered the ice surface that it experiences warmer temperatures. This region is climatically highly variables, so can be expected to see warmer and colder decades, despite the pervasive global warming trend.
There is a lot of confusion among the sceptics about Kilimanjaro. Not only are the temperatures warming but also the rainfall has decreased. Both factors have contributed to the melt, as has albedo-melt feedbacks. Of course, many sceptics have difficulty with the concept that more than one variables might be causing a change. The authors of the Nature 2004 study certainly do not agree with the interpretation placed on their paper that somehow deforestation is to blame.. http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2005/02/06/checking_cri…
It would appear that this scientific insite is simple a recycling of the nonesense in State of Fear.
David
Sorry Wolfgang, that one left when the "hopefully" final corrections were made to Spencer and Christy's MSU reconstructions.
See for example
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/08/et-tu-lt/
http://tinyurl.com/g2quv
and the referenced papers and the discussion. For a layman's (although a very skilled one) introduction to the controversy
http://www.scottchurchimages.com/enviro/docs/MSU-Troposphere-Review01.p…
http://tinyurl.com/jo5qv
As David said, Spencer and Christy at UAH now show an increase of 0.086 to 0.12 deg/decade. The RSS has a trend ~0.19 deg/decade. Both are within the range of the models for the "lower"-trop.
So, now perhaps you have an opinion as to why Marshall (where Spencer and Christy worked, and still collaborate) keeps this out of date and misleading page up.
Eli
Your link: http://www.scottchurchimages.com/enviro/docs/MSU-Troposphere-Review01.p…
"Introduction:
There is general agreement among the world's climate scientists that the Earth's global average
surface-air temperature is now increasing at rates that are without precedent during the last 1000 years,..."
I stopped reading right there. There is no general agreement. Hasn't he heard of medieval warm period?
Mark, did you, perchance notice that the sentence said INCREASING AT RATES without precident. Evidently your eyes shortcircuited. Even if you believe that the absolute global temperature during the medievel warm period was ~the same as today (and there is reasonable evidence to indicate that it was not), THE RATE OF INCREASE IS WITHOUT A DOUBT HIGHER TODAY.
Literacy, try it.
Mark,
read those words carefully and you will note that they do not contradict the existence of a Medieval warm period. It is true that there is agreement that the rate of increase is unprecedent. Whether the Medieval warm period was warmer of cooler than the present is a question which can only be answered with probabilities, and the current consensus is that it was very probably cooler. Of course, this doesn't really matter as the globe is now warming so fast that it will soon be the warmest it has been for 100,000+ of years, and by centuries end the warmest in millions of year.
If you look around, there is only one "peer reviewed" near-global temperature reconstruction which contradicts this fact which is that by M&M (they actually redefined the Medieval Warm period to coincide with the start of the little ice age, a fact conventiently lost by their "fans"). It is known that these spurious results are driven by the miss application of the Mann EOF filtering and M&M are know on the record that their paper did not provide an alternative reconstruction. Suggest you go away and ask yourself why one of the sceptics doesn't go away and do a global paleo reconstruction "correctly".... (hint, they don't like the answer).
David
Not sure about how biased that statement is but I will keep on investigating. Next step is WGMS...
Wolfgang Flamme, the interpretation you place on your observations is wrong. Overall there has been a massive deglaciation through Patagonia over the 20th century. This doesn't mean that all glaciers contract at all times; for a start some in this region have a habit of surging (an effect which is enhanced by a warmer climate).
Our nearest neighbour in New Zealand has similar observations. The glacial mass there has declined by 25% since 1950 which is an astonishing rate of deglaciation, but a number of small steep glaciers (notably the Fox and Franz Jozef) have expanded at times. No prizes for guess which the hard core sceptic publicise.
David
Sorry guys.. First sentence above should read..
The interpretation placed on these observations is wrong.
Eli David
There is no instrumental record of the rate of increase in temperature to achieve the actual temperatures for the Medieval Warm Period, so no-one "knows".
There are instrumental records for temperature for Central England from about 1660 http://www.climate2003.com/images/series10.png.
They do not show an unprecented actual temperature, or that any rate of increase that is unprecendented, even for that shorter timescale.
Oops link shouldn't have full stop at the end, hopefully this one works. http://www.climate2003.com/images/series10.png
Wolfgang: looks like the usual cherrypicking. [Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retreat_of_glaciers_since_1850):
>The Southern Patagonia Ice Sheet has exhibited a general trend of retreat on 42 glaciers, while four glaciers were in equilibrium and two advanced during the years between 1944 and 1986. The largest retreat was on Glacier O'Higgins, which during the period 1896-1995 retreated 14.6 km (9 miles). The Perito Moreno Glacier is 30 km (18 mile) long and is a major outflow glacier of the Patagonian ice sheet, as well as the most visited glacier in Patagonia. Perito Moreno Glacier is presently in equilibrium, but has undergone frequent oscillations in the period 1947-96, with a net gain of 4.1 km (2.5 miles). This glacier has advanced since 1947, and has been essentially stable since 1992. Perito Moreno Glacier is one of three glaciers in Patagonia known to have advanced, compared to several hundred others in retreat.(Skvarca and Naruse)(Cassasa)
Now compare and contrast:
http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Climate/Climate_Science/EarthsSurf…
Is it any wonder that people are skeptical?
Just to add to the discussion about Patagonian glaciers (which I've been researching since 1991). Only a handful have positive mass balances, and these are calving glaciers. Calving obscures the glacier/climate signal to the extent that water depth and pinning points play as important a role in driving glacier behaviour as climate. The sceptics don't understand this but continue to cherry-pick these glaciers to make their "case".
"Only a handful have positive mass balances, and these are calving glaciers. Calving obscures the glacier/climate signal to the extent that water depth and pinning points play as important a role in driving glacier behaviour as climate. The sceptics don't understand this but continue to cherry-pick these glaciers to make their "case"."
Indeed. The latest meme circulating the Parrots of Denial seems to be the Hubbard Glacier. Regarding which I quote:
"Hubbard Glacier is the largest tidewater glacier on the North American continent. It has been thickening and advancing toward the Gulf of Alaska since it was first mapped by the International Boundary Commission in 1895 (Davidson, 1903). This is in stark contrast with most glaciers, which have thinned and retreated during the last century. This atypical behavior is an important example of the calving glacier cycle in which glacier advance and retreat is controlled more by the mechanics of terminus calving than by climate fluctuations."
http://ak.water.usgs.gov/glaciology/hubbard/index.htm
>There is no instrumental record of the rate of increase in temperature to achieve the actual temperatures for the Medieval Warm Period, so no-one "knows".
MarkR there are lots of indicators which correlate very highly with historical temperatures (glacial mass balances, isotopes in corals, ice, bore hole temperatures, written records, pollen types, the list goes on). The scientists who work with these data are well aware of their strengths and weakness, but are comfortable with their use. You might choose to disbelieve the science, and prefer a faith based approach (and that's fine) as long as your actions based on faith don't impact the rest of us who prefer a science based approach.
David
It's my lack of faith that is the difficulty.
Scientists who claim to be sure that there was no medieval warm period, based on convoluted studies of proxies, are flying in the face of proven historical records. This is what makes the rest of their claims in this area, unbelievable.
"The Domesday Book (1085-6) records vineyards in forty-two definite locations.
Interestingly enough only twelve of the Domesday vineyards were attached to monasteries. Most belonged to nobles and were undoubtedly cultivated to provide them with wine for their dining tables and altars.
There were two main areas of monastic viticulture: the coastal areas of the South East, and the area covering Somerset, Gloucestershire, Herefordshire and Worcestershire. Many sources point out that the climate improved for a period of 300 years starting from about the time of the Norman invasion and citing this as a reason why so many vineyards were planted." http://www.englishwineproducers.com/history.htm
" In Roman Britain the weather was warmer than it is now, and by 1086 when the Domesday survey was carried out there were thirty nine vineyards officially recorded in England, although the actual figure may have been much higher .Temperatures began to drop in the second half of the sixteenth century causing a retreat of vine growing from the north and east of Europe."
http://www.infobritain.co.uk/History_Of_Wine_Making_In_Britain.htm
You see, we actually have historical and archaelogical records of viniculture, which chart the rise and fall of temperature.
It's no good saying the Medieval Warm Period, and the Little Ice Age didn't happen because some proxy study says so, because the historical record says those temperature changes did occur.
"It's no good saying the Medieval Warm Period, and the Little Ice Age didn't happen because some proxy study says so, because the historical record says those temperature changes did occur."
Wouldn't the Chinese have noticed it? Let's not be too Eurocentric. In addition, any proxy study outside of the North Atlantic which gave some indication of a Medieval Warm Period might be nice.
Of course, I study neither the Medieval Warm Period nor globalwide temperature proxies for a living, I just read the IPCC reports and "parrot" them. I need to, because so many people who are "skeptical of AGW" ask "skeptical questions" which make it clear that they have not. Nor, apparently, have they read the myriad answers to the same question every time somebody else has asked it previously. Maybe someday, somebody will be able to move the discussion on to the next step, by asking a "skeptical question" regarding the IPCC's longstanding answer to the seemingly everfresh question of "So, what's the deal with the Medieval Warming Period?". To name just example.
"Wouldn't the Chinese have noticed it?"
Yes they would. Do you have any evidence to the contrary, and please don't say proxy based studies, because if they are unreliable for England, why should they be reliable for China?
As far as "parroting", I'm afraid you've admitted that's what you are doing.
And please don't say that the IPCC report represents the"consensus" because it doesn't. Even if it did, the consensus prior to Galileo was that the earth was flat.
Amazingly, MarkR does a better job than I ever could
http://rabett.blogspot.com/2006/07/how-denialists-argue-after-similar.h…
or
http://tinyurl.com/qfbdo
Hi Eli
Why don't you try debating the point that has been made, rather than ones which haven't?
"Even if it did, the consensus prior to Galileo was that the earth was flat."
Nope. Pliny the Elder, Ptolomey and co were plotting global maps in 50BC approx. Y'know, half a millemium before Galileo. And by medieval times, a round earth was the prevailing consensus. And you reckon all those Iberian Penisula eurotrash would have funded Columbus if they thought he was gonna sail off the edge of the world?
I can see Mark R that you have all the makings of a fine young climate change denialist (ClimDen?). Pig ignorant about the very facts you quote that you think make your point.
OK. Even if it did, the consensus prior to Galileo was that the Sun revolved around the Earth.
Now that is out of the way. Do you have any point to make about the actual historical records of climate change in England and the absence of it in the current IPCC model?
Or are you too "Pig ignorant" to address the question?
MarkR, could you provide some explanation as to how an apparently local phenomenon (a warm period in England/Europe) is evidence for a global warm period?
In the absence of such a connection, why should the IPCC consider it relevant?
"As far as "parroting", I'm afraid you've admitted that's what you are doing."
Yes. I am not a working climatologist, as apparently you would portray yourself; at least you apparently feel that you are not "parroting" a question about AGW that you saw somewhere else? You came up with the Medieval Warming Doubt on your own, did you? Like anyone, I have the ability to detect obvious internal logical inconsistencies, and to go back to primary sources and identify misquotes and misrepresentations, but the highly technical field-specific questions such as whether Frump's work on badger fossils is more reliable than Irvington's analysis of owl pellets is beyond me. You feel that your abilities apparently differ. Nevertheless, the date is long since past when uncertainty in such fine grain detail could obscure the overall pointilistic picture.
"Wouldn't the Chinese have noticed it?" "Yes they would. Do you have any evidence to the contrary, and please don't say proxy based studies, because if they are unreliable for England, why should they be reliable for China?"
Well, even as a mere parrot I know that the Chinese have been keeping written historical records of things like this for quite a while now, which somehow never seem to show up in references to climate change based on European records. In fact, it seems that for nearly a couple of decades, based on the following publications, there appear to have been questions about the global applicability of European weather records.
"Here we collect more historical documentary evidence, as shown in table 2. ... In eastern China, there were two warm spells appearing in the late 9th to the late 11th century, and the 13th century. There was no warm climate over western China during the 10th-13th century. The coldness occurring in the 12th century was more significant in western China than in eastern China." (Wang, S. and Gong, D.; Climate in China during the four special periods in Holocene; PNAS 10, #5; May 2000)
"Although there is some agreement between climate change in China and elsewhere, there are also indications that significant lag occurs between the timing and direction of climate change in different regions. This pattern appears different from the warming trend of the past century, which is more uniform in both hemispheres." (Zhang, J. and Crowley, T.; Historical Climate Records in China and Reconstruction of Past Climates; Journal of Climate 2, #8, 1989)
If I may violate your request and resort to climate proxies, we can add this:
"It has frequently been suggested that the period encompassing the ninth to the fourteenth centuries A.D. experienced a climate warmer than that prevailing around the turn of the twentieth century. This epoch has become known as the Medieval Warm Period, since it coincides with the Middle Ages in Europe. In this review a number of lines of evidence are considered, (including climate-sensitive tree rings, documentary sources, and montane glaciers) in order to evaluate whether it is reasonable to conclude that climate in medieval times was, indeed, warmer than the climate of more recent times. Our review indicates that for some areas of the globe (for example, Scandinavia, China, the Sierra Nevada in California, the Canadian Rockies and Tasmania), temperatures, particularly in summer, appear to have been higher during some parts of this period than those that were to prevail until the most recent decades of the twentieth century. These warmer regional episodes were not strongly synchronous. Evidence from other regions (for example, the Southeast United States, southern Europe along the Mediterranean, and parts of South America) indicates that the climate during that time was little different to that of later times, or that warming, if it occurred, was recorded at a later time than has been assumed. Taken together, the available evidence does not support a global Medieval Warm Period, although more support for such a phenomenon could be drawn from high-elevation records than from low-elevation records.
The available data exhibit significant decadal to century scale variability throughout the last millennium. A comparison of 30-year averages for various climate indices places recent decades in a longer term perspective."
(Hughes, M and Diaz, H.; Was there a medieval warm period, and if so, where and when?; Climatic Change 26, #2-3; March 1994)
To sum up what is itself a summary of the whole response to your question, "Medieval warmth appears, in large part, to have been restricted to areas in and neighbouring the North Atlantic." (Climate Change 2001: Working Group I: The Scientific Basis; 2.3.3 Was there a "Little Ice Age" and a "Medieval Warm Period"?) But of course, I'm just parroting something with which you are undoubtedly already quite familiar; although I'm perplexed that in such a case you would come here and ask questions befitting an incurious and somewhat lazy undergrad, when you must have already have good valid critiques of this old answer to an old question.
"Even if it did, the consensus prior to Galileo was that the earth was flat."
Anybody who ever stood on the edge of the Big Water and watched a ship sail **down over the horizon** knew that the earth was not flat.
"OK. Even if it did, the consensus prior to Galileo was that the Sun revolved around the Earth."
Geez. Three for three. You see, the question of whether the sun and planets revolve around the earth in a complicated pattern of epicyclic orbits or the earth and planets revolve around the center of mass of the solar system (which is inside the sun) in simple elliptical orbits, is entirely a matter of different descriptions of the same phenomenon due to differences in Point of View, since both are quite mathematically correct; and since Einstein, of course, we now accept that there is no single correct Point of View favored by the universe. Due to Occam's Razor, however, we prefer to use the simpler description because it allows us to see more easily the theorized simple and consistent model behind the motion, i.e. gravity and Newtonian mechanics. The "sun and planets orbit the earth" model, while having been able to predict the motions of the planets since antiquity, has the problem of not having any good reason why the planets should at various points stop their smooth motion and begin to pirouette in the opposite direction for a while.
I bring this up not to pick your nits, but because it's therefore highly ironic that you should discard the simple, Occam-friendly model:
burning millions of years of fossil carbon in a few decades -> generating a lot of CO2 -> more CO2 in the atmosphere -> more greenhouse effect -> higher temperatures
in favor of a model with the problem of not having any good reason why the above chain of events should not function, in addition to requiring some mysterious Unidentified Other Process to cause the earth to get warmer.
Hi z
Re "although I'm perplexed that in such a case you would come here and ask questions befitting an incurious and somewhat lazy undergrad, when you must have already have good valid critiques of this old answer to an old question."
I think you need to read up a little more.
Here are 15 Chinese scientific papers which refer to the Medieval Warm Period, and Little Ice Age in China.
http://www.co2science.org/scripts/CO2ScienceB2C/subject/l/summaries/lia…
"In an attempt to rewrite climatic history, certain scientists have claimed that the Little Ice Age and Medieval Warm Period were neither global in extent nor strong enough where they did occur to have a discernable influence on mean global air temperature. By doing so, they have made the putative dramatic warming of the latter part of the 20th century appear highly unusual, which they equate with anthropogenic-induced, which they associate with the historical rise in the air's CO2 content, which gives them a pretense to call for huge reductions in the use of fossil fuels, which we believe to be unwarranted. Hence, we continually search the emerging scientific literature for evidence that the Little Ice Age and Medieval Warm Period were truly significant global events. This summary reports what we have learned over the past few years about the Little Ice Age in China."
PS Someone as widely read as you would surely have heard of the expression; "Manners maketh man".
Hi Davis
Re "could you provide some explanation as to how an apparently local phenomenon (a warm period in England/Europe) is evidence for a global warm period?"
Will the post above do?
You see it was only an "apparently local phenomena" to those who wanted to see it that way.
MarkR, in regards to this load of garbage:
"And please don't say that the IPCC report represents the 'consensus' because it doesn't. Even if it did, the consensus prior to Galileo was that the earth was flat."
This is absolutely false. Look at Naomi Oreskes' study which analysed 928 peer-reviewed studies from several journals and found zero which claimed climate change is not happening or that human activites is not the cause. This sounds like consensus to me, that 100% of all 928 studies published supported the fact that global warming is occurring and that it is primarily the result of human activities.
Also, the IPCC is a scientific organisation of about 2500 scientists, the largest peer-reviewed study ever performed, and all IPCC scientists have concluded that global warming is occurring and that it is primarily the result of human activities.
If this is not consensus, then what? The consensus that gravity exists on Earth is non-existent?
As for the Galileo bit, you're wrong. Galileo resembles the IPCC and other scientists who have found that climate change is occurring and are being irrationally criticised by the establishment who are trying to keep the status quo so they can continue to profit from fossil fuel extraction and mining activities.
MarkR, give me a break!
"Or are you too "Pig ignorant" to address the question?"
Funny, coming from somebody who is too ignorant to read the answer to his question, which was published by the IPCC 5 years ago.
Re: "Re "could you provide some explanation as to how an apparently local phenomenon (a warm period in England/Europe) is evidence for a global warm period?"
Will the post above do?
You see it was only an "apparently local phenomena" to those who wanted to see it that way."
Sure, the LIA and MWP were global. So what? The current period is far warmer than the MWP ever was.
Also, human activities which began around 1850 at the Industrial Revolution caused the LIA to end and global warming to begin. Had none of this happened, we would still be stuck in the LIA or at least nearing the end of it. So, us humans are responsible for the end of the LIA.
Hi Stephen
If numbers count, try here for a list of scientists (17,200) who reject your theory of climate change.
http://www.oism.org/pproject/s33p37.htm
Also from von Storch press release in response to the NAS Report
"4) With respect to methods, the committee is showing reservations concerning the methodology of Mann et al.. The committee notes explicitly on pages 91 and 111 that the method has no validation (CE) skill significantly different from zero. In the past, however, it has always been claimed that the method has a significant nonzero validation skill. Methods without a validation skill are usually considered USELESS."
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=716
PS I know you would like to relax into complacency, but I'm afraid facts won't go away.
"Scientists who claim to be sure that there was no medieval warm period, based on convoluted studies of proxies, are flying in the face of proven historical records. This is what makes the rest of their claims in this area, unbelievable."
"please don't say proxy based studies, because if they are unreliable for England, why should they be reliable for China?"
"It's no good saying the Medieval Warm Period, and the Little Ice Age didn't happen because some proxy study says so, because the historical record says those temperature changes did occur."
"Here are 15 Chinese scientific papers which refer to the Medieval Warm Period, and Little Ice Age in China."
Hong et al. (2000) developed a 6000-year high-resolution ð18O record from cellulose deposited in a peat bog
Xu et al. (2002) examined plant cellulose ð18O variations in cores retrieved from peat deposits
Chen et al. (2000) studied sediment cores from Erhai Lake
second study of lake sediments
Also working with lake sediment data were Zhang et al. (2004),
etc. etc.
To sum up: if the historical record says there was a MWP in Europe and the proxies disagree, go with the historical record; if the historical record says there was no MWP in China and the proxies disagree, go with the proxies.
"Like anyone, I have the ability to detect obvious internal logical inconsistencies, and to go back to primary sources and identify misquotes and misrepresentations"
Hi z
See von Storch comment above.
The IPCC report is built around Mann's Hockey Stick.
von Storch says it is wrong.
Hi Stephen
Re "Also, human activities which began around 1850 at the Industrial Revolution caused the LIA to end and global warming to begin. Had none of this happened, we would still be stuck in the LIA or at least nearing the end of it. So, us humans are responsible for the end of the LIA"
We caused the end of the LIA how?
MarkR: "If numbers count, try here for a list of scientists (17,200) who reject your theory of climate change."
Now how many of those are CLIMATE scientists and not petroleum geologists or geologists affiliated with the mining industry? Three? Four?
How many of the 2500-some IPCC scientists actually have a research background in the CLIMATE sciences? What? Nearly all of them?
Hmmm. I wonder to whom we should pay more attention on this issue. Come on, MarkR! Give me a break!
Hi Stephen
"Now how many of those are CLIMATE scientists and not petroleum geologists or geologists affiliated with the mining industry? Three? Four?"
The answer appears to be "Signers of this petition so far include 2,660 physicists, geophysicists, climatologists, meteorologists, oceanographers, and environmental scientists who are especially well qualified to evaluate the effects of carbon dioxide on the Earth's atmosphere and climate."
Also: "Nearly all of the initial 17,100 scientist signers have technical training suitable for the evaluation of the relevant research data, and many are trained in related fields. In addition to these 17,100, approximately 2,400 individuals have signed the petition who are trained in fields other than science or whose field of specialization was not specified on their returned petition."
http://www.oism.org/pproject/s33p357.htm
"We caused the end of the LIA how?"
Ummm. By combustion of fossil fuels which released carbon dioxide, a known greenhouse gas, which raised atmospheric temperatures.
Now if you don't know about greenhouse gases and their effects on atmospheric temperature, you're really a lost cause.
Re: "Sure, the LIA and MWP were global. So what? The current period is far warmer than the MWP ever was."
I'm afraid you are incoreect in assuming that the current period is far warmer. There are no temperature records to confirm that.
Hi Stephen
Do you know how much man made CO2 was released into the atmosphere in 1850?
Re: "I'm afraid you are incoreect in assuming that the current period is far warmer. There are no temperature records to confirm that."
No, but proxies confirm this.
If you don't trust proxies, why would you cite the CO2Science article which uses proxy sources to analyse the MWP and LIA? If this is the case, then you are guilty of a double standard.
Re: "Do you know how much man made CO2 was released into the atmosphere in 1850?"
Heck, no, but the industrial machine was beginning to move and CO2 concentrations began to rise in the mid-19th Century as evident in ice core data.
Re: "I'm afraid you are incoreect in assuming that the current period is far warmer. There are no temperature records to confirm that."
Also, to add onto this, Al Gore profiles the last 1000 years of temperature data in "An Inconvenient Truth" and the graph he showed indicated that global temperatures in 2005 were much higher than around 1100 A.D.
MarkR, I'd recommend that you see Gore's film. It is scientifically accurate, which is authenticated by the following link:
http://rabett.blogspot.com/2006/06/list-for-james-inhofe.html
Re: "Sure, the LIA and MWP were global. So what?"
So that invalidates the use of proxies that show a Hockey Stick.
It's not that I don't trust proxies, it's that I don't trust proxies that are statistically manipulated, or that have no correlation to temperature. Like the Mann et al and co versions.
Re "I'd recommend that you see Gore's film. It is scientifically accurate"
I'm afraid Al Gore is no scientist, if he'd read any of the above he wouldn't be making the statements he's making.
Hi z
Re "To sum up: if the historical record says there was a MWP in Europe and the proxies disagree, go with the historical record; if the historical record says there was no MWP in China and the proxies disagree, go with the proxies."
Actually no, a lot of the proxies and historical records agree about a LIA and MWP in China. It depends on which you choose.
"Four data sets yield information about Holocene climatic change
in China at different scales of space and time: (a) 120-yr ground temperature
and precipitation measurements covering eastern China;
(b) two NOAA 10-yr 850 hPa wind records that highlight features
of data set a; (c) an 1100-year record of annual calcite accumulation
on a stalagmite near Beijing, and (d) Lamb-type average
wetness and temperature data from Chinese historical records
back to A.D. 1470 and 1450, respectively. Dry-wet fluctuations
and cold-warm oscillations are inferred using the long-term stalagmite
thickness series. Quasi-70, 140, 450, and 750-yr oscillations
have been detected using a wavelet transform technique. A
phase relationship between temperature and precipitation oscillations
has been identified based on modern observations and HISTORICAL
records. In northern China, relatively lower temperatures
correlate with periods when precipitation shifted from above to below
normal. Three colder periods during the Little Ice Age (LIA) in
China are inferred, centered in the late 14th century (750-yr oscillation),
the early 17th century (450-yr), and the 19th century (140-yr)."
http://www.phy.pku.edu.cn/merg/att/science.pdf
Neat! That list of 17,100 includes such luminaries as "Redwine, PhD" -- I'll drink to that!
MarkR:
In regards to the OISM petition project the 17,000 people were responding to a paper produced by S&B. You seem to approve of the petition so I take it you also approve of Soon's paper. Is that an accurate assessment?
Re: "So that invalidates the use of proxies that show a Hockey Stick."
and Re: "It's not that I don't trust proxies, it's that I don't trust proxies that are statistically manipulated, or that have no correlation to temperature."
You completely destroy any credibility you have here by saying this. Is it not that you don't trust the proxy-temperature link, but that you don't understand how the link is made?
If you really want to educate yourself about how proxy sources are used to reconstruct temperatures, I suggest you read Ray Bradley's masterpiece "Paleoclimatology", which describes, in great detail and in a very comprehensible way, how proxy sources are used in the field and in the lab.
By the way, have you even read the MBH articles? Do you even know their methodology? If not, please do so!
Re: "I'm afraid Al Gore is no scientist, if he'd read any of the above he wouldn't be making the statements he's making."
His statements are those of the leading climate scientists, just condensed into a very comprehensible manner so that audiences will understand what the scientists have discovered. In essence, he is doing the job of an excellent journalist, breaking down the complex language of the scientists into something laypeople can understand.
None of what he has said is news to scientists. He is just giving another explanation.
Hi Stephen
If you read the post ref von Storch, above you will see that people are beginning to understand very well how the use of Bristlecone proxies, which have little correlation to temperature, are being used to make a false case:
"With respect to methods, the committee is showing reservations concerning the methodology of Mann et al.. The committee notes explicitly on pages 91 and 111 that the method has no validation (CE) skill significantly different from zero. In the past, however, it has always been claimed that the method has a significant nonzero validation skill. Methods without a validation skill are usually considered USELESS."
"Even if it did, the consensus prior to Galileo was that the earth was flat."
"OK. Even if it did, the consensus prior to Galileo was that the Sun revolved around the Earth."
If you can't make up your own mind about you wrote MarkR, why should we value you opinions about what others wrote?
What von Storch wrote is not my opinion, is it?
See what you are doing is called ad hominem:
Ad hominem as logical fallacy
A (fallacious) ad hominem argument has the basic form:
A makes claim X.
There is something objectionable about A.
Therefore claim X is false.
The first statement is called a 'factual claim' and is the pivot point of much debate. The last statement is referred to as an 'inferential claim' and represents the reasoning process. There are two types of inferential claim, explicit and implicit.
Ad hominem is one of the best-known of the logical fallacies usually enumerated in introductory logic and critical thinking textbooks. Both the fallacy itself, and accusations of having committed it, are often brandished in actual discourse (see also Argument from fallacy). As a technique of rhetoric, it is powerful and used often, despite its inherent incorrectness.
In contrast, an argument that instead relies (fallaciously) on the positive aspects of the person arguing the case is sometimes known as "positive ad hominem," or appeal to authority.
"Even if it did, the consensus prior to Galileo was that the earth was flat."
"OK. Even if it did, the consensus prior to Galileo was that the Sun revolved around the Earth."
See what you are doing is called ad hominem
Er...no it's not. Damn how many mistakes can one guy make in a thread?
There was no insult Mark. After all, you did say the above. All Nabakov did was ask a question. There was no personal attack. Of course I can understand you taking it that way...
Now if Nabakov had said "Mark's argument is wrong because he's a stupid poopy head" then you would have something.
But the fact is that you made a statement. It was wrong. Pointing that out is hardly an attack!
Hi Dominion
Re: "But the fact is that you made a statement. It was wrong. Pointing that out is hardly an attack!"
I didn't say it was an attack, and ad hominem doesn't have to be an attack.
Nabakov wrote:
"If you can't make up your own mind about you wrote MarkR, why should we value you opinions about what others wrote?"
He didn't just point out a mis-statement, he went on to infer that one mis-statement automatically invalidated other unrelated statements or posts.
MarkR, it's only an ad hominem, if it is not of relevance to the discussion at hand. In this case, you said that group A was like B, when people then point out that B is a fictionous group, and have never existed, you state "I mean like C".
There is nothing ad hominem in pointing this out, and make clear that it does your little for your credibility.
Hi Kristjan
See, this is the whole point of ad hominem.
The only answers you now make are not about the substance of the debate.
I make a mistaken analogy, ergo anything else I refer to must wrong.
No, ad hominem is about attacking the person, instead of the argument. In this case, the original argument was attacked, and used to ask you why we should rely on anything you said.
An ad hominem would be something like "Mark works for Big Oil" or "Since Mark is a Conservative".
Very different from the case at hand.
You could argue that asking why we should rely on your representation of other peoples' writing, based upon a mistake like that, is not a very constructive way to debate, is unserious, or many other things, but it is not, however an ad hominem.
To try to explain this in a different way:
You makes some arguments that are based upon you reading of other peoples' work. Since we have already found mistakes in some of your arguments, you are asked why we should trust your reading.
This is not an ad hominem, and it's not a logical fallacy.
According to the WGMS, a distinct overall deglaciation trend can be observed. However inventory and historical reconstructions are far from complete and trends are masked by surprising regional and temporal variabilities. Still a lot of guesswork and 'localized thesis' generation to be observed in this field AFAICS.
For the apl glaciers here in Germany considerable deglaciation did not start before the 80ies and the retreating glaciers still uncover artefacts like roman trading posts and paths as well as various biological specimens like butterflies and tree trunks, indicating the current state of affairs is not (yet) unprecedented (->'Green Alps Theory'). The speed of change however might well be but this theory cannot be confirmed due to sparse data and insufficient timely resolution.
As for Patagonia the region has undergone substantial millennial-scale variability (as has about every region on earth).
So interpretation will remain a matter of dispute until the signal becomes considerably stronger (or reverses).
Wolfgang Flamme's argument is the traditional we don't know everything therefore we know nothing. He misses the vital point that it is exactly in such cases that modeling provides a guide. Sparse data and modeling alone are not very useful but together they can provide good guides.
From the data we have and the models we have it is extremely likely that there is a global deglaciation trend.
"I make a mistaken analogy, ergo anything else I refer to must wrong."
For the record, I thought your response, i.e. posting references to papers which supported your position, to my original jab was right on, and I hereby withdraw my accusation of uninterested lazy undergradness or however I worded it.
I think the exchange between MarkR and Kristjan Wager is instructive, in that MarkR relies on traditional tactics (ad hom) - tactics that are akin to throwing pasta against a wall to see what sticks.
Googlers, not having wisdom but having information, can't discern one piece of linguine for another and, thinking they have a gourmet meal, take the one noodle that seems yummy and flail others with it.
That is: MarkR, you don't know what ad hom is, but you've seen someone use it, think it's cool, and so you appropriate the tactic for yourself.
This is similar to other Googlers who see some shill use a fact, don't know anything about the fact but think it's cool, and use it for themselves in their argumentation.
Google doesn't have a 'wisdom' or 'context' button. I think this is just fine, as we can see that some folks indiscriminately use what they find on Google any ol' place.
This 'Googler' thing is a useful indicator. Now if we can just use indicators like this to quickly ID Googlers for what they are, to save time reading comments...
Best,
D
"With respect to methods, the committee is showing reservations concerning the methodology of Mann et al.. The committee notes explicitly on pages 91 and 111 that the method has no validation (CE) skill significantly different from zero."
A CE score of zero does not mean there is no skill. To assess skill, you need to determine the significance level of the reconstruction against appropriate noise. It is shown in http://www.meteo.psu.edu/~mann/shared/articles/RuthetalJClimate05.pdf and http://www.meteo.psu.edu/~mann/shared/articles/MRWA-JClimate05.pdf what the significance levels are that are associated with the CE scores of the hockeystick reconstruction validation, i.e. significance levels usually greater than 95%. This means the reconstruction is more than 95% likely to be better than noise with the same statistics as the proxies. The committee does not seem to have grasped fully the significance of these recently published results.
"In the past, however, it has always been claimed that the method has a significant nonzero validation skill."
That's right. At least 95% significant.
MBH98 uses an RE benchmark of zero to indicate significance. The random numbers here give RE statistics greater than the critical value of zero. Therefore, using the RE statistic with a critical value of zero would attribute statistical skill to random numbers. That is, under criteria used in MBH98, random numbers could be regarded as skillful predictors of future temperatures.
http://landshape.org/enm/?p=48
MarkR, it looks as if you did not read Chris O'Neill's comments directly above your own.
"The random numbers here give RE statistics greater than the critical value of zero."
I had a look at this so called "Predict your Climate" link http://landshape.org/enm/?p=48 and it let me know the level of understanding of the usage of the RE statistic in reconstructions by that link's author, i.e. practically useless.
Roughly speaking, the RE statistic gives a positive value if the forecast mean is closer to the mean in the verfication period than the mean in the calibration period. The calibration period in "Predict your Climate" appears to be 1856 to 1994. The mean chosen for the "random" forecast is the 1994 temperature. As we all should know, 1994's temperature is a lot closer to the average of 1995-2005 than the average of 1856-1994 is. So surprise surprise, the RE statistic is significantly more than zero.
Next time, try using a forecast mean the same as the 1856-1994 mean and then see how your RE statistic turns out.
It's amazing how someone who is knowlegeable of statistics and appears to be moderately intelligent can make such a basic mistake and also think it's that easy to punch a hole in the RE argument. I guess such silliness is a consequence of being a global warming septic.
The point is, as the website author says: "MBH98 uses an RE benchmark of zero to indicate significance. The random numbers here give RE statistics greater than the critical value of zero. Therefore, using the RE statistic with a critical value of zero would attribute statistical skill to random numbers. That is, under criteria used in MBH98, random numbers could be regarded as skillful predictors of future temperatures."
From Wegman:
Figure 4.4: One of the most compelling illustrations that McIntyre and McKitrick have produced is created by feeding red noise [AR(1) with parameter = 0.2] into the MBH algorithm. The AR(1) process is a stationary process meaning that it should not exhibit any long-term trend. The MBH98 algorithm found 'hockey stick' trend in each of the independent replications.
Discussion: Because the red noise time series have a correlation of 0.2, some of these time series will turn upwards [or downwards] during the 'calibration' period6 and the MBH98 methodology will selectively emphasize these upturning [or downturning] time series.
"The point is, as the website author says: "MBH98 uses an RE benchmark of zero to indicate significance. The random numbers here give RE statistics greater than the critical value of zero."
You just don't get it do you? "The random numbers here" do NOT have a randomly chosen mean. It is an artificially chosen mean that very conveniently produces a positive RE, AS OPPOSED TO the mean produced by a temperature reconstruction which is generated by the reconstruction method using the proxy data it is given without any artificial choice of prediction mean unlike so-called "predict your climate". Let's see you come up without an artificially chosen mean for "predict your climate".
"some of these time series will turn upwards [or downwards] during the 'calibration' period6 and the MBH98 methodology will selectively emphasize these upturning [or downturning] time series."
Even if this was true, it doesn't apply to reconstructions that don't use supposedly spuriously trending proxies like the Bristlecones. Wahl and Amman's reconstruction using the 1450 proxy network without Bristlecones gives quite high RE even though there is a complete absence of the supposedly spuriously trending Bristlecones. Even though according to M&M the Bristlecone proxies produce a large bias, strangely no-one has ever seen this bias during the time after 1450 when reconstructions with and without Bristlecones are available and can be compared with each other.