December 2011 Open Thread

More like this

I told you so. :-) [gloat].

By Billy Bob Hall (not verified) on 30 Nov 2011 #permalink

I mean, how much more humiliation can he take?

Far more than scientific illiterates like you and McinTyres can dish out, that's for sure.

> No, instead, it was DELETE the decline!

Odd. The deletion of the data and the inclusion of false data was actually the problem of one of your mates, and displayed by the Daily Fail in the UK.

David: Do you realise that the graph concerned was not a figure for a peer-reviewed paper; it was a cover illustration?

Have you ever produced a cover illustration for a peer-reviewed journal? Or indeed selected one as an editor?

Here is an example from the journal 'Structure':
[Structure cover]. I could show you dozens of other examples.

Cover illustrations have to convey something without the benefit of extensive supporting text. So they necessarily follow different conventions, and are interpreted differently, from the figures in the papers.

This is absolutely clear from Briffa's publication record, and from the others concerned. When producing a paper, they show all the data along with discussions of all the features. For this cover illustration, they are plotting something different: Rather than plotting the output of their proxies, they show their own best estimate of the millenial temperature record groups, because that's what the WMO report is about.

Does Briffa believe his proxy is more accurate than the thermometers after 1960? No.

Kevin - you are in denial to not accept that this is pure chicanery.

By Alpha Tango (not verified) on 30 Nov 2011 #permalink

Then someone should probably tell Nature, Springer, Elsevier, and pretty much every other journal publisher in every field that we need to change the way we do cover illustrations. Where should we start?

"Does Briffa believe his proxy is more accurate than the thermometers after 1960? No."

You could take that premise further.

"Can Briffa (or anyone) explain why his proxy works as a thermometer up until 1960? No. Does this make it somewhat questionable as a temperature proxy, since it appears to diverge from temperature for unknown reasons? Yes."

By Bill Williams (not verified) on 01 Dec 2011 #permalink

OK, I so can't believe that this is even an issue that my attempts to explain it are very poor. Let me try and do it properly.

Let's take an example which has nothing to do with climate. Consider the cosmic distance ladder:

  • - We can determine the position of nearby stars by parallax - out to say 50ly.
  • - Beyond that we can estimate distances by assuming stars are similar in real brightness to nearby stars with the same spectra, and scaling the distance according to how much dimmer they are. It's crude, but it works.
  • - But there are also 'standard candles', which can fix the positions of certain distant objects, and by extension other stars which are clustered with them.
  • - And dynamic parallax gives further distance estimates for some clusters and nebulae.

In a particular astronomical paper a researcher may publish a set of distance estimates using a particular method. And we can legitimately ask 'What can we determine about the structure of the galaxy using such-and-such a method'.

But we could also ask someone who has worked on the problem a different question: 'What is your best understanding of the structure of the galaxy making use of all available data including yours?'. That's a legitimate question. And the answer will involve a synthesis of multiple data sources with regard to the reliability of those sources over different ranges. That's also a legitimate answer. (And it would make a great cover illustration.)

I don't see how the climate case is different. It is legitimate to ask 'what it your temperature reconstruction on the basis of such-and-such a proxy?'. But it is also legitimate to ask 'what is your best estimate of temperatures over the last millenium on the basis of your data and other sources?'. It's a legitimate question, and it's exactly the question that the WMO graph was answering.

The only problem I see is that the inside cover text of the WMO report was unclear about exactly what was being shown, as the Muir-Russell report rightly identified.

> Does this make it somewhat questionable as a temperature proxy, since it appears to diverge from temperature for unknown reasons?

No.

Using a mercury thermometer to measure a smelting kiln temperature will not work, since the response of that thermometer to temperature is only definitionally correct over a certain calibrated range (mercury boils at molten steel temperatures). But an optical pyrometer will work to calculate the temperature of your melt.

However, that optical pyrometer will not tell you the temperature of your home.

Does that mean that temperature measurements are unreliable?

No.

Does it mean you have to discard a method of temperature measurement when you find that it no longer applies?

Yes.

Bill: Yes, it is a valid question whether the proxy is invalidated by it's recent divergence from temperatures. But exactly the same problem comes up in the cosmological distance ladder (and geology, etc). Does a contradictary result invalidate the method? Not necessarily. Does it affect our confidence in the method? Yes. And as a result a lot of work has been done comparing the MXD proxies with the long CET record and other proxies.
The answer to your question is in that literature.

> you are in denial to not accept that this is pure chicanery.

Nope, he's correct in his denial.

Denialism is the refutation of any evidence for a proposition.

Given the proposition is that a conver illustration proves data has been faked and there is no evidence for that connection, whereas there is evidence that no such connection exists, refuting the proposition is not denial.

Then again, given the likes of you continue to call yourselves skeptics, flying in the face of all evidence of denialism, that you fail to understand what the term means is no surprise to anyone here.

Kevin,

If Briffa's graph was so unimportant, why was it chopped off to hide it's decline?

It doesn't matter whether the graph is on the front cover or buried inside the paper, selective editing is not science, it is merely propaganda, which takes into the realms of Gore's laughable and error-ridden 'Inconvenient Truth'.

Additionally, I noticed that in one of the Climategate emails Mann suggests hiring a private detective to spy on McIntyre and try and connect him to 'Big Oil'. Spying on other scientists is not science, it is espionage.

Propaganda and espionage - sounds like East Germany circa 1970 doesn't it?

Andy:

> It doesn't matter whether the graph is on the front cover or buried inside the paper, selective editing is not science, it is merely propaganda, which takes into the realms of Gore's laughable and error-ridden 'Inconvenient Truth'.

You must never enter the library of a university then, because then you'll be subject to the propagandistic force of a thousand Josef Stalins.

> Additionally, I noticed that in one of the Climategate emails Mann suggests hiring a private detective to spy on McIntyre and try and connect him to 'Big Oil'. Spying on other scientists is not science, it is espionage.

OK, so scientists investigating think-tank 'scientists' = espionage, but politicians (e.g. Cuccinelli, Issa) investigating scientists (e.g. Mann) = dispassionate science. I get the picture.

Is uploading a file to ftp.tomcity.ru a part of normal scientific procedure then, I wonder?

-- frank

Andy: I already answered your question in my comparisons with the cosmic distance ladder.

Clearly the cover issue is completely opaque to someone who hasn't done it, so I withdraw the argument.

The reasons for the decline (only in some proxies) are well noted in the scientific literature. Any scientist knows this and even McinTyres knows it.

What he's doing is feeding the ignorati congregation in his sharktank with ancient meat he's tarted up to look fresh. He has to do this occasionally because he's an irrelevance since the Wegman scandal broke.

> If Briffa's graph was so unimportant, why was it chopped off to hide it's decline?

The graph wasn't chopped off. That is why you can see the graph.

And decline in what?

You're incoherent, kid.

> Spying on other scientists is not science, it is espionage.

Yes. This is true. However, since Mann isn't doing the spying, this isn't stopping any science.

You're REALLY incoherent.

Additionally, I noticed that in one of the Climategate emails Mann suggests hiring a private detective to spy on McIntyre and try and connect him to 'Big Oil'

Bollocks. He suggests trying to get an investigative journalist interested in McIntyre's known connections to the oil industry.

Actually the argument hat it is merely a cover illustration wears thin when the same illustration appears to be in the paper itself.

That is a) not a paper, b) not the report in question, c) not the same illustration, d) not an illustration which uses the 'trick' in question.

Other than that, good point!

> wears thin when the same illustration appears to be in the paper itself.

WRONG.

Go to the PDF. Page 6 is where that graph is. Now, zoom in 400% and look at the end of the graph.

On that graph in the PDF, in the content, there is a black dotted line behind the red, in front of the green and purple lines.

Now zoom into the graph as a jpeg on climate fraudit's site.

You can still see the little squarish black blob on the end of the page, but you can't see the black line there any more after it's minima at around where the pink shading ends.

In fact, on CA's picture, there's a pink shading, and no pink shading on the graph in the pdf.

They are not the same graph.

Or did you just take his word for it they were the same?

They are

I like Andy's complaint about Mann's suggestion to get someone to investigate McIntyre. That information comes from a private e-mail that was made public without the sender's and receivers' consent.

Apparently, spying on scientists is fine, suggesting to investigate someone is not...

the hypocrisy of the deniosphere in a nutshell.

Why are people still hung up on the 'decline'? Briffa has spent a lot of his career publishing papers critically analysing the accuracy of proxy records, so if he wants to hide anything, he's chosen a pretty odd way of doing it. Also, now that the 'decline' has been brought to everyone's attention (even though they already knew about it anyway), has that forced anyone to re-evaluate any of the temperature records? Not one bit.

Neither science nor the earth's climate can be changed by character assassination, no matter how persistently people try. If McIntyre was serious about the science he would have tried doing his own reconstruction and be honest about the results that he got. All the data and software tools he needs are out there, so what's stopping him?

> Why are people still hung up on the 'decline'?

people aren't.

Denialists (the small subset of people) have nothing else than misrepresentation of the work of science. THEY are the ones still hung up on "decline".

Because they don't have anything else.

>Spying on other scientists is not science, it is espionage.

So, what do you call it when hundreds of thousands of private inastitutional emails are hacked, along with other data, and released to those who would bring disrepute to those from whom the data were stolen?

What would you call it when folk encourage code cracking in order to access other parts of the body of stolen material?

Do tell - I'm very curious.

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 01 Dec 2011 #permalink

> ...so what's stopping him?

He's probably fairly sure he won't like the results - see BEST - and it would make it harder for him to claim plausible deniability for his dog whistling.

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 01 Dec 2011 #permalink

Is it just me, or is there dishonesty following any use of the syllable "er," (the comma is an invariable part of it) whenever typed by David Duff?

Seriously, almost every time I see it come up in one of his comments, a porkie is almost certain to follow.

Wow, I don't get your point about the graph. You claim that McIntyre is using a different graph based on some minor differences you see in squiggles. Ok, even if this is true (which seems unlikely), are you saying the Fig 1 in the paper (not the the cover graphic) does not cut off the Briffa reconstruction at 1940?

I am not sure why people have raised a "cover illustration" argument. The CA analysis clearly identified the graph as Fig 1 and this is confirmed by the link above. Fig 1 also clearly cuts off the Briffa reconstruction, apparently at 1940.

As regards the analogy to using a mercury thermometer to measure a smelting kiln, that really doesn't work. The whole point here is to measure temperatures in the same range. How can on earth can you tell if the MCA had temperature levels comparable to today's if the proxy just doesn't work at today's level???

As we all know, the millenia temperature reconstructions are heavily dependent on dendro. So if the divergence issue indicates that the dendro records are not a reliable proxy, that is a big deal for the hockey sticks.

> You claim that McIntyre is using a different graph based on some minor differences you see in squiggles.

Yup.

Therefore it can't be the same graph.

> Ok, even if this is true (which seems unlikely)

No. You see if the graph doesn't have the same lines on it, it isn't the same graph.

Just like neither are this graph:

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A2.gif

Even though they all have wiggly lines on.

Different graphs. All graphs, but different.

> As regards the analogy to using a mercury thermometer to measure a smelting kiln, that really doesn't work.

I know it doesn't work.

That's why they don't use a mercury thermometer.

Does this fact that a mercury thermometer cannot measure temperature outside a certain range mean that a thermometer cannot measure temperature within that range?

No.

And now for something completely different:
Pal Review, with de Freitas , Michaels , McKitrick , etc.

By John Mashey (not verified) on 01 Dec 2011 #permalink

crem @28

How can on earth can you tell if the MCA had temperature levels comparable to today's if the proxy just doesn't work at today's level???

One set of trees was different. Acid rain, I believe.

By Richard Simons (not verified) on 01 Dec 2011 #permalink

Hello! Hello! Has anyone seen anything, anything at all, in the MSM about Durban? No, nor me. Not a mention. The only thing I did find was this in the WSJ:

"As with religion, it ['climate change'] is presided over by a caste of spectacularly unattractive people pretending to an obscure form of knowledge that promises to make the seas retreat and the winds abate. As with religion, it comes with an elaborate list of virtues, vices and indulgences. As with religion, its claims are often non-falsifiable, hence the convenience of the term "climate change" when thermometers don't oblige the expected trend lines. As with religion, it is harsh toward skeptics, heretics and other "deniers." And as with religion, it is susceptible to the earthly temptations of money, power, politics, arrogance and deceit."

How very rude! But it gets worse, that is, even more truthful:

"Yet a funny thing happened on the way to the climate apocalypse. Namely, the financial apocalypse. The U.S., Russia, Japan, Canada and the EU have all but confirmed they won't be signing on to a new Kyoto. The Chinese and Indians won't make a move unless the West does. The notion that rich (or formerly rich) countries are going to ship $100 billion every year to the Micronesias of the world is risible, especially after they've spent it all on Greece.

Cap and trade is a dead letter in the U.S. Even Europe is having second thoughts about carbon-reduction targets that are decimating the continent's heavy industries and cost an estimated $67 billion a year. "Green" technologies have all proved expensive, environmentally hazardous and wildly unpopular duds."

You know,being a 'warmer' must be terrible nowadays, a bit like being a mother and seeing your new baby slowly dying before your eyes. Do you know, I almost feel sorry for you, but, nah, I'll just give the baby another kick - heh, heh, heh!

@Wow,

But they're not using tree rings to cover a different temperature range than the mercury thermometer. A more apt analogy would be a mercury thermometer that is claimed to accurately record temperatures in your bedroom but for some reason doesn't work in your living room, according to your irritating mother-in-law who won't leave the thermostat alone.

No property of temperature changed between the MWP and today, and trees haven't significantly evolved since then, so if tree rings don't track temperature now, they didn't back then, either, unless by complete coincidence.

By George Turner (not verified) on 01 Dec 2011 #permalink

"Is uploading a file to ftp.tomcity.ru a part of normal scientific procedure then, I wonder?"

If that file had been released under FOIA requests, as it should have been, then such uploading would notm have been necessary.

Is doing everything you can to subvert the FOIA process a part of normal scientific procedure then, I wonder?

By Taphonomic (not verified) on 01 Dec 2011 #permalink

Well upon my soul, looks like Duff the Fake has completely forgotten his jolly old chap persona, while spewing his usual tissues of lies.

Still I suppose David the Water Carrier For Lost Causes and Lame-brain Conspiracies possibly doesn't know about the UK's Daily Telegraph, Guardian, the BBC, Channel 4, the LA Times, CBS etc. etc. et-bloody-cetera. No links because they'd only trip the spam filter for the sake of one of nature's most spectacular wastes of space between the ears Duffers, but all readily available.

One wonders who the Duffus thinks would ever believe a word he sends.

"Using a mercury thermometer to measure a smelting kiln temperature will not work, since the response of that thermometer to temperature is only definitionally correct over a certain calibrated range (mercury boils at molten steel temperatures). But an optical pyrometer will work to calculate the temperature of your melt.
However, that optical pyrometer will not tell you the temperature of your home.
Does that mean that temperature measurements are unreliable?
No."

Your analogy doesn't translate. We know the range over which a mercury thermometer will correctly measure temperature. We know how an optical pyrometer responds to temperature, so we know that it won't work,as you say, in a domestic setting.

We don't know why Briffa's proxy suddenly diverges and we don't know when/if it has done it over time periods prior to 1960.

The comparison is somewhat different.

By Bill Williams (not verified) on 01 Dec 2011 #permalink

"Yes, it is a valid question whether the proxy is invalidated by it's recent divergence from temperatures. But exactly the same problem comes up in the cosmological distance ladder (and geology, etc). Does a contradictary result invalidate the method? Not necessarily. Does it affect our confidence in the method? Yes."

Yes I would agree. The problem in this particular case being that the said affect on confidence wasn't acknowledged (at least no publicly). Simply cutting out data that doesn't fit and then assuming that the rest, because it does fit, is therefore correct, is not particularly convincing.

By Bill Williams (not verified) on 01 Dec 2011 #permalink

> The problem in this particular case being that the said affect on confidence wasn't acknowledged

Nope, it was acknowledged in Nature, ferchrissakes! YEARS before! Discussed FOR YEARS. WELL KNOWN.

Completely acknowledge by the people who work on this.

You're just insisting that they'd change it without any idea of what they knew, because you want to make up a crisis.

It's nonexistent.

> But they're not using tree rings to cover a different temperature range than the mercury thermometer

That wasn't what the analogy was about.

It was about whether inapplicability in one area removes applicability to ALL uses.

And it doesn't.

> so if tree rings don't track temperature now, they didn't back then, either

Ah, and you know HOW MUCH about biology?

Bugger all.

Do you know what happened in the 70's? Smog ring a bell?

The possible reasons for the difference are all in the literature that you won't read because you're convincing yourself of an obvious lie.

And the fact that it tracks so well is proof that it works.

> If that file had been released under FOIA requests, as it should have been

Nope, you know NOTHING about FOIA in the UK.

That file DID NOT have to be released under FOIA, therefore the theft of it is illegal.

Wow, you are incorrect about the Nature article. That dealt with with densities, not ring widths.

To cut to the chase, do you think it was copacetic to truncate the Briffa series in 1940?

This is why they're called zombie arguments.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but:

(1) Only a subset of tree rings diverge.

(2) There were accurate thermometers before the divergence problem occured, and the subset of tree rings that eventually diverged were consistent with thermometers up to that point.

(3) There are numerous other proxies that track temperature, and they are largely consistent with the tree rings in question up to the point of divergence. Therefore, we can be fairly confident that the tree rings were an acceptable proxy up to that point.

(4) Nothing has been hidden. This problem has been known about for a long time and has been argued in the literature. I'm really not sure what else people expect? Do not mistake your own ignorance about a subject matter for a conspiracy. That's just silly.

(5) This is how science works. It matters not what one individual scientist or even layperson believes. What matters is whether enough qualified experts are convinced that a problem has been sufficiently explained. If enough experts were not convinced about the reliability of certain proxies the papers that relied on those proxies would fail to gain prominence.

As also briefly noted at RC, McIntyre is making up another story, and effectively defending the Soon & Baliunas paper. Of course, once again reality is not very nice to the deniosphere (and McIntyre definitely is right there at this moment), and anyone reading the EOS criticism of the Soon & Baliunas paper will note that it is filled with pointers to false and unsupportable claims in the S&B paper, none of which related to the MXD divergence issue.

It reminds me of McIntyre defending the McShane & Wyner paper, ignoring the blatantly false claims in that paper about what Mann et al did. Something he would have HAD to know, considering he's been 'auditing' those papers to death.

All this arguing over the details of the cover art.

Please, answer one question: What is the irrefutable evidence that tree rings prior to 1940 scale with temperature (and only temperature) when they don't scale with temperature post 1940.

Without this evidence I won't believe anything about this graph: from beginning to end, with or without the end chopped off.

Damian,

Just calling something "zombie arguments" does not make them so. To your credit, you do give a number of reasoned arguments but they include some misconceptions and miss some background:
- yes, the series was an accurate thermometer before divergence but this was in a specific range. Divergence occurred as the instrumental record began to rise. Do you see why these proxies cannot therefore be relied upon to judge whether MCA temperatures were comparable to today's?
- we don't know if all the other series diverge. Many of them have never been updated for periods coinciding with the more recent temperature rise. Ababneh did update the Greybill sheep mountain chronology in 2007 and it also does not track the instrumental record.
- actually, this specific issue (ring widths) was barely mentioned in the academic literature at the time of the EOS paper. Even today, we really have nothing more than speculative theories for the divergence.
- enough qualified experts are not convinced about the reliability of these proxies. Even the landmark NAS panel (which largely supported the hockey stick) concluded that BCPs are a poor proxy and should not be used for temperature reconstructions. And yet they remain a staple of recent work.

There are real issues, and using dismissive terms like "zombie arguments" adds little.

I do know lots about FoI in the UK. I handle all the requests for a data-rich government department. Tell me why these files are exempt information?

David L:

If you are going to dismiss "all this arguing over the details of the cover art" why are you then asking for "irrefutable proof" in order to "believe anything" about it?

Here is a webpage discussing the divergence problem in dendrochronology with links to multiple papers discussing it in the peer-reviewed literature.

Go. Read. Learn.

We hate liars, especially when their hands are in our wallets and the governments support this grand robbery!

THE UN are liars - they are behind this bad science to make money and fools of us all.
I'm so fed up with it all.

NOW really motivate to start a call to boycott the blue boxes and all these other useless recycle programs (within in my province ONT) until our hydro bills are affordable again.

By a canuck who H… (not verified) on 01 Dec 2011 #permalink

Which part of bore-holes don't you idiot trolls understand.
We invert the 1-dim heat equation on a bore-hole with the appropriate underlying geology and we get the actual temp function for the last 2000 years over the hole.

Not a proxy, but the actual temperature. Thus we can check the tree rings proxies against the actual temp for the last 2000 years, and we see they are in good agreement.
This is what PROVES they work

QED.

crem:

Recent research on the MCA shows it was not a global phenomenon. See discussion on Mann 2009 [here](http://www.skepticalscience.com/medieval-warm-period-intermediate.htm).

The map showing the reconstruction of MCA temperature anomaly (compared to a 1961-1990 baseline) compared to a map showing the temperature anomaly for 1999-2008 compared to the same baseline should probably clear things up.

If you're going to argue a proxy record is no good please do so using citations to literature on the topic.

a canuck:

Since it is the climate science pseudoskeptics & denialists who are spreading dishonest claims & mendacious misrepresentations, your handle is a sad, ironic misnomer.

Please do not allow yourself to be misled any more: get the science straight from the horse's mouth and review the literature. If a lack of formal training & experience in the field is a constraint (and it's a very reasonable one), then be sure to review sources which accurately interpret & represent the literature rather than misinformation sites such as WUWT.

Composer 99,

I am always skeptical of links to Skeptical Science. I have found they have a bias that does not always show the full story. No-one wants to rehash all the arguments over the MWP which is beyond the original narrow discussion here about whether it is copacetic for the EOS graph to truncate the Briffa series in 1940 (will you address this?). However, I will make the point that if you take Mann 2008 and eliminate the sediment series that he mistakenly inverted and also remove the BCP series as recommended by the NAS panel, you get a MWP that is within the error bars of today's temperature. Don't take my word for it - check the updated SI at Mann's own website. (But you probably won't see this at Skeptical Science!)

a canuck who HATES lies

F**king dumb, self-loathing projectionists.

crem said:

I am always skeptical of links to Skeptical Science. I have found they have a bias that does not always show the full story

Yes, they are biased all right, biased towards honesty and truthfulness unlike dishonest lying deniers like you and those you worship.

By Ian Forreste (not verified) on 01 Dec 2011 #permalink

crem:

I have just been to Mann's website and reviewed the [2008 paper](http://www.meteo.psu.edu/~mann/shared/articles/MannetalPNAS08.pdf) and found it does not appear to support your claim that "you get a MWP that is within the error bars of today's temperature". See Figure 3. If you are thinking of a different version please provide a direct link.

Also, I note that you are referring to Mann et al 2008 (focusing on Northern Hemisphere reconstructions) instead of Mann et al 2009 (global reconstructions) which is the paper that the Skeptical Science link discussed. Why the attempt at misdirection?

Oh, no, even the kiddie-winkies don't believe you!

"email 682: Tom Wigley tells Michael Mann that his son did a tree ring science fair project (using trees behind NCAR) that invalidated the centerpiece of Mannâs work:
âA few years back, my son Eirik did a tree ring science fair project using trees behind NCAR. He found that widths correlated with both temp and precip. However, temp and precip also correlate. There is much other evidence that it is precip that is the driver, and that the temp/width correlation arises via the temp/precip correlationâ
"

Wigley, of course, is an NCAR scientist. His son looks as though he will turn out to be one, too! And Mann's 'hockey stick' is look as hooky as, er, well, a hockey stick! I ownder if Briffa has any kids?

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/12/01/hockey-stick-falsification-so-eas…

Duff, you incompetent clown.

The trees behind NCAR are low-elevation ponderosa pines -- of course tree-rings there will be strongly correlated with precipitation.

That's why temperature reconstructions rely on "temperature stressed" trees found near timberline (elevation and latitude), i.e. in regions so cold that tree-growth is limited by temperature, not precipitation. The low-elevation trees behind NCAR are not nearly as temperature stressed as they are moisture stressed.

Duff, you really are denser than 2000-year-old bristlecone heartwood.

By caerbannog (not verified) on 01 Dec 2011 #permalink

Only just come back to the thread after working all day.
It seems my 'propaganda' and 'espionage' comment rather hit a raw nerve, judging by some of the vitriolic comments that people have typed up. I'll do my best to answer some of them (although in a slightly jumbled chronological order)

Bernard J: "what do you call it when hundreds of thousands of private inastitutional emails are hacked, along with other data, and released to those who would bring disrepute to those from whom the data were stolen?"
The UEA isn't a private institution, it's a public one, so there should be full public disclosure of the emails. The fact that Phil Jones spent so much time convincing others to surreptitiously delete emails demonstrates that he knew these emails had the potential to be shown to the public. As for 'disrepute', if the Hockey Stick Team's actions were beyond reproach, how could they be brought into disrepute? Personally, I've worked for publc institutions and couldn't care less if my emails were released to the public as I know I've got nothing to hide. If the Hockey Stick Team's science was so solid and their actions beyond reproach, why did they get so worked up?

Wow: "Apparently, spying on scientists is fine, suggesting to investigate someone is not..."
Nobody's spying on scientists, they've just had the emails they wrote that have been stored on the servers of a public institution released to the public. If they've got nothing to hide, what's the problem?
However, Mike Mann shouldn't be using publicly-funded time and resources to try and sanction the use of investigative journalists to spy on other scientists.

Wow: "The graph wasn't chopped off. That is why you can see the graph.
And decline in what?"
Yes it was chopped off (Jones admitted the 'trick') and it shows a decline in positive temperature change (you just have to read the label on the vertical axis)

James A: "If McIntyre was serious about the science he would have tried doing his own reconstruction and be honest about the results that he got". From what I've seen, McIntyre has always been completely open and honest about his results. You seem to imply he has been dishonest - I'd love to see your evidence.

Martin M: "Bollocks. He suggests trying to get an investigative journalist interested in McIntyre's known connections to the oil industry." You're right Martin and I was wrong - Mann suggested hiring an investigative journalist to spy on McIntyre rather than suggesting the use of a private detective to spy on McIntyre. You warmists (I assume you are one) should try admitting when you are wrong - you'll find it very liberating ;) BTW let's try and keep the swearing out of the debate. Not only is it terribly uncouth, but it tends to suggest desperation and insecurity on you part.

Frank: "OK, so scientists investigating think-tank 'scientists' = espionage, but politicians (e.g. Cuccinelli, Issa) investigating scientists (e.g. Mann) = dispassionate science. I get the picture."
Two things:
Firstly: since when do politicians have to be 'dispassionate' scientists? Personally, I quite like my politicians passionate rather than damp rags.
Secondly: scientists should not be investigating other scientists. Instead they should be getting on with the science and leave it to the politicians to carry out investigations into the subterfuge, lying, and wasting of the public's money by a cabal of scientists proposing a hypothesis that has been cobbled together with the use of woefully inaccurate models that failed to predict the currently flat-lined temperatures (when it comes to useless models and predictions, I love to amuse myself by thinking of Hansen's terrible 'Scenarios A, B and C' Opredictions that stubbornly refused to come true.

Various commenters: Some of you have suggested the offendIng graph was only on the front cover, when you all know it was also presented in 'Fig 1', so you were wrong. Mind you, I still don't understand why it is acceptable to print any misleading graph on the front of any scientific publication. I don't know about you, but I prefer ALL my graphs with none of the avaliable data removed, front cover or not.

"but I prefer ALL my graphs with none of the avaliable applicable data removed

There, corrected that for you.

re: the confused canuck

I apologise.

John McManus
Nova Scotia
Canada

By John McManus (not verified) on 01 Dec 2011 #permalink

Well said, Andy, but "BTW let's try and keep the swearing out of the debate" is, I'm afraid, a whistle in the wind as far as this lot are concerned. It stems not so much from desperation as panic, I think. One must be charitable because, after 30-odd years of belief in "the cause", it must be heart-rending to realise slowly but surely that you have been conned. Truly cringe-worthy!


One must be charitable because, after 30-odd years of belief in "the cause", it must be heart-rending to realise slowly but surely that you have been conned. Truly cringe-worthy!

So says the individual who isn't bright enough to figure out why paleoclimatologists don't use tree-ring data from low-elevation moisture-stressed ponderosa pines for temperature reconstructions.

By caerbannog (not verified) on 01 Dec 2011 #permalink

it must be heart-rending to realise slowly but surely that you have been conned.

Thus spake the moron Duff for whom the implications of comment #58 (and every other refutation he's been unable to address here, ever) have yet to sink in.

There are many trolls here, even more than usual.

Duff, the "incompetent clown" dropped a link and begged for assistance again, didn't he?

What's this? Could it be Duff pronouncing that the science is settled?

>One must be charitable because, after 30-odd years of belief in "the cause", it must be heart-rending to realise slowly but surely that you have been conned. Truly cringe-worthy!

It's been two years since you started stating that any moment now the science will collapse.

Two long, long years in which the evidence has only strengthened.

Two long, long years in which all the deniers have done is build a bizarre conspiracy theory out of stolen emails.

Truly cringe-worthy! Ha! Black lesbians! Er!

Chek:
"but I prefer ALL my graphs with none of the avaliable applicable data removed
There, corrected that for you."
Firstly: I really can't abide the 'fixed that for ya' thing that some people insist on using. You can say what you like about me, but please don't change my words. I find it very condescending and I believe it just makes you look smug
Secondly: you talk about 'applicable' data. Since when was the chopped data not applicable? Rather than not being applicable, I think it instead showed a rather inconvenient truth.

Hi David,
I notice the last two commenters have accused you of being dumb and called you a 'moron'. I'm sorry you have to put up with this abuse, but I find that the more perceptive your point, the more sweary and shouty the warmists get.
Keep at it my friend and we'll change some minds; haven't you noticed that there are warmists who became sceptics, but no skeptics who've suddenly embraced the AGW mantra?
Thankfully, it seems politicians are listening to their more well-informed members of the electorate who don't want to pay through the nose for a pseudo-scientific fraud and so the politicians are starting to back-off from the carbon-craziness. It must drive the warmists to despair!

Here's some more evidence that proves somebody here has been conned:

2011: worldâs 10th warmest year, warmest year with La Niña event, lowest Arctic sea ice volume

>Global temperatures in 2011 are currently the tenth highest on record and are higher than any previous year with a La Niña event, which has a relative cooling influence

It's obviously, er, meaningless because fat lesbians something hacked emails heh heh heh

John: "Two long, long years in which the evidence has only strengthened."
I wouldn't call continuing flat-lined temperatures a strengthening of the global-warming mantra.

>John: "Two long, long years in which the evidence has only strengthened." I wouldn't call continuing flat-lined temperatures a strengthening of the global-warming mantra.

No, of course you wouldn't. I, on the other hand, am much smarter than you and know about pesky things like "evidence" and "research" and all those things you people like to ignore while you quote mine emails and gossip on internet forums.

What global warming? What evidence?

>The seasonal Arctic sea ice minimum, reached on 9 September, was 4.33 million square kilometres. This was 35% below the 1979-2000 average and only slightly more than the record low set in 2007. Unlike the 2007 season, both the Northwest and Northeast Passages were ice-free for periods during the 2011 summer. Sea ice volume was even further below average and was estimated at a new record low of 4200 cubic kilometres, surpassing the record of 4580 cubic kilometres set in 2010.

@Andy:
>James A: "If McIntyre was serious about the science he would have tried doing his own reconstruction and be honest about the results that he got". From what I've seen, McIntyre has always been completely open and honest about his results. You seem to imply he has been dishonest - I'd love to see your evidence.

I didn't say he was being dishonest, I'm saying he's not serious about science. He spends the best part of his life making snide digs at the scientists' handling of the data, all the while he is perfectly capable of repeating the analysis himself (as others have done, e.g. BEST) and settling the issue. What's stopping him?

@62. David Duff, what is "the cause"? What is its manifesto and goals? Just asking...

Sorry James I slightly mid-read your thoughts. However, McIntyre never set out to make any reconstructions, he just worked hard on highlighting all the weaknesses and faults in Mann et al's Hockey Stick

John: yep, ice has been melting in the Arctic and the Northwest Passage has been open (like it has been countless times in the past). Equally, Antarctic ice has been increasing and that damned 'hotspot' way up over the tropics that all the models predicted should be there has still stubbornly refused to show up.... If you want to wave around alarming situations I can always wave some rather un-alarming ones around as well.

Right, I'm off to bed.

David Duff: keep up the good fight sir, if you can weather the storm of abuse you have suffered here.

Goodnight everyone and thanks to the blog-master for letting me comment here. The time I've spent here has further strengthened my scepticism.

It's currently the warmest November here in the UK for many, many years and I'm loving it. I really hate it when it's cold. Don't you?....

Andy has so little to say in his last post but all of it is wrong.

[Here is some recent data on the Arctic Ice](http://www.skepticalscience.com/Arctic-sea-ice-hockey-stick-melt-unprec…).

[The Antarctic sea ice is expected to expand](http://www.skepticalscience.com/increasing-Antarctic-Southern-sea-ice.h…) for a number of reasons, one of which is that the ice cap is melting at a much higher rate than expected resulting in less salinity in the surrounding ocean thus more ice. Quite simple if one stops to think about it.

[The tropospheric hot spot has been identified](http://www.skepticalscience.com/tropospheric-hot-spot.htm). Andy doesn't seem to understand that this hot spot is not a finger print of AGW but is only indicative of a warming climate whatever the cause.

Too bad deniers don't spend time actually reading the real science rather than wasting all their time on lying denier blogs.

By Ian Forrester (not verified) on 01 Dec 2011 #permalink

> As we all know, the millenia temperature reconstructions are heavily dependent on dendro.

That would be why they also do reconstructions without dendro and get reasonably similar results, eh?

> Divergence occurred as the instrumental record began to rise. Do you see why these proxies cannot therefore be relied upon to judge whether MCA temperatures were comparable to today's?

Don't you love how one "skeptic" argues against the position of another, and yet they both somehow agree that they are right and the scientists are wrong?

> As for 'disrepute', if the Hockey Stick Team's actions were beyond reproach, how could they be brought into disrepute?

Ah, the Soviet police state defence - if you have done nothing wrong, then you can't complain when people take your private conversations and ... interpret selected extracts on your behalf via the mass media.

> From what I've seen, McIntyre has always been completely open and honest about his results.

LOL! Thanks for that bit of unintentional humour embedded in your transparent refusal to avoid answering the question.

> Two things: Firstly: since when do politicians have to be 'dispassionate' scientists?

Zero-thly: since when do *scientists* have to be 'dispassionate'? You're apparently operating under an illusion on that point. Science works regardless of the level of passion of individual scientists (and regardless of whether individual scientists are as pure and honest as freshly fallen snow).

Pointing at scientists being snarky about other scientists as "evidence" that the science isn't solid is merely evidence that you have no actual case against the science.

> ...that failed to predict the currently flat-lined temperatures...

Sheesh, two wrongs in eight words. Bet you don't admit either one.

> Secondly: scientists should not be investigating other scientists.

McIntyre is a scientist now? Who knew?! Here's me thinking (a) his B.S. was for studying mathematics, and (b) AFAIK he doesn't even have a Ph.D. in *anything*, let alone in science.

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 01 Dec 2011 #permalink

Posted by: Andy | December 1, 2011 6:29 PM

Sorry James I slightly mid-read your thoughts. However, McIntyre never set out to make any reconstructions, he just worked hard on highlighting all the weaknesses and faults in Mann et al's Hockey Stick

And what weaknesses/faults, when corrected, changed Mann's results to any noticeable degree? Replacing Mann's SVD short-centering with SVD full-centering? The changes in the "hockey stick" output were hardly visible.

By caerbannog (not verified) on 01 Dec 2011 #permalink

Flooding scientists with frivolous FOI requests is dishonest behaviour.
McIntyre is dishonest. And, as pointed out, he has not contributed any original research of his own.

By Vince Whirlwind (not verified) on 01 Dec 2011 #permalink

Lotharsson:

> Zero-thly: since when do scientists have to be 'dispassionate'?

Indeed.

> Secondly: scientists should not be investigating other scientists. Instead they should be getting on with the science and leave it to the politicians to carry out investigations

I wish that were possible, but unfortunately the current crop of Democratic politicians, and even the current US Attorney General, are too busy with such all-important tasks as 'trying to get re-elected' and 'writing speeches' to bother with protecting the rights of scientists such as Prof. Mann.

And in case you forgot, Mann is, you know, a US citizen, with all the rights that come with being a citizen.

-- frank

Composer99,

Please don't accuse me of wrongdoing when you don't know the facts. Mann 2008 most certainly is a global reconstruction. You say you looked at the paper, but somehow you even missed the title: "Proxy-based reconstructions of hemispheric and global surface temperature variations over the past two millennia". If you don't concede this, I don't see any point in continuing this discussion.

As regards your reference to Fig 3 in Mann 2008, you did not read what I said. I very clearly wrote that you had to look at Mann's updated SI, not at the original 2008 paper. You just misread this. No problem - you can find the SI here: http://www.meteo.psu.edu/~mann/supplements/MultiproxyMeans07/

Andy says:

>If you want to wave around alarming situations I can always wave some rather un-alarming ones around as well.

Then he says:

>It's currently the warmest November here in the UK for many, many years

Nothing to worry about, obviously. I'm sure it's going to start cooling any day now.

>Quite simple if one stops to think about it.

Expecting Andy to do something so quaint as to "think" was your first mistake, Ian.

crem:

I would give you more credit if you were to, say, note that the paper I have been advising you (& others) to read is Mann et al 2009.

Also, the figure in the link you have given (thank you, by the way) still does not appear to support your contention (by which I mean the land+ocean full global EIV reconstruction).

If you are referring to the updated figure [here](http://www.meteo.psu.edu/~mann/supplements/MultiproxyMeans07/NHcps_no7_…) the description of the proxy records is "NH Land (CPS)". Suggesting that this particular proxy reconstruction, limited to Northern Hemisphere land-based proxies, leads to your claim

if you take Mann 2008 and eliminate the sediment series that he mistakenly inverted and also remove the BCP series as recommended by the NAS panel, you get a MWP that is within the error bars of today's temperature.

striking me as cherry-picking if 'today's temperature' is meant to refer to global mean temperature, particularly in light of the following:

(1) CRU temperature dataset is well-known to be cooler on account of omitting much of the Arctic, which is experiencing on average the most rapid warming.

(2) If the allegations of conspiracy were actually valid, it is the CRU temperature dataset that would have to be discarded.

>It seems my 'propaganda' and 'espionage' comment rather hit a raw nerve, judging by some of the vitriolic comments that people have typed up.

Eh? What's "vitriolic" about my question?

>The UEA isn't a private institution, it's a public one, so there should be full public disclosure of the emails.

So why aren't all university emails immediately uploaded to the respective institutional web pages? Why can't Joe Public just walk in off the street and demand access to every computer and hard drive on campus?

The rest of Andy's spiel is just froth and bubble - a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Speaking of... from where did the current gloop of numpties emanate? And if they're so convinced that the 20th century temperature rise is nonexistent, what physics do they rely on to explain such nonexistence? And what of the non-dendrological 'hockey sticks'? Are the numpties aware of just how many 'hockey sticks' there are? And how do they explain the 'blade' in each 'hockey stick'?

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 01 Dec 2011 #permalink

Composer99,

So you won't concede you were wrong in claiming Mann 2008 does not include a global reconstruction. You won't concede you were wrong when you referred to the paper instead of the SI which I clearly mentioned. You are again wrong on your link. I think made it quite clear that I was referring to a global reconstruction. Please actually click on the link to the SI itself and look at the global reconstructions, graph F for example. Remember that without both sediment and BCPs (as opposed to removal individually), the error bands would be even wider than shown there under basic math. I also have no idea why you insist I should only use Mann 2009. I am pointing out that the argument against a global MWP is not well supported by the corrected Mann 2008, which is one of the most analyzed papers in the history of the climate blogosphere. I do not know Mann 2009 well enough to comment on it and resolve any differences with Mann 2008. If I didn't make that clear, sorry, but that was always my intent and it is a valid argument.

Given your inability to concede where you are clearly wrong and your refusal to address the original question as to whether it is copacetic to truncate the Briffa series in 1940, I think I am just wasting my time here. I won't be adding any future replies.

Ok, I know I said I wouldn't post any more, but I was curious to look at Mann 2009. It seems like it suffers from some of the same issues as Mann 2008. Gavin Schmidt says: "Note too that while the EIV no-dendro version does validate to 1000 AD, the no-dendro/no-Tilj only works going back to 1500 AD (Mann et al, 2009, SI)." (http://www.realclimate.org/?comments_popup=4431#comment-183182 Read the entirety of Gavin's comment for context).

So for those of use who believe in the NAS panel recommendation and also believe sediments are a poor proxy (as believed by Tiljander herself), the conclusions of Mann 2009 will be unpersuasive.

> Wow, you are incorrect about the Nature article. That dealt with with densities, not ring widths.

And narrower rings means a higher density of tree rings.

Seems you have absolutely no ability to comprehend.

> Tell me why these files are exempt information?

[from here](http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/36/section/17)

17 Refusal of request.E+W+S+N.I.
This section has no associated Explanatory Notes

(1)A public authority which, in relation to any request for information, is to any extent relying on a claim that any provision of Part II relating to the duty to confirm or deny is relevant to the request or on a claim that information is exempt information must, within the time for complying with section 1(1), give the applicant a notice whichâ

(a)states that fact,

(b)specifies the exemption in question, and

(c)states (if that would not otherwise be apparent) why the exemption applies.

(2)Whereâ

(a)in relation to any request for information, a public authority is, as respects any information, relying on a claimâ

(i)that any provision of Part II which relates to the duty to confirm or deny and is not specified in section 2(3) is relevant to the request, or

(ii)that the information is exempt information only by virtue of a provision not specified in section 2(3), and

(b)at the time when the notice under subsection (1) is given to the applicant, the public authority (or, in a case falling within section 66(3) or (4), the responsible authority) has not yet reached a decision as to the application of subsection (1)(b) or (2)(b) of section 2,

the notice under subsection (1) must indicate that no decision as to the application of that provision has yet been reached and must contain an estimate of the date by which the authority expects that such a decision will have been reached.

(3)A public authority which, in relation to any request for information, is to any extent relying on a claim that subsection (1)(b) or (2)(b) of section 2 applies must, either in the notice under subsection (1) or in a separate notice given within such time as is reasonable in the circumstances, state the reasons for claimingâ

(a)that, in all the circumstances of the case, the public interest in maintaining the exclusion of the duty to confirm or deny outweighs the public interest in disclosing whether the authority holds the information, or

(b)that, in all the circumstances of the case, the public interest in maintaining the exemption outweighs the public interest in disclosing the information.

(4)A public authority is not obliged to make a statement under subsection (1)(c) or (3) if, or to the extent that, the statement would involve the disclosure of information which would itself be exempt information.

(5)A public authority which, in relation to any request for information, is relying on a claim that section 12 or 14 applies must, within the time for complying with section 1(1), give the applicant a notice stating that fact.

(6)Subsection (5) does not apply whereâ

(a)the public authority is relying on a claim that section 14 applies,

(b)the authority has given the applicant a notice, in relation to a previous request for information, stating that it is relying on such a claim, and

(c)it would in all the circumstances be unreasonable to expect the authority to serve a further notice under subsection (5) in relation to the current request.

(7)A notice under subsection (1), (3) or (5) mustâ

(a)contain particulars of any procedure provided by the public authority for dealing with complaints about the handling of requests for information or state that the authority does not provide such a procedure, and

(b)contain particulars of the right conferred by section 50.

> I wouldn't call continuing flat-lined temperatures a strengthening of the global-warming mantra.

Since the trend over two points has an infinte variance, this would be rather impossible to proclaim over two years, Andy.

I guess you don't mind missing data when it's you doing the "deletions", eh?

However, I will make the point that if you take Mann 2008 and eliminate the sediment series that he mistakenly inverted and also remove the BCP series as recommended by the NAS panel, you get a MWP that is within the error bars of today's temperature.

I'd love to know how you reached that conclusion, given that no such reconstruction exists in Mann et al 2008, the SI, or the updated SI.

Ok, I know I said I wouldn't post any more, but I was curious to look at Mann 2009. It seems like it suffers from some of the same issues as Mann 2008. Gavin Schmidt says: "Note too that while the EIV no-dendro version does validate to 1000 AD, the no-dendro/no-Tilj only works going back to 1500 AD (Mann et al, 2009, SI)." (http://www.realclimate.org/?comments_popup=4431#comment-183182 Read the entirety of Gavin's comment for context).

So for those of use who believe in the NAS panel recommendation and also believe sediments are a poor proxy (as believed by Tiljander herself), the conclusions of Mann 2009 will be unpersuasive.

Oh, I see. You don't know the difference between bristlecone pines and trees. One is a subset of the other; they aren't identical. Yes, removing all tree ring data probably widens the error bars rather a lot. Good job there's no reason to do that, then.

Remember that without both sediment and BCPs (as opposed to removal individually), the error bands would be even wider than shown there under basic math.

Not necessarily. Removing a few high-variance series could easily narrow the error bars. This is, as you put it, 'basic math', and so the fact that you get it wrong is rather telling.

THE UN are liars - they are behind this bad science to make money and fools of us all.

Who sent all the "skeptical" cretins here?

The time I've spent here has further strengthened my scepticism.

No doubt your complete and utter denial of reality was reinforced by an encounter with people promoting it ... that's common cognitive dissonance.

I'm curious to know if this logic is correct:
IF the MWP or the Roman Warming period were indeed as warm or warmer than current temperatures
THEN surely the arctic would have experienced the SAME melting that we are observing now? AND if such periods were longer than current warming periods then I would imagine the ice loss would be far greater and NO long term ice would have survived?

Yet we observe ice core samples that obviously did not melt during those periods.

So, CO2 falling below 600 ppm was the kick start needed for Antarctic glaciation.

And this work (using alkenone palaeotemperature determination) seems to account nicely for previous conflicting data on the CO2 vs ice relationship (i.e. the counter-intuitive CO2 going up during glaciation):

Here, we further investigate alkenone records and demonstrate that Antarctic and subantarctic data overestimate atmospheric CO2 levels, biasing long-term trends. [Long suspected IIRC.] Our results show that CO2 declined before and during Antarctic glaciation and support a substantial CO2 decrease as the primary agent forcing Antarctic glaciation, consistent with model-derived CO2 thresholds.

New data validates models, too! Gee whiz!

Andy

It's currently the warmest November here in the UK for many, many years and I'm loving it. I really hate it when it's cold. Don't you?....

Of course the fact that much of the country is facing a drought come next year, in spite of the flooding in other parts, has gone over your head, which I guess most aspects of a complex topic such as this do.

>*It's currently the warmest November here in the UK for many, many years and I'm loving it. I really hate it when it's cold. Don't you?....*

Not if the cost [is this](http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2011/11/27/famine-climate-oxfam.h…), and worsening outlook along [these lines](http://www.dawn.com/2011/11/30/pakistan-tops-climate-risk-index.html).

Leading to more of [this](http://www.crisisgroup.org/en/key-issues/climate-change-and-conflict.as…).

re: 600ppm CO2 and Antarctica

Water doesn't change state because of CO2 concentrations. Water changes state because the temperature has risen or fallen around 0C.

34 mya was a much different world geologically. The Isthmus of Panama only formed 3 mya. In the world Antarctica formed, ocean currents were far different.

> I really hate it when it's cold. Don't you?....

I really hate it when it's hot.

After all, in the cold you can wrap up warm and turn the fire on.

In the hot, there's only so much you can take off before you're bleeding.

PS if you don't like the cold so much, eff off to Spain. Unless you're going to let those currently living in Spain to come to your neighbourhood because you now have their climate, you're just being selfish.

And I hate people who are selfish. Don't you..?

Er, yes Jeffrey, as the ice on my windscreen attested to this morning when the air temperature hovered around 0°C. And as it likely did around this time of year 20 years or so ago when CO2 levels were about 30 ppm or so less than they are today when temperatures hovered around 0°C. And as they surely will should frost days continue to be a feature at this time of year in my locale in 15-20 years' time when CO2 levels will be about 30 ppm higher than now. No argument.

But though I'm not so naive that I know there are likely wrinkles in all research findings that will cast sufficient doubt on these conclusions that will require further investigation to clarify, I'm presuming Pagani et al know all about the points you raise and have taken account of them (a dangerous assumption on my part without reading the full paper, I have no doubt).

Are you supposing, perhaps, that they haven't taken account of these things in arriving at their conclusions?

> Water changes state because the temperature has risen or fallen around 0C.

And temperature rises or falls based on (among other things) GHG concentrations.

> IF the MWP or the Roman Warming period were indeed as warm or warmer than current temperatures

They're not, so the hypothetical has no more worth than the one "IF man had wings, then...".

Andy:

yep, ice has been melting in the Arctic and the Northwest Passage has been open (like it has been countless times in the past).

When was the last time it was open 5 years in a row?

By Chris O'Neill (not verified) on 02 Dec 2011 #permalink

crem:

Even the landmark NAS panel (which largely supported the hockey stick) concluded that BCPs are a poor proxy

No, they didn't conclude they are a poor proxy. They just pointed out they are affected by rising atmospheric CO2. This problem can easily be avoided either by compensation or by just using the proxy record from before atmospheric CO2 started rising IF compensation doesn't work.

and should not be used for temperature reconstructions.

The NAS panel said they should be avoided (not must be avoided) for the above reason. That doesn't mean they should be avoided if the above reason doesn't apply.

And yet they remain a staple of recent work.

For good reason as I point out above.

By Chris O'Neill (not verified) on 02 Dec 2011 #permalink

I noticed an earlier comment that said David Duff had been posting here for two years. I was wondering just when did David Duff start posting and what was it he posted?

By Berbalang (not verified) on 02 Dec 2011 #permalink

re:100

One of my points is that the absolute level of cO2 concentrations isn't an apt metric for much of anything. The chief assumption behind repeating an experiment is that all other things are equal. But then and now are very different. The change in the ocean currents effected by removing easy flow between the Atlantic and Pacific created a very different world between 30 mya and the present.

The precis of the paper refers to the fact that CO2 levels were declining during Antarctic glaciation. The decline in CO2 -- rather than the absolute number -- appears to be the point of the paper.

> One of my points is that the absolute level of cO2 concentrations isn't an apt metric for much of anything.

And that's wrong.

I hope this has cleared things up for you.

crem:

I don't know if you'll stick to your flounce or not.

However, it should be noted that you were the one saying graphs in Mann et al 2008 showed the medieval climate anomaly was comparable to today's global mean temperature anomaly.

What I have been saying (and you can see other people, doubtless more educated than I, saying the same thing) is that the paper and the revised supplemental graphs do not support your contention.

I may be incorrect about the global vs. Northern Hemisphere nature of the reconstructions in Mann et al 2008, however that is irrelevant as to whether the paper supports your claims or not.

As far as the Briffa data being "cropped" (I assume you are referring to Fig 1 from the PDF on gkss.de), once again, I do not see how you can actually claim that it is getting cropped around 1940, particularly given the low granularity/resolution of the X axis. Frankly I suspect you're using the "eyecrometer" rather than referring to data. Trying to extrapolate scientific wrongdoing from this graph strikes me as a fruitless exercise in conspiracy-theory-mongering rather than valid scientific criticism.

28 crem -- "Ok, even if this is true (which seems unlikely), are you saying the Fig 1 in the paper (not the the cover graphic) does not cut off the Briffa reconstruction at 1940?">

I am. A tiny portion of the Briffa mustard/ochre coloured curve is just about visible in Soon.EosForum.20032.pdf.

Actually, I take that back. I gridded it again and it does cut off around 1940.

"Who sent all the "skeptical" cretins here?" @92

They were invited by David Duff in a comment he made at the failed TV weatherman's blog, asking for support for his thread starter.

J Bowers:

Thanks for the clarification @109.

What did you to do grid the curve again and find the cut-off (for the Briffa et al 2001 data)?

As I suggested to crem upthread, given the jumble of curves at that end of the graph, simply eyeballing it does not appear conclusive.

Indeed [he did](http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/30/hide-the-decline-worse-than-we-th…),
fully expecting Anthony "accept whatever result" Watts and his team of world class oafs to come to his rescue "like the US cavalry". By which I presume he means in the clean-cut, dust-free vaudeville style of Hollywood movie myth, rather than the Big Government instrument of native American genocide.

I'm back - hi guys!

Wow: "PS if you don't like the cold so much, eff off to Spain. "
Well, I've been told to "eff off". That just about sums up the intellectual level of argument from the warmists.
I also notice I've been called a "sceptical cretin". Once again warmists have descended to personal abuse.

Chris O'Neill: "When was the last time it was open 5 years in a row?"
Probably about the same time that the Vikings settled Greenland...

Jakerman: One of the links you supplied was great - it admitted that climate change projections are 'somewhat limited' i.e. unreliable (a bit like Hansen's laughable ABC scenarios)

Wow: "Since the trend over two points has an infinte variance, this would be rather impossible to proclaim over two years, Andy."
If I had been talking about two years, then fair enough. Actually, I was talking about the temperatures that have flat-lined for more than a decade (the lack of warming that the Hockey team couldn't 'account for')

Bernard J: "So why aren't all university emails immediately uploaded to the respective institutional web pages? Why can't Joe Public just walk in off the street and demand access to every computer and hard drive on campus?"
Whilst Joe Public can't "walk in off the street" they can request to see emails held by a public institution using FOI. Whether their application is successful or not depends on how much that particular university has got to hide...
(by the way Bernard, calling me names such as "idiot" is really not very classy)

John: "It's currently the warmest November here in the UK for many, many years
Nothing to worry about, obviously. I'm sure it's going to start cooling any day now."
It sure will John, winter's coming here in the UK - it's how the seasons work (why not Google 'seasons' if you're not sure)

Ian Forestter: "Andy doesn't seem to understand that this hot spot is not a finger print of AGW but is only indicative of a warming climate whatever the cause."
This is just superb Ian. You've basically admitted that the lack of a hotspot denotes a lack of a '"warming climate". As AGW was supposed to result in a warming climate, doesn't the missing hotspot mean that AGW is almost inconsequential?

All of you warmists seem morbidly afraid of a small amount of warming. You seem to think that this warming is going to cause such things as increases in the number of storms (research has shown the frequency of storms hasn't increased) and other things such as catastrophic sea level rise (the current tiny rate of sea level rise is actually decreasing).
You really should be afraid of excess cold. By way of example a study of US death rates between 1979-2002 churned out the following results:
Deaths from extreme heat: 8589 Deaths from extreme cold: 16313 http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/the-deadliest-natural-hazards-for-the-un… (I hope the link works. Apologies if it doesn't - you'll have to Google it)

Whenever the globe has been warm (Minoan, Roman, Medieval Periods and the 20th/21st Century) we have seen society and technologies flourishing. Whenever it's been cold we've seen collapsing civilisations and the spread of disease (the Dark Ages).

Besides, if it gets a bit warm you can always flick on the air-conditioning :)

Just when you think the duffers of this world have, out of shame and embarrassment, slunk away and shut up, back they come once again. Same old arguments, same old mistakes, same old ignorance, same old stupidity. They have learnt nothing and forgotten nothing. When will the point come that they disappear back into their new world order security bunkers and let the adults get on with clearing up the mess we are making of this planet?

@Wow , I agree that there is no evidence that the MWP and Roman Warming periods were not as hot as today.
I am suggesting that logically the presence of old ice today AND the rate of ice loss observed due to recent temperatures should be further logical proof.

David: "Just when you think the duffers of this world have, out of shame and embarrassment, slunk away and shut up, back they come once again. Same old arguments, same old mistakes, same old ignorance, same old stupidity. They have learnt nothing and forgotten nothing. When will the point come that they disappear back into their new world order security bunkers and let the adults get on with clearing up the mess we are making of this planet?"

Oh dear, you really have taken in by 'Big Green' haven't you. Whilst the city traders at their 'Carbon Exchange', Al 'private jet and massive power-sucking house' Gore, Wind Farm Subsidy Barons, Greenfleece, and Third World Despots make billions (nay trillions) by keeping the likes of you morbidly afraid of a trace gas, real eco-tradegies pass you by. Tragedies such as desperately needed food crops replaced by wretched 'biofuels', the over-fishing of our oceans, and the destruction of the rainforests.
Besides, if you warmists were really serious about stopping the production of man-made CO2 you'd be stood in Tiananmin Square telling the Chinese to stop building coal-fired power stations. But you'll never have the courage to do that as you find it far easier to sit in front of your computer in the comfortable West tapping on a plastic keyboard that's been made using that liquid you love to rail against: oil.

Me? I love the opportunities oil and coal has given us in the West. Particularly the chance to fly to warmer more exotic countries all around the world (just like the IPCC crew flying to their many junkets such as the one in sunny Durban)

J Bowers: "Actually, I take that back. I gridded it again and it does cut off around 1940."

Kudos to you J Bowers for admitting when you are wrong. Not many people these days have the strength of character to admit their mistakes.
You are the epitome of a superb sceptic.

Isn't it rather scandalous that they've chopped Briffa's graph off at 1940? Smacks of censorship to me.

Chek:"rather than the Big Government instrument of native American genocide."

Oh dear, self-flaggelation and collective guilt for something that happened over a century ago.
Why are you warmists so hung-up on white guilt? Haven't we moved on since then?

Besides, David was just using it at as a turn of phrase. He wasn't suggesting he wanted to commit genocide. A bit like when someone uses the phrase 'an eye for an eye' it doesn't really mean they want to poke someone else's eye out.

Now, being told to "eff of" is an entirely different matter...

116 = 49, conspiratorial crackpots and morons who fancy themselves, Dunning-Kruger-like, to be "skeptics".

Take home message (click on the published version link) is that the graph was smoothed using 40 year period, so that last viable date for the Briffa recon is 1940 since the original cut off in 1960. There really is nothing here.

By Rattus Norvegicus (not verified) on 02 Dec 2011 #permalink

Oh dear, self-flaggelation and collective guilt for something that happened over a century ago. Why are you warmists so hung-up on white guilt? Haven't we moved on since then?

Missing the point as is the usual oafish way, watch out for that projection y'all, yee haw.

In any case the acceptance of your smug, blathering proposition would be conditional on how many native American friends one has or on one's origin, you presumptuous moron. Even if it does take a history lesson to understand why their traditional voting preference is Republican.

Still, at least that last point can be successfully changed these days with the help of barrel-scraping, reality-denying cretins like Watts as R candidates.

(Re: Posted by: Rattus Norvegicus | December 2, 2011 5:27 PM)

Regarding that cluttered fig 1, deleting the problematic time-series would made virtually no visible difference at all.

Aside from that minor issue, the bottom line is that the SB 2003 paper was so flawed that anyone unable to identify at least one of the several obvious "show-stopper" methodology blunders in it is completely unqualified to comment on the matter in the first place.

By caerbannog (not verified) on 02 Dec 2011 #permalink

Wow: "Since the trend over two points has an infinte variance, this would be rather impossible to proclaim over two years, Andy."

I did try to post a reply to this earlier but the mods held onto it (not a criticism of the moderators, I think they've been very tolerant of my comments)

Anyway, in reply to Wow's assertion, I wasn't talking about two years, I was talking about the lack of warming for over a decade (that's the lack of warming that Trenberth fretted about).
It amuses me that warmists panic at the thought of a warming globe, so you think they'd be happy that the warming has stopped for the moment. Instead, they seem to get even more upset and shouty. Perhaps warmists are Armageddon-junkies: never happy unless we're all doomed.


Anyway, in reply to Wow's assertion, I wasn't talking about two years, I was talking about the lack of warming for over a decade....

OK, so we have another WUWT incompetent who flunked Statistics 1A... yawn...

BTW, Watts attended college 1975-1982, but never managed to get a degree. Remind you of someone else? Here's a hint: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjIH1jdx2_A

By caerbannog (not verified) on 02 Dec 2011 #permalink

(that's the lack of warming that Trenberth fretted about

When will you deniers ever get to understand the concept of 'context'? For the umpteenth time, Trenberth was complaining about our ability - as in capacity - to monitor the planet's heat budget adequately.

Playing stupid wordgames may work over in Anthony's wannabelieve la-la land, but it doesn't work elsewhere where folk know better than to fall into well-worn denialist tropes appealing to single figure IQs, like Duffs.

Caerbanog:"Ok, so we have another WUWT incompetent who flunked Statistics 1A... yawn..."
What do you mean?
Again I say: despite all the hand-waving about infinite variance between two points, the last decade's temps have flatlined. Are you denying they have? Even Ãber-Climate-God Phil Jones once admitted they had.
As for degrees, I have one in Mathematics (BSc Comb Hons Aston University, Birmingham, England)

Check: "for the umpteenth time, Trenberth was complaining about our ability - as in capacity - to monitor the planet's heat budget adequately." Alright, let's pretend just for the moment that I believe the SkepticalScience website's spin that Trenberth was talking about heat budgets. If we can't monitor the planet's heat budget properly, why do climate scientists have the nerve to suggest their models are able to make accurate predictions (Hansen's ABC scenarios being pretty useless, for example)?
BTW I thought Trenberth's rather-too-convenient excuse that the missing heat must be somewhere in the ocean depths really laughable. Talk about clutching at straws!

>Third World Despots make billions (nay trillions)

Oh lordy. The things deniers believe.

Notice as Andy's arguments have been torn to shred he's resorted to memes that show him up for the ideologically driven right-wing shill he is.

Check:"you presumptuous moron. "
Another blinding piece of finely crafted argument from Check.

Right, I'm off to bed again. But just before I go, many warmists on this thread have predicted catastrophic death to all by extreme heat. However, many studies have shown that more people die yearly from extreme cold than extreme heat. Goklany (2007) found that between 1979 and 2003, deaths from extreme heat in the US totalled roughly 8600, whereas deaths from extreme cold totalled just over 16300 (that's the kind of science I like - use of real-world empirical evidence rather useless models).
Besides, if it gets too hot I just flip on the air-conditioning ;)

Goodnight all....

>Even Ãber-Climate-God Phil Jones once admitted they had.

Where?

>that's the kind of science I like - use of real-world empirical evidence rather useless models

Then you'll be fascinated by Mann's hockey stick and the BEST project.


Are you denying they have? Even Ãber-Climate-God Phil Jones once admitted they had.

Yep -- you flunked stats 1A.


As for degrees, I have one in Mathematics (BSc Comb Hons Aston University, Birmingham, England)

I can trump you there -- so BFD.

By caerbannog (not verified) on 02 Dec 2011 #permalink

Andy, here is an exercise for you.

Tell me, does a test for no trend over the past decade pass at the 95% confidence level?

To save you the time, the answer is: it does not.

The question put to Jones was engineered by Lindzen, passed to Watts, and forwarded to the BBC. It was based on finding the largets possible time period that would *just barely* fail a statistical significance test. Now, I don't know about you, but it strikes me as profoundly unscientific to look for the answer you want to find in that way. Cherry picking, you might say. Add one more year to the data and you got > 95% significance. Take the same starting point Jones was given and run it to the present day and you get > 95% significance. That you did not get > 95% significance was a direct consequence of the length of time they chose to look at in relation to the year-on-year variability of cilmate. Any longer, and Lindzen/Watts could not make the same claim.

So, basically, you are exercising a serious double standard. If the question that was put to Jones - that you crow about here - was in any way meaningful, is it not relevant that the trend since that start date is now unequivocally positive? But you don't do that - instead you move the goalposts again to just the last decade.

If I measure the height of a child on two consecutive days, I won't find a statistically significant difference. Yet, amazingly, children manage to grow up.

Perhaps one day you'll realise you're being conned.

Andy's blathering about a "pause" he cannot define seems an excellent time to regurgitate this graph. Andy will be delighted to know it shows six pauses and therefore is proof of the UN/Al Gore scam to give trillions to the Third World.

Shorter Andy @131

Rather than spend any time forming a coherent argument, I'm just going to beat this strawman to within an inch of its life.

Another blinding piece of finely crafted argument from Check (sic).

Nope, merely yet another caustically crafted highlighting of pig-ignorance from Watts' finest. Appealing to the notion of civility is a privilege you morons have yet to go a long, long way to earn.

Andy boasted:

As for degrees, I have one in Mathematics (BSc Comb Hons Aston University, Birmingham, England)

Mmm must have been a long time ago, BS in fact where BS stands for "Before Statistics". Or did you just think that statistics was too boring so you just skipped the statistics classes? Whatever, I wouldn't be boasting about having a degree in mathematics after what you have posted here. You can get away with that sort of nonsense on blogs where intellectual gnats congregate but not where the science level is much higher.

Your other posts just show a complete lack of knowledge about what climate science is all about. I'd stay with the wattsuphisbutt crowd, your ignorance will be welcome there.

By Ian Forrester (not verified) on 02 Dec 2011 #permalink

Sorry, I was going to go to bed, but I couldn't resist one more thing:
John:"Oh lordy. The things deniers believe.
Notice as Andy's arguments have been torn to shred he's resorted to memes that show him up for the ideologically driven right-wing shill he is."
John, are you denying that third world despots haven't been syphoning off oodles of aid that have been meant for the deserving poor in their country? Are you denying that The Goracle hasn't made a business out of AGW alarmism (and a complete fool of himself as well)?

I would like to think my arguments have had some sort of positive effect, judging by the shrill, abusive, and vitriolic comments that have been thrown at me by the warmistas on this thread. BTW I'm a shill for nobody, right or left. I walk my own path, thank you very much. Your presumptuous comment that implies hatred for right-wingers actually suggests you're one of those self-righteous foaming-at-the-mouth naively idealistic socialist watermelons. But I hope that's not the case, as I'd hate to be so rude about someone I'd never met.

Right, I really am off to bed. I'm looking forward to the unseasonably warm weather that we have here in the UK right now. With any luck, I won't have to turn my central-heating on tomorrow, as my energy bills have really hit me in the pocket since the idiots in the Tory party decided to make us pay subsidies to erect yet more of those massively inefficient wind-powered generators.

Good night, once more...

Andy, Gore donates any money he makes to his foundation, and your contention is that Third World despots are going to make *trillions* of dollars.

Trillions of dollars!

Just who is the alarmist here?

>BTW I'm a shill for nobody, right or left.

A fabulous lie.

>Your presumptuous comment that implies hatred for right-wingers actually suggests you're one of those self-righteous foaming-at-the-mouth naively idealistic socialist watermelons

Because these are *exactly* the words of a free thinking rebel unencumbered by ideology. How dare I suggest that someone who espouses right-wing ideology in lieu of scientific evidence is right-wing. The gall!

>I'd hate to be so rude about someone I'd never met.

No such scruples when slagging off Al Gore, but the right's hatred of Al Gore for popularising the science for the layman knows no bounds.

Have a good sleep Andy. See you in ten minutes.

I don't get it.

Why bother to argue with some attention-seeking, smug, serially-wrong conflict-entrepreneur? The demonstration value of refuting this stuff ain't exactly high! And anybody who's stupid enough to be taken in by this stuff already has been...

Sorry, I was going to go to bed, but I couldn't resist one more thing:
John:"Oh lordy. The things deniers believe.
Notice as Andy's arguments have been torn to shred he's resorted to memes that show him up for the ideologically driven right-wing shill he is."
John, are you denying that third world despots haven't been syphoning off oodles of aid that have been meant for the deserving poor in their country? Are you denying that The Goracle hasn't made a business out of AGW alarmism (and a complete fool of himself as well)?

I would like to think my arguments have had some sort of positive effect, judging by the shrill, abusive, and vitriolic comments that have been thrown at me by the warmistas on this thread. BTW I'm a shill for nobody, right or left. I walk my own path, thank you very much. Your presumptuous comment that implies hatred for right-wingers actually suggests you're one of those self-righteous foaming-at-the-mouth naively idealistic socialist watermelons. But I hope that's not the case, as I'd hate to be so rude about someone I'd never met.

Right, I really am off to bed. I'm looking forward to the unseasonably warm weather that we have here in the UK right now. With any luck, I won't have to turn my central-heating on tomorrow, as my energy bills have really hit me in the pocket since the idiots in the Tory party decided to make us pay subsidies to erect yet more of those massively inefficient wind-powered generators.

Good night, once more...

Andy:

Chris O'Neill: "When was the last time it was open 5 years in a row?" Probably about the same time that the Vikings settled Greenland...

Two questions:

1. How do you know?

2. In the unlikely event that it did happen then, was the Southern Hemisphere then as warm as it is now?

By Chris O'Neill (not verified) on 02 Dec 2011 #permalink

>Posted by: John | December 2, 2011 7:37 PM

>Posted by: Andy | December 2, 2011 7:47 PM

Exactly ten minutes. I have a gift.

Adam@116,

I think its quite a good question, but a bit more subtle than your phrasing, because your wording implies other equivalencies that are not in fact equal. Melting billions of tons of ice takes time, and the Arctic sea ice has not yet reached equilibrium with our current temperatures. That is, even if we rose no further (and we will) we would still see further ice loss "in the pipeline" just to achieve equilibrium.

Your original question hypothesised that similar temps in the past would produce similar melting. That is not correct - the MWP - not globally as warm as today but regionally warmer than average - lasted several hundred years, long enough for the ice volume / temperature ratio to achieve equilibrium. The current period of warming has not reached that equilibrium position, partly because it has not been as long as the MWP, but mostly because we are *still getting warmer* and the ice melt has not yet caught up with recent (last couple of decades) warming. There is a lot of warmer water in the oceans to flow into the Arctic in coming years and the annual sea ice minimum will continue to shrink, regardless of short term temperature changes.

That means that your hypothesis is wrong, but in the opposite direction to what one might think. You use the null hypothesis to conclude that MWP temps were not as high as today. Which is correct, but IMO a weak conclusion - the same temps in the MWP as today would not produce the SAME ice loss, but MORE ice loss, as per the above.

So I come to a conclusion that is a bit different. Because ice loss then was less than now (witness the recent loss ice shelves that survived the MWP), and we still have more melting to come with existing temperature levels (quite apart from further warming in future), we can say not only the the MWP was not as warm as today, but was in fact *significantly* cooler.

*Current* temperatures commit us to and Arctic virtually free of ice in summer within the next 50 years; there are some good reasons to consider the possibility of that state occurring within the next 10 years. With time and further temperatures rises, we are virtually certain to see *year round* ice free conditions by around 2100. That regime has probably not existed at any time in the last 4 million years.

Alright, let's pretend just for the moment that I believe the SkepticalScience website's spin that Trenberth was talking about heat budgets.

I've a better idea. Let's pretend for a moment that partial quotes from emails furnished and explained to you by professional liars don't mean shit, and that clarifications from the people misrepresented are by definition more satisfactory than the former. Why, such a state of affairs would mean that Anthony would be out of a job wouldn't he, and you'd need your juvenile, prurient fantasies to be stroked by Alex Jones and David Icke or similar instead.

If we can't monitor the planet's heat budget properly, why do climate scientists have the nerve to suggest their models are able to make accurate predictions (Hansen's ABC scenarios being pretty useless, for example)?

So according to wattbot logic everything must be absolutely perfect before it's of any use? What are you trying to do - drive us back to the stone age? Do you even live in the real world at all?

And for your information, [Hansen's B & C scenarios](http://www.skepticalscience.com/Hansen-1988-prediction-intermediate.htm) have tracked what were future events pretty impressively for a 20+ year old model, which is pretty much all that can be expected of a model. Although no doubt failed, fat-butted ex-weatherman Watt's ignorant criticisms carry far more weight with you than anyone with acclaimed and recognised expertise in the subject.

Oh, and lest there be any confusion regarding the civility issue, I'm not trying to change your third-rate, conspiracy fizzled mind, I'm illustrating what a moron you are to third parties.

Andy, now just wipe up your mess and turn that light out, please.

In the morning, if your wrist's not too sore, you can learn how to use blockquotes.

Andy @129:

As for degrees, I have one in Mathematics (BSc Comb Hons Aston University, Birmingham, England)

Are we supposed to be impressed?
Earlier in same comment:

the last decade's temps have flatlined.

At least your degree should mean that you can answer this question, which no denialist seems to have attempted. Select any period of years ending at the time you think global temperatures flatlined. Calculate the trend for that time, using any set of global temperature measures you prefer. Using any procedure you like, can you show that the last decade's temperatures are statistically significantly lower than those predicted from the trend you calculated? Only when you have done this are you justified in claiming that temperatures have flatlined.

By Richard Simons (not verified) on 02 Dec 2011 #permalink

> As for degrees, I have one in Mathematics (BSc Comb Hons Aston University, Birmingham, England.

Ask for a refund.

Or at least ask for a free remedial course in the statistics of trend detection in noisy signals:

> Again I say: despite all the hand-waving about infinite variance between two points, the last decade's temps have flatlined.

Then come back here and use your new-found knowledge to correct several of your errors, and then head over to Watts' place and correct their misconceptions.

I bet you don't do any of this, especially since amongst other things you appear to have delusions about reality:

> But just before I go, many warmists on this thread have predicted catastrophic death to all by extreme heat.

And you fail at logic:

> I would like to think my arguments have had some sort of positive effect, judging by the shrill, abusive, and vitriolic comments that have been thrown at me by the warmistas on this thread.

But at least you're mildly amusing, in an OMG-the-DK-is-strong-in-that-one way.

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 02 Dec 2011 #permalink

> ...can you show that the last decade's temperatures are statistically significantly lower than those predicted from the trend you calculated? Only when you have done this are you justified in claiming that temperatures have flatlined.

I would interpret "flatlined" to mean stopped rising, for which I suspect the test would be even more stringent than that.

But the point remains: most denialists simply cannot allow themselves to base their arguments on statistically significant trends that isolate signal from noise, because doing so explodes their arguments in a way that even *they* might comprehend. (Witness Alex Harvey on the "Trick to hide the context" thread ducking and weaving to avoid defining how one detects a "pause" in global warming.)

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 02 Dec 2011 #permalink

Andy @ 115

"When was the last time it was open 5 years in a row?" Probably about the same time that the Vikings settled Greenland...

I just came across this, which indicates otherwise.

By Richard Simons (not verified) on 02 Dec 2011 #permalink

Andy might get away with his dishonesty and obfuscation on non-science sites such as Wattsuphisbutt but not here.

He makes some ridiculous claims about the difference between deaths caused by extreme cold and extreme heat. He quotes a ["paper" by Goklany (2007)](http://www.csccc.info/reports/report_23.pdf). Let's have a look at this paper and check it out.

First of all it is not a peer reviewed paper but is published by an outfit called "The Civil Society Coalition on Climate Change" which was established:

as a response to the many biased and alarmist claims about human-induced climate change, which are being used to justify calls for intervention and regulation.

The "paper" claims to use data from the CDC WONDER data base to show that extreme cold killed more people in the US than extreme heat. However, if we look at [CDC data](http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5407a4.htm) we find that the death rate from extreme cold has fallen by 50% since 1990. Could this have anything to do with global warming?

[CDC are predicting](http://www.cdc.gov/climatechange/effects/heat.htm) that global warming will result in an increase in deaths caused by extreme heat.

The sad part of all this is that Andy, who considers himself to be educated, can be so wrong. The question always remains, "Is he just ignorant of what is going on around the world or is he deliberately passing on bogus and dishonest information?" Only Andy knows the answer to this question but I am sure many reading this blog will have formed their own answer based on his arrogant manner.

By Ian Forrester (not verified) on 02 Dec 2011 #permalink

@FrankD
Thanks Frank. You actually phrased my logic better than I did.
I have not seen this logic used to dismiss the MWP at all yet it seems pretty sensible.

Thanks, Andy, for coming onto this blog and offering up your bum for a good spanking. Apart from giving many readers a lot of entertainment, your abject lesson may be educational for others of your ilk. Be sure to link here again from the Anthony Twatts site.

"As for degrees, I have one in Mathematics (BSc Comb Hons Aston University, Birmingham, England"

A degree in Combined Honours is not a degree in Mathematics.

Was that a lie or do you not even understand your own qualifications?

By GWB's Nemesis (not verified) on 02 Dec 2011 #permalink

>by the way Bernard, calling me names such as "idiot" is really not very classy.

Even when it's in the context of a Shakespeare quote?

And even when it's true?

I rest my case.

Moving on:

>All of you warmists seem morbidly afraid of a small amount of warming. You seem to think that this warming is going to cause such things as increases in the number of storms (research has shown the frequency of storms hasn't increased) and other things such as catastrophic sea level rise (the current tiny rate of sea level rise is actually decreasing).

and

>Anyway, in reply to Wow's assertion, I wasn't talking about two years, I was talking about the lack of warming for over a decade (that's the lack of warming that Trenberth fretted about). It amuses me that warmists panic at the thought of a warming globe, so you think they'd be happy that the warming has stopped for the moment. Instead, they seem to get even more upset and shouty.

and especially

>...that's the kind of science I like - use of real-world empirical evidence rather useless models...

Given all of the above statements made by you, Andy, you should be champing at the bit to enter into a legally binding wager with me, based on [one of the alternative options I describe here](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/09/jonas_thread.php#comment-5784133).

The basis is completely empirical, and if you truly believe that there is no "catastrophic" global warming occurring, it should be very profitable for you.

I will put the wager options to David Duff too, in order to see how willing he is to stand by his claims. In Duff's case though I will most definitely insist that he deposits his sum in an escrow account - given his advanced years I want to be assured that I don't have to fight his estate for what is mine, when I win.

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 02 Dec 2011 #permalink

by the way Bernard, calling me names such as "idiot" is really not very classy

Being the sack of dishonest stupid troll shit that you are isn't very classy.

Alright, let's pretend just for the moment that I believe the SkepticalScience website's spin that Trenberth was talking about heat budgets.

Why bother pretending, when the site has a link to Trenberth's own comments in which he says so? And his post links to his paper, which is clearly about that. So calling this "spin" and pretending that there's some reason to think that Trenberth wasn't talking about that isn't very classy ... rather, it is corrupt to the core; it shows you to be despicable garbage.

Oops, Andy walked right into the camp meeting with a sober mind and, surprise, surprise, the evangelistas started to speak in tongues. The level of hate you deltoids carry...must be painful.

But who said catharsis was pleasant?

The hiatus of warming is a scientific problem that a sceptic mind find interesting. Want to join in? :-)

@Olaus Petri

There is no hiatus. You're peddling turgid groupthink.

The skeptical mind finds your contribution uninteresting.

Hold everything! I bring you Good News/Bad News. Well, it's Good News for most of us but I do realise, and sympathise, that it is Bad News for the tiny collective of HAFs (Hot Air Fanatics) still clinging to the tattered tenets of their religion - despite the mounting evidence. Anyway, from my blog ("An ill-favoured thing, sir, but mine own"):

The IPCC's Fourth Assessment claimed that "there is strong evidence" of sea-level rising over the last few decades. It goes so far as to claim: "Satellite observations available since the early 1990s provide more accurate sea level data with nearly global coverage. This decade-long satellite altimetry data set shows that since 1993, sea level has been rising at the rate of 3mm yr-1, significantly higher than the average during the previous half century. Coastal tide gauge measurements confirm this observation, and indicate that similar rates rates have occurred in some earlier decades".

Almost every word of this is untrue. Satellite altimetry [no, me neither, but it's obviously the dog's bollocks!] is a wonderful and vital new technique that offers the reconstruction of sea level changes all over the ocean surface. But it has been hijacked and distorted by the IPCC for political ends.

In 2003 the satellite altimetry record was tilted upwards to imply a sudden sea level rise rate of 2.3mm per year. When I criticised this dishonest adjustment at a global warming conference in Moscow, a British member of the IPCC delegation admitted in public the reason for this new calibration: "We had to do so, otherwise there would be no trend".

Well, if it isn't tree rings it's altimetry, either 'hide the trend' or 'boost the trend'. Still, at least we don't have to sing 'Tootle-oo to Tuvalu'!

The words of Nils-Axel Mörner which you can read in this week's Spectator or, when the link comes up in a few days time, try here:
http://www.spectator.co.uk/spectator/

It's a "hiatus" now. One and a half years ago it was "cooling". In another one and a years it will be "we never said it wasn't warming, we just don't agree that it's causedd by man". In fifteen years it will be "it hasn't warmed since 2020". And so on.

Duff, try, just for once, to be a little bit skeptical, will ya?

I mean, who believes a moron (pun intended) who claims the *IPCC* does something, while the sea levels are actually recorded and studied by a range of university groups (and funnily enough, I don't think there's any British group involved). The IPCC doesn't do anything but provide a framework for scientists to summarise the science of climate change and help inform the governments on what is happening, what may be expected, and what policies may be adopted and what their impact will be.

(and in case anyone wonders, I am quite aware that the Duff will not be swayed by any facts, but who knows, maybe someone who thinks he might have a point is reading this).

Arses indeed! Daft old farts really should learn to know when to shut up. He won't, of course.

That cartoon they used for the cover is a classic - it's about 50 years out of date, for a start, with the, well, I guess it's a 'scientist', as some wicked headmaster from Beano. Which is about the intellectual level. Oh, and it's not, um, funny. ( Would go well at WUWT then! That house cartoonist of theirs doesn't even qualify as third rate.) But then, there really is something strikingly kitsch, dated, and anachronistic about the whole denier enterprise. It's a revolt by guys who tuck their shirts into their underpants!

Homeopaths and dowsers, eh? And 'the Hong Kong of the Ancient Greeks'? Idiot detector on-the-blink, then, David? We'll enjoy the defense of the indefensible...

ââââââââââ
Ah, Nils-Axel Mörner

  1. â Purveyor of "high-grade woo" (love that phrase)
  2. â Relies on non-scientific publications to promote his denialism
  3. â Retired geologist, not a climatologist; has 1 (one) debunked published study to his name in the field
  4. â Thinks there is a worldwide conspiracy by scientists to promote lies about climate
  5. â Linked to swindlers like Ian Plimer and "Lord" Christopher Monckton
  6. â Charlatan

Is this the homunculus to whom the Duffer refers? Figures.

BTW, heads up, News Corp. has a new piece out on how sea levels are not rising (yawn).
ââââââââââââ

> The words of Nils-Axel Mörner which you can read in this week's Spectator...

Gullible troll remains gullible. News at 11.

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 03 Dec 2011 #permalink

From that News Corp opinion piece Scribe linked to:

> In his new guide for students, How to Get Expelled from School, Plimer asks: "If the science of human-induced global warming is so strong then why is it necessary for the climate industry to engage in fraud, exaggeration, obfuscation, personal attacks, spin and the demonising of dissent?"

Teh irony, it burns like ... like ... er, like an iron sun?

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 03 Dec 2011 #permalink

>Teh irony, it burns like ... like ... er, like an iron sun?

Aw, crap Lotharsson, don't say that - you'll invoke the Hissink, and then we'll have a critical mass of Teh Stupid on this thread...

And [Miranda Devine](http://www.heraldsun.com.au/opinion/stars-party-as-we-burn/story-e6frfh…)?! As a demonstrably talented scientific ignorant, she makes a very poor newspaper hack. Objective Fact and she may have once met at a party, but it seems that OF didn't bother to keep her number.

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 03 Dec 2011 #permalink

Hi, I'm back! Just spent a lovely night curled up with the wife: I'm an impoverished high school maths teacher whereas she's a multi-millionaire. Her dad made an absolute packet running carbon-belching delivery trucks up and down the length of Britain. Ain't life grand!

Now, where can I start?

John: "It's a "hiatus" now. One and a half years ago it was "cooling". In another one and a years it will be "we never said it wasn't warming, we just don't agree that it's causedd by man". In fifteen years it will be "it hasn't warmed since 2020". And so on."
Similar to 'Global Warming' becoming 'Climate Change' when the warming stubbornly refused to appear, which went on to become "Climate Disruption" so that pretty much anything could be blamed on CO2. Some people even tried to blame earthquakes on CO2 - superb!

ianam: "Being the sack of dishonest stupid troll shit that you are isn't very classy." Ooh dear, you seem to be getting your knickers in a twist, don't you? I love it when people accuse others of being 'trolls' just because they've visited a blog and made comments that others don't like. Calling someone names suggests your on the defensive and are lashing out in desperation.

GWB's nemesis: "A degree in Combined Honours is not a degree in Mathematics.
Was that a lie or do you not even understand your own qualifications?"
Well, all those lectures I sat through discussing second order partial differential equations sure weren't about Sociology or hairdressing. Actually, I must admit to missing quite a few lessons as I was too busy getting drunk, sleeping with young women, and scuba diving. But I still got an Honours, so I can't be all that thick!
BTW I took a Combined Honours in Mathematics and Business Administration (they were completely seperate of each other), so now I can understand the rather weak maths the warmists post up, and see through the money-making scams that the likes of Al Gore puts up. Superb!

Scribe: "Thanks, Andy, for coming onto this blog and offering up your bum for a good spanking. Apart from giving many readers a lot of entertainment, your abject lesson may be educational for others of your ilk." I think I'm having more fun watching warmists such as yourself throwing your toys out of your pram and descend to the level of sweary abuse (janam being a case in point)

Richard Simons: "At least your degree should mean that you can answer this question, which no denialist seems to have attempted. Select any period of years ending at the time you think global temperatures flatlined. Calculate the trend for that time, using any set of global temperature measures you prefer. Using any procedure you like, can you show that the last decade's temperatures are statistically significantly lower than those predicted from the trend you calculated? Only when you have done this are you justified in claiming that temperatures have flatlined."
Personally, being a visual animal, I like a good graph. This one is pretty good:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:2002/plot/gistemp/from:20…
Seems pretty flat to me. (but I'm sure you'll find some hand-waving way to say it's a complete fabrication)

Ian Forrester: The "paper" claims to use data from the CDC WONDER data base to show that extreme cold killed more people in the US than extreme heat. However, if we look at CDC data we find that the death rate from extreme cold has fallen by 50% since 1990. Could this have anything to do with global warming?"
Nope, people have obviously spent the last twenty years using technology to help them deal with the cold. Anyway, why not celebrate a decline in deaths - you warmist hate to hear the good news! Unfortunately, there are still more deaths from extreme cold than extreme heat in this world. Show me some data that says otherwise.

John: "Trillions of dollars! Just who is the alarmist here?"
Okay, I was getting a bit carried away, but the numbers are still staggering:
In 2011, the US will have spent about $10.6 million a day to 'study, combat, and educate about climate change'.
http://climatequotes.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/cc-funding2011.pdf
The National Science Foundation really went for broke: they requested $1.616 billion!
Between 1989 and 2009, the US spent $79 billion on the climate industry (nice work if you can get it)
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/originals/clima…

Speaking of cash, I've noticed that a few wamists on this blog have leapt to Al 'millions of degrees below the earth's crust' Gore. He's not such a paragon of virtue and has plenty invested in the Green Machine. Here are some of the companies he has a financial stake in: Amyris (biofuels), Altra (biofuels), Bloom Energy (solid oxide fuel cells), Mascoma (cellulosic biofuels), GreatPoint Energy (catalytic gasification), Miasole (solar cells), Ausra (utility scale solar panels), GEM (battery operated cars), Smart (electric cars), and AltaRock Energy (geothermal power).
That private jet and massive house don't pay for themselves, do they?
Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2008/04/11/gore-admits-finan…

John: "Andy's blathering about a "pause" he cannot define seems an excellent time to regurgitate this graph. Andy will be delighted to know it shows six pauses and therefore is proof of the UN/Al Gore scam to give trillions to the Third World."
Nice graph John, but I prefer this one as it puts all the panicking about global temps into perspective: http://www.planetseed.com/files/uploadedimages/Science/Earth_Science/Gl…

MH: "David Duff, what is "the cause"? What is its manifesto and goals? Just asking.."
It's the one Mike Mann keeps referring to in his emails e.g. "I gave up on Judith Curry a while ago. I donât know what she thinkâs sheâs doing, but its not helping the cause."

Bill: "Andy, now just wipe up your mess and turn that light out, please.
In the morning, if your wrist's not too sore, you can learn how to use blockquotes."
Thanks Bill, now it's accusations of self-abuse from a warmist. I'm afraid I didn't need any of that as I had my lovely wife lying next to me last night. Sorry I don't know how to use blockquotes, but I'll get along just fine.

Lionel A: "Of course the fact that much of the country is facing a drought come next year, in spite of the flooding in other parts, has gone over your head, which I guess most aspects of a complex topic such as this do"
This quite a nice little graph that shows current droughts in the UK are not bucking the trend of the last 120 years:
http://www.groundwateruk.org/pi/cache/cache_640_Thames_rainfall_deficie…
This graph seems to show the UK getting wetter, not drier:
http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/49128000/jpg/_49128164_rainfall_g…
So Lionel, what's it going to be - too wet or too dry? Make your mind up. Whatever you decide on, I'm sure you'll blame it on global warming (whoops, sorry!) Climate Change

Right, I've had enough for now.

Toodle pip!

And by the way, Monbiot's less than impressive counter-attack based as much on Mörner's apparent belief in dowsing as anything else seems to ignore the fact that some of the world's greatest thinkers have believed in oddities. Newton, for example, believed in God as well as alchemy, although I am not sure which Monbiot would find more ridiculous.

Incidentally, apologies for the repitions above brought about by the vagaries of the operating system on this highly, er, scientific site!

David, the obvious answer to your question is "no". Möron lied.

@Olaus Petri

Another one who's wrong about Jones. Quelle surprise.

Duff, anyone with a few brain cells and access to a search engine can find out that [*Morner and/or Monckton* tilted the altimetry](http://www.skepticalscience.com/monckton-myth-16-bizarro-world-sea-leve…) to create a graph that claimed no sea level rise. And then accused others of doing so - without, AFAIK, providing any evidence - in order to help fool the gullible.

And in that endeavour they certainly succeeded.

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 03 Dec 2011 #permalink

What a shame, I'd written up a superb little post replying to all the vitriolic abuse, shrill threats of imminent armageddon, and some really rather silly 'statistics' from various outraged warmists. It had web-links aplenty and some extremely rather witty repartee from me (even if I do say so myself). However, the mods didn't let it through. It may have been because I didn't post the urls in the form that mods would want. Never mind, they needn't bother posting it now. I thank them for letting so many of my other posts through.

Anyway, I'm afraid I'm going to leave this thread for good as I have far better things to do with my time right now: I'm going to sit and watch the sun go down with my family around me, marvel at the power of nature, bless the wonder of the technology that surrounds me, and be thankful that I live in the West and have access to 'instant on' light and warmth, all because of those marvelous resources: oil and coal.

However, before I go (and stand back and wait for the torrent of warmist abuse that will no doubt ensue) I would like to tell you about something that happened to me the other day:
At the school where I teach Maths, the Geography teacher and I were both agreeing that the Global Warming hysteria was just silly. At that point, the Science teacher told us we, "couldn't say that" as she had to teach the kids all about Climate Change. Patently, children aren't allowed to see a different point of view in Science lessons anymore. So much for the scientific method. In my lessons, I tell the kids to be skeptical of everyone, including myself, and make their own minds up.
Subsequently, when I was in the Science teacher's classroom, I looked at the worksheets she was using to teach the Climate Change module. Of course, they were full of warnings of imminent catastrophe unless the kids turned off the TV at night, their Dad stopped lighting the barbeque, and Mum started driving a Prius. What amused me most however, was that the worksheets had been sponsored by a big multinational: BP. There they were, with their new cuddly green leaf logo stamped across every worksheet.

Seeing an oil company sponsoring dire warnings of imminent death confirmed my belief about the AGW nonsense being a complete scam. Companies, charities, universities, carbon traders, and Al Gore are all making a fortune from this Global Warming nonsense and you lot really can't (or refuse to) see through the scam. While you wet your pants about tiny changes of temperature measured in tenths of a degree, worry yourselves silly about barely noticeable changes in sea level measured in millimeters, and panic about miniscule CO2 level changes measured in parts per million, these climate scammers are laughing all the way to the bank.

If you remember one thing, remember this: companies aren't your friends, they just want your cash, and they'll say anything they want if they think it means you'll hand over your dollars.

I will leave you with a quote from a far greater man than myself, the late and great Hal Lewis, which comes from his letter of resignation from the APS. It is a quote I think of nearly every day:
"...my former pride at being an APS Fellow all these years has been turned into shame..It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist."

Well said Hal.

Adieu, warmists, it's been a blast.

Andy

I imagine David Duff signing off all his missives with a flourish, content in the delusion that - once again - he has skewered his online opponents deftly and decisively.

A hero in his own mind.

Quite sad really.

content in the delusion that - once again - he has skewered his online opponents deftly and decisively.

... and every time he clicks on 'Post', a spring loaded custard pie hinged on his belt pops up to splat him in the face.

Given his pristine 100% failure rate at scoring any points ever, and total and utter inability to address every consequent debunking, that's some powerful masochistic driving force. Or maybe he just likes being splatted in the face by his own pies.

Hey Mods,

Why have suddenly stopped my posts getting through?
It makes it seem like I've just slunk off, tail between my legs.
Please at least post my last comment (or tell me why you won't) - you've been really even-handed before then.

Thanks,

Andy

Right, the mods stopped my last two posts, but they let my message to them get through, so let's hope I can sneak this one through.

I just wanted to say that watching you warmists get your knickers in a twist about tiny temperature rises measured in tenths of a degree, get all worked-up about minuscule sea-level rise measured in tenths of a millimetre, and fret about minute changes in CO2 levels measured in parts per million has been great fun.

Right, I'm off now.

Adieu, warmists, it's been a blast.

Will the despicable sack of stupid shit stick the flounce?

And you've got to love David Dunce's argument that people who believe in dowsing are credible because Newton believed in God and alchemy. Tilt!

I can't believe the stunning idiocy of "Warmer temperatures are nicer anyway" coming back again. That's not regular D-K. That's got some supercharged Eurocentric arrogance mixed in for added fun.
They've never heard of people dying in heat waves around the world? Flocks did in Pakistan not so long ago (before being flooded all to hell). India too. Heck, New York city has a big enough problem with this annually and it's been known to snow there the previous winter.
Now and then you even see Australian deniers pull this one out. Not just great evidence of parroting group think. Confirmation they are in some sort of well serviced "facility" for the rich but variably capable.

Since this an open thread, maybe someone would like to talk about something other than jousting with D-K'd trolls.

Q: Has Jo Nova ever said anything about funding for The Skeptics handbook?

By John Mashey (not verified) on 03 Dec 2011 #permalink

The hiatus of warming is a scientific problem that a sceptic mind find interesting. Want to join in? :-)

http://www.nytimes.com/cwire/2011/09/19/19climatewire-by-storing-more-h…

The "missing heat" needed to balance the Earth's energy budget may be lurking in the deep oceans, a new study finds....The study also predicts that the continued warming of the climate will be punctuated by brief periods when the rate of warming slows, stops or even reverses, slightly.... "We will see global warming go through hiatus periods in the future," said the study's lead author, Gerald Meehl of the National Center for Atmospheric Research. "However, these periods would likely last only about a decade or so, and warming would then resume. This study illustrates one reason why global temperatures do not simply rise in a straight line."

Denial such as we get from gits like Olaus Understanding what's happening during such warming hiatuses will help scientists and policymakers weigh the merits of policies to fight climate change and determine which natural events are driven by warming...."We know the ["missing"] energy has to be somewhere in the climate system because if you look at the top of the atmosphere, you have a net imbalance -- more energy coming than going out," Easterling said of the hiatus periods. "This paper gives you a physical mechanism as to why that's happening. ... The energy goes down in the ocean, and sooner or later, it's going to be released to the atmosphere, and that's what's really critical about this."

I can't believe the stunning idiocy of "Warmer temperatures are nicer anyway" coming back again.

No depths of idiocy from deniers should, by now, be unbelievable or even surprising.

John, surely that would mean either following or researching her blog, one of which I don't and the other is accompanied by an uneasy sense of trepidation, at least without the pre-flight shots.

Should you have any other slightly less unpleasant tasks, such as perhaps might entail wading eyeball-deep through a Coleridgean lake of pig slurry, I'd be happy to favourably consider them.

I'm calling QED on David Duff.

John Mashey:

I remember, very vaguely, her blog mentioning that the printing of the Handbook at a recent Heartland conference was funded by an "anonymous" source. But I'm too lazy to actually look that up... :)

-- frank

I'm calling QED on David Duff.

Seconded.

BTW, from dictionary.com:
duff â[duhf]
noun Slang
The buttocks or rump

verb (used with object) Slang .
1. to give a deliberately deceptive appearance to; misrepresent; fake.
2. British . (in golf) to misplay (a golf ball), especially to misjudge one's swing so that the club strikes the ground behind the ball before hitting it.
3. Australian . a. to steal (cattle).
b.(formerly) to alter the brand on (stolen cattle).
4. to cheat someone
Perfect!

Dumb as a Duffer:

the repitions above brought about by the vagaries of the operating system

Operating systems, natural variations. Ever the blame-shifter.

By Chris O'Neill (not verified) on 03 Dec 2011 #permalink

Global warming is caused by increased turnip production. See you all later, I'm off to get a Spectator cover.

>But did they tilt the altimetry or not?

Why don't you show some actual skepticism and go and look for yourself.

Is that too much to ask?

>Right, I'm off now.

>Adieu, warmists, it's been a blast.

What's wrong Andy? [Too scared](http://i42.tinypic.com/se3cpw.jpg) to actually put your money where your very windy mouth is?

You obviously do not have the courage of your convictions, if [you won't entertain accepting any of my wagers](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/12/december_2011_open_thread.php#c…) that would test the existence (and the severity) or otherwise of global warming.

You're the same as every other cowardly denialatus that drives by here; happy to libel professional scientists, but too lily-livered to actually stand by the rubbish that you spread.

Typical.

Still, good riddance - for now, at least.

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 03 Dec 2011 #permalink

I see the writings of Nils-Axel Mörner have raised their ugly heads again, with a suggestion that there should be a ["Sealevelgate"](http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comme…) (I hate to give Andrew Bolt extra exposure but this seems to be the easiest summary to get to).

However, if Nils-Axel Mörner wants a "Sealevelgate", here is my [contribution](http://www.members.iinet.net.au/~johnroberthunter/www-swg/morner_emails…)
- a series of emails between me and Morner from 2004.

You will have to draw your own conclusion of Morner from these, but I don't see a "true expert on sea level" - I see a prevaricating duffer who, after a year of obfuscation, provided nothing to substantiate his wild claims.

By John Hunter (not verified) on 03 Dec 2011 #permalink

[John Hunter](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/12/december_2011_open_thread.php#c…).

Good to see you drop in. You might find that you cop a bit of flak from some of the nutters who buzz in here - although having said that, they might also decide that discretion is the better part of valour in the case of interacting with a publishing oceanographer who is studying sea-level rise induced by climate change...

It's a shame that Nils-Axel Mörner doesn't exercise such discretion. That little exchange between you and him is quite revealing.

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 03 Dec 2011 #permalink

I particularly enjoyed reading John Hunter's exchange with Morner. Some of the local arses could benefit from doing the same. Speaking of whom, I particularly enjoyed Morner's -

one don not make trens studies on short time series

That's sooo right, isn't it, boys? Ah, the irony...

Morning, chaps, feeling refreshed, are you? Excellent because I bring you further 'Good News', although why I bother I don't know because you're an ungrateful lot!

Anyway, tipped off by a commenter over at my place, I can tell you that the Envistat satellite indicates that sea levels are slightly lower now than when they launched it!

The Good News from your point of view is that you can do another of those switches you're so good at - you know, like 'Global Warming' to 'Climate Change', that sort of thing - so now you can wail about the loss of sea water which is now threatening the planet, etc, etc. Personally, and pointing no elbows at our distinguished host, I blame those Aussies using all those desalination plants!

http://www.real-science.com/cooking-sea-level-data

@Scribe 201:

I enjoyed your dictionary, particularly #1. In my days flogging 'shrapnel' as a used-car dealer I used to trade under the name of 'Duff Motors'. Now you know why!

Shorter Duff:

I feel shame for being so gullible. Now look over there!

@John Hunter

Revealing stuff, if unsurprising :). Thanks for the link.

The other meaning of the word "Duff" is Worthless, useless. As I've probably pointed out before, duff by name, duff by nature.

> Why have suddenly stopped my posts getting through?

They haven't. As I understand it, moderation algorithms hold up posts with certain keywords or too many links or some such for human approval...and if approved they [appear some time later](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/12/december_2011_open_thread.php#c…) in chronological submission sequence.

Speaking of which, you (surprise, surprise) emit many standard fallacious claims in aforementioned comment.

> Similar to 'Global Warming' becoming 'Climate Change' when the warming stubbornly refused to appear...

Two errors in one half sentence! Well done!

Quick questions: when was "climate change" or "climatic change" first used in a scientific paper, and what does the "CC" in "IPCC" stand for? And which is the global average temperature's hottest decade on record?

> ...which went on to become "Climate Disruption"...

Never seen the term used before.

> Personally, being a visual animal, I like a good graph.

You appear to especially like a graph that **does not answer** Richard Simons' question. (The trend he asked for was **up to** the year from which you assert it has flatlined (i.e. 2002 in your graph).) Which certainly would explain why you say you're not sticking around (to respond to further critique - because perhaps even you realise you're spouting indefensible bullshit).

> Between 1989 and 2009, the US spent $79 billion on the climate industry...

...and you (a) trusted an "Institute" which copious evidence shows is quite happy to flat-out lie, and (b) bought the implication that this was all spent on "climate change" research, right? Because we have no interest in putting up rather expensive satellites and understanding how both weather and climate work for any other reason than AGW, right?

> He's not such a paragon of virtue and has plenty invested in the Green Machine.

Al Gore is on record stating that the profits are going to a non-profit foundation. He got plenty rich from non-green investments...and then *put his money where his mouth is* on the environmental front, including buying carbon offsets for his lifestyle, etc. rather than investing it in ventures that would line his own pockets.

So given the full set of evidence, one draws pretty much the *opposite* conclusion that you drew via cherry-picking.

> Nice graph John, but I prefer this one as it puts all the panicking about global temps into perspective...

...which (for anyone who couldn't be bothered fixing the URL) links to a (unspecified) graph of global temperatures over 425,000 years showing it hotter than now about 130,000 years ago, and approximately 130,000 years before that, and so on.

Which reveals your deep ignorance (or denial) of the root causes of the current concern.

> Sorry I don't know how to use blockquotes, but I'll get along just fine.

Bloody hell. Not just too ignorant/dumb to understand what he's talking about, but unable to learn how to use blockquotes - something that takes most people here about 15 seconds.

> This quite a nice little graph that shows current droughts in the UK are not bucking the trend of the last 120 years.

Yep. You hold up an uncited unlabeled graph, without doing any kind of trend or statistical analysis, and assert it supports your eyeball-inferred claim that no statistical difference in trend is apparent? Monckton would be proud, and your University would prefer that you don't advertise that they passed you.

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 04 Dec 2011 #permalink

Errr, why are the denialati still all hot and sweaty over Briffa and the tree-ring divergence issue?

I mean, the scientific papers acknowledging and discussing this go back a long time, and it has never been a secret.

Are denialists inadvertently putting something in their coffee which reduces their attention span to mere nanoseconds?

>which (for anyone who couldn't be bothered fixing the URL) links to a (unspecified) graph of global temperatures over 425,000 years showing it hotter than now about 130,000 years ago, and approximately 130,000 years before that, and so on.

Yes, after all human civilisation works on 130,000 year timescales.

>In 2011, the US will have spent about $10.6 million a day to 'study, combat, and educate about climate change'

On satellites, you mean.

>Seeing an oil company sponsoring dire warnings of imminent death confirmed my belief about the AGW nonsense being a complete scam. Companies, charities, universities, carbon traders, and Al Gore are all making a fortune from this Global Warming nonsense and you lot really can't (or refuse to) see through the scam.

I just wanted to highlight the above quote in case everybody missed it. Science, how does it work?

>companies aren't your friends, they just want your cash, and they'll say anything they want if they think it means you'll hand over your dollars.

Oh god, the irony is delicious.

>I will leave you with a quote from a far greater man than myself...

Granted

>...the late and great Hal Lewis...

You mean the senile old man who, like you, claimed that global warming was a trillion dollar industry? This is who you are citing?

Andy, your posts are amusing in a "look what that man on the street corner is shouting now" sort of way, but deep down I feel sorry for you that you willingly accept so many lies, obfuscations, deceits and untruths.

Everything you say in your tedious posts has its roots in a right-wing meme, and you have so little skepticism that you don't bother to check if it was correct or not as long as it supports your political ideology.

The worst part is you seem to believe your sad little conspiracy theories and don't know that every single second-hand meme you babble has been refuted again and again. But hey, why bother with pesky things like "facts" and "evidence" when your real goal is to stop the big bad Left?

> Why have suddenly stopped my posts getting through?

Al Gore, probably.

Definitely not the software problems that this blog has had leading to double and triple posting over the last week.

Just blame it on Al Gore.

>Seems pretty flat to me. (but I'm sure you'll find some hand-waving way to say it's a complete fabrication)

No, but you failed to show it was statistically significant and thus failed his challenge.

I'm concerned that with comprehension abilities like yours they even let you teach children. I wouldn't want my kids being taught maths by someone who failed to show something basic like statistical significance when politely asked.

Andy

Lionel A: '...This quite a nice little graph that shows current droughts in the UK are not bucking the trend of the last 120 years: http://www.groundwateruk.org/pi/cache/cache640Thamesrainfalldeficiencie… (which is broken link 1, even when the complete address from your mangled effort is extracted) This graph seems to show the UK getting wetter, not drier: http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/49128000/jpg/49128164rainfall_gra… (this being broken link 2, even when the complete address from your mangled effort is extracted)So Lionel, what's it going to be - too wet or too dry? Make your mind up. Whatever you decide on, I'm sure you'll blame it on global warming (whoops, sorry!) Climate Change

So, not only can a mathematics teacher not manage blockquotes neither can he manage to include valid (as proven in the quote above) and undamaged links. You are a disgrace to your profession. A teacher who cannot teach himself. Pah!

Now to enlighten you oh blighted one.

Global Warming describes the way in which global mean temperatures are rising with some areas experiencing temperature rises in double digits with a few, very few showing cooling but this latter aspect is limited in extent and not static.

Climate change, you may like to discover to what the term climate refers whereupon you will learn that different geographical areas, due to latitude, topology and size of landmass relative to surrounding body of water have different climates. As the globe heats up unevenly, due to increasing imbalance between incoming and outgoing radiation, then the pattern of air and ocean currents become displaced from the norm. This brings on climate change such as Texas, not uniquely, is going through right now.

As to the relative drought and flood patterns of the UK, these are changing, a fact obvious to any with enquiring minds. This is of concern to many farmers and growers of other crops such as grapes. That warming is occurring is obvious - the movement in range of many species reinforces the temperature records. Species once foreign to our shores are becoming increasingly common. One time migrant visitors are beginning to settle and breed whilst others move their ranges further north.

I'll offer similar advice as I did to the 'used car salesman', which boasting tells us rather allot about how much to believe the views coming from that direction. Try engaging in the Wildlife Trusts - you will learn much.

Andy @178:

now I can understand the rather weak maths the warmists post up,

Personally, being a visual animal, I like a good graph. [link] Seems pretty flat to me. (but I'm sure you'll find some hand-waving way to say it's a complete fabrication)

It seems our maths is stronger than yours, judging by your apparent inability to even understand the question. At least, attempt to answer it instead of indulging in hand-waving. Use your claimed comprehensive maths education to demonstrate that current global temperatures are less than would be expected if the past trend has continued.

BTW: I too picked up a combined Math BSc, but I most certainly do not consider myself to be a mathematician.

By Richard Simons (not verified) on 04 Dec 2011 #permalink

I like "the Monckton Maneuver": the climate denial equivalent of "the Gish Gallop".

By Rattus Norvegicus (not verified) on 04 Dec 2011 #permalink

Beat me to it bluegrue. Great stuff from Potholer54 as usual, if a little light on "documentation".

John Howard is preparing to show his hand on the Labor's Carbon Tax by personally launching Ian Plimer's new and much anticipated anti-Warmist manual for the younger reader: How to Get Expelled from School John Howard's agreement to launch the book at this special Sydney Mining Club event leaves no doubt about his views on Labor's duckshoving its new Carbon Tax into legislation, and of course his regard for Plimer and his courageous stand against climate propaganda.

Pass the sick bag, Alice. Link

Yes, another great effort from Potholer. The manifest failings of the WUWT crowd to confront counter-evidence also get a good showing in the second vid.

Also, on this very thread the 'Ooh, I'm being confronted by overwhelming counter-evidence, quick, toss out another claim and hope they lose track' technique Potholer describes is strongly in evidence. How uncanny. I guess when you case is so weak your options are always limited.

Notably, at 13' 30" in the first video, Potholer tells Monckton that if he thinks his statements are libellous "Great, sue me, and I'll be happy to produce all this evidence in court."

Now, by the logic of certain parties here, Monckton's failure to see him in court will be an admission that Potholer's statements are correct, will it not?

@226,Potholer has demonstrated [again]that there are two Moncktons and they're both complete idiots...

Scribe, that link came from bluegrue a couple of comments above.

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 04 Dec 2011 #permalink

If you haven't seen it already, don't miss the 'Monckton Bunkum' series at Potholer's channel - 5 videos before these latest 2, you'll be astonished to learn.

These are the videos Monckton's supposedly 'refuting'.

http://www.youtube.com/user/potholer54#p/c/A4F0994AFB057BB8/13/fbW-aHvj…

Just scroll to the bottom of the 'climate change' playlist at right.

The whole channel is highly enjoyable - let's hear it for the Golden Crocoduck!

Ahh yes! he either was or is now being slippery, (@1:15 not 1:30 as my previously said). In 2007 he did not tell voters that the ETS was *"predicated on the rest of the world acting in a similar fashion"*. He made no mention of such a "predicates" just a promist to the electorate for an ETS.

In fact, far from waiting for the rest of the world, Howard said, *"Australia will more than play its part to address climate change"*.

But now he's trying to provide political cover for his boy Abbott.

Howard's ETS support was opportunistic, and launching Plimer's book is opportunistic. Howard only cares about global warming as long as it can get him elected, or if he can use the issue to damage Labor.

As for Plimer's book, teenagers usually demonstrate rebelliousness by drinking and taking drugs, not by disobeying the laws of science and buying books launched by conservative former prime ministers (last time I checked, Howard was not popular with anyone under the age of 40).

Howard's ETS support was opportunistic, and launching Plimer's book is opportunistic.

That makes me recall one journalist who claimed that if Howard had been re-elected, then we would have had an ETS at the time Rudd tried and failed to pass his ETS through parliament. Apparently that journalist had forgotten the Howard term "non-core promise".

By Chris O'Neill (not verified) on 05 Dec 2011 #permalink

Ah, another Petri Dish, fresh from 'Agar the 'Orrible...

WUWT spam? I, for one, don't care.

David Duff #1 is right. The 'proof' is plane to see ! :-)

By Billy Bob Hall (not verified) on 05 Dec 2011 #permalink

Meanwhile, back inthe real world - SkS takes on Morner.

You really can tell a lot about a movement by the calibre of person it chooses to raise to prominence.

Morner was wrong? Heavens above!

Jakerman said

Scribe, your link didn't work for me

Sorry, here it is fixed

bill:

These are the videos Monckton's supposedly 'refuting'.

Will graft some of these onto Lord Monckey's page at SourceWatch. Ta.

Lookie lookie...the schtick is flawless â again

Certainly none of your best and finest have managed to do anything except whine inconsequentially about it for 13 years now.

And while we're on the subject of emails, you'll need to supply full details and full text of all the emails, because some very egregious splices have come to light recently which almost suggest muppets like you are being manipulated. And tellingly, not a single one was noticed by any of you fake sceptics Fancy that!

So as Bill says, nobody is interested in your sideline as a spambot for Watts, the desperate little liar with his desperate little conspiracies.

I've kept my mouth shut on the GM matter, partly because I have encountered odious industry shills in the past and know that they are largely as recalcitrant in their sticking to the factoids as are the Climate Denialati, and partly because [the current discussion on the "Stolen CRU Emails" thread](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/11/stolen_cru_emails_the_rejects.p…) is off-topic, but I can't help but ask this of Chris S...

What percentage of non-medical GM applications is not essentially a response to poor management practices? Of the GM applications that are essentially a response to poor management practices, which could not more sensibly be addressed by improving best practice, rather than by swallowing spiders?

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 06 Dec 2011 #permalink

No wonder you lot are so churlish, your elders and betters are even worse!

From Briffa to Cook:
"June 17, 2002 (5055). I am sick to death of Mann stating his reconstruction represents the tropical area just because it contains a few (poorly temperature representative) tropical series. He is just as capable of regressing these data again any other âtargetâ series , such as the increasing trend of self-opinionated verbage he has produced over the last few years , and ⦠(better say no more) Keith"

Does he not know that he is speaking of a God worshiped by, er, well, I was going to write 'thousands' but these days
let's just say several dozen? And here was me thinking that Briffa was such a nice man despite all that potential dendrology on his face!

So you admit you're not our better, Dai.

Well, we can at least agree on that.

Duff, that really shoots down "The Team" meme.

Interesting that you're still sniffing the bins trying to find a substitute in place of your so lacking scientific argument.

Did I expect any better from you Duffer? Sadly no.

C'mon, chaps, give me a break! If I came over here and told you that Mann was producing "self-opinionated verbage" (which he frequently does!) you would all jump up and down and then, after running through a check-list of 'Nasty Things to Say to Deniers', you would accuse me of political venom/scientific ignorance/being Rightwing/in the pay of Big Oil (I wish!) but now you have it from 'one of your own'!

My question is simple - like me - do you agree with Briffa?

> C'mon, chaps, give me a break!

Sure.

Arm? Leg? Neck?

> (which he frequently does!)

Ah, and you know this because you decided it was, yes?

> you would accuse me of political venom/scientific ignorance/being Rightwing/in the pay of Big Oil

Well, you ARE guilty of political venom and ignorance. We may posit reasons why a rational person would do so so openly, but we admit that you may not be a rational person.

This just in: Scientists argue, Watts' spambot faux shocked.
News at 11.

A couple of days ago I downloaded the FOIA2011.zip file and made a couple of random guesses at the password on the all.7z in hopes of being "lucky". I wasn't.

But it got me to thinking. What purpose does it serve by being there? I know that professional deniers know that Global Warming is happening and have looked closely at the consequences in order to set up contingency plans for future events. My gut feeling is that all.7z is one of those contingency plans for climate related events they expect to happen in the next couple of years. My further gut feeling is that since we don't know if the encrypted information in all.7z has been tampered with, we cannot say for sure that all the emails in all.7z are unchanged. To say that they are unchanged could be stepping into a dangerous trap.

By Berbalang (not verified) on 07 Dec 2011 #permalink

@Wow and Chek:

You must have missed it in your rush to attack but there was a really, really easy question to answer, especially to swots like you:

My question is simple - like me - do you agree with Briffa?

> but there was a really, really easy question to answer

And why would it need to be answered?

You, for example, never have bothered answering questions.

And unlike you, I agree with Science.

Duff, you have no credibility whatsoever.

On this very thread your own heroes - Morner and Monckton - have been thoroughly de-panted in a manner that goes way beyond your pathetic quote-mining efforts. Monckton in particular is left in tatters.

And you? You just run and hide.

Coward.

Yep, you sneak away, then slink back when you hope the coast is clear to chuck around some other sordid nugget that will turn out to have been confected specifically to chum for morons.

I.e. you.

Either respond on Morner and Monckton, or sod off. Your own thread is long overdue, as you are every bit the Dunning-Krugerite waste of space and time to merit one.

Or, better yet, just sod off altogether. You are a man without substance.

I, for one, am fed up with playing bad-faith ping-pong with third-rate hacks who - in the complete absence of any genuine case - resort to contrived and dishonest character assassination with the kind of shallow, infantile and malicious glee displayed by some creepy 12-year old boy dismembering insects.

Their antics are just one long, sordid smear in the gusset of humanity. Some day I hope they will be held to account.

In the meantime, this is the situation we are stuck in, in no small part due to the unfortunate proliferation of such as these -

Actually, to be honest, nobody over here is paying any attention to science.

>Actually, to be honest, nobody over here is paying any attention to science.

It's the political version of the fallacy of the false compromise. Such a position may be politically expedient in the short term, but with respect the the laws of physics there is only one correct answer.

Governments around the world are singularly insistent on offering the wrong answers. It moves me to wonder if perhaps one day there will be a Retribution Movement...

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 07 Dec 2011 #permalink

> ...bad-faith ping-pong...

That's an excellent description.

> John's question is appropriate for Duff.

As is: does Briffa in 2011 think the quote attributed to Briffa in 2002 is at all relevant to today's science? (And if not, don't you think it smells of desperation that the best you can do is quoting a moot opinion?)

It's also interesting to note Duff transparently attempting to play off one (perceived) authority against another.

One might speculate that Duff is a bit of an authoritarian follower himself which leads him to (a) adopt beliefs based on his chosen authority rather than evidence, (b) think that attacking an authority is likely to prove useful, and (c) likely to fail to comprehend that such a tactic has no impact on those who weigh the body of evidence.

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 07 Dec 2011 #permalink

Tell you what, chaps, I'll answer yours if you'll answer mine!

As mine came first, it's over to you:

Do you agree with Briffa's assessment of Mann's work?

> As mine came first, it's over to you...

As yours is moot due to subsequent developments, you should go first.

Bet you don't.

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 07 Dec 2011 #permalink

> like me - do you agree with Briffa?

So, since Briffa agrees with the IPCC reports and you agree with Briffa, you agree with the IPCC reports too.

Duffer,

No. Neither would Briffa (now) agree with Briffa (then).

You are quoting Briffa 2002 talking to Cook 2002 and Esper 2002. At the time they had their own rival reconstructions and disagreed with some elements of Mann, and in particular, got jack of him touting his as the best. Heated scientific dispute, oh noes, its all a scam! Except that, over the following three years, all three of them agreed that Mann's multi-proxy reconstruction was as good as, or better than, the other alternatives (Cook, Esper, D'arrigo 2004, Mann, Briffa et al letter to JoC 2005). So Briffa was wrong then (except, perhaps, for his frustration at Mann's vocal defense of his own work). Perhaps if these emails contained any current content we could reassess the question. But they don't, so we can't. But you agree with this, so we can say that you are 6-9 years out of date.

>Tell you what, chaps, I'll answer yours if you'll answer mine!

Your turn.

What are you afraid of, Duff? Why are you such a simpering coward when it comes to actually stating a scientific opinion?

[John](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/12/december_2011_open_thread.php#c…):

>What are you afraid of, Duff? Why are you such a simpering coward when it comes to actually stating a scientific opinion?

Not only is David Duff a simpering coward when it comes to actually stating a scientific opinion, he is also one when it comes to putting his money where his unscientific mouth is.

After all, if he believes that consensus climatology is wrong, Duff should be wetting his pants to collect [ten thousand euros from me](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/12/december_2011_open_thread.php#c…).

Over the last month or so that I have been challenging various Denialati with my wager, not a one has actually had the spine to detail scientifically why they will not accept my offer. I suspect that doing so would involve them staring down the barrel of hard scientific fact, and the cognitive dissonance would [make their brains explode](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MhgnMX73Pw).

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 08 Dec 2011 #permalink

What are you afraid of, Duff?

What Duffer's afraid of is having an opinion or worse, forming one. As is seen time after time on his visits here, he's not equipped with the tools to form an argument let alone pusue one, so he struggles to maintain his studied supercilious detachment in imitation of what he imagines his Spectator-reading social superiors might do.

This intellectual bargain-basement, barrel-scraping smear game that the deniers are reduced to playing on account of their having no other weapons at their disposal really is the end game for them, and readily suits the chortling stupidity that is Duff. He's their perfect archetype.

While it may still play with know-nothings like Duffer who seeks to reduce complex situations to sound bites that he can file away internally as his reference For All Time, even the mainstream press acknowledges (by its lack of reaction) that after crying wolf once, the deniers have nothing there. You really have to wonder at the child-like grasp of the world for simpletons fed to the likes of Duff by Watts and the gang.

Given the intense rivalries between say Oppenheimer and Teller we can only speculate on what a theoretical theft of emails from say Los Alamos in 1946 may have 'revealed'. No doubt Duffer would still be proudly spambotting plenty of provided, well-chosen partial quotes 'proving' that atomic fission was a myth tailored to fit increased Big Government/mankind's penchant for endtime fantasies/delete as appropriate.

Well, FrankD made a reasonable effort whilst 'Wow' remained true to his, er, lawyer-like agility by misrepresenting my question. Even so, fair play to Frank so I will answer the question posed by John as whether or not I "believe Morner".

First, I would make clear that in my approach to the whole question of AGW and its ancillary subjects, 'belief' is not a word I would use in this or any other scientific controversy. Unlike so many here, I am not part of "a cause"! I have frequently confessed my own relative scientific ignorance, relative, that is, to those who specialise in it. However, as a reasonably intelligent, well-read man I try my best to understand these things - particularly when I see politicians picking up hypotheses and running with them because I know that will cost me money!

I can only tell you in absolute honesty that when, several years ago, I began to take an interest in this particular subject I had no views one way or the other. I read widely on both sides of the debate. I may be wrong, after all I have a lifetime's experience of being wrong about many things, but at no time have I ever been completely convinced by the totality of the 'warmer' argument. I have always based myself on the premise that the earth's climate is in a constant state of flux, thus, I have never doubted that temperatures may, repeat 'may', have increased in the last few decades. I stress 'may' because every investigation into the means of actually measuring *global* temperatures shows them to be, as we used to say in the motor trade, more than a bit hooky! It is now clear from the e-mails that not even the protaganists were convinced by each other's efforts to find trustworthy proxies for past events. If any of you, today, are still convinced by Mann's 'hockey stick' graph then please let me sell you a really low-mileage, one old lady owner, Ford Cortina - a real bargain - honest!

Everything the 'warmer technicians' come up with as a definitive graph to show historical temperature trends are based on 'computer models'. If you trust computer models knowing the truth of how they can be manipulated, then again, I have just the car for you and, honestly, you can trust me! I'm afraid that far too many people who know just as much about the various esoteric topics within the discipline as your 'heroes' have come to different conclusions. They are not allcrooks or scallywags o rinthe pay of Big Oil, any more than your lot are in the pay of Big Government A cacophony of mutual slagging off then ensues, but the fact is that, as in a court case, the 'deniers' have established a reasonable doubt, in my opinion (not worth much), a better than reasonable doubt.

Science, as I understand it, has to be more or less water-tight. It is obvious - and in fact should be even more obvious to you who are on the receiving end - that your theories *may* be well founded but so are the doubts. Consequently, no one but a fool (so that let's out the politicians, then!) would actually take drastic, expensive action to follow your precepts.

Finally (you will be glad to read), in answer to your question I do not "believe" in Morner but I would take his his description of global sea levels, provisionally, as likely to be more accurate than those forecasting huge and dangerous rises.

Sorry, one more 'finally'. I do not pretend to scientific expertise but I do know a bit about human nature and behaviour. The crude, vituperative, shrill nature of the response of 'warmers' to even a hint of doubt (do you ever read yourselves?) instantly puts me in mind of members of extreme Left or Right wing 'groupuscles', or even, various extreme religious sects. The behaviour is startlig similar and only adds to my doubts concerning their "beliefs".

It is obvious - and in fact should be even more obvious to you who are on the receiving end - that your theories may be well founded but so are the doubts.

Could you give us just one example of a doubt that you feel is well-founded, because I can't think of a single one?

By Richard Simons (not verified) on 08 Dec 2011 #permalink

P.S. Remember to include the evidence you've seen that justifies your doubt.

By Richard Simons (not verified) on 08 Dec 2011 #permalink

For those uninterested in the inconsequential bloviatings of an utter ass; back in the 'real' world -

His nickname is "George W. Obama." Obamaâs negotiator, Todd Stern, will be here today. They have kept the exact same principles and negotiating stance as President George Bush did for eight years. Obama has carried on Bushâs legacy. So, as skeptics, we tip our hat to President Obama in helping crush and continue to defeat the United Nations process. Obama has been a great friend of global warming skeptics at these conferences.

Marc Morano, Durban.

Duff when provided [this link](http://www.skepticalscience.com/news.php?n=1153) writes in reply:

>I do not "believe" in Morner but I would take his his description of global sea levels, provisionally, as likely to be more accurate than those forecasting huge and dangerous rises.

What is Morner's description of global sea levels? Morner writes that:

>*[sea level] have remained roughly flat ever since [1970]."*

Inspite tidal gauge measurements and satelite measurements of sea level rise over that period. Duff opts instead for Morner's *"description of global sea levels"*.

Duff thus reveals himself as a raging denier of evidence in favor of a shonky story teller.

Duff has such a lack of self awareness that in support of his postion he evokes the claim that:

>*Science, as I understand it, has to be more or less water-tight.*

What a contradiction, Duff rejects the water tight case for our observed rising sea level in favor of a conspiracy story lacking evidence.

What a load of waffle, finally culminating in Duff's wide eyed acceptance of conspiracy theories over evidence.

Duff, tell me how you can believe Morner's projections are more accurate when his current observations are already devastatingly wrong?

>I have never doubted that temperatures may, repeat 'may', have increased in the last few decades.

Good lord, you just contradicted yourself *halfway through your own sentence*.

>The behaviour is startlig similar and only adds to my doubts concerning their "beliefs".

I have the same reservations about chuckling old men who think they are too smart to learn anything, that the world is exactly the way it was in the 50's, and that progress is nothing more than a left wing conspiracy to extract their precious money.

"...the world is exactly the way it was in the 50's, and that progress is nothing more than a left wing conspiracy to extract their precious money."

Perhaps if someone suggested that we revert to 1950's tax rates they might have a bit of a rethink. And get them talking about something else for a while.

70% top tax rate in the USA, 75% in Oz, would really set the cat among the pigeons. Even though the world turned just the same back in the 50s, 60s, 70s.

The other point I want to make here is you have not come in good faith. You came here to troll, so don't complain that people are impolite to you and it's *our* fault you can't accept the science.

You came here to boast (mutiple times) that the theory was over and we should all go home etc. Those are not the words of someone expressing a few doubts. Those are the words of a zealot who has made up his mind and you received the treatment you deserved.

> Unlike so many here, I am not part of "a cause"!

Wow, me neither! And yet I still point out that you indulge in logical fallacy, ignore evidence and make unjustified claims. Fancy that! One can be outside of "a cause" and still disagree with someone else who is not part of "the cause" too!

> I have always based myself on the premise that the earth's climate is in a constant state of flux,...

...as do climate scientists, who are nevertheless deeply concerned about the causes and magnitude of the current 'flux'. In that case, you raising 'constant flux' is entirely irrelevant.

> ...I have never doubted that temperatures may, repeat 'may', have increased in the last few decades.

Well, except that the very word 'may' implies some form of doubt.

> ... every investigation into the means of actually measuring global temperatures shows them to be...more than a bit hooky!

You are claiming facts not in evidence. Denying, in other words.

(Hint: see those shaded regions surrounding the curve on many of the temperature reconstruction graphs? Any idea what they mean?)

> If any of you, today, are still convinced by Mann's 'hockey stick' graph...

Thus do you appear to deny the existence of a dozen or so other reconstructions, using different methods and proxies, all in broad agreement. Par for the course for you, I'm afraid.

> Everything the 'warmer technicians' come up with as a definitive graph to show historical temperature trends are based on 'computer models'.

Liar, liar, pants on fire. Again. Apparently you don't even understand the difference between a statistical procedure and a computer simulation. Why, it's like you're confidently pontificating on something you don't understand. Dunning & Kruger would be proud!

Never mind that you interact with products and services heavily influenced by 'computer models' every day.

> Science, as I understand it, has to be more or less water-tight.

Nope. Especially not when it is a major fact in risk assessment and mitigation:

> Consequently, no one but a fool ... would actually take drastic, expensive action to follow your precepts.

You are the unwitting fool here - you have risk management completely and utterly ass-backwards. No-one but a fool would wait until the argument is "water-tight" that he is going to drive straight into a cliff before taking action. No-one but a fool would wait until there is a bush fire in their neighbourhood before buying fire insurance for their dwelling. And only fools waited until there were only a handful of 'skeptics' who were unable to substantiate their 'reasonable doubts' about the claim that tobacco was causing all sorts of diseases before stopping smoking.

The science just has to be good enough to do effective risk management. And it clearly is, even if you are clueless about risk management - and science.

> The behaviour is startlig similar and only adds to my doubts concerning their "beliefs".

Funny, you never make those observations about 'skeptics', who have the kind of 'shrill' response you tone-troll about here if you challenge them on their core beliefs, or point out that skeptic A claims something that utterly contradicts skeptic B.

That suggests that 'tone' does not provide a good guide to the veracity of beliefs. In which case, you'd better start trying to assess the evidence instead...

...except that you acknowledge you don't have the skills for that, although you contradict yourself by implying that you do when you confidently assert that you think a fringe position that is unsupported by evidence is more likely than the mainstream scientific position.

So let me reiterate Richard Simons' request:

> Could you give us just one example of a doubt that you feel is well-founded, because I can't think of a single one?

> P.S. Remember to include the evidence you've seen that justifies your doubt.

And let me elaborate: the well-founded doubt, if proved accurate, should have a *sufficiently large* impact on climate science that it would significantly change our understanding - and our response to climate change. You know, something that would affect the action that politicians might take if they were doing evidence-based risk management.

Bet you can't.

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 08 Dec 2011 #permalink

I have a lifetime's experience of being wrong about many things

What a surprise.

David, you are dimwitted, pig ignorant, and most important, totally devoid of intellectual honesty. You have no idea how to evaluate evidence, and so what you accept or reject is entirely a matter of its emotional appeal. As a consequence, your assessments are completely unreliable, your judgments utterly irrelevant ... no sensible person has any reason to consider them, and every reason to ignore them.

Duff says:
>... I will answer the question posed...

But then he doesn't:
>I would take his his description of global sea levels, provisionally, as likely to be more accurate than those forecasting huge and dangerous rises.

Morner is more likely to be right than some unspecified person forecasting huge but unspecified rises. That's not an answer, or at least, not to the question that was asked. Stipulating that "believe" would be better expressed as "concur with", what is your answer to John's question? Just with regard to the matters discussed on this thread, you needn't defend his dowsing arsehattery. So lets try again...

Do you concur with Morner's conclusion that sea level has not risen since 1970? Do you concur with his "Sealevelgate" conspiricy theory? Do you concur with his "estimate" that sea level rise will be no greater than 20 cm's by 2100?

These are very simple expansions of John's very simple question, and require no handwaving or bloviating. I dignified your question with a yes/no answer, and provided an explanation of the basis for that. Kindly do the same, if as you say "fair play" comes into it.

Simple stuff, David. Are you up for it?

>...as we used to say in the motor trade, more than a bit hooky! It is now clear from the e-mails that not even the protaganists were convinced by each other's efforts to find trustworthy proxies for past events. If any of you, today, are still convinced by Mann's 'hockey stick' graph then please let me sell you a really low-mileage, one old lady owner, Ford Cortina - a real bargain - honest!

Ah, all is explained - Duff is a former used car salesman.

It puts into very clear context the extraordinary cognitive dissonance and refractoriness to real scientific fact that he displays.

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 08 Dec 2011 #permalink

...and also his projections concerning other people's honesty, or lack thereof, and manipulative self-interest.

Monbiot has now published in the Spectator itself, refuting Morner's nonsense.

He even gives a handy introductory couple of paragraphs explaining why his refutation will have no impact on the likes of Duff, or, one suspects, the Spectator readership, for that matter.

I'm under orders from the 'Memsahib' so I might be a bit busy today but, be sure, like that old rascal MacArthur, "I shall return"!

Oh, but in the meantime, thanks to those many of you above who proved by demonstration the accuracy of my description of you as "crude, vituperative, shrill".

> "I shall return"!

No need on our account, Dai.

Oh, but in the meantime, thanks to those many of you above who proved by demonstration the accuracy of my description of you as "crude, vituperative, shrill".

I don't suppose it would ever occur to you that vomit-making, phoney contrivances such as, "I'm under orders from the 'Memsahib'" and your anachronistic Colonel Blimp act in conjunction with your freely admitted intellectual dishonesty might have something to do with those reactions you find disagreeable? Or maybe it's just that the import of your own words hasn't penetrated the exoskeleton of your beliefs yet.

Rather "crude, vituperative, shrill" than "credulous and wilfully stupid" any day.

Me:
>Simple stuff, David. Are you up for it?

Duff:
>Run away!

Pathetic. This might be the best example I've ever seen of the "I can't admit I'm wrong, so I'll just pretend that I have to be somewhere else" crock, seen so many times on Deltoid of late. Future examples might be referred to as "Duffs exit".

But DaiDai's byebye frees me to remark on something I originally passed over:

John@271:
>Good lord, you just contradicted yourself *halfway through your own sentence*.

Spectacular, isn't he? I never saw a man get through a day so fast.

'Shrill'!? From a shill? Will will will*...

*as they say in New Zealand

Oh, but in the meantime, thanks to those many of you above who proved by demonstration the accuracy of my description of you as "crude, vituperative, shrill".

So what? That's no more relevant than our hair color.

David Duff appears to be leading an admirable one man campaign to improve standards in science. He has set the bar impressively high: "Science, as I understand it, has to be more or less water-tight". We must assume from here-on in that he will only cite work that is demonstrably watertight. If at any stage anyone can demonstrate that this is not the case then he will clearly not rely upon it. Given that it is easy to show that Morner's latest protestations are not watertight, Mr Duff (being a man of honour and his word) will obviously cease to rely upon is work to support his case.

I feel that it is important that henceforth we endeavour to point out to Mr Duff whenever we believe the science upon which he is basing his argument is less than watertight (it would be rude not to, and Mr Duff is very keen on manners). I am slightly fretting about what he will have left, but we will worry about that in due course.

I wonder if Mr Duff could also kindly outline for us some current science that he thinks is watertight? For example, the aviation industry relies upon equations that are based on Newtonian mechanics, but we know that this is not watertight (indeed it is definitively wrong). I assume that he will not fly any longer? The computer industry relies upon Quantum Theory (transistors cannot work without it), but that is not watertight (and may well indeed be wrong), so presumably he will cease to use his PC (which may reduce the number of posts, admittedly). And recent observations suggest that even General Relativity is not watertight, so I assume that Mr Duff is reminding the physics community that they need to up their game.

So Mr Duff, can I politely request that you provide an example of a cutting edge current research area that you believe is "more or less watertight"? Just so that we know how high the bar is set, of course. We clearly need to understand where the gold standard lies. Please do ensure that it is a current research field (i.e. something in which a peer reviewed publiation with new data has been published in this current year) so that we can compare your gold standard with climate research.

Yours in anticipation!

GWB's Nemesis

By GWB's nemesis (not verified) on 09 Dec 2011 #permalink

Good lord, you just contradicted yourself halfway through your own sentence

David "Duff by name, duff by nature" Duff has learned self-contradiction at the feet of the master, Ian Plimer. See Plimer vs Plimer.

GWB's nemisis.....I'm sure Duff will say the best science comes from the oil drilling industry. BP is a prime example of water tight science, because no water leaked out.

Well Duff did say 'more or less watertight. Presumably, he will countenance science that is less than watertight. What would be more than watertight would be interesting to know, but I fear he won't point to any exemplars of that.

What we need to now is how much less than watertight things can be before they fail the Duffer test and how he measures this shortfall. Perhaps we need (gasp) a model for working this out -- we could call it the Duffer model -- for measuring the shortfall and offering a rationale for his own plimsoll line.

If nothing else, the Duffer Model should be watertight -- more or less.

By Fran Barlow (not verified) on 09 Dec 2011 #permalink

Now I must ask you children to be quiet today because last night's dinner was, shall we say, festive and I am walking wounded!

I would like to thank 'GWB' for his polite response even if I sense that it was written through gritted teeth, if you follow my meaning. He seems surprised at my phrase indicating that science is "more or less watertight". I grant that was perhaps a less than specific description, so let me explain it.

In my view science, as opposed to technology (the application of science) must have one critical condition - it must be able to forecast future events. Thus, Newton's laws tell us that if we have sufficient data we can forecast with accuracy the momentum and position of matter. No one, I think, would argue that Newton's laws have proved their efficacy - and accuracy - ever since he first proposed them. However, they are not (yet) totally comprehensive. At the sub-atomic level (so far) it has proven impossible to integrate them into quantum theory thus producing an over-arching theory. So, that, along with other examples in physics and chemistry, is what I call 'science' whose main characteristic is that it is almost, repeat almost, invariant in being able to forecast events and/or their outcomes - hence my somewhat careless phrase "more or less".

Now let us turn to what I call 'technology' which is the attempt to use science to explore the world we live in. Perhaps the oldest and therefore the most 'respectable' is biology. But of course, biology is not a science. It can make no definitive forecasts. For example, even the most highly respected Darwinists cannot tell us which species will exist in 10,000 years, let alone which species will be produced. Newton, on the other hand, will tell you exactly where the planets will be.

It is precisely this confusion between technology and science which lies at the heart of the dispute over global climate. Uneasily aware and slightly embarrassed that they are not real scientists, the climate technicians attempt to inflate their mundane tasks into something much larger and grander than it actually warrants. When real scientists, like Freeman Dyson, express some doubts they are offended and then seek, by fair means or foul, to instil a certainty into their prognostications which quite simply will not bear the weight.

If you seek proof of my contention that climate science is only technology, let me ask you if you believe that the 'forecasts' of Dr. Mann have proved accurate?

Now I'm afraid I must leave you and retire to a dark room with an aspirin!

I'm not sure what other factors need to be integrated, but certainly Duffer is scoring consistently and impressively on the fu*kwit scale.

David Duff,

Not gritted teeth at all. It is rather fun to demonstrate (politely) that denialists are without credibilty, although that is usually rather easy. And indeed, you rather nicely demonstrate this in your response. With the greatest respect you are quite wrong when you say: "Newton, on the other hand, will tell you exactly where the planets will be". Even a High School student is aware of the three body problem (although clearly you are not), which means that this is not possible. Given that this means that even basic physics cannot predict the future, by your definition this is not a science. That would leave you in something a pickle, one would think?

So once again, I ask you to provide an example of a cutting edge science field that you feel is "more or less watertight".

And finally you say: "let me ask you if you believe that the 'forecasts' of Dr. Mann have proved accurate?". You are clearly inferring that you do not believe that they have been accurate (or do you mean reliable?). Given your admirable crusade for scientific integrity, I am sure that you wuld not make such a statement without "more or less watertight" evidence to support it. I think we would all be grateful if you could let us see your analysis.

By GWB's nemesis (not verified) on 10 Dec 2011 #permalink

@David Duff

> Newton, on the other hand, will tell you exactly where the planets will be.

Apart from, say, Mercury. You really are ignorant of science and history, aren't you?

@GWB:

Thank you, you make my point better than I could. Of course, we shoot rockets at the moon precisely because Newton's laws are so precise. The three-body problem, particularly at the quantum level is proof that not even science is totally watertight - to quote a phrase!

As to your faith, I use the word after due consideration, in Dr. Mann's forecasts here are some quotes:

"In general, we found MBH98 and MBH99 to be somewhat obscure and incomplete and
the criticisms of MM03/05a/05b to be valid and compelling. We also comment that they
were attempting to draw attention to the discrepancies in MBH98 and MBH99, and not to
do paleoclimatic temperature reconstruction."
[...]
"In our further exploration of the social network of authorships in temperature
reconstruction, we found that at least 43 authors have direct ties to Dr. Mann by virtue of
coauthored papers with him. Our findings from this analysis suggest that authors in the
area of paleoclimate studies are closely connected and thus âindependent studiesâ may not
be as independent as they might appear on the surface."
[...]
"It is important to note the isolation of the paleoclimate community; even though they rely
heavily on statistical methods they do not seem to be interacting with the statistical
community. Additionally, we judge that the sharing of research materials, data and results
was haphazardly and grudgingly done. In this case we judge that there was too much
reliance on peer review, which was not necessarily independent."

I could go on, I could find others, but the only result will be that you will produce *your* favourite authors, and then the whole thing descends into 'he said, she said' tedium. Please don't come back and tell me the Wegman and his uncle plus his entire family are in the pay of Big Oil, or whatever, there's a good fellow!

http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/WegmanReport.pdf

Mr Duff,

I note with respect that you have dodged my question, so I will pose it for a third time: I ask you to provide an example of a cutting edge science field that you feel is "more or less watertight".

As for the Mann question, I asked for YOUR analysis, not one recycled from a report. And incidentally your challenge was "let me ask you if you believe that the 'forecasts' of Dr. Mann have proved accurate?". Your example is for palaeoclimate reconstruction, not a climate forecast.

We can leave the extraordinary isssues with the Wegman Report to one side (but I wonder how this squares with your crusade for scientific integrity). Your choice of evidence is remarkable!

So to summarise Mr Duff, please can we have:
1. Your examples of more or less watertight cutting edge science; and
2. Your own analysis of Mann's climate forecasts,;

We are all looking forward to your words of wisdom.

By GWB's nemesis (not verified) on 10 Dec 2011 #permalink

"Please don't come back and tell me the Wegman and his uncle plus his entire family are in the pay of Big Oil"

He almost certainly is, however the relevant point is that
Wegman is a con artist and serial plagiarizer. (How about just this once, you demonstrate that you can google things yourself instead of demanding that we do it for you?)

Kudos to you GWB's N - I had the fleeting hope that your own deployment of logic was going to work in this instance. Alas I can now only see the Bernaysian thoroughness with which Watts (and Pielke & Co. of The Best Science Website) has been designed to appeal to the total inertia of know-nothing complacency affecting the comfortable but ill-educated Duffer type demographic.

It might have seemed depressing at one time, but it's always worth remembering that ignorance is not a strength. It's a fatal weakness. Absolutely and 100% fatal.

real scientists, like Freeman Dyson

Definition of real scientist: someone well past his prime who offers off-the-charts crank opinions about fields in which he has no expertise, but says what Duff wants to hear.

biology is not a science

Tim, it really is time to give David a private room.

Yep, for the entire dreary tribe 'real science' is that science that announces results they want to hear, 'real scientists' are those that make these announcements. Actual competence and relevant qualifications don't enter into it. Any buffoon will do; hence Monckton (the 'science' advisor) and Morner.

This has been proved repeatedly, and more conclusively than AGW itself. Constant re-demonstrations are simply tedious, and not a little depressing, as they only serve to remind us that the enlightenment never really penetrated all that far, and there's no good historical reason to believe that rationality must inevitably triumph over smug, complacent stupidity.

The joke simply isn't funny anymore. Sure, we'll be proved right (though too late to do much, probably), and the likes of Duff will deservedly stink in the nostrils of posterity, but in Durban right now we're being pulled down to the muck by the muck.

Could Duff not be confined on the existential-pointlessness thread with the Scandinavian Tobacco Lobby?

Duff my sweetheart, in all your dreary pontifications about Real Science (i.e. classics, nothing has changed since the 1500s) and "Real Scientists" (i.e. scientists who says what you want to hear), you have failed to answer my disarmingly simple question:

>Duff, tell me how you can believe Morner's projections are more accurate when his current observations are already devastatingly wrong?

>But of course, biology is not a science. It can make no definitive forecasts.

Duff, if you weren't so busy being a drunkard you'd be embarrassed to have ever said this.

If this really is your level of understanding of science, then you have proved once and for all that you are abjectly unqualified to comment on even high school level material.

Go back to selling used cars. You might actually find a sucker there who will swallow your swill.

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 10 Dec 2011 #permalink

Duff is a professional spreader of doubt about AGW. His purpose is to disseminate FUD far and wide, the way a hippo's tail sprays manure about. Oh look, FUD is DUF spelled backwards â who woulda guessed?

Perhaps we should christen Duff's brand of schtick FFUD, where you can use your imagination to decide what the extra 'F' might stand for - but "manure" might be an appropriate association.

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 10 Dec 2011 #permalink

You (the Duff) really are ignorant of science and history

Sounds perfectly qualified for denying science.

By Chris O'Neill (not verified) on 10 Dec 2011 #permalink

>Tell you what, chaps, I'll answer yours if you'll answer mine!

We're still waiting David. Are you going to answer John's question as you promised, or are you just going to throw out more denialist chum? I'm not really to fazed, of course, but evading it seems like...er, evasion ;-)

Or in you apparently preferred faux-retro-speech: Play up, old boy, can't be a squibber and let the side down, wot? Gin us up, me old chummoy - what say you to Johnnie's puzzler, eh?

Can I suggest that everyone else here help David stay on track? He's obviously easily distracted, so staying on one point help avoid confusing him. There are many questions here that he might deal with, but John *was* first.

Sorry for the delay - well, actually, I'm not in the least sorry, I do have a life outside of this particular imbroglio, thank God! I will stick to GWB because, despite his icy disdain, it is possible to hold a polite conversation with him.

Taking your points inorder:
1. I never spoke of "cutting edge science", not least because I have n't the faintest idea what you mean by the expression. I have givenyou Newton's laws as an example of 'science', ie, calculations based on observations which are (more or less) universal and from which predictions can be made. (I would be happy to add the quantum theories of the 20th century if that is more up to date - although what age has to do with it, I do not know.)

2. Might I remind you that, once again, it was me who asked the question first, to repeat, "let me ask you if you believe that the 'forecasts' of Dr. Mann have proved accurate?". I am eager, even panting, to read your response.

Duffer, as it does not appear to have sunk in yet, GWBN skewered your Newtonion 'pure science' nonsense pretensions and your carefully constructed little fences between 'good science' and 'bad science' ('bad science' being a euphemism for climate science of course) by introducing you to the classic three body problem - which itself predates Principia Mathematica. Incredibly, you can look it up on the very same infernal machine you're using at precisely this moment, don'tcha know.

What you actually seem to have in the intellectual space your brain reserves for scientific and technical information is a cobweb of half-baked, unexamined ideas and perhaps some truisms which have probably served you well enough for one who aspires to affect the mannerisms of a long-dead class, but make you woefully unequipped to discuss science anywhere outside of the retiree's golf club bar.

No wonder disinformers like Watts and McinTyres welcome you with open arms.

Mr Duff, I defined "cutting edge science" in my earlier post (you appear to have a short term memory problem - perhaps you should lay off the sauce for a bit). To remind you - this is a research area in which new data has been published in a peer reviewed journal in this current year. Newtonian mechanics does not qualify. Over to you.

Regarding Mann's forecasts, see my earlier post too. As far as I am aware Mann's work focuses on palaeoclimate reconstruction. You are clearly aware of a paper in which he has made some forecasts that can now be teste against data. I am not - and being a good scientist I even did a Web of Science search to try to find such a paper. So please do elucidate which forecasts you mean. I cannot answer your question unless you are more specific. If you provide this information I will reply (I think it is so rude to ignore a question that has been posed, and being a man of such integrity I am sure you feel the same).

It is therefore a surprise that to date you have answered none of the questions posed to you in this thread - are you actually going to do so now?

By GWB's Nemesis (not verified) on 11 Dec 2011 #permalink

@David Duff

Your example was that using Newtonian mechanics you could accurately predict the positions of the planets in 10,000 years.

But you can't. Again, Mercury will be off by something like 1.2 degrees over that timescale.

You also change the subject, quoting from a highly controversial and plagiarised document to make further points, and preemptively dismiss the (far more numerous and credible) rebuttals and counter examples as "he said/she said". This is just childish, and *nobody* with half a brain is impressed by your evasion.

GBW, thank you (and I mean it) for the polite exchange. Alas, as you are bright enough to see as well as an old Duffer like me, our conversation is going nowhere useful except into a never-ending circle.

I will end by restating my basic premise. The hypothesis of AGW cannot be accepted by neutral outsiders because the those who disagree with it, whilst they might not have proven the opposite, they certainly have established what m'learned friends call "reasonable doubt". That is not the end of the story because, of course (and quite properly), you and other practitioners in the field will strive mightily to prove your case to the same level of exactitude as , say, Newton's Laws. I applaud you for that because I have no wish to perpetuate a system which might cause global damage on the scale you warn us of.

Needless to say, and all opinion polls confirm it, the great unwashed, in which I am proud to take my place, are even more sceptical now than hitherto concerning your dire predictions. Even so, keep at it! You will not be alone in pursuing a chimera, indeed, you will be in distinguished company - Newton went to his grave believing in alchemy and virtually the entire Royal Academy believed in phlogiston!

I shall continue to watch your efforts with interest, and now I must leave you so that the various grunt-snufflers can shamble out of the undergrowth and indulge their less than impressive vitriol.

Duffer, as it does not appear to have sunk in yet, GWBN skewered your Newtonion 'pure science' nonsense pretensions and your carefully constructed little fences between 'good science' and 'bad science' ('bad science' being a euphemism for climate science of course) by introducing you to the classic three body problem

And, as Dave H pointed out, even with two bodies, what Newton tells us "exactly" is wrong, as has been known since 1859 when the precession of perihelion of Mercury was calculated.

I have givenyou Newton's laws as an example of 'science', ie, calculations based on observations which are (more or less) universal and from which predictions can be made. (I would be happy to add the quantum theories of the 20th century if that is more up to date - although what age has to do with it, I do not know.)

Here Duff shows that he is clueless about the difference between physical laws and science, clueless about the difference between quantum mechanics and relativity, clueless about the fact that Newton was never "exactly" right, and clueless about the refinement of scientific understanding over time.

The notion that something is only science if it can predict exactly what will happen in 10,000 years is so mindbogglingly stupid that I didn't think it possible even of Duff. For him, it seems, science consists solely of "laws" that are so powerful that they can offer exact predictions even in the face of numerous contingent unknowns. And he is so arrogant that he imagines that, even with his nearly complete lack of knowledge of or competence in science, his notions override the dictionaries, the encyclopedias, and the whole of educated intellectual society on the matter of whether biology is a science. And we see this same sort of arrogance, to varying degrees, in Andy, Jonas, Brent, and every other so-called "skeptic".

our conversation is going nowhere useful

Due entirely to your own dishonesty.

*But of course, biology is not a science. It can make no definitive forecasts. For example, even the most highly respected Darwinists cannot tell us which species will exist in 10,000 years, let alone which species will be produced. Newton, on the other hand, will tell you exactly where the planets will be*

I echo Bernard's description of the old Duffer's verbiage as being pure swill. Where to deconstruct this vapid remark? I won't even bother. Even a young public school student in the 6th grade would be on the floor when reading this. If anybody is interested, I will rebut, but given the senility factor in the old Duffer's splendidly hilarious comments, I think we can put this kind of nonsense to bed.

By Jeff Harvey (not verified) on 11 Dec 2011 #permalink

>I shall continue to watch your efforts with interest, and now I must leave you so that the various grunt-snufflers can shamble out of the undergrowth and indulge their less than impressive vitriol.

This is the fourth or fifth time he's made a dramatic exit. He'll be back to gloat when Watts finds the next "final nail in the coffin".

Even more disappointing than this latest fake exit, he still can't answer my basic, basic question:

>Duff, tell me how you can believe Morner's projections are more accurate when his current observations are already devastatingly wrong?

Real Science = forming an opinion and then looking for facts to support it

That David Duff is uttering the term 'Darwinists' (in addition to rubbishing biology) indicates that perhaps he is the victim of crank magnetism in more than one field of science.

And how about this...

Newton, on the other hand, will tell you exactly where the planets will be

Perhaps you have heard of something called general relativity?

Perhaps he is the victim of crank magnetism in more than one field of science

http://duffandnonsense.typepad.com/.services/blog/6a00d8341c5caf53ef00d…

Yep. One gives us -

I am a semi-, and mostly, self-educated second-rater

Never were truer words spoken in supposedly ironic mock-humility.

If you want to see just how deep the crankery runs with this one, try searching his site for 'birth certificate'.

> ...biology is not a science. It can make no definitive forecasts.

It's good to know that Duff thinks there's no such thing as medical science either. I'm guessing he refuses all modern medical treatment on principle, eh?

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 11 Dec 2011 #permalink

Better yet, search for "Glenn Beck".

Monckton for PM, Glenn Beck for Chairman of the BBC!

Do I sound like Glenn Beck? Good!

Do we really need to waste any more time on this buffoon?

Duff writes:

>*I have a lifetime's experience of being wrong about many things*

Then he adds yet another to the long list:

>*But of course, biology is not a science. It can make no definitive forecasts.*

Here David, widen your reading. Start with [some basics](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biology), then ask yourself if we can predict with certainty that you won't live for long if your heart stops pumping your blood? Or if loss of sea ice will affect kill?

Or if your body can cool itself to 37 deg C in an enviroment with wetbulb temp [over 35 deg C](http://www.skepticalscience.com/Heat-stress-setting-an-upper-limit-on-w…)?

>The hypothesis of AGW cannot be accepted by neutral outsiders because the those who disagree with it, whilst they might not have proven the opposite, they certainly have established what m'learned friends call "reasonable doubt".

In other words, you have no understanding of science.

Back to selling lemons, Duff. Oh, of course - you've never stopped...

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 11 Dec 2011 #permalink

Emphasis added:

I am a semi-, and mostly, self-educated second-rater

Ahhh, and therein lies the problem.

The trouble with autodidacts is that they are teacher's pet.

By Mercurius (not verified) on 12 Dec 2011 #permalink

Just a heads-up!

The past two days there have been two attempts to download malware to my computer from Climate sites I regularly visit. I think either the site or one of the advertisers has been hacked. The one from SwiftHack was a rootkit and the one from Climate Progress was some sort of a remote code execution. The timing on these bothers me.

By Berbalang (not verified) on 12 Dec 2011 #permalink

Sorry, sorry, I didn't mean to return but I bring you urgent news from, er, ... Dur ... glug-glug ... ban ... where rapidly rising ... glug-glug ... seas ... have brought an ubrupt ... glug-glug ... ending to the climate conference.

So I suppose this global warming isn't all bad, then!

> Newton, on the other hand, will tell you exactly where the planets will be

[Wrong](http://templarseries.fortunecity.com/solarsys.html), even in the absence of General Relativity.

In a prediction of only million years, we know that Pluto will still be in the same orbit, but we don't know which side of the sun it will be. Heck, we don't know the location of the Earth in its orbit in a 100 million year prediction!

`#`330

Cretin troll.

>This is the fourth or fifth time he's made a dramatic exit. He'll be back to gloat when Watts finds the next "final nail in the coffin".

Correct again, because as usual the trolls have waited for Watts to tell them what to think about Durban after all that scary news there might be an agreement.

Duff, stop being an unfunny sad old man for a second and answer my simple question:

>Tell me how you can believe Morner's projections are more accurate when his current observations are already devastatingly wrong?

I thought I'd lost the capacity to be shocked by the denialists until I heard Howard on ABC this morning. What sort of reality do these guys live in?

Anyway, it had a coda this afternoon when I was listening to PM and Plimer was on there. The guy is incredible. I hadn't understood what 'going emeritus' meant until I heard him raving this afternoon. Mark Colvin asks him some reasonable questions and Plimer just goes off his face. How dare anyone question his credibility! As well as his usual drivel about how volcanoes cause climate change (or not) he denies asbestos is asbestos and that it causes cancer. The guy really has lost it.

Here's the link (masochists only) http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2011/s3390224.htm

There once was an old troll named Duff,
Who posted a whole lot of guff,
From each stinkin' word
Grew a great pile of merde
That no-one but no-one could flush.

By Mercurius (not verified) on 13 Dec 2011 #permalink

Oh PB, that is *gold*.

>IAN PLIMER: I'm sorry. You are just a journalist. I have spent my life studying minerals. Look up any basic mineralogy textbook, the sort of thing that we give to 18-year-old students at university, and you'll see that chrysotile is a serpentine mineral.

>MATT PEACOCK: Called asbestos.

>IAN PLIMER: A family of serpentine minerals.

>MATT PEACOCK: Called asbestos.

Let's play a game. How many lies can you spot in these paragraphs?

>And we've only got to our present climate from past climates. The climate industry ignores the past.

>Climate science is a very new science. Geology is a great part of climate science. You cannot ignore geology. If you do, you get a completely different view of the way the planet works.

>But that's the way that the climate industry wants us to look at climate because geology has those really uncomfortable questions. It shows that sea level goes up and down and climate goes up and down and the land goes up and down and it's much more complicated than traces of a trace gas in the atmosphere.

And they wonder why they get called "deniers". Plimer is precious, and it is astounding that anybody would believe these lies. I'm sure Duff is eating it right up though. What a sucker.

For connoisseurs of stupidity: Gosselin at NoTricksZone.

>[**Renowed Warmist Scientist Mojib Latif Says Humans Could Be Responsible For Only 0.35°C In 100 Years**](http://notrickszone.com/2011/12/12/renowed-warmist-scientist-mojib-lati…)
>
>Usually warmists screech that humans are 95% responsible for the recent warming, and that huge positive water vapor feedbacks will get involved in the future. So itâs not very often you hear a warmist admit that humans perhaps could be just half responsible for the warming of the last 100 years.
> ...

Oh dear. I'm going to have to hand in my membership card at the masochists' club. That Plimer interview was unbearable.

But, but ... he seemed almost pitiful. Talk about setting yourself up to fail. He seems to have gone like a lamb to the slaughter following whoever led him down the chrysotile-is-not-asbestos-and-isn't-carcinogenic-anyway path.

After having seen little to contradict it, I have a hypothesis that the rejections of logic and other justifications that Climate Deniers have to accept bleeds into other areas of their thinking, making them more and more deranged. I also suspect that the long term effect of this is to induce brain cancer. Of course it is possible that the early stages of brain cancer make one more likely to accept climate denial.
Just for the record, I have watched an individual go through stages of replacing logic with conservative political thought (including climate denial) with the result of increasingly bizarre behavior resulting from it. He has now been diagnosed with brain tumors. Despite having what tumors they could reach removed, radiation treatment and chemotherapy, he seems just like he always did to a number of people who knew him. To me he seems more like an old Eliza program and has for many years.
It makes me wonder if there will not be a long term correlation between the rise of conservative political thought and an epidemic of brain cancer. I would find it reassuring if the conservative Republican candidates would release MRI scans of their brains to prove they don't have brain cancer. I'm not saying they do have brain cancer, I'm just concerned they might have brain cancer.

By Berbalang (not verified) on 14 Dec 2011 #permalink

David, could you please post an MRI scan of your brain just to add another data point toward confirming or disproving my hypothesis?

By Berbalang (not verified) on 14 Dec 2011 #permalink

Duff's post rate hasn't dropped since he made his fifth dramatic exit. How sad.

What's wrong Duff? So out of depth on basic science all you can do is snipe from the sidelines? Because that's exactly what it looks like.

Suddenly my words of two weeks ago seem remarkably prescient:

>[The sad, unfunny old man routine is] so Duff can back out of any statement he makes as "just having a laff!".

>Duff, like most deniers, is a gutless coward too frightened to stand by his own words, hence the endless caveats on his insipid blog that he doesn't know what he's talking about. He's such a cad and a wit, you see!

Climate Crocks reports: Denier bloggers raided 'in what seems to be a coordinated effort by Metropolitan Police, the Norfolk Constabulary and the Computer Crime division and the U.S. Department of Justice Criminal Division. [A bloggers] home was raided and computers were taken for âexaminationâ.'

Perhaps now we'll get a gander at how the sauce that was perfectly fine when it was served for the goose tastes now...

@Bill: wouldn't it be fun if this raid resulted in the "whistleblower" release of e-mails of these guys?

I'm sure there's a treasure trove of stupidity in there (especially from Roger Tattersall), and definitely a lot of quotes that can be mined for whatever purpose deemed necessary for "the cause".

Now, THAT would be karma...

Wonder how many deniers are frantically clicking 'delete delete delete' right now... Sounds just like chickens coming home to roost, doesn't it?

Pigeons, meet Cat.

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 14 Dec 2011 #permalink

Cue upsurge in George Orwell 1984 references on denier blogs.

By lord_sidcup (not verified) on 15 Dec 2011 #permalink

Read the WUWT comments thread. And here I was thinking their conspiracy theories couldn't get any stupider.

@349 and I wonder why they are so afraid and so busy spreading the word ("quick ! warn X and Y !" I am not kidding, this was one of the first comments over tallbloke's blog)
After all, they have nothing to hide since they are innocent, aren't they ?

...
Just LOOOOVE the karma kicking back. Let's place bets on the number of minutes a comment at WUWT reminding that will stay before it gets deleted.

This may seem like an odd question, but how do we know that the deniers actually got these emails from the Department of Justice? Something about this whole thing just doesn't seem right on some level. Could this "raid" be a hoax by the hacker FOIA in order to try and restore life to Climategate2? It would be a logical step for the hacker to take.

You can be sure the Climategate hacker is using another name, lurking in the background and pushing Climategate2 as "the real thing". My bets are he/she/it has become a lot more obvious over time...

By Berbalang (not verified) on 15 Dec 2011 #permalink

I've been Googling information on the story and turned up interesting information, including a name for FOIA. I don't know yet if the name is correct, so I am not going to post it. (Frankbi if you see this drop me an email and I will share it with you.)

By Berbalang (not verified) on 15 Dec 2011 #permalink

There has been a breakthrough in the police investigation of the stolen CRU emails.

Police officers investigating the theft of thousands of private emails between climate scientists from a University of East Anglia server in 2009 have seized computer equipment belonging to a web content editor based at the University of Leeds.

On Wednesday, detectives from Norfolk Constabulary entered the home of Roger Tattersall, who writes a climate sceptic blog under the pseudonym TallBloke, and took away two laptops and a broadband router.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/dec/15/hacked-climate-emails…

Genuine skeptic Christopher Hitchens is dead at 62.

What's going on is that the gullible are still reading WUWT and believing themselves very fine fellows for having found "teh troof".

... and perhaps Anthony can get Christopher to lend him his Nobel Prize pin should the IPCC win again.

Watts fills out an online application to see a draft report. Petri is impressed?

By lord_sidcup (not verified) on 16 Dec 2011 #permalink

Well, it's a fact that Petri is *very easily* impressed...

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 16 Dec 2011 #permalink

In a move calculated to bring IPCC 5 into compliance with Sturgeon's Law , Anthony Watts has been accepted as an Expert Reviewer.

Russell, read the six posts before yours.

Anthony Watts is a peer reviewed scientific expert, remember. He proved once and for all that the UHI conspiracy theorists were wrong.

From Watts' site about his reviewership:

>An invitation letter is available from ...

>[snip]

>Your username and password will be required to access the WGI AR5 FOD Chapters and to submit a review. The drafts, review form, and additional supporting material are available from the WGI AR5 FOD Expert Review website:

>https://fod.ipcc.unibe.ch/fod/

>Expert Reviewers are kindly reminded that all materials provided from this website are available for the sole purpose of the Expert Review and may not be cited, quoted, or distributed.

Given that Watts has already published material from the domain from which recipients of the letter are not supposed to quote, it seems that Watts' expertise is in not following the instructions given by the acceptance letter he received.

Or perhaps his 'expertise' is in making out that he was invited to join AR5 by the IPCC's initiative, when in fact it is clear from the text in the comments that he applied off his own bat, and received the 'invitation' in response, rather than having been sought out by the IPCC.

I note that those links indicate that AR5 material is apparently hosted by La Universidad Iberoamericana in the Dominican Republic. Firefox didn't like the site, which makes me wonder - is AR5 really working out of the Dominican Republic, or is someone going to a lot of effort to have a lend of some Denialati? Either way, I was not sufficiently moved by curiosity to follow the links.

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 17 Dec 2011 #permalink

If Watts genuinely reviews for AR5 we can expect two things.

1. Draft documents to mysteriously spread far and wide over the denialosphere.

2. His resignation/blog posts attacking "The Team" when it becomes clear AR5 will merely confirm what we already know.

@John (368)

I think there are a few other plausible alternatives to your proposed #2.

a) He resigns in feigned disgust over the "lack of openness" when he is reprimanded for publishing drafts/comments which he has agreed not to publish.

b) After violating the confidentiality agreement, his "expert reviewer" privileges are revoked, at which point he whines that he was forced out for not toeing the consensus line.

Errrr...Bernard J, that's a Swiss URL from the University of Bern: unibe.ch

Ladies and Gentlemen, I use the term loosely, of course, but just a small word of warning; have a care when referring to 'Tallbloke's' travails. Matters have taken a serious turn and I know what an excitable bunch of kiddies you are and I would hate any of you and/or our distinguished host to get into trouble with m'learned friends.

No, no, don't thank me - just the usual in the plain brown envelope!

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/12/14/uk-police-seize-computers-of-skep…

[Marco](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/12/december_2011_open_thread.php#c…).

I've just figured the same thing out, after I followed a link from That Search Engine to the reference page of a heritage-breed site and got the photos from that site, with thousands and thousands of repetitions of words relating to 'enhancement' products.

I tried the home url and got back to the same reference page url but with the correct text. As soon as I realised this, something twigged and I tried the Bern page, et voila...!

I seem to be having a severe issue with my computer. I have scanned it with several different high-profile malware applications and it always comes up clean, so if anyone here has any idea about tracking down this bizarre redirection thingie I'd be most interested to hear...

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 18 Dec 2011 #permalink

Yep, duffer, not only old news, but if you follow the link you'll note that nobody engages in defamatory speculation regarding criminal activity, though the words 'stupid' and 'karma' do get tossed around a bit.

Contrast this to the constant string of libelous accusations integral to the conspiracy theory that is the larger portion of your side of the debate.

Note how the discussion tailed off pretty quickly? That's because the reality-based community tends to take Mr. Holmes' advice, and doesn't speculate well head of the evidence.

We shall see, and while I'm sure many would experience just ein biÃchen of the old schadenfreude at the prospect of some 'the biter bit' style entertainment, few will be surprised if little comes of it all.

Bernard @ 374

Check your "hosts" file in C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc for spurious entries.

Should only have a reference to "localhost"

Simpering coward Duff has now posted here five or six times in the week since he announced he was quitting commenting after he couldn't justify his startling claim that biology wasn't a science, explain why he felt Morner's projections were so accurate when his observations were so wrong, or tell us exactly what projections Dr. Mann (who studies paleoclimate) has made.

Duff, there is a line of people here still waiting for you to answer these questions.

Why are you so afraid of scientific debate? Why have you resorted to weak trolling and link spamming instead of actually standing by your own arguments like any person of intelligence or integrity would?

Interesting [account](http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/12/climate-cynicism-…) of the Third Santa Fe Conference on Global And Regional Climate Change. Impressions of Curry are ... interesting, as are those of Monckton (I will post a link and quote on the Monckton Debunks Monckton thread).

> The main lesson I took away from the conference was this: there is no consistent contrarian science, and there is no defining contrarian ideology or motivation. Some are sincere. Others are angry at their lack of funding. Some appear to be envious of the IPCC scientistsâ success, and others have found a niche that gets them attention they would not otherwise get. Only a few appear to be motivated by politics. No single label applies to them, and I found myself referring to them as "contrarians/skeptics/deniers/enablers/provocateurs/publicity-seekers".

> The one common thread I found among them was the fervent belief that "Climategate" was a conspiracy and that the IPCC is rigged. This faith-based belief seems to be unshakable, and is the antithesis of true skepticism. Those I met were uniformly cynical about the honesty and motivations of mainstream scientists. If I were forced to use a single label, I would be inclined to call them "science cynics".

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 20 Dec 2011 #permalink

"there is no defining contrarian ideology"

Precisely and exactly so, which is part of what makes them so attractive. You see, the don't have "the cause" to push.

'Warmers', on the other hand . . .

Duffer, if you for one nanosecond imagine you're not being led by the nose into what you should think by those who knowingly play to your own ignorance and vanity, you're already several stages beyond delusional.

I vote for several stages beyond delusional. Plus -

This faith-based belief seems to be unshakable, and is the antithesis of true skepticism.

- is also a neat summation of the Duff world view. Don't you love it when hoary old tories play at being 'outsiders'?

Hey Duff, still any word on why you believe Morner's predictions when his observations are so very wrong?

Got a list of more fields that aren't Real Science? Perhaps ecology this time, or maybe physics?

How's that list of incorrect projections Dr. Mann has made coming along?

More importantly - why are you such a scientific and ideological coward?

It seems the blubbery, shambling carcass who calls himself "Duff" likes to give it but he can't take it. How pathetically gormless.

> You see, the don't have "the cause" to push.

They're quite clearly pushing "their cause" for which they cannot marshal decent argument or evidence. But they've certainly pulled the wool over Duff's eyes on that front - which is apparently quite easy.

That would be the same Duff who quote-mined but failed to note that the original said they all disagree with one another's arguments, and the only unifying factor is a belief that "'ClimateGate' shows a conspiracy and the IPCC is rigged".

And the very same Duff who won't defend his assertions; see what John said, including:

> More importantly - why are you such a scientific and ideological coward?

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 20 Dec 2011 #permalink

Duff likes to boast he doesn't have a cause, which is odd because his cause is posted on top of his blog:

>âThat one can convince oneâs opponents with printed reasons, I have not believed since the year 1764. It is not for that purpose that I have taken up my pen, but rather merely to annoy them, and to give strength and courage to those on our side, and to make it known to the others that they have not convinced us.â

Just in case you needed more proof that Duff is a politically motivated troll who bases his scientific views on his ideology.

They are calling it âpollgateâ. Murdoch organ The Sunday Times hides the results of a poll they commissioned on renewable energy, because it undermines the editorial line they relentlessly plug:

[Sunday Times bury wind farm survey after it reveals majority support](http://politicalscrapbook.net/2011/12/sunday-times-wind-farms/)

By lord_sidcup (not verified) on 21 Dec 2011 #permalink

They are calling it âpollgateâ. Murdoch organ The Sunday Times hides the results of a poll they commissioned on renewable energy, because it undermines the editorial line they relentlessly plug:

[Sunday Times bury wind farm survey after it reveals majority support](http://politicalscrapbook.net/2011/12/sunday-times-wind-farms/)

By lord_sidcup (not verified) on 21 Dec 2011 #permalink

Sorry about the double post. I seem to have something in common with D Duff (grimace).

By lord_sidcup (not verified) on 21 Dec 2011 #permalink

Remember NAS, last summer?
Kerry Emmanuel has another good article, which sadly falls on deaf ears.
However, it was fairly useful as it was a response to Sterling Burnett, a fellow I've been reading some of lately.

By John Mashey (not verified) on 22 Dec 2011 #permalink

> Impressions of Curry are ... interesting...

...and she turned up in comments, mostly focused on making a few denials and claims that weren't exactly convincing, and flounced off inviting anyone who cared to discuss it on her blog.

As one headline example, she claimed that her cartoon of Mann apparently "hiding the uncertainty monster" under a sheet with a hockey stick and the cover of The Hockey Stick Illusion...was not attacking Mann!

Other commenters appear to be [taking apart some of her pseudo-scientific bafflegab and hand-waving fluff](http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/12/climate-cynicism-…):

> Judy, Risk assessment is my day job, and I can say without any uncertainty that you donât understand it. ...

> When a risk with severe consequences cannot be bounded, standard risk assessment prescribes risk avoidance as the only reasonable strategy, since intelligent allocation of resources toward risk mitigation is not possible for situations of unbounded risk. ...

> ...Indeed, without reliable modelsâas you contendâthe only reasonable strategy is to slam on the brakes HARD.

> Judy, uncertainty is not the friend of the complacent.

> In short, Judy, your talk contains 3 sorts of contentions:
1)trivial
2)wrong
and
3)so vague that they fall into the category of ânot even wrongâ

And dhogaza points out that:

> ...her "uncertainty monster" only has one eye and its neck is fused and unable to turn. It is genetically programmed to stare in one direction, the direction that claims that all of uncertainty is on the low range â actually, far below the low range â and apparently is incapable of examining the full realm of uncertainty ...

And [this one](http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/12/climate-cynicism-…) is worth reading too.

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 22 Dec 2011 #permalink

> Kerry Emmanuel has another good article, ...

I second that.

And the first commenter demonstrated pretty much exactly what the author was pointing out.

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 22 Dec 2011 #permalink

Berbalang:

I think I lost your e-mail address when my Hushmail account was disabled. I'd like to know more -- please contact me at 4u2 at inactivism dot tk (or the e-mail address on this blog, or both). Meanwhile, also consider making a WebCite cache of whatever you found...

-- frank

Now is the season of goodwill, they tell me. So, in that spirit let me wish you all well but urge you to try and do much better in the future! When that chap Hansen promised us some scorching summers and warm winters I rubbed my hands in anticipation. And you lot keep warning me that really, really, hot weather is just about to happen. Sorry but I can't wait much longer. My sun creams are all past their sell-by date and the canvas in my deckchair has rotted. And now I can't even remember where I put my BBQ because it has been so long since I last used it what with the miserabley cold summers we've had for teh last three years. I'm beginning to lose faith, fellas, teeny-weeny doubts are entering my mind. Well, I mean, if this is global warming it's pathetic!

Anyway, I hope all of you enjoy an excellent Christmas and that you make a point of cooking on a coal-fired oven - every little bit helps.

> you make a point of cooking on a coal-fired oven - every little bit helps.

Hey David Duff, if you wanted us to give presents to rich CEOs of coal companies, instead of giving them to people we love or donating them to the needy, you could simply ask.

Merry Christmas!

-- frank

And Bernard J...

I'm not sure how well this'll work, but you may want to get a known clean system with its own boot drive, disable AutoRun and AutoPlay, move your suspicious hard drives to the known clean system (without booting them up), and then scan the hard drives using only programs on the clean system. This should reduce the chances of any active malware on your system messing up your anti-virus program's analysis.

-- frank