John Mclean has a reply to Lewandowsky at the Drum where he proves once and for all that he has no clue, with comments like:
If the SOI accounts for short-term variation then logically it also accounts for long-term variation.
and
We show a relationship going back to the 1950s. Isn't that long enough for your "long-term" ?
Despite being challenged to post the reviewers comments on his Reply declining publication, Mclean hides the declines. Where's the transparency?
Below I plot UAH temperature data and the differenced UAH data to show that taking differences removes any long-term trend. Apparently this is too complicated for Mclean.
See also James Annan.
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Typo correction...
[The link to NASA's Sept. 20007 version temperature data](http://web.archive.org/web/20070914231348/http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gis…) is correct, and does show the warmest year on record as being 1934, but, as Chris noticed, I misidentified it as 1997.
Thanks for the proofreading, Chris.
(BTW, the reason I chose to cite the "six warmest" years rather than the 5 warmest or 10 warmest is that the same six years are listed as warmest in [all the versions of NASA's data](http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/F…) that I could find, though the order changes from one version to another.)
[Dave Burton](http://www.burtonsys.com/climate/global_msl_trend_analysis.html)
Cary, NC USA
([email](http://www.burtonsys.com/email/))
Tim wrote:
Tim, thank you for clarifying why my posts aren't appearing here (because I included too many links, not because of my heresies).
However, as you can see, my response to MSW, Lee, Bernard & Dave R. still has not showed up here. Perhaps you tried to approve it but something went wrong?
Will you please double-check the moderation queue? There should be two copies of my response to MSW *et al* awaiting your approval (both copies posted before you posted your #104). Please just approve one and delete the other.
Also, while we're at it, I have a question. I tried to embed an image, but it didn't work. This is the syntax I used:
\!\[graphs\]\(http://www.mitosyfraudes.org/images/AltaGracia\\\_23\\\_july\\\_2010.jpg "graphs"\)
What is wrong with that? How should I have done it?
(I also tried a plain HTML <img src="http://etc." /> but that didn't work, either.)
Thank you!
[Dave Burton](http://www.burtonsys.com/climate/global_msl_trend_analysis.html)
Cary, NC USA
([email](http://www.burtonsys.com/email/))
I've noticed every year it gets warm in the summer. Could that also explain the long-term warming? It makes sense logically.
I thought I recently read that John McLean was not a working scientist, was not affiliated with any recognized research organization. Ah yes, here we go, he apparently has described himself as "John McLean has an amateur interest in global warming following 25 years in what he describes as the analysis and logic of IT." and "Computer consultant and occasional travel photographer"
Now I'm all for amateurs making and being recognized for contributions, but shouldn't a journal be extra careful about reviewing the work of an amateur? We now see that he cannot understand or admit that his differencing technique is essentially a derivative with respect to time, does not reduce noise, but does eliminate any long term linear trend. This shows a massive gap in math/science background - the background of an amateur.
Has the journal editor issued any sort of mea culpa?
I've noticed that every time the weather is unusually warm, the the media and some AGW proponents link this weather to global warming. I've noticed that whenever the weather is unusually cool, the media and some AGW proponents say that it has nothing to do with AGW. I've noticed that when the weather is unusually cool, and there's snow on the ground (DC this winter, for example), that the media, and some AGW proponents link this weather to global warming. Science, woo hoo!
Hey Ben, did you happen to notice that even when the global temperature is very warm for say 3-4 months (like it has been from December thru March) denialists cherry pick a few places where it is cooler than normal and claim that global cooling is happening. Now THAT'S pretty dumb, huh? :) Ever notice that?
Ben, here are some simple rules to make life easy for you.
i) Weather != climate
ii) Your back yard != the globe
iii) Spot measure != trend
You are welcome.
Ben @3, care to speak to McLean et al's idiocy and ignorance? Or is that what you are trying to detract from with a beautiful example of your own idiocy and ignorance?
Sorry to be so blunt, but I've had it with trolls.
Trying to get a valid picture of science from the media is like trying to get a classical education from porn. Then when you come here and try to paint yourself as having a clue among the clueless, it's epic fail time.
6 MapleLeaf,
One of the defining characteristics of denidiots is their absolute inability to stay on topic.
Just how do they get to be like this?
My concern for Mr. McLean (aside from the mistakes in the paper he co-authored) is that he appears to think that publishing his rejoinder with SPPI is somehow going to advance his academic career. As a Ph.D. candidate or student, he should know better. This could easily turn out to be worse than not responding at all; he could dig himself into a deeper hole.
Eli had something to say about amateur hour a few years ago, which pretty much nails McLean
Journalists don't understand the science and regurgitate the press release.
This summer in Britain is predicted to be the hottest since 1976 and dry. The forecast by a small Welsh group (who picked a freezing winter) say it will be a BBQ summer.
A positive AO will make it happen.
RE: #2, GFW
"I thought I recently read that John McLean was not a working scientist, was not affiliated with any recognized research organization."
McLean is a PhD student, so would have a supervisor and be associated with a university somewhere. We should cut McLean a lot of slack in this respect. It is perfectly reasonable for PhD students to publish papers as first authors, and this is normally a cause for celebration.
When things blow up as spectacularly as MFC09 has, the spotlight should fall on his PhD supervisor. Is the supervisor providing wise counsel? It is not normally sensible for a PhD student (and his coauthors) to launch a public attack on some of the world's leading experts in the field, as well as the editor and reviewers of a scientific journal. If a situation like this happened at UNSW we would bring all the parties together for a serious chat.
In a recent post at the Drum, John Nicol complained about the treatment that McLean et al have received, saying "McLean et al. may then have to modify some of their work and so it goes on in a very competitive but hopefully convivial fashion as it always should. Not with vitriolic outbursts we have seen here as if MFC09 had strayed onto someone's sacred turf"
To which I replied (not yet up on the Drum):
The normal to and fro of peer-reviewed science would have dealt with MFC09 in its usual way, most likely the paper would have had no citations and would have quietly disappeared since it was obvious to any climate scientist that the paper was seriously flawed.
Occasionally, bad papers do get into peer-reviewed journals. They usually drift off into electronic oblivion.
Where McLean et al crossed the line was to issue press releases immediately after the paper was published claiming that the paper showed that Nature, not man, was responsible for global warming. Needless to say, it is laughable to think that the paper shows any such thing.
The paper was then picked up by the denialist blogosphere, the anti-AGW public relations machine, loopy organisations such as the Science and Public Policy Institute, the usual crowd of wingnut OpEd writers, and the Murdoch media, and added to the very thin list of papers allegedly disproving human influence on the climate.
It was at this point that an eminent group of climate scientists came together to write a comment on the paper. Normally they wouldn't bother with such an obviously flawed piece of work, but the baying hysteria from the anti-AGW lobby demanded a response.
Foster et al killed MFC09 stone dead.
At this point, McLean et al should have taken the comments on board, and moved on to doing some real science. Instead they wrote a rebuttal to Foster et al, but it was so illogical and self-contradictory that the journal rejected it.
At this point, McLean et al should perhaps have tried speaking with the editor and attempted a rewrite of their rebuttal to answer the referees' objections. But the reality is that you can't breathe life into the corpse that is MFC09.
Instead, once again McLean et al crossed the line of normal scientific behavior and issued a 10-page rambling attack on the journal, the reviewers, the American Geophysical Union, and the authors of the rebuttal.
McLean et al have only themselves to blame for how this played out. They have made fools of themselves and shone a bright light on how the anti-AGW publicity machine works.
I do not recall seeing any evidence that McLean is researching *climate science per se*, and given that:
1) McLean and someone else claiming to be a (former?) academic on The Drum thread are pushing his papers analysing IPCC processes and counting IPCC authors and so on
2) McLean claims he was *invited* to do a PhD
3) someone on Annan's post claims McLean's doing it at James Cook where Bob Carter is (IIRC?) emeritus
... I would raise the possibility that he's doing his primary research on *the politics and processes surrounding climate change research*, not in climate change science itself.
Against that hypothesis, we have to note that MFC09 was squarely within the realm of the science (and this alone is odd if he was invited to do a PhD based on his earlier non-scientific work.)
If he is researching within the science, then his own supervisor - if competent - should have killed MFC09 before he submitted it to any journal. However, if his supervisor is someone who isn't particularly rigourous themselves (e.g. perhaps Bob Carter), then they may not even have recognised the problems or preferred to risk them in the service of other goals - which bodes ill for McLean's candidacy. (Although with some finessing one might be able to get some shoddy work through the system and get the piece of paper in the end.)
I probably missed it, but did anyone mention in what field he's a PhD candidate? It's strange that he never seems to refer to it himself. What discipline? What university? What's the subject of his dissertation?
Ah. Crossed posts with Lotharsson.
That is the impression I got from what he wrote.
(Here in the US, you can only call yourself a "candidate" when you've passed your oral/comprehensive exams. Is that the case everywhere?)
I don't recall there being a big distinction between "student" and "candidate" in Australia. But then, at least in my field, we don't generally have a series of subjects with exams at the start of the process prior to starting actual research, which I believe is the typical case in the US. We do take postgrad (and sometimes undergrad subjects) but I don't recall a formal distinction between two phases - so some of the research activities start while some of the classes are being taken.
My PhD was more than a decade ago, so maybe those with more recent experience in Australia, either as students or supervisors, can chime in.
Poking around, I found this from 2007:
http://www.nationalpost.com/most_popular/story.html?id=164002
In the list of signatories, there's:
Same person? In what is his doctorate?
re: #12
Great summary, Michael.
One nit: SPPI is not exactly an organization, it's really Rob Ferguson, a website, some unknown funding, and a few of the usual advisors, acting as a USA outlet for the Viscount.
Rob is being more productive than he was at FF/CSPP.
See CCC, p.74 on SPPI and p.121 on Ferguson.
For amusement, see p.50 "What's in a name?" which shows a matrix of think tanks versus words.
Science and Public Policy Institute would make Orwell proud
#1 Institute (16 mentions)
#2 Science (11 mentions)
#4 Policy (9 mentions)
into its name. "Public" is respectable also, with 6 mentions. Someone could probably make up a random think tank name generator from these words.
Although Institute fits the dictionary, Rob doesn't really fit most people's idea of an institute. If there is any actual science, that's not apparent. It clearly isn't for the public. I would agree he wants to influence policy.
But, back to McLean. For a good while, he billed himself as a climate data analyst, although Marc Morano had already awarded him a PhD.
I posted more detail here at Deltoid, with a bunch of questions that I didn't ever notice answered, but may have missed. This was back when I was studying SPPI closely for the Monckton/Oreskes affair.
But the interesting question is:
a) Can someone in Oz confirm whether or not McLean is actually in a PhD program somewhere (like James Cook, as DC suggests)? How many PhD-granting institutions are there with relevant programs?
b) Generally, as Michael notes, people are generally pleased to see a PhD candidate as a lead author... perhaps not this one.
re: #10 Eli's full post is worth reading
John Mashey, I thought I saw a reference somewhere to another John McLean, possibly Australian, with an actual PhD - but I can't remember the field.
John Mashey, thanks. Looking around a bit more before you posted, I saw that you had already done the investigative work! I think it's the same person who signed that 2007 letter, and that the PhD there was a falsehood. In any case, it should be simple enough for this John McLean to say, "No, I didn't sign that letter. That had to have been a different John McLean." I also want to see evidence that he is currently in an actual PhD program. There's something very fishy going on here. Why would someone be so dodgy about his field?
Maybe for the same reason that one John McLean posting on earlier threads on climate change at The Drum claimed - on his personal authority backed by having peer-reviewed papers in the field - that AGW was bogus, yet seemed remarkably reluctant to provide a reference to said papers?
Regarding the issue of a PhD, I am quite certain that no John D. McLean has ever obtained a higher degree by research in Australia at any institution in any field at any time.
The Australian National Library keeps a record that, to the best of my knowledge, is authoritative and I searched that a few months ago. (I mentioned that in my piece on the [ABC Drum](http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/stories/s2858332.htm).)
By Mr. McLean's own recent statements it is quite clear that he does not claim to have earned a PhD.
The letters "PhD" must therefore have slipped into his earlier signature(s) by some minor clerical mistake or were added by persons unknown.
Deep Climate points me at something I should have seen (but tropical things confuse me right now, since I'm skiing in Canada, albeit surrounded by Aussies; the skip shops here at Big White even sell Vegemite.)
"He is completing a PhD at James Cook University."
I asked McLean on /The Drum/ just which 'peer-reviewed journal' his critical study of the CSIRO was published in, and he didn't find the time to reply...let's go to one of his sources...
(http://www.auscsc.org.au/about_us.html)
His crit! ical rev iew of CSIRO climate reports, published in Energy & Environment, was a first for Australia
(end quotes)
Anyone surprised?
*
I'm still trying to work out just what he's a PhD candidate in, and where. His reluctance to tell us is at least suggestive. His home page describes him as a "[c]omputer consultant and occasional travel photographer". I can't find anything amounting to an actual CV on his pages about climate issues, either. (http://mclean.ch/climate/global_warming.htm) So who knows?
As Stephan alludes to, lots of PhDs do get added to other people's names. Morano is well-known for that.
However, as per #23,
John McLean has clearly made a public claim of affiliation with James Cook U.
"Completing" might be overstating it, given that MFC09 lists his affiliation as "Applied Science Consultants, Croydon, Victoria, Australia". That implies (at a minimum) that he was not enrolled in a PhD program at the time of submission (Dec '08), and possibly not even at the time of acceptance (May '09). It would be fairly astonishing to be nearing completion after only 10-16 months (unless perhaps it's primarily a mild rehash of his earlier papers on process).
McLean: We show a relationship going back to the 1950s. Isn't that long enough for your "long-term"?
Wow. There's a relationship between the seasons and hemispheric temperature too, going back a long time. It must explain the long-term trend in hemispheric mean temperature too.
McLean doesn't seem to have much expertise. What's Bob Carter's excuse?
What would it take for JGR to formally withdraw the paper?
Also, for those wondering about whether John McLean is a PhD candidate at JCU or not - typically, PhD students have to do a confirmation seminar within 12 months of starting their PhD. I'm about 9 months into my PhD candidature at JCU, and have neither seen any notice of a confirmation seminar for John McLean, nor have I ever heard of him before this brouhaha. There's also no reference to him at all anywhere on JCU's website.
McLean has complained on the Drum that Carter and de Freitas escaped attention. They certainly seem to be in hiding and leaving McLean to take all the flack.
Carter said he'd been invited to write a piece for the Drum to 'balance' Clive Hamilton's series, but the ABC didn't publish it. Rejection seems to be the name of the game with that mob. They just can't write anything sensible on the topic. Carter's article suggests that he's losing it completely. He could be going senile.
If you can stomach it, here's the reason why the ABC decided not to publish it (it's complete junk, the writing of a raving lunatic):
http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2010/03/abc-gags-bob-car…
I think Carter and Plimer have no credibility left at all and are now quite useless to any but the most extreme nuts like SPPI or maybe canadafreepress - (wash my mouth out).
Someone must know if McLean is really a PhD candidate and where. (Maybe the 'invitation' has been withdrawn after this latest fiasco. I wouldn't want to be the one who has to own up to being his supervisor!)
It looks as if the differences trend is rising too, would this implicate the speed of warming has increased? Well, the rise is very shallow, and likely statistically insignificant. But I for one sure would want to have a speedometer that detects the change of speed while descending a steep hill that has a curve on the bottom (ecological collapse for the Darwin Award driver).
Re #3 Ben,
There is no problem in attributing unusually warm weather events to Global Warming, overall that is what Global warming means. Cold weather events in the midst of global warming are somewhat intangible, the way to look at those events is how cold would it have been without global warming? The obvious answer is likely colder! The example where I live (in Australia,) more than thirty years ago, snow had fallen as late as Christmas day. Now, we are lucky to get snow in Winter!
To me the situation is exactly analogous to the change from Winter to Summer. From late winter and onwards, each warm day is a sign of the coming Summer. Does a cold day, week or even month disprove that the Summer is coming?
(Re-post, orig:Real Climate: http://www.realclimate.org/?comments_popup=2625#comment-153933)
@29. Golly, at the rate Bob Carter is going he'll soon be found cowering in a dark corner huddled in the fetal position with spittle dribbling down his chin mumbling "don't let the commies get me! don't let the commies get me!"
You're right. It is the ramblings of someone who has just about lost their mind.
If the SOI accounts for short-term variation then logically it also accounts for long-term variation.
this is just plain out stupid.
anyone got a list of all those denialist blogs that swallowed their paper, including hook and sinker?
Lotharsson says
Think Tim Ball. Likely someone is trying to wire this one. It happens
Reminds me of another famous PhD (at least in the UK)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2007/feb/12/advertising.food
There is a fascinating lack of trolls on this thread so far.
Easter Sunday? All at the Church of Poisoned Minds, maybe?
Being a Holy Day, they probably don't know what to think, because even Murdoch doesn't publish any papers on Easter Sunday. So they haven't received their memos on how to attack. Must be terribly frustrating for them.
They want to attack, they know they should attack, but their training and conditioning tells them that independent thought and action is totally unacceptable.
They must anxiously await Murdoch's "team of well-broken horses" appearances on Monday before they know how they are allowed to think.
Fascinating. I might become a PhD candidate on the topic.
:D
http://climatewtf.blogspot.com/2010/04/wotts-up-with-that.html
Michael Ashley is being very much the gentleman in [his observations](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/04/john_mclean_hides_the_declines…) about John McLean's paper, co-authored by de Freitas and Carter. I find it difficult to be as polite as Mike has been in this matter.
When I was writing manuscript drafts during my PhD I was keen to promote my work that contradicted the accepted decades of consensus, but even so I was acutely aware that my own investigations were but a drop in the ocean compared with the body of knowledge that I was working within, and thus that I might easily have missed something obvious. A little humility goes a long way to reining in the ego when drafting papers, and if MFC has exercised such they might have picked up the errors in the paper that really would make a first year undergraduate in climatology blush with humiliation.
My sister also found herself in a situation during her PhD where she was able to overturn a fundamental tenet of her field. I spent hours with her checking her results, comparing them with the literature of her field, and paying careful attention to the phrasing of her claims in order to ensure that she spoke from a solid scientific basis. Unlike my work, hers had commercial implications, and this only added to the motivation to be utterly stringent in the conclusions that she drew.
Mclean's et al claims, on the other hand, demonstrate a cavalier rashness and disregard for scientific preciseness that make me wonder if he really has any association with a credible scientific institution, and if he does, whether his association is supervised by competent professional scientists...
Stepping back though, I have to say that I am flabbergasted that McLean could have been "invited" to do a PhD in Australia in the first place, on the basis of his previous output. Any candidate, or potential candidate, for a PhD in Australia will be acutely aware of how difficult it is to be accepted into a course, and McLean's record is not one that would have passed muster by a bull's roar, at my university at least. The only way to have been fast-tracked to candidature, that I can imagine, would be to have been backed by some very highly connected and/or very well financed interests who have the know-how to circumvent the usual academic hoops though which prospective students are required to leap.
I have been wondering if Mclean is "enrolled" in an overseas cereal-box PhD: I can't imagine that there is the laxity in Australian criteria for his candidature.
And if he is enrolled in an Australian institution, his (and his supervisor's) patent incompetence in putting out the MFC09 paper would seriously call into question his suitability for remaining as a candidate. Any Australian university faced with Foster et al would definitely be tripping over their feet to have the "serious chat" that Michael Ashley mentions.
On a much more trivial matter, and with respect to [stopmurdoch's comment](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/04/john_mclean_hides_the_declines…) about the quietness of the Denialati, I found myself [wondering the same thing](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/well_now_we_know_why.php#commen…).
The silence is fascinating!
I think you guys may be taking this too seriously. After all, McLean's response on The Drum is dated on April 1st and the end of that piece blasts "individuals who unknowingly or knowingly preach from very partisan positions" and then says: "A full public statement on this matter will be published this week by the Washington-based Science and Public Policy Institute." Surely, this is just McLean's way of saying "April Fools!"
Over at Open Mind (but no so open your brain falls out), Slioch presents several comments from years gone by, posted by 'John M' and 'JDM'. Certainly sounds like the same John McLean, and blimey does the denialism run deep. Be careful not to drown.
Ross McKitrick is doing his damndest to detract from Mclean et al's failure (and record high UAH AMSU data?), and Roger Pielke Jnr is on happy to help spread the word and misinformation..."honest" broker my, you know what.
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2010/04/fabrication-or-lie-in-ipcc-ar…
As I said at DC,
".....McKitrick also makes a, IMO, a blatant lie designed to really get the deniers riled up:
"IPCC used false evidence to conceal an important problem with the surface temperature data on which most of their conclusions rest."
Most of the IPCC's conclusions rest on the [edit]CRUT data!?
That statement set off my BS filter. Now, alas, someone has to waste their time showing McKitrick to playing loose with the facts, again."
[Mapleleaf](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/04/john_mclean_hides_the_declines…).
It was just yesterday that [I was thinking about McKitrick's nonsense](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/well_now_we_know_why.php#commen…); it's interesting to see that he too picked April Fool's Day to bray from his soapbox, at Pielke's. Fortunately McKitrick's rant was posted before I pondered his grievous errors again, so I don't have to fret that I somehow invoked his appearance on the Interweb! ;-)
On an only marginally less flippant note, it'd be entertaining to see The Drum offer McKitrick his own thread from which to spout his tripe. Given McLean's pummelling, I think that McKitrick would be wise not to go there at the moment - for a change, the ABC's blogs are significantly peopled with folk who actually have a clue.
Ol' Ross would be minced.
One more time: McLean has made a specific public claim of affiliation with JCU, in a fairly public way. Somebody in Oz might politely ask JCU if they support that claim. There are a few other questions that might be asked...
I suspect many of us know people who were in the state "completing my PhD" for quite a while...
BernardJ @42, Thanks.
McK is predictably going with the very friendly and uncritical crowd at Pielke Jnr. Pielke is once again engaging in dog-whistle tactics, and the loyal denialists come running, and then spread the misinformation far and wide on the net, which then gets picked up by Leake et al. and so the fun and games begin, again.
Just WTF happened to the Pielkes!?
I started a thread entitled, âGlobal-warming denier f@&#ups â a recent exampleâ over on my hometown newspaper âs on-line discussion board (linky: http://forums.signonsandiego.com/showthread.php?t=104941 ). My opening post there describes McLean's f@&#up in basic, not-too-technical language.
So far, most of the responses to my post there can be described as âweapons-grade stupidâ.
If you are not above ogling "train-wrecks", you might want to take a peek. On the other hand, may you'd better not (especially if you value your brain-cells).
I was puzzled by McLean's claim "I am also a PhD candidate conducting thesis research on a climate topic. I accepted an invitation from a university on the basis of my analyses of various climate-related issues such as the IPCC's history, claims and processes". His biography on the Drum site says "He is completing a PhD at James Cook University."
Now, call me out of touch, but I don't know of a procedure where a university "invites" someone to do a PhD in the sense McLean means here. There seems to be no suggestion that McLean has an undergraduate degree (unless he has something in "IT", and that wouldn't provide a basis for an invite to do a PhD in climate science I think), and no evidence of any postgraduate (Honours or Masters) work. Having an undergraduate degree would be a pre-requisite for PhD enrolment. I know there can be situations where someone enrolled for a Masters at a particular university may do such excellent work that along the way they are invited to convert to a PhD enrolment, but this is clearly not the case here. In fact McLean seems to live in Victoria, and again, in my experience, you would really need to be based, for a minimum period of time (three years these days?), at the university, to be considered as being a PhD student.
So I wonder if McLean is just saying something like "Last time I chatted to Bob Carter he said my work was worthy of a PhD and he would look into enrolling me at JCU"?
I don't really care in general terms what someone says about their own qualifications. At some point, if it matters, you have to produce the evidence. If not, then, not. But McLean himself makes this an important issue. He slams Lewandowsky for only being a psychologist, and then "Tim Flannery, Barry Brook and Ove Hoegh-Guldberg" are only biologists and "people in fields with no direct relationship to climate analysis speaking about climate change". He goes on to say Lewandowsky "failed to reveal or perhaps discover that I am also a PhD candidate conducting thesis research on a climate topic" and "Unlike Lewandowsky, and the other people mentioned above, my area of expertise, information technology, is directly applicable to the analysis of climate data, and my background in logic is likewise useful."
Now if you are going to make those claims - that you outrank Lewandowsky, Tim Flannery, Barry Brook and Ove Hoegh-Guldberg because you have an expertise in climate science and are doing a PhD on the topic (although it would indeed be unusual anyway for a mere PhD student to make a claim of superiority to the people mentioned above, especially when the "topic" is supposedly "my analyses of various climate-related issues such as the IPCC's history, claims and processes" not actual climate science) - you had better have the paperwork to back them.
John Mashey @25 and 43:
A query to JCU regarding McLean's status can't be made until they reopen after the Easter holidays. However, a rummage around their website reveals that (a) almost every department has its postgraduate students listed, and (b) John McLean's name cannot be found on any of these lists, nor does it turn up on a directory search. That isn't conclusive, since it could be, for example, that the website is out of date or that he's temporarily suspended his candidature.
Unfortunately, though, I'm somewhat more cynical about the possibility of his being a candidate than Bernard J. @38. The modern Australian university is a business, and postgraduate students are a source of income. In the humanities we are under not-so-subtle pressure to recruit more postgraduate students. A little while back the powers-that-be at my institution were floating the idea that academic staff would lose their research-active classification if they were not supervising a PhD or research Masters student (regardless of publication output); I hear anecdotally that this policy has been adopted at other institutions. Obviously this creates an incentive for individual academics to agree to take marginal students on board; and while the minimum entry standards supposedly provide some safeguard, grade inflation in honours programmes is even more rampant and more extreme than for undergraduate studies.
#46 David
Regarding degrees, Item G) in my post here had found a BArch (Melbourne).
I suspect your hypothesis regarding Carter is at least plausible.
When I get back from the hot tub, I will offer an amusing parallel, which in fact has an odd connection with McLean.
Which was immensely ironic, given that
(a) IT skills (in the typical sense of the word "IT") really aren't directly applicable to the analysis of climate data. You may need a *little* bit of critical thinking - but many IT people get away with merely low levels. You don't need much in the way of statistics, evidence gathering and analysis procedures, and the overall scientific method. This claim strikes me as a classic DKM (Dunning-Kruger Moment).
(b) The problems with MFC09 included (amongst other things) failures of climate data analysis, which rather undercuts his claims to have the requisite skills in that area.
(c) McLean was (and had previously) been arguing from authority derived in part from his claimed skills (strengthened by publication in a peer-reviewed journal), but rejects argument from the authority of the strong consensus of those who actually have the skills and rejects the post-publication peer review. This alone is a serious logic failure.
(d) Lewandowsky was smart enough NOT to claim to have unwarranted skills in climate science; one of his points was that those who do not have the skills need to rely on those who do (via peer review and other processes). McLean and his followers on that thread enthusiastically and unknowingly demonstrated that point.
Thanks John - I don't seem to be able to use the internet to see if there is a Bachelor of Architecture, but even if there is, would JCU take on someone for a PhD on the basis that they had, at some distant time in the past, done an undergraduate degree in some completely unrelated discipline? Without requiring them to demonstrate (a) any expertise in the field concerned or (b) any ability to do research, say by getting them started on a Masters Qual or a Postgrad Diploma. Once upon a time you had to get a very good honours degree in the same field order to go into a PhD directly, otherwise you had to go via Masters. This is all far more than I want to know about Mr McLean, and it is possible, as you suggest, that universities are so desperate for postgrads that qualifying standards have been totally dumped. It wouldn't affect my other questions.
When McLean says "my area of expertise, information technology, is directly applicable to the analysis of climate data"
Rubbish. To analyze climate data you need the ability to analyze data and probably some domain knowledge of climate. You don't even need a computer for that. Expertize in IT doesn't guarantee either of those things anyway.
re: #50 David Horton
I've given talks at many Oz universities, but I have no current calibration on what might or might not be done.
As an amusing exercise, people might look at Crescendo...", read Section 2, especially Figures 2.5 and 2.6, which catalog reasons for anti-science, and map them versus people's backgrounds. Which of these might fit McLean?
Now, on degrees...
In doing the above piece, there emerged an especially odd collection of labels for Naomi Oreskes (from p.81 there):
She is often characterized as a
âhistory instructor (from Chris Horner, a lawyer)
âsocial scientist (Lindzen, who called her Nancy)
âhistory professor in a Gender Studies Department (from Joseph Bast, who runs heartland, but as far as I know, has no degree)
- essayist (from Monckton/Ferguson/SPPI, in comparison with "researcher" Schulte. SPPI publishes McLean...
Actually, she is a well-published geoscientist, BSc in
Mining Geology from Imperial College, London (~MITR of UK), PhD in Geological Research and History of Science from
Stanford U. She was an Assistant Professor of Earth Sciences at Dartmouth, and lately, a Provost at
UCSD. She has done work on oceanography and evaluation of numerical models.
http://historyweb.ucsd.edu/oreskes/pages/profile.html
http://historyweb.ucsd.edu/oreskes/pages/publication.html
http://historyweb.ucsd.edu/oreskes/pages/profile.html#awards
Yes, she does history of science,but the only one of those with any relevant background is Lindzen.
Anyway, it turns out that most people with strong backgrounds and track records don't make a big deal over degrees. For some amusing interaction with the Viscount, who just had to put "Dr" in front of my name multiple times, see: DeSmogBlog.
Search down for "Brenchley" to find the Viscount's diatribe, which includes amazing complaints like:
"rather than interfering in an unlawful manner on the blogosphere"
After some amusing comments by others, I posted "Reality Check" about "Dr" and hoped he might respond, but alas, he did not.
I've worked in IT ever since I completed my science degree in the mid-80's. There are a lot of very smart people working in IT but many of them know little about anything else.
Unless he has a lot of experience in scientific-computing in particular (end even then) I doubt he has the skills to analyze much about climate science.
Well, it's not really rubbish - it means he's qualified to write code for other people once they communicate the proper algorithms to him :)
But that's not what he's saying, which implies he's just blowing smoke. He might be smart enough to additionally *learn* enough of statistics to do useful work on his own, but that's totally different than saying his IT skills are directly applicable.
Some remarkable comments from John McLean in the Lewandowsky thread:
"IT" covers such as vast range of knowledge, experience and skills that claiming "IT expertise" is A VACUOUS CLAIM, hence really not even worth debating.
re: #47 thanks for checking
re: #50 I'm not sure if that was a rhetorical question or not. Although I've given talks for many OZ universities (including one in Townesville), it's been a while, and I certainly don't know the local behaviors. It is hardly inconceivable that Carter would tell McLean "you ought to do a PhD". Every once in a while some faculty member runs across someone with a nontraditional background they think has promise. However, all remains to be seen in this case.
An interesting exercise might be to read Chapter 2 of Crescendo..., especially the reasons-for-anti-science catalogs in Figs 2.5-2.6, and speculate on which, if any, might fit McLean.
A parallel to McLean's attempt to denigrate others' expertise popped up in the course of doing that piece. See p.81 of V1.0 for more, but Naomi Oreskes has been labeled:
"history instructor" (by Chris Horner, a lawyer)
âhistory professor in a Gender Studies Department" by Joseph Bast, who runs Heartland, but as far as I know, has no college degree
"essayist" (as compared to researcher Schulte), by Monckton & Rob Ferguson of SPPI (i.e., McLean's preferred venue)
"social scientist" (Richard Lindzen: well, at least Lindzen has some expertise, and Naomi does do social science sometimes. Of course, he couldn't get her name right, calling her Nancy.)
Naomi certainly does history of science, but she is a well-published geoscientist, BSc in Mining Geology from Imperial College, London (~MIT of UK), PhD in Geological Research and History of Science from Stanford U.
She was an Assistant Professor of Earth Sciences at Dartmouth, a Professor at UCSD and lately, a Provost at UCSD. None of these are exactly poor schools.
She has done work on oceanography and evaluation of numerical models.
See this ,or this or this.
If [McLean said](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/04/john_mclean_hides_the_declines…) "I am also a PhD candidate conducting thesis research on a climate topic", then he has not a clue about the basic terminology used in academic circles.
"...PhD candidate conducting thesis research..." is part tautological, part confabulation. Of course a PhD candidate conducts research for a thesis; it goes without saying. However, the thesis and the research are separate things, and this wording is clumsy in its bringing together of the two different endeavours.
Further, "â¦on a climate topic" is the phraseology of someone not familiar with PhD research, and if anyone were so enrolled in such a project said person would specify the detailed focus of the research, rather than refer to an abstract "climate topic".
McLean's comment:
Iâve offered this up before elsewhere:
Here are links to submissions made by McLean to a New Zealand Parliament Select Committee that was considering an Emissions Trading Scheme.
Three Select Committees have had a go.
For the first round in 2008 McLean co-submitted with someone who in a previous life called for a boycott of Mobil because of climate change issues and is now a denialist.
http://www.parliament.nz/en-NZ/PB/SC/Documents/Evidence/9/1/7/48SCFESCE…
For the second round in early 2009 McLean went solo:
http://www.parliament.nz/en-NZ/PB/SC/Documents/Evidence/6/3/2/49SCETSSC…
http://www.parliament.nz/en-NZ/PB/SC/Documents/Evidence/3/6/2/49SCETSSC…
And nothing for the 3rd round in late 2009.
By definition the submissions are public.
He's trying to be the Casey Luskin of climate denial.
I wonder if McLean would meet the entry requirements for a PhD at JCU?
http://cms.jcu.edu.au/grs/researchdegrees/JCUDEV_015301
Maybe this is why his paper was so important to him:
"For example, a graduate of at least two years standing with research experience and publications could be considered."
He may have been optimistic with his claim that: "He is completing a PhD at James Cook University". I wonder if he has even started work towards it? It's really hard to find a school at JCU where his background would have any relevance and where he would write a thesis on a 'climate-related topic'.
http://cms.jcu.edu.au/grs/topics/index.htm
It can't be a science discipline, he just doesn't have the credentials. (Not that I know what his academic qualifications are, but if he studied science at the undergraduate level he obviously didn't keep up with it.)
He says he's been working in IT (which could mean anything, and doesn't mean he has academic quals in IT). Based on what he's written to date, I doubt he would have the expertise to contribute anything new on a climate-related topic. I can't see any other area in which he would have anything to contribute.
Hope someone satisfies my curiosity and unravels the mystery :D
To re-iterate my comment above, I think we should cut McLean a lot of slack here. The whole purpose of a PhD is to educate someone to the point where they can conduct independent research. Part of this is acquiring an in-depth knowledge of a particular discipline, part is becoming steeped in the culture and norms of research.
The ultimate responsibility for MFC09-gate must rest with McLean's supervisor. The original paper should never have seen the light of day. The rebuttal to Foster et al is even worse. The public attacks directed at the journal, the reviewers, and experts in the field are beyond belief.
Any competent supervisor would have nipped this in the bud. Either McLean is proceeding without the approval of his supervisor, or his supervisor is grossly incompetent - I can't see any alternative. Whichever Department/School/Faculty/University that McLean is working in should be in crisis mode and having urgent meetings with McLean and his supervisor. Either that, or they don't care for their reputation and the damage being done to their PhD student.
Not to toot my own horn too much, but did everyone miss my earlier post (#28) concerning confirmation seminar requirements (as well as pointing out the fact that John McLean doesn't appear on the JCU website) at JCU?
One more possibility - he doesn't have a supervisor because his talk about doing a PhD is ... shall we say not supported by any evidence?
Surely if MFC-09 was part of McClean's PhD he should have declared his affiliation with the university. But in both the original paper and the response to Foster et al it is stated as Applied Science Consultants, Croydon. So, if his PhD is in science, he must have commenced after 15 January 2010, when he submitted his response to JGR. If he is doing a PhD then it would more likely be about the politics of climate change.
#61 - yes we did note your finding, another part of the jigsaw of this mysterious matter. I think all of us have been focused on the formalities of the "invited to do a PhD" and "completing a PhD" business. I'm wondering now if there might be even more to my imaginary scenario of Carter telling him he should do a PHD. I am wondering if McLean's coauthors told him that this was such an important paper, a paper that would overturn all of the accumulated climate science of the last 150 years, a paper that would stop those greenies and their one world government, perhaps the most important paper, in fact, ever published, that he would be certainly awarded a PhD on the strength of it (and what he refers to as "my range of documents, some of which are mentioned on this page", ie the "one of my documents has been cited in the US senate" and another in a "peer reviewed journal") . Hence the desperate fight back against the negative analyses of the paper, the abuse of the critics - fame (and a PhD) was slipping away.
But if this was being said to me, I think I might have been just a little wary, just a little uncertain that my analysis in a single paper was enough to overturn the work of all those climate scientists, might have been a little apprehensive that my qualifications perhaps weren't quite up to producing a single paper of such earth shattering importance, might have wondered why no one else had realised that "If the SOI accounts for short-term variation then logically it also accounts for long-term variation", might have wondered if mathematically removing a warming trend and then claiming your data showed no warming trend was really the best way to contradict all of the lines of evidence pointing to a warming planet. It seems Mr McLean was unwary.
Sorry about the odd formatting, dunno what happened there. Just wanted to add that I would be quite happy if someone was to prove all my hypotheses about this business to be wrong.
From a comment at a Tamino thread on some of McLean's silliness at The Drum, a proposed solution for handling papers that have been published in peer-reviewed journals and subsequently thoroughly debunked, courtesy of Horatio Algernon.
I rather like it. Can we get it to catch on?
Th other easy way to 'hide the decline' and solve global warming is pretty simple;
Vote it away!
http://anarchist606.blogspot.com/2010/04/stop-climate-change-vote-it-aw…
While the denialists are at it; can we repeal the laws of gravity? Because I've always wanted to be able to fly!
As Zibethicus said above (#24), McLean claimed to have a paper published in a 'peer-reviewed journal', which turns out to be Energy and Environment (no surprise). (No citations according to Google Scholar.)
And this is being nitpicky, but why not? In another unpublished paper (a badly written whinge about a CSIRO report) he cites his own E&E paper as one of only three footnotes (all his own), but still gets the citation wrong, writing "vol. 17, no 1 (March 2006)" instead of "vol. 17, no 1 (January 2006)".
http://mclean.ch/climate/CSIRO_review.pdf
He also refers in a comment on Unleashed, to a paper by "Timoniev (or similar)", by which I assume he meant Troshichev et al (2005). (He should check first.)
And he cites in his own unpublished/unpublishable reply to the comment, work of some of the very authors he castigates as being 'biased' (let alone his frequently stated contempt for citations as 'appeals to authority', except for his own work, presumably).
A very mixed up man is John McLean, and sloppy to say the least.
With respect to [Michael Ashely's post](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/04/john_mclean_hides_the_declines…) above - in any other circumstance I would wholeheartedly concur.
However, McLean is very much a 'mature-age' student (if he really is a student), and his decades of independence as an adult, and as a worker in his chosen profession of 'IT', significantly enhance his culpability. And on top of this, McLean has a prominent and entrenched reputation in the field of public contradiction of accepted science, without having previously ever demonstrated any basis for being able to comment with competence or with valid authority in the field that he seeks to overturn.
On this basis, McLean is very much responsible for his own commentary, whether he does so as a real PhD student, or as a player in the Denialist body memetic. His previous history is one that any postgraduate research committee considering his candidature should carefully dissect in a judgement of his worthiness to remain as a PhD candidate...
I myself was a 'mature-age' student when I enrolled in my own PhD, and I was cognisant even then of my own responsibility in how I represented myself, my supervisors, my discipline, and my institution, and in the public commentary that I gave whilst I was a student. In my own candidature at least, saying the things that McLean said, with the obvious lack of scientific justification for doing so, and with the patent inability to self-assess one's scientific capacities in doing so, would have been justifiable grounds for termination of candidature.
If McLean is a PhD student, his supervisors, whomever they may be, are culpable if they had any prior knowledge of his participation in MFC09. However, as a fully mature, world-experienced and publicly-active adult, he holds just as much responsibility (if not more), and in any serious scientific educational institution his continued candidature would be justifiably considered inappropriate, and terminated in very short order.
If there are any institutions out there that would hand out a PhD on the basis of McLean's ham-fisted grasp of science, I might almost wish that I had enrolled there rather than in my own university. This way I might have had to do far less work for my testamur, and saved myself a year or more in the process!
I have rather more pride in myself than that however, and I have sufficient pride in the hard yards that I and my colleagues have slogged over the years, to be more than disgusted that someone like McLean thinks that he can sail through without the sacrifice of the blood, sweat, tears and integrity that should underpin a real PhD.
As gentlemanly as Michael Ashley is about McLean's putative candidacy, I myself have to take the line of 'bad cop'. It makes me sick to my stomach to think that a scientific featherweight such as McLean might get the same level of academic recognition that I and countless of my colleagues have worked so hard for, for what is no better than a fail-level term report from a senior high school student. I've seen better scientists than him not get even a Masters for decent enough work, and in fact, in my own tertiary teaching I myself have failed better students than McLean demonstrates himself to be.
In the end, if McLean really is enrolled in a PhD somewhere, then something is wrong in the world of tertiary education, and it's a rot that threatens real science in the professional arena.
Out, out, foul spot!
Concern trolling from Michael Ashley aside, I suggest you go read the submissions McLean made to the new Zealand Parliament about an Emissions Trading Scheme that I link to in #58.
(For extra belly laughs read those made by Carter at the same site - go back to "evidence" and search on Carter).
McLean knew exactly what he was doing.
RE: #70, Bernard
That's a very sensible comment. And RE: #71, I'm not "concern trolling", although I can see how it might sound that way.
Despite McLean's age, experience, and past history, if he has competent supervision, and if he completes a PhD thesis, and if it is examined and passed by credible world experts (not hand-picked contrarians), then he should learn how to do good science.
However, there are a lot of "if"s there. Given recent events, JCU should be asking some questions.
69: And this is being nitpicky, but why not? In another unpublished paper (a badly written whinge about a CSIRO report) he cites his own E&E paper as one of only three footnotes (all his own), but still gets the citation wrong, writing "vol. 17, no 1 (March 2006)" instead of "vol. 17, no 1 (January 2006)". http://mclean.ch/climate/CSIRO_review.pdf
(end quote)
Ha, ha! I missed /that/!
Some might call it nitpicking. Others might call it correcting the record.
Drolleries like citing your own paper wrongly look pretty bad coming from a person who attacked "the incompetence or worse of the journal editor" who dared to reject their rebuttal, don't they now?
A number of good people on here appear to have done some remarkable desktop investigating on McLean, and v. infenous has made two comments. I have no background in this area, and not followed it to the degree some have, is it possible that McLean doesn't exist, and that is why he is not on JCU dept. lists.
Could it be a simple internet invention of an established person as a way of saying things without getting into "trouble?"
Might it be a developed Bob Carter sockpuppet? (And I thought this truth machine character was hard work! ;)) Has anyone met McLean in real life?
:P
Re #75
Funnily enough, you may have something there. An ABN search for "Applied Science Consultants" yields nothing. So this is not a registered trading name. A Google search on the postal address listed - PO Box 314 Croydon Vic only comes up for a business called Aromaspray/Nontoxic Online, which is registered to a Wayne Anthony Baker. One and the same? Who knows.
There is an ABN registered to a John Duncan McLean in Croydon, but it has no business name registered to it. Nothing appears on ASIC either.
As an aside, I notice that the authors of MDC thank Craig Loehle for lending his statistical expertise.
Not sure if you've already seen this but for someone whose own credentials appear to be so dubious it sure seems like he's quite critical and demanding of others when it comes to their credentials.
Think Big #77, thank you, that post deserves to be in the all time annals of best denialism rants. Perhaps simply one of the best rants of all time. And Jimmy #76, good work, this whole thing gets curiouser and curiouser.
I think that McLean is actually a somebody.
It's just that he is an intellectual and a scientific nobody.
In the AGU paper, McLean's affiliation is listed as:
"Applied Science Consultants, P.O. Box 314, Croydon, 3136, Australia"
A Google search for "P.O. Box 314, Croydon, 3136" yields a company listed as "Aromaspray / Nontoxic online" at the same address. This is a "health foods business". Strangely, despite the name, they don't seem to have a website. Can anyone in Australia find out anything about that business?
You can find out McLean's address from a whois search. More importantly he does not appear to be a Ph.d candidate at James Cook University, unless of course , he has some private arrangement with Bob Carter. Carter does not appear to be supervising any students at JCU. Was Carter in Finland and Iceland in 2002-2003 ?
I'm sure everyone remembers
http://mclean.ch/climate/global_warming.htm
Correction : at least one student is supervised by Carter : Melissa Land.
For a fascinating insight into how real science is done, have a look at Martin Vermeer's discussion of what happened behind the scenes prior to publication of his paper on global sea level coauthored with Stefan Rahmstorf.
People such as McKitrick (who has been complaining of scientific "gatekeeping" and "censorship") might note that the Vermeer & Rahmstorf paper was first rejected by Nature. The authors dusted themselves off, used the referees' comments to improve the paper, and submitted to PNAS.
Ops, I used HTML for the links in #84, so they don't work. Here it is with Deltoid-style links:
For a fascinating insight into how real science is done, have a look at Martin Vermeer's discussion of [what happened behind the scenes](http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/04/science-story-the…) prior to publication of [his paper on global sea level](http://www.pnas.org/content/106/51/21527.full.pdf) coauthored with Stefan Rahmstorf.
People such as McKitrick (who has been [complaining of scientific "gatekeeping" and "censorship"](http://deepclimate.org/2010/04/05/mcclimategate-continued-mckitrick-com…)) might note that the Vermeer & Rahmstorf paper was first rejected by Nature. The authors dusted themselves off, used the referees' comments to improve the paper, and submitted to PNAS.
This exchange, from the comments on John McLean's response to Stephan Lewandowsky's piece on The Drum pretty much sums up how it went for JM:
I rang James Cook University's Graduate Research School, but they said they were unable to release information about my question of whether John D McLean is a PHD Candidate there and, if so, who his supervisor is.
He in not on their phone list, which includes honours and graduate students (but since he's in Melbourne, I guess he might not be on the list)
This whole issue of whether McLean is enrolled in a PhD could be very easily solved.
All McLean has to do is to tell us where he is enrolled, and by whom he is being supervised. If he is prepared to say publically that he has been "invited" to undertake a PhD, in order that he garners some (self-)perceived credibility to justify his shoddy work, he should be prepared to back up his claim with the details.
I find it fascinating that (as far as I have been able to determine) he has not, to date, supported his claim with any evidence...
Even if Mclean is actually enrolled in a PhD, he has no right to [sign himself as already having one](http://www.lavoisier.com.au/articles/climate-policy/garnaut/Garnautsuba…) in a submission), or to allow anyone else to do so with his knowledge.
Such behaviour is dishonest.
The misrepresentation is [repeated here](http://www.larouchepub.com/pr/2007/071217sci_ltr_to_un.html), [there](http://www.larouchepub.com/pr/2007/071217sci_ltr_to_un.html) (twice!), and [everywhere](http://www.ipe.net.au/UNletter.html) (amongst countless other examples) with no correction to date.
I wouldn't necessarily expect McLean to ensure that every site corrects the misrepresentation (given the way shit speads around the Interweb it would be difficult), but he has a responsibility at the very least to issue his own clear and public refutation of the incorrect attribution, and preferably one that includes an explicit declaration that he did not start the misrepresentation himself when he put his name to the submission.
Davidp:
The JCU privacy policy makes it unlikely they would answer the request you mentioned.
"only disclosing personal information outside the University and its controlled entities or affiliated bodies where:
* its disclosure has been consented to by the individual to whom it relates; or
* its disclosure is required or authorised by or under law; or
* it is reasonably believed to be necessary to prevent or lessen a serious threat to life or health of any person; or
* its disclosure is in the public interest under Section 44.1 of the Freedom of Information Act 1992 (Qld); or
* its disclosure is reasonably necessary for enforcement of the criminal law or of a law imposing a pecuniary penalty, or for the protection of the public revenue. "
Suppose you asked JCU about 10 people. They have to consistently answer "we can't tell you". If they answer "No, not student" to some, and "we can't tell you" for others, you know what that means.
One might ask them instead on their policy for handling public claims of affiliation? I.e., there might well be a difference in their rules between:
a) Calling and asking them is XYZ a PhD student?
b) Sending them a copy/URL of the ABC bio note, pointing out that this a public claim by McLean, and asking them about their policies for handling such things, and perhaps noting that if there is no way to check such a public claim, ANYONE can without penalty claim to be a PhD student at JCU. Note that he made no claim about his supervisor, so it would be hard to ask about that.
Next time I see John McClean down at the local shops I'll ask him.
Oh yes.
He lives down the road from me.
A few facts to ponder:
1. In the United States, according to James Hansen's NASA data, the six warmest years on record in the USA were: 1934, 1998, 1921, 2006, 1931 & 1999. The order of those six years depends on which of NASA's datasets you believe; that's the order from the [Sept. 1997 version](http://web.archive.org/web/20070914231348/http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gis…), with 1934 the warmest year on record. Hansen et al keep revising their historical data, and refuse to disclose how & why, despite FoIA requests and at least [one lawsuit](http://legaltimes.typepad.com/blt/2010/05/foia-suit-seeks-nasas-global-…). But all versions of the NASA data agree that 5 of the 6 warmest years were more than a decade ago, and 3 of the 6 warmest years were >75 years ago, which is certainly unsupportive of "catastrophic warming" claims. Did "global" warming somehow largely skip the USA for all these years?
2. Surveys of American professional meteorologists show that a large majority of them disbelieve the claim that human activities are primarily responsible for the warming seen in the last 1/4 of the 20th century. Here's the result of a survey of broadcast meteorologists, [from the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society](http://www.heartland.org/publications/environment%20climate/article/267…), and [another from George Mason University](http://www.heartland.org/full/27383/Majority_of_Broadcast_Meteorologist…). Ask yourself what they know that you don't?
3. For those who would point to this year's hot spring and summer as evidence of global warming, I note that the heat has only been present in the northern hemisphere. South of the equator it has been colder than usual, and in much of South American it has been brutally cold, with hundreds of deaths & considerable loss of livestock resulting.
4. IMO, anyone who complains about John McLean's credentials w/o ever having complained about the credentials of railway engineer / economist / [novelist](http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7018533.ece) Rajendra Pachauri simply proves his own bias by doing so.
I commend to you [Mr. McLean's latest article about the IPCC](http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/originals/mclea…).
[Dave Burton](http://www.burtonsys.com/climate/global_msl_trend_analysis.html)
Cary, NC USA
([email](http://www.burtonsys.com/email/))
>in the USA [...] [1934](http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/distro_realdeal.16aug20074.pdf) [...] which is certainly unsupportive of "catastrophic warming" claims
Provide a citation of any claim they may have made that "catastrophic warming" has taken place, or explicitly concede that they made no such claim.
Unless you can do that I see no point in explaining to you the errors in your other off topic talking points, all of which you could easily find for yourself if you bothered to exercise a bit of skepticism.
Dave Burton:
So the 1997 version shows that 1998 was one of the warmest years. Gee, NASA must be prescient.
Sorry Dave Burton, all you've done is shown you're an idiot.
Shorter Dave Burton:
I needed an excuse to linkspam McLean's latest opus idioticus.
* * *
More linkspam here.
Dave Burton.
[Chris O'Neill has already pointed out how prescient the 1997 version was](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/04/john_mclean_hides_the_declines…), although I'm more impressed that it picked the 2006 and the 1999 temperatures, than the 1998 temperature.
Of course, if you're so sure that Heartland's TV weathermen have more understanding of the physics of the climate than do the world's actual, real, professional, trained climatologists, you will be able to provide detailed and supported answers to [each of the questions that I put to so many other of your brethren](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/12/firedoglake_book_salon_on_jame…), questions that so far none of them have been able to adequately address.
Dave,
[You say](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/04/john_mclean_hides_the_declines…):
>"For those who would point to this year's hot spring and summer as evidence of global warming, I note that the heat has only been present in the northern hemisphere. South of the equator it has been colder than usual, and in much of South American it has been brutally cold, with hundreds of deaths & considerable loss of livestock resulting."
Please show us references. Where I live (which is in the southern hemisphere) it has been much warmer than usual. My colleagues in Tasmania tell me they've had so far the warmest winter on record. Show us references or you just pulled your statements out of your rear orifice.
South of the equator it has been colder than usual, and in much of South American it has been brutally cold, with hundreds of deaths & considerable loss of livestock resulting."
you can simply plot the SH data.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vsh/last:180
the SH was extremely hot, over the first halve of this year.
2nd try... it appears that Mr. Lambert has banned me for heresy, but perhaps it was merely an oversight that he blocked or removed the following message:
---------------------------------------------------------------
Typo correction...
[The link to NASA's Sept. 20007 version temperature data](http://web.archive.org/web/20070914231348/http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gis…) is correct, and does show the warmest year on record as being 1934, but, as Chris noticed, I misidentified it as 1997.
Thanks for the proofreading, Chris.
(BTW, the reason I chose to cite the "six warmest" years rather than the 5 warmest or 10 warmest is that the same six years are listed as warmest in [all the versions of NASA's data](http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/F…) that I could find, though the order changes from one version to another.)
[Dave Burton](http://www.burtonsys.com/climate/global_msl_trend_analysis.html)
Cary, NC USA
([email](http://www.burtonsys.com/email/))
@DaveBurton:
You are aware that the US constitutes only about 2% of the worlds surface area?
And that temperature variability over smaller areas is much larger than over larger areas, so noise is 'louder?'
And that even in just the US, if you look at decades rather than individual years (which are subject more to extremes from 'weather noise,' that the most recent decades are by far the warmest?
You do know that, don't you?
If so - why are you cherry-picking one region (the US), and one measurement time scale (annual temperatures), that maximize the appearance of noise - and then pointing at a handful of years with extreme values -noise- to dispute the trend?
[Dave](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/04/john_mclean_hides_the_declines…),
[For the second time](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/04/john_mclean_hides_the_declines…), give us references to your cooler southern hemisphere claim or you just made it up.
Ah, it seems that perhaps I've been unbanned! Thank you, Tim.
So, I'll try to answer to some questions that have been raised...
Â
**Bernard J.** wrote:
Perhaps I was unclear, Bernard. Those were not surveys of "TV weathermen" which found that most were skeptical of anthropogenic global warming, and they are not Heartland's. Heartland merely reported the news.
They are surveys of professional broadcast meteorologists, from [the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society](http://www.heartland.org/publications/environment%20climate/article/267…), and from [George Mason University](http://www.heartland.org/full/27383/Majority_of_Broadcast_Meteorologist…).
Don't feel bad. Many people are confused about the difference between TV weathermen (who are journalists) and professional broadcast meteorologists (who are scientists). The former were not surveyed. Only professional meteorologists were surveyed, and few of them believe that the warming seen in the last 1/4 of the 20th century had human activity as its primary cause.
Ask yourself what they know that you don't?
Â
**Dave R.** cited [this response](http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/distro\_realdeal.16aug20074.pdf) from Dr. James Hansen to skeptics' discovery of an error in NASA's data which, when corrected, caused 1934 to (for a while) be listed as the warmest year on record in the USA.
In a related comment, **Lee** wrote:
Right, and about 6% of the land area.
Actually, *temperature* variability is much larger over larger areas, but I think you meant temperature *anomaly* variability is larger over smaller areas, which is true.
I'm glad you asked! The answer is that it is far better to compare real data for a region in which it actually exists than to compare it to no data at all.
Take a look at [that document from Dr. Hansen](http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/distro\_realdeal.16aug20074.pdf), which Dave R. cited. In particular, look at the last couple of paragraphs on p. 2 and the diagrams on p. 3 of that document.
There you can see temperature anomaly plots, to a couple of tenths of a degree of supposed accuracy, for very nearly the entire world, including even the oceans, *for 1921 and 1934* -- long before there were reliable temperature measurements for most of the world.
The gist of Hansen's argument (as stated at the end of p. 2) was that, "the 1998 and 2006 temperature anomaly maps differ fundamentally from the 1934 and 1921 temperature maps. In 1998 and 2006 the world as a whole has become warmer... [but] In 1921 and 1934 the United States happened to be a relatively hot spot compared to the world as a whole..."
The problem with that claim is that there's no reliable temperature data to support it. Although there are [problems with the surface station data these days](http://www.surfacestations.org/), at least we *have* some. 75-90 years ago that simply wasn't the case for much of the world.
That's one of the biggest problems in climatology these days: the confusion of real, measured data with "data" that has been adulterated or manufactured entirely by computer models.
Â
**MFS** wrote:
Regarding the cold wave which most of the southern hemisphere (especially S. America) has been experiencing (even as we've been going through a heat wave up here), I give you a series of reports from Eduardo Ferreyra. (I think he's Presidente en Fundación Argentina de EcologÃa CientÃficaFAEC, though it is possible that's a different man with the same name.)
On Sat, May 22, 2010 at 2:48 PM Eduardo Ferreyra wrote:
Reports from meteo stations in Antarctica show the occurrence of abnormally low temperatures, especially in Vostok where temperatures as low as -70ºC have been recorded. Freezing polar fronts (MPHs) are coming into Argentina at increased frequency. Also the South Pacific and South Atlantic anticyclones have changed and are allowing more cold air going through the Drake Strait directly to Tierra del Fuego and Patagonia.
It looks as this will be a repetition of the 2007 terrible winter in our country.
Eduardo
On July 22, 2010 Eduardo Ferreyra submitted a response to [Tim Egan's NYT opinion piece](http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/21/weather-bane/?th&emc=th). The response read, in part:
... BTW, heat waves are common everywhere, and warmists always use them to promote their scaring views, "it is caused by global warming" and human emissions. But when cold winters or freezing spells come and make peopleâs lives terrible, they say, "Itâs just weather." Well, I haven't seen the NYT or the mainstream media reporting on the extremely anomalous "Freezing South Polar Wave" in South America and other parts of the Southern Hemisphere, as Australia or New Zealand, or South Africa.
The freezing air from Antarctica already has killed more than 200 people in Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Brazil, Bolivia, and Peru, has covered with snow parts of Argentina that never have seen snow, ...
On Sat, Jul 24, 2010 at 12:13 AM Eduardo Ferreyra wrote:
Dear all,
This graph gives and idea of the persistence of the polar wave we are suffering from 13 below zero consecutive days -and it has no sign of easing.
http://www.mitosyfraudes.org/images/AltaGracia\_23\_july\_2010.jpg
Humidity that came from the Atlantic short before the second polar wave on July 10th brought heavy snowfalls in about 70% of Argentina. But after the snowfalls the sky has remained clear. In a subtropical area day temperatures are normally this high during winter, but they were quite below normal. The wind kept blowing from the south bringing more cold air from Antarctica. So that's reflected in the above temperature graph of the city close to my home.
The cold wave killed many thousands of cattle in Paraguay and Brazil, where cattle are not used to freezing temperature. In Peru and Bolivia about 200 people died in the high mountains, and the polar front kept going crossing the equator cooling cities in the northern hemisphere. A very rare (if not unprecedented) event in decades.
Eduardo
On Tue, August 3, 2010 7:37:01 PM Eduardo Ferreyra wrote:
Dear all,
The new cold polar wave has arrived yesterday to Argentina. In our sierras in Córdoba has been snowing without stopping for the last 26 hours. People say that "now it is snowing "sugar". It means it is a very dry and cold snow, they have never seen before. Excellent for deep powder skiing! All roads going to the mountains have been closed, and our Justice is closing down during three days the building where it functions due to freezing temperatures that the heating system cannot cope with!
I am waiting for a new snowfall at my home before dawn. (Not hoping for one!). If it happens I will send some pics.
Livestock losses in Patagonia has been heavy. More than 6000 sheep in Chubut (about 75% of production lost)
However, this is going to be the hottest year in record!
 **:-D**
Eduardo
On Sun, Aug 8, 2010 at 3:12 AM Eduardo Ferreyra wrote:
Bolivia is as bad as we are in Argentina. According to a Bolivian website:
http://www.boliviabella.com/1-million-fish-dead-in-bolivian-ecological-…
Over 6 million fish and thousands of alligators, turtles, dolphins and other river wildlife are floating dead in numerous Bolivian rivers in the three eastern/southern departments of Santa Cruz, Beni and Tarija. The extreme cold front that hit Bolivia in mid-July caused water temperatures to dip below the minimum temperatures river life can tolerate. As a consequence, rivers, lakes, lagoons and fisheries are brimming with decomposing fish and other creatures.
Unprecedented: Nothing like this has ever been seen in this magnitude in Bolivia. Inhabitants of riverside communities report the smell is nauseating and can be detected as far as a kilometer away from river banks. River communities, whose livelihoods depend on fishing, fear they'll run out of food and will have nothing to sell. Authorities are concerned there will be a shortage of fish in markets and are more concerned by possible threats to public health, especially in communities that also use river water for bathing and drinking, but also fear contaminated or decaying fish may end up in market stalls. They've begun a campaign to ensure market vendors and the public know how to tell the difference between fresh and unhealthy fish.
In university fish ponds and commercial fisheries the losses are also catastrophic.
See my report (in Spanish, but with 4 videos embedded where you can see the catastrophic event:
http://www.mitosyfraudes.org/calen12/ola\_polar\_bolivia.html
In our southern province of Chubut they still are with the greatest snowfall since many decades, and expect to lose about 60-70% of their sheep. Temperatures are still in the -15ºC range. The army has to go to their rescue with supplies, fodder, and fuel.
http://www.lanacion.com.ar/nota.asp?nota\_id=1292623
Eduardo
Â
[Dave Burton](http://www.burtonsys.com/climate/global_msl_trend_analysis.html)
Cary, NC USA
([email](http://www.burtonsys.com/email/))
MFS wrote:
MFS, please be patient. I've already sent a reply to several of the questions here, including yours, but Tim has apparently flagged my ID for "moderation," and he's not yet "approved" my reply, which is why you haven't seen it yet.
You may also contact me directly, at [my email address](http://www.burtonsys.com/email/). I don't have your address, so I can't contact you directly, unless you first contact me.
[Dave Burton](http://www.burtonsys.com/climate/global_msl_trend_analysis.html)
Cary, NC USA
([email](http://www.burtonsys.com/email/))
>MFS, please be patient. I've already sent a reply to several of the questions here, including yours, but Tim has apparently flagged my ID for "moderation," and he's not yet "approved" my reply, which is why you haven't seen it yet.
This is untrue. Some of Burton's posts went into moderation because he included many links. They had been long since approved when he wrote the above.
*(Trying again without my email & web page links, to try to avoid moderation)*
Tim wrote:
Tim, thank you for clarifying why my posts aren't appearing here (because I included too many links, not because of my heresies).
However, as you can see, my response to MSW, Lee, Bernard & Dave R. still has not showed up here. Perhaps you tried to approve it but something went wrong?
Will you please double-check the moderation queue? There should be two copies of my response to MSW *et al* awaiting your approval (both copies posted before you posted your #104). Please just approve one and delete the other.
Also, while we're at it, I have a question. I tried to embed an image, but it didn't work. This is the syntax I used:
\!\[graphs\]\(http...etc.jpg "graphs"\)
What is wrong with that? How should I have done it?
I also tried a plain HTML <img src="http...etc.jpg" /> but that didn't work, either.
Thank you!
Dave Burton
Cary, NC USA
(For my email address, see www(dot)burtonsys(dot)com/email)
DB, you still never answered where you got your data showing the Southern Hemisphere is cold this year.
Nor the query about why a cherry pick of the US and one year average.
Thanks Tim,
Still waiting, Dave. A concise email with one link to your source of southern hemisphere temperatures should not be that hard to get through moderation...
While you're at it, you could also tell us why you think the outlier results (i.e. the hottest years) are an important measure of the plausibility or otherwise of GW; what dataset are you using to obtain your global average temperatures (so far you've only supplied US); and what they have to tell us that we can't see by looking at the trend.
Dave, I found your [other post](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/04/john_mclean_hides_the_declines…) -- there were so many links it got classed as spam.
You can't include images in a comment.
> Ask yourself what they know that you don't?
Ask yourself what climate scientists know that broadcast meteorologists don't.
Hint: try checking out the different educational requirements for the two vocations...
Thank you, Tim!
Dave,
Interesting. You're only providing links to opinion pieces and anecdotal references, most of which pertain exclusively to Argentina and Bolivia. Bolivia bella is a commercial tourism information site.
As to Mitos y Fraudes... Por favor... me muero de risa... it is, interestingly enough, a conspiracy theory site, advancing, for example, that the Club Bilderberger meeting in Spain in 2010 is an attempt to install a world government, or accusing modern green movements of mediatic terrorism and 3rd Reich Goebbelian tactics. Not what I'd call a reliable source of information.
In no way is this evidence that:
>"South of the equator it has been colder than usual..."
If you had given us, for example, the average satellite measurements for the southern hemisphere so far this year and compared them to the average, and they were indeed "colder than usual" then you'd have a leg to stand on. Instead you have covered yourself in glory by trying to advance a conspiracy theory website in Spanish as proof of cooling...
Epic Fail.
Dave Burton, listing off cherry picked sites of low temperature is not evidence of a cool sotherner hemisphere. IT is just evidence that you can find cool spots if you look for them.
You have been directed to evidence that the SH is warmer than usual. You have failed to counter this compelling evidence. The last six months of data have been [at or above](http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vsh/plot/hadcrut3vsh/from:1980…) the rising trend let alone above normal.
Dave Burton, your refusal to [retract claims that you cannot substantiate](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/04/john_mclean_hides_the_declines…) suggests that you have no interest in the truth about this subject, and this is confirmed by your subsequent parroting of delusional far-right conspiracy nuts...
>problems with the surface station data
These claims have been [tested and shown to be false](http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ushcn/v2/monthly/menne-etal2010.pdf) (PDF).
**Tim**, thank you for tracking down & approving my lost post, and for the explanation about embedded images.
Â
**All**, the order of the messages here is a bit confusing due to moderation delays; e.g., you can see MFS & Wow complaining that I gave no evidence for the harsh SH winter, in messages *after* my #103 with evidence of it. It may look like they just ignored what I wrote, but they actually wrote those messages *before* my #103 showed up here.
Since this message contains no links at all, perhaps it will post immediately.
(I've also discovered that failing to fill in the "Email Address" box seems to cause moderation to kick in, regardless of whether the message contains links.)
Â
**MFS** wrote:
Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Peru, Brazil & Antarctica, actually -- a pretty big chunk of the SH.
As for Mitos y Fraudes, I'll have to take your word for it, because I don't read Spanish. Sadly, the world is awash in tabloid-ish nonsense these days, and the conspiracy nuts are just a small part of the problem. But all we're talking about here is the weather, so unless they're blaming their frigid temps on the Bilderbergers, I don't see that it matters much for the purpose of this conversation.
Â
**Lotharsson**, I think what professional meteorologists know that some climatologists seem not to know is the difference between weather and climate. When we get headlines about climatologists predicting, on the basis of a few months of preliminary temperature data, that we might be headed for the hottest year ever, and blaming it on Global Warming, it makes people who know better (like professional meteorologists) skeptical of *everything* those climatologists say.
Â
**jakerman**, I saw a NH vs. SH temp anomaly map illustrating the point a few weeks ago, but can't seem to find it now. Sorry about that! If I find it again, I'll post a link.
Â
Dave Burton
Cary, NC USA
(For my email address, see www(dot)burtonsys(dot)com/email)
Dave Burton:
>my #103 with evidence of it.
Liar. Your #103 did not provide evidence in support of your claim, which [has been shown to be false](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/04/john_mclean_hides_the_declines…).
>*I saw a NH vs. SH temp anomaly map illustrating the point a few weeks ago, but can't seem to find it now. Sorry about that! If I find it again, I'll post a link.*
Can I suggest you reassess the reliability of your sources. If they give you bad info you are setting yourself up by believing them.
**Dave R.**, pooh-poohing Anthony Watts' [rigorous and highly respected research](http://www.surfacestations.org/) and calling him a "delusional far-right conspiracy nut" does *not* help your case.
That sort of *ad hominem* attack is unfortunately commonplace (and probably unavoidable) in the dirty world of politics, but it is entirely avoidable in science. Politicians might attack and belittle those with whom they disagree, but *scientists* are supposed to learn from and build upon the work of those who have reached different conclusions from their own.
When scientists behave like politicians, it is evidence that politics has supplanted science.
Dave Burton
Cary, NC USA
(For my email address, see www(dot)burtonsys(dot)com/email)
"Dear all,
The new cold polar wave has arrived yesterday to Argentina. "
May I point you to a similar situation here in the North last winter. However, despite the Southern US and the UK having extremely wintry conditions (moreso the Southern US), the situation did not last and was overall one of the warmest winters in these areas and that many areas NOT reporting such conditions were, in fact, much warmer than usual over this "wintry" period.
Selective reporting, selective amnesia, DB.
"Dave R., pooh-poohing Anthony Watts' rigorous and highly respected research "
You mean the research that he never did and complained when NOAA used "his" data to show that selecting for stations *HE* had rated "good" locations showed a higher warming trend then the entire used record he was complaining about?
We pooh-pooh it because it's poo.
"When scientists behave like politicians"
Well I suppose that Watts gets a bye here because he's no scientist, he's just a weather presenter with no science qualifications.
Similarly Monckton, who is a journalist graduate.
But funny how you decry this behaviour yet ignore Fred Singer's politicization...
"it is evidence that politics has supplanted science."
No, it's evidence that those using politicking to get their way, the deniers of AGW have no science.
>Dave R., pooh-poohing Anthony Watts' rigorous and highly respected research
Bwahaha! Ahahaha! Bugger, coffee on screen. Still, thanks for the laugh Burton.
By the way,
>That sort of ad hominem attack is unfortunately commonplace (and probably unavoidable) in the dirty world of politics, but it is entirely avoidable in science. Politicians might attack and belittle those with whom they disagree, but scientists are supposed to learn from and build upon the work of those who have reached different conclusions from their own.
would be a valid point if Watts was a scientist. But he has demonstrated, through boneheaded posts of his own (eg. histograms of temperature series, oblivious to their different baselines) and through those of others (Goddard's Venus post comes to mind) that he has only, at best, a tenuous grasp of scientific judgement, methods and analysis.
BTW if you're perhaps wondering what Wow is referring to in the above post, it's a paper by Menne et al. that uses Watts' surfacestations classifications to show that the trends between 'good' and 'poor' sites show no significant differences, and indeed there is a small, insignificant cool bias to the 'poor' sites. And I believe Watts is still to publish a full analysis of his surfacestations data, is he not? I really don't want to say he's delaying because the data does not agree with his preconceived bias, but it kinda looks that way...
Dave Burton:
>That sort of ad hominem attack
You either don't know what an ad hominen attack is, or you're a liar. I did not say he was wrong because he's a delusional far-right conspiracy nut. I said he's wrong because [he has been shown to be wrong in the peer-reviewed literature](http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ushcn/v2/monthly/menne-etal2010.pdf).
Dave Burton,
Vostok does not the whole of Antarctica make. Australian stations Davis, Casey and Mawson have not had such extremes, not has McMurdo, Scott, Amundsen... Which makes a nice segue your following statement:
>"But all we're talking about here is the weather..."
No Dave, we're talking about the climate, and until you learn the difference there is not much point continuing this conversation.
We may be trending down from a big El Nino, but it's still been pretty warm in the SH. Or do you have actual data that [disproves this](http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vsh/last:180)?
Antarctica is a bit of a sore point, it just refuses to follow the script.
http://www.tinyurl.com.au/fdq
http://www.tinyurl.com.au/dwm
http://www.tinyurl.com.au/i47
Nah, that's your momma's underwear being dried on the ground, spotty.
And in what way is it not following the script? It's on land, not ocean, the total volume is reducing and the flow rate from the land to sea (which, since the ice block is not melting relatively as fast, since that depends on volume, not linear distance) is increasing, this would extend the sea ice because it's falling off the land and into the sea.
Are icebergs in your world evidence of a cooling arctic? After all, that increases the sea ice EXTENT doesn't it?
Actually, as also pointed out by Judith Curry, Antarctica IS following the script. Climate models predicted equal or even increasing Antarctic sea ice extent for the 20th and significant parts of the 21st century...
marco - correct
wow - still a dill
"marco - correct"
So you're wrong and knew it. Why, then did you say it?
wow = still a dill,
wow it's your ice cream that is melting,
lick it, go on licker
> I think what professional meteorologists know that some climatologists seem not to know is the difference between weather and climate.
Don't be silly. That difference is THE key distinction between climate science and meteorology. Or at least between the courses I've seen that teach the two disciplines. Do you have evidence to the contrary?
> When we get headlines about climatologists predicting, on the basis of a few months of preliminary temperature data, that we might be headed for the hottest year ever...
...which might seem like a reasonable prediction after a few months out of twelve, given the comparison of those few months to the same few months in previous years, and regardless of who is making the prediction...
> ...and blaming it on Global Warming...
...which might indeed be a significant factor in any abnormally hot year, given that we are pretty damn sure it's warming - globally, on climate timescales.
> ...it makes people who know better (like professional meteorologists)...
They know better? In other words, you're arguing they know more **climate science** than climate scientists?
Big claims, no support.
sunspot still a ball-less kid.
NWOR.
Sunspot: if you agree with me, you disagree with yourself. Please explain how you deal with that discrepancy.
**Wow** wrote:
Wrong. [Anthony Watts](http://frontpagemag.com/2010/02/09/the-heretics-anthony-watts/) is a professional meteorologist, and an American Meteorological Society seal holder (retired). He and the army of more than 650 volunteers who he recruited have undertaken a mammoth project, and made an enormous contribution to climatology. He is a methodical and diligent scientist, the Tycho Brahe of climatology.
Â
**Sunspot** wrote:
Indeed, sunspot. Even as Arctic sea ice extent has *decreased* a bit, Antarctic sea ice extent has *increased* by very nearly the same amount. The significance of that fact is that it negates the sea ice albedo positive feedback effect which some climatologists had expected. (Less positive feedback means less warming effect from forcings such as GHG increases.)
The big difference between sea ice near the two poles is that Arctic sea ice extent varies more randomly, because it is heavily influenced by wind, because it isn't anchored to a continent. If the wind blows it into warmer water, it melts, and sea ice extent goes down. Wind has much less effect on sea ice in the Southern Ocean. Hence, increases in Antarctic sea ice may be of greater consequence than the similar-scale decreases in Arctic sea ice.
Dave Burton
Cary, NC USA
(For my email address, see www(dot)burtonsys(dot)com/email)
> Wrong. Anthony Watts is a professional meteorologist,...
You seem to be under the illusion that makes him qualified to do **climate science**. (You **do** realise that meteorology and climate science are related but **rather different fields** of endeavour, right?)
Feel free to enlighten us as to the tertiary qualifications Watts has (ideally with some indication of the content of individual subjects) which in your opinion make him so qualified. Please follow that up with his publication record, and then to compare and contrast both of those things with your average research climate scientist.
> ...and made an enormous contribution to climatology.
The change their work has brought to any significant climatological result is at best a small but useful footnote. They have provided data that have confirmed that the intuition that siting issues of land-based weather stations bias the temperature record to induce an additional warming trend is not correct, and if anything the opposite holds.
> He is a methodical and diligent scientist, the Tycho Brahe of climatology.
Goodness gracious! (I thought "Poe" for a minute, but earlier comments didn't strike me that way.)
I guess there's no point arguing with someone who thinks the evidence supports that assertion. Watts has been documented as dead wrong, often egregiously, on what are often relatively simple matters of *climate science* - as opposed to meteorology - that he doesn't have a scientific leg to stand on. The one thing he certainly is NOT is methodical and diligent when it comes to science.
Now if you were to argue that he was methodical and diligent in pushing a particular viewpoint regardless of the evidence I suspect you'd find a lot more agreement...
Most of the comments above appear to be critical of McLean's work as a scientist. He has long been involved with advanced computing, IT and modeling. His studies of the world climate and the material published by the IPCC goes back more than six years. He is well advanced in a PhD under two supervisors in the hard sciences, Physics and Geology, both of whom have wide experience in these fields. Studies of meteorology, climate and the atmosphere have their very roots in these areas of research and were widely and deeply established in these disciplines for over 90 years, long before the first thoughts of Global Warming started to appear in the 1970s. Most "climatologist's" backgrounds are in Geography. McLean's paper reflects the type of analysis which is so sadly lacking in the work from most of the climate units in Australia and overseas. It carries with it an effective experimental demonstration of the behaviour of the climate under direction from the thermal, dipolar cycles which occur in the large oceans. Anyone who has studied the output from the models used by CSIRO and others contributing to the IPCC can verify that none of them, not one, has been able to reproduce, from an "experimental basis" set in say 1970, the climate which has been experienced and measured over the past thirty years, to an accuracy better than about +-200%. The IPCC admits that in its Chapters 8 an9 of AR4 2007, but insists that the SELECTED warming from 1978 to 1995, was caused by increases in CO2. Warming periods from 1850 to 1880 and from 1920 to 1945 showed equal or greater rates of warming than from 1978 to 1995. (1850-80 and 1920-25 are never referred to by CSIRO or IPCC - why?) Carbon dioxide continues to increase, but one of the leading IPCC authors, who criticised McLean's paper, has admitted that "NO statistically significant warming has occured in the fifteen years from 1995 till 2010. The melting of ice, the rise of sea levels, birds nesting early, may indicate Global Warming. However, none of these effects can point the finger at Carbon Dioxide. The one "signature" of the green house effect, defined by the IPCC climatologists, a warming of the upper tropical atmosphere, has never been found by any of the large number of research groups throughout the world who have sought to find it for 25 years. These are facts which need to be answered. The CSIRO (Dr Penny Whetton) and colleagues supporting the IPCC dodge such questions and repeat their only mantra: "We BELIEVE that MOST of the increase in global temperatures in the second half of the twentieth century, was VERY LIKELY due to increases in the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide". (IPCC - AR4 2007, and CSIRO - Climate Change in Australia - 2007) Their "evidence" depends exclusively on the "results" from 23 experimental computer models, plagued by non-linearities, no two of which arrive at the same result. I leave you all to ponder these points and look forward to viewing your response.
John Nicol.
John Nicol writes
>*Most "climatologist's" backgrounds are in Geography.*
Is that true, or did you just make that up?
John continues:
>*McLean's paper reflects the type of analysis which is so sadly lacking in the work from most of the climate units in Australia and overseas.*
You are joking right? He's just removed the trend by taking away the differences.
With the made up junk you spout I wont even bother reading the rest of your rubbish.
John Nichol:
>The one "signature" of the green house effect, defined by the IPCC climatologists, a warming of the upper tropical atmosphere,
If you're really that ignorant, you should keep quiet it about and try to acquire some basic knowledge of the subject, rather than flaunting your ignorance as if it were something to be proud of.
If you're not really that ignorant, but are just trying to deceive people who are not familiar with the subject, you've come to the wrong place.
Here's some results of a climate scientist - not a geographer - are you sure you're not thinking of meteorologists?
http://www.skepticalscience.com/A-detailed-look-at-Hansens-1988-project…
And computers are not the issue here. The computers available to NASA in 1988 were probably less powerful than your laptop or PC. This is all about good analysis and good science - and only one simple error in the whole thing. Absolutely brilliant!
> The one "signature" of the green house effect, defined by the IPCC climatologists, a warming of the upper tropical atmosphere
Problem here, John, is that a tropical hotspot is indicative of a warming FROM ANY SOURCE. E.g. even if the sun did it, there'd be a tropical hotspot.
However, a signature of GHG warming (definitely not solar warming) is a warming night (since no sun shines at night). And that's been seen.
The standard of the deniers doesn't improve with time. They're as scientifically illiterate as ever.
John Nichol, do you have a single denialist fact that you would stand by? You know, with data and evidence?
"The standard of the deniers doesn't improve with time. They're as scientifically illiterate as ever."
Not just scientifically. Why do so many scientifically challenged people also have such difficulty with the concept of 'paragraphs'?